re: Has any show gotten so much better after a character left than better call saul

Chuck was a POS. He is a ton to blame for Jimmy. I still don't give Saul a pass but Chuck was the worst brother ever.

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After chuck left?

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The ending was kinda stupid

The character of Chuck and the performance of the actor were both fine and actually necessary to the plot. It was the misdirected focus and too much time spent by the writers on pointless law firm politics and bullshite that hurt. They should have let the Mike and cartel plot lines have more time at the expense of the law firm story line. Part of who Saul is was caused by his rejection by his brother and the hoity toity law firm; we get it. Best character on a flawed show was Lalo and the story line involving him and Nacho was where the show got back to the genius of Breaking Bad. Mike's back story was also awesome but hard to watch because of how old a "young" Jonathan Banks looked.

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Howard Hamlin really got a raw deal. Turns out, he was not quite the dick Jimmy thought he was.

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Howard was probably the best human being in the entire Breaking Bad/Better Caul Saul universe. He got the rawest of deals. But I don't think Jimmy thought he was a dick. He knew he was legit a happy and moral man, and I think that pissed Jimmy off because he knew, subconsciously, he could never be that. Jimmy may have thought his act was a put-on at 1st (and it was to an extent as Howard always put on that persona, even when the firm was tanking), and he thought that a lot of opportunities he gave him was only because of Chuck, but a lot of it wound up being genuine. So he resented Howard's "phoniness" at 1st, then probably resented it even more when it became more clear that he was a genuinely good man.

But he mainly resented him because Chuck respected him, but he never expected Jimmy. Jimmy admits just this to Howard's wife at his wake at HHM in the the final season, episode 9 (Point and Shoot). Howard had told his wife that Jimmy was playing some elaborate trick/harassing him (which he obviously was), and Jimmy and Kim were the last ones to see him alive and had told the cops that, so the wife cornered them about it at the wake.

They had to continue the lie they had created about his drug addiction, so Jimmy had to keep that up but couldn't let her think that Howard had gone completely nuts. ("Couldn't" because it would make the story less believable that Howard's wife wouldn't have been able to pick up on the signs, but also "couldn't" do that to Howard or his newly widowed wife out of some sense of, what I'd argue is guilt/moral regret.)

So in a rare moment of honesty (though self-serving), he downplays the huge prank/harrassment conspiracy, but says this "You know what? I didn't leave here under the best terms. The past few years I could have been more considerate to Howard instead of yitzing him every chance I got. I guess there was a certain amount of jealousy on my part because Howard had the respect of my brother. Which I never did." Which was honest, and a huge contributing factor into how/why Jimmy turned out the way he did and why Chuck was such an integral part of the show. I get that it wasn't as exciting as other parts of the show, but it was absolutely necessary.

That post was probably too long, but it hit on the Howard part and the OP. I actually watched the episode I alluded to and the one prior where Howard was shot last night. I was listening on old episode of the podcast "The Watch" and they were talking about those 2 episodes, so I decided to watch them again. I was actually gonna make a thread this morning myself on whether people thought Jimmy was just a "bad" guy. The podcasters thought so, though they did love the character. I think there's more ambiguity to it.

Jimmy did bad things, but they were relatively harmless at 1st until he "got in with the wrong crowd"--what Mike tells Nacho's father in the same episode--and as the stakes got higher and higher, so did his "bad" deeds until they eventually became unredeemable. But I think, at his core, he was probably "good," he was just a really insecure frickup full of self-loathing and could never figure out how to get out of his own way.

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Jesse shooting Gale.

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had to happen or both he and WW were dead.

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Yea, they did a good job with that. I didn't like him either, but he was pretty much right about Jimmy, though.

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I didn't hate him. I felt sorry for Chuck. He was mentally ill. I think the question about what Jimmy thought about Chuck is like a chicken and an egg. Was Jimmy truly that way or did what Chuck thought about him manifest itself in Jimmy? Chuck always treated Jimmy as though Chuck was superior in every way.

I loved all of the Chuck stuff. It was part of what made Jimmy who he was. The whole show was great.

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I don't concede the show was flawed,

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That wasn't the story they were interested in telling, though.

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Take out the cartel and Mike story lines and it's just a legal melodrama like so many others we have already seen. They could also have focused more on the Gene on the run aspect, which was a good idea with poor execution and emphasis.

Sandy Duncan replacing Valerie Harper on ‘Valerie’ => ‘Valerie’s Family: The Hogans’ => ‘The Hogan Family’

I don't think it's that complicated. Chuck was a well respected lawyer (self-made, no legacy) and his little brother was a frickup. Chuck respected the law, he revered it like a religion. It was everything to him. After bailing Jimmy out over and over, he gave him an ultimatum that you come back to New Mexico with me and I'll set you up with a mail room job but this is the last time I'm bailing you out from your shenanigans. If you ever frick up again, you are on your own, cut off, no help, I don't care if it's a parking violation. This is your final chance.

Jimmy followed all the rules, while working in the mail room, went and got an online law degree and passed the bar, without telling anyone, all the while not fricking around hustling people.

It was a shock to Charles when he found out. Everyone at the firm knew Jimmy as the likable "Charlie Hustle" but Chuck knew what a firecracker he really was.

I don't think it was resentment at all. Chuck didn't want that liability employed at a firm with his own name on the building, a BAR accredidation to Jimmy was like giving a chimp an AK47, in Charles' words.

He didn't want Jimmy anywhere near his own legacy that he built over decades, unless he was the mail clerk. Charles is very supportive of Jimmy working outside of the firm, doing public defender work, a very honorable and noble pursuit of the law, until Jimmy starts ripping off Chuck's "NIL" so to speak on billboards.

It's that simple.