Keeping Kim in doc review even after she brought back a client seemed petty of him. I'd buy that maybe it's another case of there being more to the story that makes him look unreasonable, but the show doesn't have anything suggesting that.
Aside from that I don't think the guy ever did anything particularly wrong other than just being kind of an unlikable guy.
A little vain, a little superficial. Kind of a dick at times, though oddly reconstrued as some kind of benighted innocent in later seasons. Nothing worth getting killed over, really.
Punishing her when she lost a client was reasonable. Not giving her even a bit of reprieve when she brought in a high profile client after that was dickish. It just came off as him asserting dominance over one of his employees he has a personal beef with and is basically telling her "your career advancement here is over regardless of any hard work and/or results".
Uh, no. He put her entire career in jeopardy. This wasn't "clean my office, get me coffee". This was "you do not advance, ever". Frankly that is kind of worth destroying his life over (maybe not murder, but career vengeance would have been acceptable at that point).
You're right and that was the point, I think. Especially if you're watching from the point of view of Jimmy and Kim, he's supposed to be enough of a dick to where you're drawn into their hatred of him. You go from kind of disliking the guy from the start due to his snooty persona, to really disliking or even hating him when he continues to frick over the MCs, to cheering them on during their character assassination of him. That way when he delivers his final earnest monologue, reality pulls focus and you realize what you've been cheering for and how petty it is, and that he isn't actually an awful guy. You're supposed to feel small and childish the same way Jimmy and Kim do, and it worked for me at least. It makes the shock of his death all the more tragic and leaves you saying "I hated the guy, but not like that..."
It's kind of the opposite arc of Walt in Breaking Bad, where you still kind of wanted to root for Walt as your main protagonist but he makes it harder and harder to do so the more evil he becomes.
>You go from kind of disliking the guy from the start due to his snooty persona, to really disliking or even hating him when he continues to frick over the MCs, to cheering them on during their character assassination of him
Really? He was vindicated in my eyes when it was revealed that Chuck was the one forcing him to not hire Jimmy, at that point he went from a comical villain to a normal dude who was just kind of a dick at times(at a level where people in real life can be) and a good character. When the character assassin shit started I felt sympathetic towards him instead of Jimmy and Kim, because the show tells you they're buttholes and they've even accepted that they're buttholes by that point.
I missed the live threads here so I don't know how others reacted to his last scene but there was no catharsis where I went "oh these 2 are the dicks" because I already knew that at the start of the season.
this. i always liked him, and kim/jim fricking with him just made me dislike them. especially at the end, i kept plain forgetting why they were even doing it. i think kim was pissed of that he said something that could extremely ambiguously be considered condescending?
idk i never felt like i connected with this series as much as the original, i always found it difficult to relate to or even intuit what the main characters wanted and why they were going about it the way they did.
>i kept plain forgetting why they were even doing it
Anon think back to when Kim realised that her and Jimmy weren't good for each other, basically being destructive is fun for them and so screwing over Howard in a way they won't get caught was fun for them and it's all justified in their minds because he was a dick to them that one time.
yeah it was kind of explained, but i was just never really emotionally on board, you know? walt's motivations were simple and it was easy to be along for the ride, granted most of the time he was on the defensive but even when he went full greedy, murdering kingpin in the later seasons, it had been a slow enough build up that you could buy him being that far gone and it was still kinda satisfying to see him winning for a bit, even if what he was doing was completely horrific (which in turn built motivation to watch him finally get taken down).
i don't even think it's necessarily that BCS wasn't as well written, i think it's probably a personality thing. their motivations and their idea of fun is just kinda alien to me, so making sense of it all is less intuitive. but i can't say like "here's a reason this story doesn't work, doing x y z instead would have been better," and enough people have said BCS is even better than BrBa that i think it's gotta just be a "different strokes" kinda thing.
4 months ago
Anonymous
>i don't even think it's necessarily that BCS wasn't as well written
nta but BCS was significantly better written than BB, I'm just not sure what you're on about. BB feels like a cartoon.
4 months ago
Anonymous
BrBa is a cartoon but BCS is about as cartoony with much larger weaker leaps in character motivation
4 months ago
Anonymous
>much larger weaker leaps in character motivation
Strong disagree.
He was redeemed when he finally ponied up the money to buy Chuck out and send him on his way. His only mistake was not doing it sooner. Waiting until Chuck was threatening to sue the insurance company when he was clearly mentally ill was foolish and it should have never gotten to that point
The hatred for him came out of nowhere in that last season, he wasn't even harassing them and he helped out Kim and Jimmy's brother a lot, was even trying to help jimmy out. It just seemed weird like they meant to build him up as a villain to take down in the last season, but they were just torturing some guy who didn't really do anything to them.
Other than prove how much nihilistic normies hate nice guys, especially successful, mentally and physically healthy and confident ones, nothing..
See also: Detoxified Morty
He was kind of shitty to Kim, but not horrifically so. His biggest fault was in allowing Chuck use him as antagonist proxy toward Jimmy instead of making him do it himself. In fact, the only reason he puts Kim in the doghouse is because she sticks up for Jimmy, and that wouldn't have been necessary if they treated Jimmy like an adult. Which he wasn't.
>protagonist is also the antagonist
This is why the ending of the series was so sublime. Seems a lot of people just took a surface level impression of the event. "Oh so he turned himself in cause it was le right thing to do??" No, it was about Jimmy literally freeing himself from his own worst enemy, himself. Had nothing to do with the law or justice or rightness or even "saving his soul" (though you could certainly view it as that). It was 100% a personal battle that brought everything full circle and proved in the end he had the power to defeat the pathological entity responsible for everything that went wrong in his life. It was James McGill destroying Slipping Jimmy for the sheer satisfaction of personal agency, and there's nothing a man can do that's greater than conquering himself.
The writing doesn't make any sense, it doesn't take a dumbass to see the Kettlemans as delusional, especially the wife. But instead of talking to Kim like a regular adult, who's supposedly extremely professional, howard just punishes her out of no where, it didn't make any sense and just seemed like a contrived plot point to make us dislike him. You're telling me the same howard that still tried to cordially handle Jimmy after all the bullshit, at least before he snaps, doesn't give kim the time of day? Not even letting her try to explain what happened? However the shit with Jimmy running the ad I get, that was just necessary office politics to reprimand all involved, but howard shitting all over her bringing in that big client still makes no sense
You can't paint howard as this misunderstood man going to therapy trying to better himself while being a calm rational person, then have him do dumb nonsensical shit like what he does to kim.
I thought him punishing Kim was to show that Howard cared about money over practicing law in a noble and honorable way. He could see as well as anyone they were delusional, but he saw them as paychecks first, not people. Kim saw them as people first, it's why she encouraged them to turn in the money and face a reduced sentence. At least, that's how I saw it.
His tie knot has divots. Unacceptable
Nothing, he just had to die because Vince wrote himself into a corner.
Keeping Kim in doc review even after she brought back a client seemed petty of him. I'd buy that maybe it's another case of there being more to the story that makes him look unreasonable, but the show doesn't have anything suggesting that.
Aside from that I don't think the guy ever did anything particularly wrong other than just being kind of an unlikable guy.
A little vain, a little superficial. Kind of a dick at times, though oddly reconstrued as some kind of benighted innocent in later seasons. Nothing worth getting killed over, really.
he was never a dick
He was a dick to Kim.
That's just him needing to look strict as a boss.
Punishing her when she lost a client was reasonable. Not giving her even a bit of reprieve when she brought in a high profile client after that was dickish. It just came off as him asserting dominance over one of his employees he has a personal beef with and is basically telling her "your career advancement here is over regardless of any hard work and/or results".
That was just him teaching her the last lesson as a mentor; some dumb israelite will frick you over and you'll have to just deal with it.
Uh, no. He put her entire career in jeopardy. This wasn't "clean my office, get me coffee". This was "you do not advance, ever". Frankly that is kind of worth destroying his life over (maybe not murder, but career vengeance would have been acceptable at that point).
You're right and that was the point, I think. Especially if you're watching from the point of view of Jimmy and Kim, he's supposed to be enough of a dick to where you're drawn into their hatred of him. You go from kind of disliking the guy from the start due to his snooty persona, to really disliking or even hating him when he continues to frick over the MCs, to cheering them on during their character assassination of him. That way when he delivers his final earnest monologue, reality pulls focus and you realize what you've been cheering for and how petty it is, and that he isn't actually an awful guy. You're supposed to feel small and childish the same way Jimmy and Kim do, and it worked for me at least. It makes the shock of his death all the more tragic and leaves you saying "I hated the guy, but not like that..."
It's kind of the opposite arc of Walt in Breaking Bad, where you still kind of wanted to root for Walt as your main protagonist but he makes it harder and harder to do so the more evil he becomes.
It really was kino all along...
BCS is streets ahead of Breaking Bad
I agree
>You go from kind of disliking the guy from the start due to his snooty persona, to really disliking or even hating him when he continues to frick over the MCs, to cheering them on during their character assassination of him
Really? He was vindicated in my eyes when it was revealed that Chuck was the one forcing him to not hire Jimmy, at that point he went from a comical villain to a normal dude who was just kind of a dick at times(at a level where people in real life can be) and a good character. When the character assassin shit started I felt sympathetic towards him instead of Jimmy and Kim, because the show tells you they're buttholes and they've even accepted that they're buttholes by that point.
I missed the live threads here so I don't know how others reacted to his last scene but there was no catharsis where I went "oh these 2 are the dicks" because I already knew that at the start of the season.
this. i always liked him, and kim/jim fricking with him just made me dislike them. especially at the end, i kept plain forgetting why they were even doing it. i think kim was pissed of that he said something that could extremely ambiguously be considered condescending?
idk i never felt like i connected with this series as much as the original, i always found it difficult to relate to or even intuit what the main characters wanted and why they were going about it the way they did.
>i kept plain forgetting why they were even doing it
Anon think back to when Kim realised that her and Jimmy weren't good for each other, basically being destructive is fun for them and so screwing over Howard in a way they won't get caught was fun for them and it's all justified in their minds because he was a dick to them that one time.
yeah it was kind of explained, but i was just never really emotionally on board, you know? walt's motivations were simple and it was easy to be along for the ride, granted most of the time he was on the defensive but even when he went full greedy, murdering kingpin in the later seasons, it had been a slow enough build up that you could buy him being that far gone and it was still kinda satisfying to see him winning for a bit, even if what he was doing was completely horrific (which in turn built motivation to watch him finally get taken down).
i don't even think it's necessarily that BCS wasn't as well written, i think it's probably a personality thing. their motivations and their idea of fun is just kinda alien to me, so making sense of it all is less intuitive. but i can't say like "here's a reason this story doesn't work, doing x y z instead would have been better," and enough people have said BCS is even better than BrBa that i think it's gotta just be a "different strokes" kinda thing.
>i don't even think it's necessarily that BCS wasn't as well written
nta but BCS was significantly better written than BB, I'm just not sure what you're on about. BB feels like a cartoon.
BrBa is a cartoon but BCS is about as cartoony with much larger weaker leaps in character motivation
>much larger weaker leaps in character motivation
Strong disagree.
He was redeemed when he finally ponied up the money to buy Chuck out and send him on his way. His only mistake was not doing it sooner. Waiting until Chuck was threatening to sue the insurance company when he was clearly mentally ill was foolish and it should have never gotten to that point
Eh out of sight out of mind he was doing literally nothing in the mind of Howard till he came back to work and fricked things up.
I didn't really have that reaction. I was Team Howard from s5 onwards and was hoping to see Jimmy/Kimmy get fricked over
Fricked Kim (off screen)
The scenes near the beginning when they're riding around together and see Sauls billboard you just know
His guilty conscience made him blind to people using him
absolutely nothing
nothing. Jimmy and Kimmy have the mind of a child.
Literally nothing.
Cinemaphile is a Howardbro board
Wait I never really hated this guy, he was supposed to be hateable? I thought Kim/Saul were deranged the whole fricking time.
Good news you’re a mentally stable human being
The hatred for him came out of nowhere in that last season, he wasn't even harassing them and he helped out Kim and Jimmy's brother a lot, was even trying to help jimmy out. It just seemed weird like they meant to build him up as a villain to take down in the last season, but they were just torturing some guy who didn't really do anything to them.
That was the point, you were supposed to see Kim and Jimmy as the villains.
Other than prove how much nihilistic normies hate nice guys, especially successful, mentally and physically healthy and confident ones, nothing..
See also: Detoxified Morty
He was kind of shitty to Kim, but not horrifically so. His biggest fault was in allowing Chuck use him as antagonist proxy toward Jimmy instead of making him do it himself. In fact, the only reason he puts Kim in the doghouse is because she sticks up for Jimmy, and that wouldn't have been necessary if they treated Jimmy like an adult. Which he wasn't.
>protagonist is also the antagonist
This is why the ending of the series was so sublime. Seems a lot of people just took a surface level impression of the event. "Oh so he turned himself in cause it was le right thing to do??" No, it was about Jimmy literally freeing himself from his own worst enemy, himself. Had nothing to do with the law or justice or rightness or even "saving his soul" (though you could certainly view it as that). It was 100% a personal battle that brought everything full circle and proved in the end he had the power to defeat the pathological entity responsible for everything that went wrong in his life. It was James McGill destroying Slipping Jimmy for the sheer satisfaction of personal agency, and there's nothing a man can do that's greater than conquering himself.
If he didn’t put Kim in doc review he would probably make it out of the show alive.
The writing doesn't make any sense, it doesn't take a dumbass to see the Kettlemans as delusional, especially the wife. But instead of talking to Kim like a regular adult, who's supposedly extremely professional, howard just punishes her out of no where, it didn't make any sense and just seemed like a contrived plot point to make us dislike him. You're telling me the same howard that still tried to cordially handle Jimmy after all the bullshit, at least before he snaps, doesn't give kim the time of day? Not even letting her try to explain what happened? However the shit with Jimmy running the ad I get, that was just necessary office politics to reprimand all involved, but howard shitting all over her bringing in that big client still makes no sense
You can't paint howard as this misunderstood man going to therapy trying to better himself while being a calm rational person, then have him do dumb nonsensical shit like what he does to kim.
He just hates women, this is revealed to us when we find out his soul has been sucked out by his demonspawn wife.
I thought him punishing Kim was to show that Howard cared about money over practicing law in a noble and honorable way. He could see as well as anyone they were delusional, but he saw them as paychecks first, not people. Kim saw them as people first, it's why she encouraged them to turn in the money and face a reduced sentence. At least, that's how I saw it.
everything related to Chuck
didnt stand up to Chuck until it was too late