Yeah, so you're completely amoral. No point in even bothering with this.
That's.....how do you even get that from....what?
Yeah, so you're completely amoral. No point in even bothering with this.
That's.....how do you even get that from....what?
"Anyone would fire him for that"
You're completely removing context from the situation like you did before, as if the psychological manipulation isn't a factor. How do you not realize how amoral that is?
Again: Chuck would be in the right if he actually fired Ernesto the first time instead of using him.
I think Jimmy wouldn't, if he pulled off a con that involved one of his own he'd forgive and forget. At least, he strikes me as that kind of person, and this is why people, not just the audience but the characters themselves, like Jimmy and not Chuck.And yes, anybody would fire an employee for that.
I think Jimmy wouldn't, if he pulled off a con that involved one of his own he'd forgive and forget. At least, he strikes me as that kind of person, and this is why people, not just the audience but the characters themselves, like Jimmy and not Chuck.
No, then the chorus would be "FUCK CHUCK, HE FIRED ERNIE WITHOUT ANY PROOF OF WRONGDOING, WHAT A CUNT"
Veelk, if your response is "no, u".... come on, dude. You seem to think that you're fighting with people instead of talking about a TV show. Stop with the ad hom attacks.
Chumley, you're kind of helping in riling him up, too.
I mean, you gotta be a real shitter to even be in the situation where you manipulate someone's caring nature and then fired them for what you made them do. Not everyone would fire Ernie in that situation since they wouldn't even get that far.
Veelk, if your response is "no, u".... come on, dude. You seem to think that you're fighting with people instead of talking about a TV show. Stop with the ad hom attacks.
Chumley, you're kind of helping in riling him up, too.
What exactly is Ernie's job, anyway? I thought it was just getting supplies for him, a job where sabotaging wouldn't even enter into it. Chuck is involving Ernie in shit that he isn't even supposed to be involved in unless part of his job description is fucking Jimmy over.
Only in a vacuum, or exclusively from Ernie's perspective, yes, but the only person who gets to pass that judgment is Ernie, no one else. Chuck forfeits his justification through his own moral transgression.But his firing of an untrustworthy employee is justified
But this is simply not true. A trivial example is nepotism, whereby familial bonds take precedence over mundane business considerations. Any number of factors might take priority over the material act of Ernie's sabotage of his employer, like the example I gave with Jimmy, who is someone that, despite his frequent breaking of the law and addiction to cons, still considers himself a "good person". I just don't accept the assertion that Ernie's transgression against his employer is universally indefensible. You have people in this very thread who're taking his side, that is as literal as you can get for evidence that, no, it's not actually something "anyone" would do.something anyone would do.
Only in a vacuum, or exclusively from Ernie's perspective, yes, but the only person who gets to pass that judgment is Ernie, no one else. Chuck forfeits his justification through his own moral transgression.
But this is simply not true. A trivial example is nepotism, whereby familial bonds take precedence over mundane business considerations. Any number of factors might take priority over the material act of Ernie's sabotage of his employer, like the example I gave with Jimmy, who is someone that, despite his frequent breaking of the law and addiction to cons, still considers himself a "good person". I just don't accept the assertion that Ernie's transgression against his employer is universally indefensible. You have people in this very thread who're taking his side, that is as literal as you can get for evidence that, no, it's not actually something "anyone" would do.
Only specific, cruel and/or unsympathetic people.
Oh DUH! Fuck, I should have made that connection.- the opening scene is a flash forward to some point during Breaking Bad, but before the end of S4. Those worn out shoes are the same ones we see Mike throws onto the wire. We know that Gus will take over operations in New Mexico for the cartel since Hector gets confined to a wheelchair prior to BB.
I explained this to duckroll but it's clear to me now that Chuck is as much of a con artist and manipulator as Jimmy, the main difference between them being Chuck works within the bounds of the law, and in so far as he's concerned, doing so morally justifies his actions, while Jimmy doesn't respect the law, and operates on his own moral code.
Re: Ernie
I can give a real-life example, as an employer.
I had a good employee who, in order to cover for somebody, did something against some serious rules.We had a serious talk with her, about the magnitude of the issue, and she is still with the company. She completely understood, was contrite, and and has been a trustworthy and successful employee ever since.
Now, that's without the mitigating circumstance of having been entrapped into a situation which would make breaking the rules seem like a good idea.
So I would say that firing Ernie is capricious, as it's not a matter of practical real-world trust, but rather proxy action against Jimmy.
Even if it were, the act of manipulating events to encourage somebody to break rules itself is a morally reprehensible act. There was a study that shows that virtually everybody will cheat on a test given the right conditions. Intentionally pushing somebody to that point is immoral. Firing them for it is just icing.
Okay, fine, then let me rephrase the whole thing.
Would you agree that an employer firing someone for having sabotaged them twice over (one of which was without the encouragement) is reasonable and within the employer's rights, even if the generous thing were to sit down with them and have a talk?
And
Does someone being put in a situation where they could (and did) cheat mean they do not bear the responsibility for the act?
I'm not talking about rights, I'm talking about what's the right way to act. We've already established that Chuck acts within the law, but that his morality is wack.
Remind me of the first transgression. Because firing him for the second is absolutely a dick move in context.
So am I. It's generous that you had the sit down with your employee, but had you fired her for whatever serious rule breaking she did, would you have been in the wrong to do so, morally speaking? Generousity and forgiveness are good things that can pay off, but forgoing them in cases like sabotage is clear doesn't really seem morally wrong to me.
The first sabotage is when Ernie lied to Chuck at the hospital about calling Jimmy to the print shop where Chuck lost consciousness, explaining his sudden presence. It's the entire reason that Chuck needed to do the tape recorder scheme in the first place, or else Chuck would have had him dead to rights through his own deductions.
How was this sabotage? I'm trying to remember, but isn't it Ernie claiming he called him, when Jimmy was actually across the street? What's being sabotaged by Ernie? And does Chuck even know about it?
If I had set her up to make the bad choice in the first place? Absolutely. Pushing somebody to a limit and then firing them for failing is definitely an immoral act, the way that Chuck did to Ernie this season.
what if -- stay with me here -- what if characters like Chuck and his many analogues in the BB universe are intentionally complex people who are neither singularly good or singularly bad?
What if you are supposed to have these conflicted feelings about these characters?
Wild idea, right.
Hedge your bets now. Does Jimmy become Saul by the end of this season?
Nice episode. My only complaint is the needlessly convoluted thing with the drugs in the shoes on the cable. There's too many uncontrollable variables, it's just dumb and impractical. Did Mike know exactly where the truck would park? How could he possibly know that? And if he did know that, then he would have to throw the shoes to the perfect position on the power cable, and we already saw that just getting the shoes to any position on the cable was difficult enough. And then if the wind isn't perfect you're still screwed.
The cardboard box method would have been a hundred times simpler and more entertaining.
And if you didn't?
(also, I can't help but feel Chuck's set up is overstated. "Pushing someone to a limit" is hardly what happened. I've been trying to avoid saying that because I don't want to defend Chuck on a thing he definitely did morally wrong....but at the same time, it's not like Chuck pushed him into making that choice. In fact, he pushed him away by encouraging him not to tell Jimmy. His 'set up' is that he made it appear Jimmy was in some kind of legal danger when he actually wasn't, and he counted on Ernie to protect Jimmy by informing him of it, like he protected him earlier. And yeah, that is a set up, but it's baffling that people consider this to be controlling enough to remove Ernie's culpability in this action. Had the situation been engineered so that Ernie had cause to fear for his job (or legal) security if he didn't tell Jimmy, then I'd be 100% in agreement with you, that's all but straight up entrapment. However, all Chuck did was pretend there was a legal case being made when there wasn't. He wasn't enticing Ernie to tell Jimmy, he just created an opportunity to do so, and that's a big difference maker. That feels less "Set up to fail" and more "Set up, and he'll probably fail even with the warnings" because the way to beat this game was very, very obvious. Hell, the only reason Ernie delayed in telling Jimmy as long as he did was because he was worried about the legal consequences that Chuck warned about, and why he ultimately went to Kim. So Ernie is just a hop, skip and jump away from sabotaging Chuck whenever Jimmy's neck is on the line, not someone who would only do this as a last resort).
It's absurd.
As much as an asshole Chuck's been the past several episodes, there have been times when I've still been angrier with Jimmy.
The viewer roots for Jimmy because he's the protagonist, but he still seems doomed to be the one to ruin Kim's career, which makes it difficult to totally like him.
Chuck is the antagonist, but I can't disagree with his view that Jimmy isn't fit to practice law. His methods of trying to get Jimmy disbarred and screwing over others around him (Kim, Ernesto) are indefensible, but he has his limits.
I think that's covered by my real life example. A fair person would give somebody a chance, legally bound to or not. I dunno, maybe Ernie is a terrible employee and this is just icing on the cake. I'd be fine with it in that case.
I never said that. Ernie can be responsible for his own actions *and* Chuck can be a dick for using him in a way that gets him fired. Responsibility for something is not finite and binary.
Now that you pointed out that he knows Ernie covered for Jimmy, this is not as egregious. But it is more akin to revenge than personnel management. Take it from somebody who manages a large group of people.
Agreed with all of this. I only get riled up when Vleek defends Chuck's actions as not only legal (which they are) but somehow the *right thing*.
So, you're saying that the only moral action an employer would have is to offer a second chance? They cannot fire an employee for a grievous transaction on first strike morally?
That's basically what I've been arguing. Yeah, fine, Chuck is a dick, but that doesn't automatically make Ernie a blameless victim. I feel that Ernie's actions, nice guy he may be, earned him being fired.
Maybe. I'm never argued that it was entirely impersonal. Chuck is way too invested in this case to be detached from how Ernie screwed him. However, nevertheless, I just don't see most employers being as generous as you were with the second chance. Nor can I agree that they'd be bad people for doing so. Deliberate sabotage feels like something that most people would take personally.
I defend his actions as moral in the sense that Chuck is acting in accordance to an actual set of morals. He's not just a spiteful shitheel, he actually, truly believes that what Jimmy did wrong and the proper course of action is that he suffers the weight of the law for it...which, really, isn't an unreasonable philosophy by which to live your life.
The problem is that sense of genuine justice is mixed in with his personal hangups about Jimmy, an element in which he has struggled much of his life. And Jimmy's respect of Chuck and his influence over him bring into question how much of Jimmy being what he is was due to how Chuck never gave him a real chance.
That's what I mean when I say that Chuck does what he believes to be the right thing, which is not entirely without merit, while not being spotlessly clean either.
Completely aside, what's the deal with Kim sleeping in the office and getting ready at the gym? I get that she's working long hours, but wouldn't she go home? ABQ isn't that big.