Ok, I love Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad. Great TV shows, great plots and my all-time favourite, great characters. The arcs are great and it is amazing how the writers are able to make you root for the main character, even though the main characters are these pieces of immoral dirtbags that you wouldn’t normally root for. Walter and Jimmy; in their way are characters that are equally dirtbags, like Chuck.
Walter gains votes because initially he is a family man trying to do what he can for his family, knowing he might die soon. He was the breadwinner before cancer and… well… there’s no NHS in America. To be honest, I have no idea why we root for Jimmy. There is something there for him though. Maybe because most that watch Better Call Saul would be familiar with the character from Breaking Bad first.
I don’t usually talk about my favourite TV shows, so this is not going to be a regular thing. It is just Chuck has a disability and I need to talk about it.
Who is Chuck?
Chuck is a character from the Breaking Bad TV series prequel: Better Call Saul. He is a big brother to Jimmy (aka. Saul Goodman) but he is a massive jerk. They both are. I think that’s part of the point of both shows. There’s just not many good humans around them.
Chuck has all this respect. He is the best lawyer in the firm and started it with his friend, Howard. His brother wants to follow in his footsteps but Chuck would rather Jimmy remain the same as his youth. A criminal. Chuck secretly manipulates Jimmy’s situation and sabotages him whenever there is a job or case or something that could help Jimmy succeed.
Deflated and desperate, Jimmy breaks the law to get what he wants (and what Chuck wants too). Jimmy does this inexcusable thing to an old lady, but this post is about Chuck, not Jimmy.At the start of the series, you wouldn’t know that Chuck had any problems. Jimmy is constantly covering for him. However, as the series progresses, it becomes clear that Chuck has some form of severe mental health issues. Although it is not confirmed what they are, one of the symptoms that I noticed made me think of anxiety.
Relating to Chuck
Anxiety is weird. My doctor described it as fear of fear and certain things can trigger the loop. And here’s the thing, as someone with a physical disability, I find anxiety more crippling than my cerebral palsy. So, if it is anxiety, I can see how much that would affect Chuck’s day-to-day living.
Chuck’s trigger is any form of electricity. He believes that he is allergic to anything that is powered by a mains or battery. Because of this, he spends the majority of his time at home rather than at his law firm. His home has been adapted so that he is living off-grid, and he doesn’t leave the house unless he has to.
Panic Attacks
When Chuck is exposed to electricity, he has a panic attack and sometimes goes into a temporary coma-like state. He uses a large foil that he calls a space blanket to protect himself from the electric currents. Each time, Jimmy was by his side and telling everyone around them that Chuck wasn’t crazy.
This to me, showed their relationship. Jimmy loved his brother and never judged him but Chuck was unable to give Jimmy the same level of curtesy, still resenting Jimmy and judging him for the actions of his youth.
The last few episodes of the last season were really telling. Chuck and Jimmy were in a lawsuit, Chuck trying to get Jimmy’s licence banned while Jimmy was trying to defend his actions. Jimmy now knows that Chuck never was going to let him become a Lawyer. The room is adapted to make it comfortable for Chuck. To prove that his brother was mentally ill, Jimmy hides a phone battery in his brother’s jacket and Chuck is unaware of it for hours.
As Chuck wasn’t aware it was there, he didn’t have any of the symptoms that come when Chuck is aware of electricity. It was planned and executed perfectly. It was a powerful move but as someone with anxiety, I know how much that would have paralysed Chuck.
I have anxiety triggered by insects, but I am fine if a spider is in the room and I am unaware of it. The second I see it my anxiety could (not always) start off and I could start heaving. While his allergy isn’t real, his symptoms are, the anxiety is and no matter what someone did, you shouldn’t do something that could set off a panic attack on purpose.
It does lead to a good thing though.
Chuck’s Realisation
Chuck now knows that he is mentally ill and that he needs help. He starts to try and receive help and it starts to succeed. His house starts to look like a modern house again but then he starts to have the symptoms again. There is one scene where he is searching the whole of his house, looking for anything electrical, reverting it back to the non-electrical house it was at the beginning of the show. He tears his house apart, literally, looking for the source. It’s too much for him.
The season on writing ends on a cliff-hanger but what I loved was that they didn’t focus on his mental health throughout the series. He wasn’t Jimmy’s mentally ill brother. He was the best lawyer in his own firm, with a good representation.
Chuck was a character past his mental illness, and this is great and he’s not the only villain either. Jimmy is just as much as a villain as Chuck, or possibly even more of a villain.
It pulls out of the stereotype that a character who is disabled either physically, mentally or other has to be the victim or the villain. Chuck is both. He is well-rounded and has just the same amount of good and bad as any other person.
Personally, I always saw it more as Chuck just didn’t believe that Jimmy had or could change, and ended up creating situations to confirm his own beliefs, rather than he’d prefer that Jimmy remain a criminal. He saw Jimmy being a lawyer as an easy opening to be a conman. He did give Jimmy advice in the earlier episodes, for example, and was proud of him when he got a job in the mail room.
I love your analysis of his mental health. Real interesting break down of the character, who I agree is handled very well and well represented—though isn’t it Jimmy who calls it the space blanket? Because he struggles to talk to Chuck seriously while Chuck is wearing it.
And thanks so much for the shoutout!
True, it’s because he feels Jimmy cannot change and therefore doesn’t want him to be a lawyer, I think he believes that Jimmy is just a natural criminal and conman. I forgot about the mail room part, but I think he was proud as long as he wasn’t with the law.
Yh, Jimmy calls it a space blanket and references it to another character. Chuck doesn’t really call it anything, but I thought as the other character understood, maybe he called it that off-scene?
I can’t remember a scene with Jimmy referencing it to anyone other than Chuck so for all I know, yes.
Yh I thought there was a twist and In fact it was his brother trying to send his brother off when he is the problem nasty people will play on other people’s illness y I don’t know as they too wouldn’t like this at all xxx