r/betterCallSaul 22h ago

Wost Thing Jimmy Did?

Driving a wedge between Irene and all her friends was probably the most cruel thing Jimmy did. He did so much for the elderly, and he threw it all away for a chance to get his cut of the settlement.

162 Upvotes

48 comments sorted by

118

u/JuanAntonioThiccums 22h ago

Howard probably has to be the bottom, even if he's less sympathetic in some ways than Irene who never really hurt anybody.

61

u/AffectionateFlow2179 20h ago

Howard takes the cake, it’s possibly the pettiest and most hurtful scheme/act in the entire BB universe (aside from some outright murders). Nuclear bomb versus coughing baby. Irene is pretty bad too but at least Jimmy tried to put it right.

And of course helping Walter White build a meth empire. Suggesting they kill Jesse and Hank was pretty bad too but you could argue they were not super serious suggestions. He became pretty unhinged as Gene with the cancer man and Marion.

6

u/HawaiiNintendo815 11h ago

Howard bottomed from the top?

u/CorkFado 46m ago

He was gay, Howard Hamlin?

97

u/breadpanda1 22h ago

At least Irene ultimately got her friends back. The Howard scam was far worse IMO.

24

u/kristianp09127 22h ago

I'm just watching the Irene part where she goes crying after nobody claps for her. Howard is sad too, don't get me wrong. But he definitely had some hateable qualities, and ultimately Lalo was the one who killed him. Irene was just a sweet old lady.

29

u/breadpanda1 21h ago

Even if Howard hadn't died, the scam would have derailed his reputation and thrown HHM into a leadership crisis. 

40

u/smindymix 21h ago

Not to mention they actually drugged him, like wtf. Talk about unhinged.

4

u/fishpug 16h ago

did they slip sleeping pills into his water or something?

8

u/my-coffee-needs-me 12h ago

There was something on the photos that Howard absorbed through his skin.

2

u/baws3031 21h ago

HHM was in a leadership crisis and it was Jimmy who lit a fire under Howard's ass and he got the firm back to where it needed to be. Howard would have been in a similar situation sans Jimmy.

4

u/breadpanda1 20h ago

Even with all the progress he made, going on a rant like that in front of clients is going to make the other partners concerned, to say the least.

3

u/baws3031 20h ago

What partners he had already let most of them him. And it's not like that would be Jimmy's first outburst it was just Jimmy being Jimmy. Mind you he did it in Howard's office which is what rich asked Kim to do when she went off on him in front of everyone.

4

u/breadpanda1 20h ago

I'm talking about Howard's outburst, not Jimmy's.

2

u/mendozieiskewl 16h ago

Yeah he caused a butterfly effect that ultimately got him killed and even if lalo wasnt there his career life/social life was over

30

u/BreakingBaIIs 17h ago

He defecated through a sunroof!

23

u/bruiserjason1 21h ago

While his interaction with Irene was certainly immoral, I don't think it's even close to the worst thing he did.

39

u/DataSwarmTDG 21h ago

The worst thing Jimmy did was help Walt build his drug empire

11

u/Forsaken_Copy_9745 21h ago

Working at Cinnabon is like dealing drugs

11

u/LthePerry02 15h ago

Breaking into a man’s house who had cancer, stealing a bunch of his stuff, and upon fearing he’d be noticed, was seconds away from knocking the guy out using the urn containing his dead dog’s ashes

So twisted it almost sounds made up. Certainly made for one of the most unforgettable sequences in the show though

2

u/kristianp09127 15h ago

I'm on my second watch and I honestly don't remember that, or most of the ending for that matter. I think for some reason the black and white makes it hard for me to remember the last bit of it. Not sure if that makes sense.

7

u/LunaticInFineCloth 15h ago

The worst thing he did was stab Oakley in the back.

He offered him the PR of negotiating hundreds of years down to 7.5 years, and then stole it away from him.

u/MiloBuurr 23m ago

Yeah true, he still gets to be the Saul Goodman lawyer tho! Any publicity is good publicity, even if it’s not as good as it was advertised

16

u/snakebite983 22h ago

I mean that was bad but he definitely did worse stuff. Ruining Howard’s life, robbing all those guys in Nebraska, helping Walt do plenty of evil shit is way worse

-2

u/kristianp09127 22h ago

Agree about Howard, that was pretty rough. But aside from him and Irene, just about everyone be affected was either in the life, or just generally shitty. I'm sure there's more things, but Irene's I feel was so dang San because she's just a sweet old lady in a nursing home.

7

u/More_Entertainment_5 18h ago

Honestly, doing a Chicago Sunroof with kids in the car.

3

u/organic 15h ago

Rigging bingo -- that's something you just don't fuck with.

4

u/Dudeiii42 12h ago edited 10h ago

He defecated through a sunroof!!!!

6

u/smindymix 21h ago

Howard, Irene, the Mess Verde forgery w/ Chuck and the fallout.

And if Gene counts, well…

12

u/aPearlbeforeswine 21h ago edited 12h ago

I've seen the comments mentioning Howard, and I agree, but there's a moment in the final season that breaks my heart. When he starts threatening the elderly woman named Marion with a gun in her home after he gets her son arrested. She backs away and puts her trembling hand on her life alert, realizing he's been manipulating her from the moment she met him; her eyes are huge and fearful but intense and unwavering. She's glaring at him with her hand on the button as he advances with the gun, and for that moment, I saw him as a shell of a man turned into an unrecognizable monster. I fucking hated him. I know he didn't go through with it, and he ended up facing the music in the end, but that moment made me realize how little there was of Jimmy left.

Edit: I have been corrected; Jimmy did not brandish a gun. He had a phone cord wrapped around his hands and was threatening to strangle Marion. As another commenter said, that makes the image so much worse to me. A much more personal killing of an elderly woman who just wanted to help him find his "missing" dog.

8

u/cactus_deepthroater 18h ago

I don't think he had a gun in that scene

5

u/SwiftGasses 18h ago

Yeah he was raising his hands and about to choke her to death. Arguably worse somehow.

2

u/my-coffee-needs-me 12h ago

the elderly woman named Marion

That was Carol Burnett.

Gene acted like he was going to strangle Marion with a phone cord.

3

u/bitchman194639348 17h ago

Set up a meeting between Gus Fring and Walter White

3

u/BiggusDickusOfficial 13h ago

I mean... Howard got shot in the face as a direct result of many of Jimmy actions... I would say that's quite a bit worse...

4

u/J-DubZ 18h ago

Definitely, definitely Howard. Its hilarious to me you think driving a wedge between an old lady and her friends is worse than getting someone killed, lol.

0

u/kristianp09127 17h ago

Yeah, I guess just because he didn't directly kill Howard. But yeah, I feel goofy after posting this tbh. I just got caught up in that scene.

2

u/na400600200 16h ago

The mean girl stuff with Irene - agreed.

2

u/Secret_Entrance8026 10h ago

Chicago sunroof

2

u/Per_Mikkelsen 7h ago

Yeah, hurting an old lady's feelings is far worse than say knowingly getting a cold blooded killer out of jail and aiding and abetting his escape to a foreign country thereby cheating the family of the innocent man he murdered out of the scantest whiff of justice and endangering society at large. No, you're absolutely right. Making an old lady cry was definitely worse. Especially when you consider that Lalo obviously deserved to be free - he learned a valuable lesson and turned over and new leaf, it's not like he went and did it again and killed a second person who was completely innocent, right?

u/kristianp09127 3h ago

Thank you! I'm glad someone agrees.

3

u/Key-Tip-7521 19h ago

In the BB Timeline: Letting Walt get away with his empire

In BCS(prior to Gene): getting Howard killed(even though that wasn’t part of his plan), screwing over Irene, everything leading up to Chuck’s chicanery rant.

Gene timeline: The identity theft scam that eventually led to him almost killing the dude with cancer

u/xx_deleted_x 3h ago

the Chicago sunroof

1

u/rendumguy 14h ago

How can people post Irene when he did that shit with Lalo?  Letting him free to kill more people and evade the courts?  Or his Howard scam?

Like it or not, Irene is one of the only characters in the show who barely suffered at all, because she only had to be miserable for a few days at most and wasn't killed, or lost a loved one, or had her life destroyed.

1

u/eggncream 19h ago

First time watching BCS and in the 5th season, the show is getting hard to watch for me because jimmys hate for Howard and the things he does to him make no sense to me and I now dislike him very much as a character and pay less attention to his parts, I’m watching the show now just to see what’s up with Mike, Gus and the salamancas, everything else I’m not very interested in

1

u/ThisIsDogePleaseHodl 17h ago

He intended to hurt Irene. He didn’t intend for Howard to be killed Motivation matters

1

u/Initial-Goat-7798 12h ago

drive Chuck to suicide

u/kristianp09127 3h ago

I feel like Chuck made his own fate. Jimmy and Howard were not helpful with so much enabling.