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

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he was not quite the dick Jimmy thought he was.

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jimmy was always the dick

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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.