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Joel did not care that Jimmy had died. He simply did not care. Of course he didn’t, Jim had killed his wife! He’d killed her, putting her on Red and in danger of the Red tasks, and not only that. Now she was in danger of permanent death, being sent completely out of the series! Then, on top of that, he somehow managed to escape the Canary Curse, and it was Lizzie that had to die for him.
The Bad Boys might have been close, Joel acknowledged, but this was his wife. So, he just didn’t care that Jim had died, he told himself. It didn’t matter that he’d succeeded in something he’d been striving for for five seasons, or that when he killed Lizzie it had been an accident.
He didn’t care.
Jim’s death wasn't impacting him in the slightest.
When tears filled his eyes before the tasks were given out, that was because of Lizzie. He wished she was still around, and he was upset at how unfair her death was. That was all.
His life was just the same as always.
Well…
Fine, Jim might have impacted him just a bit, and Joel might have been feeling a bit emotional over it. But the emotion wasn’t sadness or anything like that.
It was anger.
Joel hated this man who ruined his life by ending the life of his wife. He despised him, he loathed him. And he was going to spend the rest of this season lamenting the fact that Jim had slipped out of his grasp and died to a Warden, instead of to Joel’s hands which were itching to swing his sword at that fragile body.
He hated that everyone was so proud, too. Wow, Jim lived ten minutes longer than Lizzie! He’s amazing! No, he just did what everyone had always done. Plus he didn’t deserve that, he killed Lizzie. Joel had to admit that was something that might have changed things for him, but it was also a murder! It wasn’t something to coo at and applaud Jim for.
But these were all just side effects of his death. The actual death, the part where Jim wasn’t around anymore? He didn’t care about it.