and how maybe she's not exactly what we expected her to be. And it makes sense on some level, because she's attracted to Jimmy. We've always known how close they are, and they have only grown closer. It's not like she just tolerates him, she admires, depends on, and loves him -- which means they can't be totally on different tracks.
I can identify with her some, being another Adult Child of Alcoholics, in the sense she is someone who feels a high burden to over achieve, and she always wanted to put herself out in the world a certain way (put together, unaccusable / adhering to a code, while protecting a lot of her core so as to maintain control over the pressures of the outer world). At some point in life, you just get sick of all that bs, though, and don't care to retain that much control -- especially once you feel you are starting to realize who you are, what you REALLY want, and develop confidence in one's abilities to be that person. A lot of it has been an awakening for Kim, where her notions of success by the external world's standards are now something she is consciously abandoning because she realizes she doesn't really want those things. And she's also accepting that she is no longer as straight "by the book" as she imagined herself to be and that she used as a way to fend off criticism from the outer world -- I mean, if you adhere to a certain image, then authority figures in your life cannot accuse you legitimately of being less than or being the bad person in that relationship. I was stark and severe in terms of my self-judgments and moral compass as a teenager in part because i felt like I had to be above everyone else including my father so that my morals and stances were beyond reproach; that scene with Kim and her mom just resonated with me so much.
I think the clearest sign of this shift in her is when she finally disrespects Howard to his face. She's always been so controlled and measured in her responses, not caring to burn bridges (aside from a few moments when she has lashed out at him, like when he was going to give Jimmy the check from his brother's estate), and then it was always about protecting another person -- it wasn't about her, she was just being someone else's defender/surrogate and thus judgment didn't really slide onto her. This is more Kim now who doesn't care what others think, they no longer have control over her where she's playing the game conservatively; she's suddenly willing to show people what she really thinks and feels, and in this case she feels mostly contempt for Howard and she actually lets him KNOW that finally ... and this leads into the final sequence where she is actually the driving force behind ways to benefit both her and Jimmy as well as bring Howard to some kind of ruin. She's still pretty logical about it -- I think she might still allow it to just be a whimsy if it was ONLY about Howard, but because (1) financial freedom would benefit both her and Jimmy and (2) the settlement would benefit the elderly being screwed by the legal system, it now becomes bigger than her and is killing a few birds with one stone. Like "The stars are aligned, this is perfect in so many ways, let's do it."
IOW, we are finally getting a glimpse of Kim, whose exterior isn't nearly a match for the interior as we envisioned. She is more freewheeling, willing to bend the rules, less idealistic and more pragmatic than expected -- we had just been led to believe those small acts over the course of five seasons were "not the norm" for her but some kind of influence Jimmy had on her to erode her moral certitude, and meanwhile she's mostly been playing by rules because of her own childhood protective measures still in place to give her options and fend off criticism, whereas inside she's always admired Jimmy on some level and been more flexible. (It was pretty amazing how she refused to do the Giselle thing for awhile, but once she finally did it, she was GOOD at it and seemed to thrill to it.) And now the mask is more drawn back, a mask that also might have been hiding her from herself.
I think the irony is that Jimmy was always off the wall externally so everyone already knew about him, but his bad recent experiences have led him to question his "slippin' jimminess" because he bit off more than he could chew (staring at a bullet five seconds away from ending his life did wonders for him in that regard -- the tongue is no longer mightier than the gun, and he needs to take better care), whereas Kim has never really cut loose but she has a lot more confidence in their abilities. Standing down Lalo rattled her on some level -- she is totally aware of what might have been set into motion -- but at the same time it inspired much confidence in her own abilities, whereas for Jimmy it seems to have shaken his confidence. Overall, I guess Kim had a better true sense of the stakes than Jimmy has had, all the time. It's now real to him, but it's been real to her since forever, and she now has given up the things she might have lost related to her "clean" image so she's liberated in some ways.
I dunno. I worry about her so much, because we know she's not present in Breaking Bad, and Jimmy has seemingly given up on life in BB -- it just bespeaks a horrible tragedy of some kind. I have trouble foreseeing a path where Kim walks out of this prequel alive. At best, she has been utterly outcast or gone into total hiding but I'm not even sure how that would have worked -- would she have ever left Jimmy willingly?
