(no subject)
Better Call Saul 3.9
Unslipped Jimmy's utility, inside or outside the law. Chuck's the law, Hamlin's the mere appearance of legal propriety, Schweikart's a force for evil working within it, Kim's a force for good working within it. When forced, Kim chooses utility over law, and this sickens her, just like the choice of personal utility over collective - a choice also forced by Chuck - sickens Jimmy. Kim's papers are all over the place because she fell asleep at the wheel of the law yo.
The oil case is way symbolic. You have a line, a boundary, that is in a sense made up but still important: knowing it's there affects our behaviour. We scratch it into existence in the dirt, and have to do that again the next time we come around. Taking someone else's oil prior to getting the land rights is illegal: if the other people drilled down, got the oil, and paid both states' taxes they could have had all of it. But the penalty is damages, is money, and less than the evaded taxes - this is something you can legally get away with, not something that is just. The state line, the figure for the law, is literally undermined by this solution.
It's also closely analogous to what Jimmy's doing, showing Kim's done slipped along with Jim. His solution, too, keeps him financially afloat personally, benefits rich people eager to get away with crossing lines, and gives less recompense to people who deserve more (the old folks, as compared to either the government (thus all folks) or the Texan rights-holders).
Kim's situation also points up the deeper trouble with Jimmy's. He convinces himself this isn't so bad by analogizing the old women's need for money with his own (true lies not unlike what he told the insurance rep.). But even though giving a smaller amount of money to deserving people now rather than a larger amount later may seem vaguely justifiable when they're super-old, the other point of securing a full recompense + a penalty is that the corporation's malfeasance will have resulted in a net loss for them. The point of the law, the reason a line was drawn there, was to discourage the infringement of others' rights. Sandpipers are birds that wait around and then dart forward to take whatever opportunities the shifting tides present. Think of that shifting line of water: what's left behind when it recedes is fair game. They are predators we think of as cute and harmless because we are not their prey. Kim and Jimmy are weakening laws protecting those who have less from those who have more.
And the law has made it happen. Those seeking to do good deep within the law (Kim) or just barely within the law (Jimmy at his anti-Sandpiper best) are kept largely powerless by the Haves of the legal world, and when they pursue the alternative of becoming Haves themselves the only way to do it is to neglect those they were doing it for.
Kim's car (her way forward in her career) gets stuck in the mud. In attempting to get it going again she almost blows everything up, catches it just in time. The actual wreck later on may be a good thing, may represent her catching her car before it hits an active oil rig despite its being wrecked in the process - if her conscience has led to the microsleeps, her conscience may have wrecked her corporation-serving career before it did real damage.
Much else going on in the episode: we learn Nacho has himself slipped, since he's working for the Salamancas "again." Given the episode's title, his telling his father not to do the right thing will prove fatal for one or both of them. Jimmy has fallen by undoing the one great thing he did (thus killing who he wanted to be and could have been, the good lawyer), Kim has either fallen by giving up on being her own kind of good lawyer or by destroying her career entirely (we'll soon see). But in all three cases the slip has preceded the fall - a slope has been involved, maybe explaining the final image. Since all are in a sense relapsing, each one's earlier scuffing of the line in the dirt at the slope's start must have left it too hard to see.
Mesa Verde means what, Green Stretch or something? The sustenance needed, could we retain it. Kim accepts the second client to prove to herself and Hamlin that what she has was not merely taken from him. I guess that's to suggest why even when they have sufficient means initially well-intended lawyers tend not to do good? Why one who can afford to buy back in stays sold out, in other words. Competing with Hamlin, showing she can beat him at the game she's been his pawn in for years? Or just being so long dominated by debt-terror that even when the debt's lifted one seeks as much money as possible to get the threat of it farther and farther away? Leaves her the pawn of what he represents either way, I guess.
The actor they borrowed from Law and Order to play Schweikart was basically Dershowitz on that show - he plays a fully Satanic version of him here. Googled, "Schweikart"'s etymology seems to be "descendant of the mighty" or "descendant of the spearman" or something. The might-makes-right prelegal state of affairs that's survived into the age of the law via money's influence? In 3.9 the Satanic moment is Mike's signing with Lydia, of course, and secondarily the newly-a-poor-man's-Schweikart Jimmy's asking the Class Representative to look into her heart after putting doubt, fear and loneliness there. Kim may still have her soul, if nothing else.
Unslipped Jimmy's utility, inside or outside the law. Chuck's the law, Hamlin's the mere appearance of legal propriety, Schweikart's a force for evil working within it, Kim's a force for good working within it. When forced, Kim chooses utility over law, and this sickens her, just like the choice of personal utility over collective - a choice also forced by Chuck - sickens Jimmy. Kim's papers are all over the place because she fell asleep at the wheel of the law yo.
The oil case is way symbolic. You have a line, a boundary, that is in a sense made up but still important: knowing it's there affects our behaviour. We scratch it into existence in the dirt, and have to do that again the next time we come around. Taking someone else's oil prior to getting the land rights is illegal: if the other people drilled down, got the oil, and paid both states' taxes they could have had all of it. But the penalty is damages, is money, and less than the evaded taxes - this is something you can legally get away with, not something that is just. The state line, the figure for the law, is literally undermined by this solution.
It's also closely analogous to what Jimmy's doing, showing Kim's done slipped along with Jim. His solution, too, keeps him financially afloat personally, benefits rich people eager to get away with crossing lines, and gives less recompense to people who deserve more (the old folks, as compared to either the government (thus all folks) or the Texan rights-holders).
Kim's situation also points up the deeper trouble with Jimmy's. He convinces himself this isn't so bad by analogizing the old women's need for money with his own (true lies not unlike what he told the insurance rep.). But even though giving a smaller amount of money to deserving people now rather than a larger amount later may seem vaguely justifiable when they're super-old, the other point of securing a full recompense + a penalty is that the corporation's malfeasance will have resulted in a net loss for them. The point of the law, the reason a line was drawn there, was to discourage the infringement of others' rights. Sandpipers are birds that wait around and then dart forward to take whatever opportunities the shifting tides present. Think of that shifting line of water: what's left behind when it recedes is fair game. They are predators we think of as cute and harmless because we are not their prey. Kim and Jimmy are weakening laws protecting those who have less from those who have more.
And the law has made it happen. Those seeking to do good deep within the law (Kim) or just barely within the law (Jimmy at his anti-Sandpiper best) are kept largely powerless by the Haves of the legal world, and when they pursue the alternative of becoming Haves themselves the only way to do it is to neglect those they were doing it for.
Kim's car (her way forward in her career) gets stuck in the mud. In attempting to get it going again she almost blows everything up, catches it just in time. The actual wreck later on may be a good thing, may represent her catching her car before it hits an active oil rig despite its being wrecked in the process - if her conscience has led to the microsleeps, her conscience may have wrecked her corporation-serving career before it did real damage.
Much else going on in the episode: we learn Nacho has himself slipped, since he's working for the Salamancas "again." Given the episode's title, his telling his father not to do the right thing will prove fatal for one or both of them. Jimmy has fallen by undoing the one great thing he did (thus killing who he wanted to be and could have been, the good lawyer), Kim has either fallen by giving up on being her own kind of good lawyer or by destroying her career entirely (we'll soon see). But in all three cases the slip has preceded the fall - a slope has been involved, maybe explaining the final image. Since all are in a sense relapsing, each one's earlier scuffing of the line in the dirt at the slope's start must have left it too hard to see.
Mesa Verde means what, Green Stretch or something? The sustenance needed, could we retain it. Kim accepts the second client to prove to herself and Hamlin that what she has was not merely taken from him. I guess that's to suggest why even when they have sufficient means initially well-intended lawyers tend not to do good? Why one who can afford to buy back in stays sold out, in other words. Competing with Hamlin, showing she can beat him at the game she's been his pawn in for years? Or just being so long dominated by debt-terror that even when the debt's lifted one seeks as much money as possible to get the threat of it farther and farther away? Leaves her the pawn of what he represents either way, I guess.
The actor they borrowed from Law and Order to play Schweikart was basically Dershowitz on that show - he plays a fully Satanic version of him here. Googled, "Schweikart"'s etymology seems to be "descendant of the mighty" or "descendant of the spearman" or something. The might-makes-right prelegal state of affairs that's survived into the age of the law via money's influence? In 3.9 the Satanic moment is Mike's signing with Lydia, of course, and secondarily the newly-a-poor-man's-Schweikart Jimmy's asking the Class Representative to look into her heart after putting doubt, fear and loneliness there. Kim may still have her soul, if nothing else.