Finally! Finished the Big BCS Binge yesterday.
Great show, but not close to Breaking Bad's level of tension, creativity, and character development. Walter White is one of my all-time favourite characters; Jimmy/Saul/Gene never became more than a really good passenger. I watched BCS primarily for Mike and Nacho. Mike was a haunted, compromised hero. Nacho was trying to free himself from an impossible trap. Loved those two guys. Lalo was a fantastic bad-guy. Loved watching his eventual fate unfold.
For me, everything orbited around those three guys, including Jimmy & Kim. Nacho was motivated by desperation and fear; Mike was motivated by guilt, grief, a need to protect his surviving family; Lalo was motivated by hate and... whatever motivates a psychopath. They couldn't walk away from those things, and that tension made the story move.
On the other hand, Jimmy and Kim had every opportunity to walk away and live comfy, healthy lives. Instead, they volunteered again and again to get themselves in trouble. For what? Money. Fun. Meh...
I loved the show because the stories and acting were so good, not because I cared about the fates of Jimmy or Kim.
Most of you won't agree, but I found Walter White more sympathetic than Jimmy. Yeah, Walter became a violent sociopathic drug lord, but his path began out of desperation and being hopelessly out of his depth when entering the drug world. He became a smarter psychopath in order to survive, then gradually embraced the role. In the end, despite the huge moral conflicts, he still saved Jessie and provided for his family. An amazing blend of evil, good, pride, regret, and intellect.
Jimmy had a good side, but his bad side was flipped on too arbitrarily for my taste... like he was contractually obligated to be an asshole to keep the show moving. Deciding to be bad isn't interesting to me. What's interesting is when you have no choice to be bad.
