[i]And yet, he has seen Jimmy do great work, often for very worthwhile causes.[/i]

Maybe unsurprisingly, I am also on the autism spectrum, which could explain why I'm going to the "Chuck is not objectively wrong that Jimmy is a shady character" place and missing some of the social stuff that's setting almost everyone else off about Chuck. I mean, I *see* the stuff that bothers you all about Chuck,…

This is all objectively correct and I am a damned idiot who had forgotten about the Mike-needing-money angle. Thank you for taking the time to write this out and doing so in a non-assholish way—-that's more patient than most people usually are with people who forget major plot points. You're a class act!

How does he justify not sending Jimmy to jail? I feel like "aw, the kid made a mistake, let's let him off with a warning!" was an option here.

Oh, for sure, we can all condone the murder of cartel members—-especially ones as remorselessly sociopathic at the Salamancas, and especially when they're fictional. :)

Well, yeah, that's the problem with Chuck. He sounds like such an asshole when he says anything. I do wonder sometimes—-and this is hard to calibrate, obviously—-what goes into all the Chuck hate. How much of it is his demeanor? How much of it is that his role in the story is that he's trying to stop fun from…

God, that scene is so perfect. I can't disagree with anyone who watches the first half of that scene ("an online course?!?!") and thinks Chuck is just an elitist douche, but basically every pro-Chuck argument I could ever make is made much more succinctly by his little speech that has the monkey-machinegun analogy in…

Agreed. Donna's an exceptional writer and critic. I don't know how she does it. I credit her for getting me into Breaking Bad in the first place—-for years, I heard about this show where Bryan Cranston plays "Mr. Chips turning into Scarface", and I'd watch the first few episodes and think, "He is nothing like Mr.…

Yeah, I'm just splitting semantic hairs here. "That motherfucker's got to go because he is a threat to my granddaughter" sounds like a story in which Mike is the hero. "That motherfucker's got to go because I am mad at him because he threatened my granddaughter"…less so. Although someone else astutely pointed out,…

I love that Mike kept the "DON'T" note and brought it to his meeting with Gus. <3

I genuinely do wonder how much of the Chuck hate is about that. I'll gladly stipulate that upfront: Chuck is not a "likable" person. Even if his internal motivations were all as heroic as I generally think they are, he's still going to seem like a crusty old fuddy-duddy.

Yeah, that's legit. My criticisms aren't that serious—-because Mike is such a man of few words, it's easy to read too much into the few things he does say, and most of what he said to Gus tonight struck me as weirdly…unprofessional? Of course, the beautiful thing about BrBa/BCS is that their characters are so…

Oh, they totally *would*. The question is whether they were *going to*.

Harsh, dude - I'm just sharing my reactions to the show, the same as everybody else here. I generally enjoy reading what you have to say, and you make some good and convincing points—-who's served well by this kind of dismissiveness? Are we not here to discuss the show?

You know, you are absolutely right: I think that, 95% of the time (squat cobbler, Slippin' Jimmy, Viktor swindling KEN WINS, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.), Jimmy is shown to be a guy who shouldn't be practicing law. I think, in theory, there is a universe in which he has a paternalistic older brother who loves…

Oh, God, it's bad enough that I'm one of the most fervent Chuck people here in the Jimmy vs. Chuck fight, but I think the Gus/Mike scene tonight started to nudge me toward thinking Hector has a point in the Mike vs. Hector fight.

That's totally legit. Generally, I thought Mike action sequences were the weakest parts of "Breaking Bad", and it's reaching self-parody levels this seasons, where Mike is constantly doing mysterious things that we figure out later, or never.

I thought the cold open involved something bad happening to Kaylee (obviously in post-BrBa times), since the shoes were so tiny (presumably they shrunk due to weather damage). I'm glad it wasn't that.

He said Chuck would die "alone", no?

I'd have said this before I saw what happened to Jesse in Ozymandias. Now, knowing how sadistic Vince Gilligan can be to the characters who've been corrupted by his antiheroes, I err more on the side of hoping she dies very quickly and painlessly and without being tortured by a bunch of Nazis in a pit for a year.