Chuck, Jimmy, and the Illusion of Alternatives:

As much as I enjoyed Breaking Bad, it did leave me in a ditch when it came to finding characters to root for. Once the initial excitement of Walter’s Nietzschean Individuation wore off, I could no longer defend his actions, and that left me with no moral recourse, since by the end of the drama every supporting character had either become (or in some cases remained) helpless or had been turned into an instrument of Heisenberg’s will.

Jesse was too often employed effectively as an accomplice; Mike was too easily converted from one boss to another. Skylar became Ms. Heisenberg. Little by little, every upstanding character was assimilated into Heisenberg’s Empire, the only exception being the only character who literally could not stand up to him: Walter Junior. There were no Mulders, Coopers, or Skywalkers in the Breaking Bad universe. Hank Schrader was our most immediate contact with the Law, and his character was both comical and tragic. Gustavo Fring, the idealized businessman, was more murderous than Heisenberg himself was, at least up until Season Five. In context of all of this hypocrisy, Saul Goodman became my favourite supporting villain only because of how unabashedly corrupt and duplicitous he was.

 

Coming into Better Call Saul, it was this Goodman whom I expected to see. Instead, I got Jimmy McGill: an attempt at a three-dimensional character with a checkered past and an eccentric individualism which ended up casting him as the perpetual underdog anti-hero. Yet there was always a character foil in Jimmy’s Universe who became the first truly heroic character whom I could root for, and no: it was not Kimberly Wexler. Have you guessed it yet? It was Chuck.

 

The series has not even been as brutal towards Jimmy’s brother Charles McGill as the fans have been. There is an entire reddit thread devoted to venting frustrations about Chuck on principle. Yet why all the hatred?

Simply explained, Chuck is a “villain of the sow”. His role as antagonist is purely relative to Jimmy’s point of view. If Jimmy is regarded as the “Hero” of the story, however absurd his heroism may be, then Chuck functions as the “villain” insofar as he serves one narrative purpose: to stopper Jimmy.

In this sense, Chuck’s “vendetta” against his brother is not a vendetta at all, since there is no ulterior motive. Chuck has nothing to gain PERSONALLY by interfering with Jimmy’s attempts to become a lawyer. The satisfaction he derives from each successful attempt to blindside and outwit his criminal counterpart is only overshadowed by his extreme gravity and frustration in having constantly to do so, an aggravation which is exacerbated by the inexplicable inability for even Chuck’s most fervent admirers and friends to demonstrate the same tenacity.

Clearly, Chuck’s role is that of a PURELY moral character; his only motive is his explicit motive, which is to prevent his brother from becoming what we all should know he will become: Saul Goodman. Yet how can the most ardent fans of Breaking Bad blame him, then? And for what would this blame be?

Chuck’s means are often no less Machiavellian than Jimmy’s, though he always ends up accounting for his deeds before the end, within the very Court of Law that functions as his sanctum, expecting nothing less but for a jury of his peers to understand why his methods were necessary. In this sense, it may be argued that Chuck was “forced” into duplicity and dubiousness by his NATURALLY duplicitous and dubious brother, and this is a probable analysis. It’s not that Jimmy specifically strong-armed Chuck, but he never failed to produce a set of circumstances wherein Chuck had no recourse, just as Skylar had no recourse in dealing with Walter’s narcissistic criminal antics. At any rate, there really can be no excuse for Chuck NOT to have done as he did, just as Skylar had no SENSIBLE alternatives. Both were bound by moral necessity, and to hold them in contempt, to project ulterior motives upon them, and to pardon their aggressors is to do something even more devious than the aggressors themselves had done, since it is to imply that moral obligation and, as such, moral authority, are arbitrary.

So why would people “hate” Charles McGill? Clearly, if Jimmy forced Chuck to stoop to Jimmy’s level, though only to such an extent as it was necessary to forestall Saul, then it cannot be said that Chuck “created” Saul Goodman; rather, Saul Goodman epitomizes all which Chuck sought to prevent, and, since Chuck is absent throughout most of Saul’s rise to power, it cannot be contended that Saul was the product of a “self-fulfilling prophecy”. Jimmy did not break bad as the result of Chuck’s attempts to prevent this break; Chuck simply never had the capacity to prevent the inevitable.

Why was this transformation inevitable? Simply put: because of us. WE are the sorts of people who allow such evil to fester daily, and our capacities not only for enabling it but also for seeking the deaths of its most natural enemies, all within the lucidity of the omniscient audience who cannot deny the objectivity of the natural enemy’s account, are precisely that manure which buries the truly Heroic Quest whilst giving life to the Nihilistic Tragedy. Chuck McGill did not create Saul Goodman; we did, and we are so proud of our creation that we protect it like parents.

 

It is for these reasons that, in dealing with criminal masterminds, we must be extremely careful not only to temper our involvement, but to censor our accountability for it. Chuck never stoops as low as Saul wants him to stoop, but he still must stoop low enough for Chuck to look at least MARGINALLY bad, enough to appear unqualified to judge of Jimmy. Yet if we recognize that Chuck’s decisions are NOT his own, but rather the products of an objective Moral Order, we pardon that Order’s most pious followers, instead of simply continuing to enable its most devious deviants.

[({Dm.R.G.)}]