Better Call Saul Finale SPOILER ALERT -a true villian

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The following is written immediately after seeing the mid season finale of the finale season of Better Call Saul.

Every character being 3 dimensional is the brilliance of that show. You know all the characters, even the minor ones. You get a good idea of who they are as a person. They are fleshed out enough that they feel real, they feel like people you know...they act like personalities you have encountered.

It is easy to sympathize with any of them. Easy to see the point of view of any of them...from Hector to the kids who runs the camera for Saul...it's someone who feels real and who's motivations are understandable, even if you disagree. The kid who runs the camera, he's a pain in the ass, but you know where he's coming from.

Lost in that brilliance, or muddy waters of everyone being understandable, is that Howard was a piece of shit. He got what he deserved. While he was walking around (intruding) in Jimmy and Kim's apartment, with his "poor me...how will you live with yourselves" speech, I was yelling at the screen "are you shitting me?! You piece of trash!"

HOWARD...helped create the Jimmy that ruined his career. Howard...ruined... Jimmy's... life.

He deliberately stood in the way of Jimmy's career for years. He carried out petty and vicious policy at the behest of Chuck. He did not have to do so, he chose to do so. He prevented Jimmy from reaching the apex of his dream ( becoming a partner in his brothers law firm). That is a life changing/life ruining action. It is profound and disgusting. Howard...was disgusting.

Prior to Jimmy staring to turn into "Saul" as he eventually becomes, Jimmy had reformed himself, was working hard in the mail room, putting himself through law school. He was working towards a goal and a dream. Howard...prevented his success. Think about how profoundly evil that is. Even more evil, by the fact that if Jimmy succeeded or failed it would not have harmed Howard.

AND he allowed Jimmy to go on, unaware that his own brother was deliberately standing in his way. Also disgusting. Jimmy was not "better call Saul" at that point, he was Jimmy Mcgill, who had a chance at a legit life and a successful one, but he did not know for years that he was being prevented from that path by his own brother because Howard not only did not tell him, but aided Chuck in preventing Jimmy from that path. Howard helped create Jimmy. and Howard got what he deserved.

In a series full of villains and evil...I would call Howard one of the worst. Just about everyone on that show, is trying to build something, achieve something, working towards something.

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And the evil that they do to each other is in service of that. Lalo, Hector, do what they do for family and the family name...and are trying to build the family enterprise. Gus too, is trying to build something. Illegal enterprises, yes, but the motivation is not simple evil for the sake of evil. There is a plan...a goal. Mike is working for his family and in service of building something with Gus. They are all doing things for a goal larger than themselves.

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Howard...was not. He has a law firm that was given to him. Yes it is in ,a sense a family business, but not one he helped create. Nor one of any profound legacy for him, he is the only one left...he has no one to leave it to. Yes, he worked hard to keep it, and no doubt worked hard to become a lawyer...seemingly an excellent lawyer. But he built nothing. His actions were never in service of a dream, or a goal. His efforts were never aimed at growth, or anything new or grander. His actions and efforts were in protection of the status quo. At his most ambitious he was the lawyer equivalent any of the cartels capos. Doing as told, in service of the villain they serve...in his case Chuck.

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He could have made Jimmy a partner, he could have told Jimmy that his brother would always be working in the background against him. He did not.

He allowed Jimmy to be stopped and thwarted at every turn, helped Jimmy to be stopped and thwarted. And allowed Jimmy to go on spending time care and effort on the very man holding him back.

And when Chuck became an issue to the status quo, Howard got rid of him. He got rid of him professionally and by some accounts this caused Chuck to commit suicide. For the sake of time, we need not even blame Howard for that to show him to be a villain.

With all the rest in mind, it is completely reasonable for Jimmy to lose his shit when Howard offered him a job. What a piece of garbage move...offering him a job ...that he no longer needs, that he had actually he earned five years ago. Five years of struggle, heartbreak, and sacrifice that he shouldn't have had to go through.

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He was no better to Kim, by the way, but for the sake of time...just what we know he did to Jimmy is damning enough.

We see what Jimmy is becoming, we know what he becomes. Imagine, what Jimmy's life might have become...If Howard had stood up to Chuck. If Howard had let Jimmy know what the true obstacle in the way of his dream was.

Howard was trash. He was shot in the apartment of a man he profoundly wronged. He was shot by a man who was only in that apartment because of the path Jimmy was on after the legitimate path was thwarted repeatedly by Chuck and Howard in service of Chuck. You want to know who is responsible for Howard's death? It is Howard.

Not just on the basis of deserving it that I have been going on about, but also because of arrogance, laziness and lack of self awareness. There is a scene in season 5, after he offers the job to Jimmy and Jimmy loses his shit and starts ranting at Howard. He tells Howard that he is "teensy tiny tiny little man living a a tiny bubble" and "I travel in worlds you can't imagine. You no idea what I am capable of".

That was a rant yes...but all of it was true and Howard should have listened. Howard had at that point already seen how smart, and tenacious and ingenious Jimmy is. The lengths he is able to go to get the upper hand. At this point Jimmy had long since admitted to the elaborate scheme to falsify court documents. And yet...Howard was so arrogant as to think he could simply thwart Jimmy with no more effort than hiring a P.I.

Howard's arrogance and lack of self awareness walked hand in hand. He did not allow himself to understand that he was never anything more than an obstacle to Jimmy and Kim. That they had both overcome far more than he ever did. That he did not have the resolve or ablilities or willpower that they had been forced to develop. He had never faced a -get this done or your life is over- or- get this done or your dreams are over- situation. So the grit that is required to overcome such a thing is something he did not even understand. If he did...he would have done everything he could to get off of Saul's radar and stay off it.

...and he would never have walked into that apartment.

Fitting that Howard's last few moments on earth was once again trying to screw something up for Jimmy, that being his relationship with Kim. Howard was a lawyer who could have found a legit way to coma back at Jimmy. Got a legit P.I. He could have built a case...but Howard is not the type personality that builds things. Howard is the type that tries to stop other people from building things. and often times those things they try to stop get build right on top of them.

His laughable ranting about his particular hardships...it was almost comedic. Almost everyone on that show has been through hell that makes Howard's plight quite tame by comparison.

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Almost everyone on that show...hero or villian..has displayed courage, cleverness, tenacity, has been seem to work hard and tirelessly in pursuit of a goal.

But not Howard...Howard's biggest issue was trying to keep his law firm afloat, and in doing so he either ruined or harmed many lives. Jimmy's life, Kim's life, Chuck's life, possibly his wife's life.

I cheered when Lalo waked in, because I knew Howard would die. Some people maybe fell otherwise, were sympathetic to him, felt he was unfairly treated, too harshly treated. I disagree, we know where Jimmy end's up. Imagine where he could have ended up if at the pivotal year of his life we are watching, Howard had not been in his way. Jimmy's who life changed during this show, that's the point of the show. Let us not overlook that Howard was a tool of that change.

Even though it came out of nowhere and he and Lalo have never laid eyes on each other before it was fitting that Lalo killed him as a stark comparison of Jimmy's old life and self and his current world . Both Lalo and Howard had been brought into the family business. Howard operated with lack of imagination, lack of grit, and only sought to keep pace, where as Lalo had been risking life and limb, crawling through muck, blood, and fire, using his wits and willpower. That is the world Jimmy now lives in and thrives...Howard entered that world and only lasted 30 seconds.

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It's an amazing show...so many fleshed out personalities and shows like that can become an ink blot test, revealing who you are by who you sympathize with more, who you despise more. And each of use know some of these personalities (though in different jobs LOL) ...and Howards...I see them often. They come and go. I hadn't gotten to see one get shot in the head before, so that was a high point of the series for me.

anyways, thanks for indulging me in a character study that no doubt swerved into my own lack of self awareness...speaking of that, as I have my own goals and things to build, next time back to comics.

As always, homebase is here

https://www.arseniclullabies.com

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