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The tragedy of Chuck McGill is a tough one to appreciate.
He was a character you loved to hate or probably just hated during his three seasons onBetter Call Saul.
Michele K. Short/AMC
A cover for something else?
A metaphor for corrupting influence of the world?
Chuck was sick, but he held his sickness in a way that made him exasperating.
Michele K. Short/AMC
He seemed more interested in nurturing his condition than managing it or overcoming it.
He transformed his awkwardness and agonies into an identity statement and afflicted others with it.
Casting Michael McKean, brilliant comic actor and noted mockumentarian, exacerbated our incredulity.
Was Chuck conning everyone, including himself?
Was he just a big faker?
Was he just a more complicated version of Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk), his grifter younger brother?
Chucks solipsism and insistence on being enabled accentuated another trait: Chuck was a prickly prig.
It was easy to loathe him, especially if youre the pop in rubbed raw by fundamentalism.
We also know he wont ever pay for his sins.
If only this poor, poor Jimmy had a better big bro, maybe Jimmy woulda-coulda-shoulda turned out different.
At best, Chuck only had the toughest kind of love for morally slippery, conscience-challenged Jimmy: shame.
Which is also ironic.
No one likes the judgy pop in.
So what does that say about us, who had nothing but judgment for Chuck?
The challenge of giving a rip about Chuck was a big part of the point of Chuck.
I wish I had felt his death from the show, not aninternet Q&A.
My complaint doesnt diminish my regard for Chucks season 3 story, nor McKeans stellar performance.
It was vengeance and justice!
Chucks vendetta culminated in the middle of season 3 with a widely praised outing called Chicanery.
At his disbarment hearing.
Chicanery hinged on courtroom drama cliches; Jimmy used gimmicky theatrics and calculated provocations that worked to impossible perfection.
He manipulated Chuck into a rant that couldnt have served Jimmys cause better if he had written it himself.
Yet where the writing made my eyes roll, McKean made me believe.
The haunting conclusion to Chucks figurative self-immolation foreshadowed the literal one to come.
You could hear it sizzle.
He was blessed with a series of smartly conceived, deftly directed scenes that summed up his story.
I dont want to be the agent of its destruction.
Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian, who was fantastic in this hour) gave Chuck a push.
You know how people who kill themselves often purge their possessions before doing so?
Shredding and shedding Jimmy was part of that.
I dont give a shit about you!Or perhaps the total opposite!
The focus of the sequence was largely on Jimmy, which flatters McKeans work.
He was, until the end, an essential, humble support to the subject of the story.
The power of this passage raised my expectations for Chucks climactic scene, his suicide.
Do it.I heard that phrase in every thud of Chucks kicks.
Perhaps I should accept what Chuck never could: imperfection.
Whats certain is that Michael McKean was as good as it gets.
We left Jimmy in a seemingly good place, not yet aware of Jimmys death.
(Irenes ruptured rapport with her community of friends her family mirrored both Chuck-Jimmy and Chuck-Howard.)
We can imagine theyll want to do it right.We know Jimmy is destined to do it wrong.
I just hope Gilligan and Gould dont belabor it.
I cant imagine theres much more to Jimmys story, but who knows.
