AMC’s “Better Call Saul” has no shortage of hair-raising plot twists. One of the most dramatic of them all comes in the final episode of Season 3, when Jimmy McGill’s (Bob Odenkirk) older brother, Chuck (Michael McKean), dies after deliberately setting his house on fire. Though many signs, including a letter Jimmy receives after Chuck’s death, outwardly point that the two brothers were on decent terms, Season 4 of “Better Call Saul” features a fair share of tension between Jimmy and Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), since the latter can’t quite understand why Jimmy won’t mourn his dead brother in any traditional manner.
Jimmy, of course, has a pretty good reason for his cold reaction. The brothers had, after all, a lot of private and personal tension that bled over to their professional lives in a dramatic fashion, ultimately ruining Chuck’s career. Ultimately, things reached a point where Chuck’s final words to Jimmy were, “The truth is you’ve never mattered all that much to me.” So, why didn’t Jimmy solve the situation by telling this to Kim?
Bob Odenkirk thinks Chuck’s last words weren’t true, but shocked Jimmy anyway
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In a 2021 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Bob Odenkirk addressed the mystery of Jimmy McGill’s silence about his brother’s last words, and why he kept them to himself. According to him, the reason is complicated, though Odenkirk personally thinks that all sides of the story reflect the fact that Chuck’s last words were hurtful, yet patently untrue.
“Honestly, it’s a good question,” the actor said about Jimmy’s policy of keeping his brother’s last words a secret from Kim. “I’m not sure she would believe him, but also, I don’t believe Chuck. If anyone says that to you, it probably means you mean way too much to them. That’s why they’re saying that. It’s because they’re trying to push all those feelings away in order to stop feeling them.”
As for Jimmy’s cold demeanor regarding Chuck’s death, Odenkirk points out that even without the shocking last words, the nascent Saul Goodman’s older brother is essentially his greatest antagonist for the first half of the show. After all, Chuck attempts to disbar Jimmy, and openly condemns his attempts to become a lawyer, since he considers Jimmy to be little more than a small-time con man. Even though the brothers cared about each other in their own way, this leaves Jimmy a lot of baggage to deal with in the aftermath of Chuck’s passing.
“He had so much resentment towards his brother — and justifiably in many ways,” Odenkirk said. “So Jimmy just wasn’t there to grieve like that, at least not for a while.”
