Let’s talk about commitment, and let’s talk about what makes people afraid of it.
It’s also about the roads not taken.
The doors you close, the bridges you burn, the opportunities you lose forever.
Credit: Greg Lewis/AMC
A promise to love, honor, and cherish, to have and to hold, is a commitment.
So is a molotov cocktail, ablaze and hurtling through the air.
“So, we’re really doing this,” he says.
They really do it!
It doesn’t seem like it.
Then they start to snicker.
But the kiss is genuine, anyway.
There’s no time after for a honeymoon, or even a celebratory lunch.
“No trial, no deal,” he says.
And if that happened?
That JMM on his briefcase would represent a new motto: Just.
Like, alotof money.
He almost doesn’t.
Gus takes his hands and asks, “Do you remember Santiago?
Our backs to the wall?
I will never forget what you did for me.”
(And how well do we know him, really?
But whatever went on in South America, it clearly forged a deep bond between these men.
Compromise contains the word “promise,” after all.
He has no way of knowing how badly it will end.
“$7 million?
I can do that,” Lalo says.
And then Howard Hamlin comes up behind him.
It would be unfair to say that Howard pushes Jimmy over the edge.
Howard asks one more time if Jimmy has considered his job offer.
Of course, he knows!
The truth is, what looked like cluelessness is actually magnanimity.
“I’m sorry you’re in pain,” Howard says.
“You’re a teensy tiny man in a teensy weensy little bubble,” Jimmy screams.
He keeps screaming as Howard starts to walk away, keeps screaming as he chases after him.
“You have no idea what I’m capable of!
I’m so far beyond you, I’m like a god in human clothing!
Lightning bolts shoot from my fingertips!”
By the time Jimmy is done screaming, Howard has long since left the building.
But this isn’t about Howard.
This is about commitment.
It’s about destiny.
Commitment means there’s no turning back.
