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Saul Is Officially Working for the Salamanca’s and Oh My God Hank Is Back – ‘Better Call Saul’ S5E3

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The third episode of this season of Better Call Saul was what we in the biz call a “setup episode”. It was relatively uneventful, but set the scene for the coming episodes. Saul is officially working for the Salamanca family, Kim is now a part-time realtor, and oh yeah…Hank (Dean Norris) and Gomez (Steven Michael Quezada) are back!! It took five seasons for them to make an appearance, but Saul just got a whole lot more interesting. First, let me give some background as to how they worked their way into this season.

Last episode, Domingo (Nacho’s right hand man) got busted at a Salamanca stash house, leading to him needing legal representation – enter Saul Goodman. The episode begins with Nacho taking Saul to meet Lalo, who would decide if Saul was the man for the job. Saul (Jimmy at the time) and Nacho have a past, so knowing he is such a great lawyer is why he sought out Saul in the first place to defend Domingo. After sizing him up, Lalo agrees to Saul’s demand of $7,925 to take on the case, but gives him a round $8,000 in good faith.

Then we see Mike is drinking his pain away at the local pub. Still wrought with grief over the entire Werner situation, Mike notices a postcard pinned to the wall next to the bar. It’s not what’s written in the postcard that upsets Mike, but the picture on the front of the Sydney Opera House. If you remember the story Werner told Mike last season about how Werner’s father was the engineer who created the Opera House, you can see why it’s so upsetting for him to see that. He proceeds to desperately plead with the bartender to take down the postcard, which he refuses to at first. After seeing how serious Mike is, he takes it down.

On Mike’s walk home, a group of hoodlums attempt to jump him, but he’s not an ordinary 70-something year old man. Mike isn’t like Robert DeNiro in The Irishman…he still looks like he can kick some ass. Mike manages to get one of the guys one the ground in 0.8 seconds and was on the verge of breaking the guy’s arm with relative ease. Suffice it to say, none of the other guys try testing old man river, and Mike is allowed to go on with his night.

Now for the biggest surprise of the night…Hank and Gomez are back. If you don’t know who they are, you obviously didn’t watch Breaking Bad, but in short, they are DEA agents, and Hank is the brother-in-law of Walter White – the protagonist in Breaking Bad. Now that we’re all caught up, can we talk about how awesome it was to see these guys?? The last time we saw them things didn’t go so well, and it’s hard to forget that at one point they were just normal DEA agents (as normal as that profession could be). And now they have entered the Better Call Saul universe.

The whole reason they’re brought in is because Saul is trying to strike a deal for his newest client: Domingo Molina. Saul made up this elaborate story for Domingo to tell the agents claiming that he knew where they could find $500,000 worth of drug money. Only, they saw through the whole thing.

Obviously Saul doesn’t want Domingo giving up any real information because he’d be dubbed a rata, so they give the agents the location of “dead drops” that belong to Gus Fring. Gus is not happy that his “dead drops” are now under DEA surveillance, but it was Lalo’s call – for obvious reasons (he hates Gus).

Then Kim gets in trouble with Mesa Verde *again* because she would rather work her pro-bono cases than help the firm that’s keeping the light’s on. She ultimately gives in and drives all the way out to Tucumcari? where one old man is refusing to give up his land to make way for a brand new Mesa Verde branch…in the middle of the desert. Really not sure why they had to upend an entire neighborhood when there’s literally hundreds of miles of open desert for them to build a call center but that’s corporations for ya. So Kim is called upon to deal with this old man who has lived on his property since the 1970’s and is refusing to leave even after Mesa Verde offered him a whopping $18,000 in good faith. To be fair, I’m pretty sure that buys a three-bed, two-bath in Albuquerque so I’m not sure what the problem is. But judging by the distain on Mr. Acker’s (the old man) face when Kim makes him so acutely aware of the settlement offer, I assume that money won’t go as far as I thought, even in the early 2000’s housing bubble. Go figure. 

Despite her pleading with Mr. Acker, he only sees her as a suit even after she offers to take him looking for houses. She even brought some real estate flyers! Those lonely nights in the New Mexican desert have turned his heart cold. The episode is capped off with Saul and Kim chucking full bottles of beer off the balcony of their apartment/condo after what were career defining days for the both of them. Saul is now the go-to lawyer for the cartel, and Kim realizes she has to play hardball and embrace the heartless corporate suit her image gives off.

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Say Goodbye to Jimmy McGill. It’s Saul Goodman From Here on Out – Season 5 Episode 1 of ‘Better Call Saul’

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After a 16-month hiatus, Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad spinoff series, Better Call Saul has returned for its fifth season. While it is forced to live in Breaking Bad‘s shadow, Saul as a standalone series is one of the best shows currently on TV. It has kept pace with the preceding series revolving around Walter White, focusing on con-man lawyer Jimmy McGill (Saul Goodman). If you’re reading this it’s not too late, as I’m assuming you’re all caught up, so I won’t waste any time going into the previous four seasons. Let’s get into season 5 episode 1, shall we?

The episode opens with present-day Saul, now Gene Takovic (new identity) franticly rushing to his car after he was made by a cabbie in Omaha, who is from Albuquerque and knows “Gene’s” true identity. This is a continuance of the opening scene from season four, and gives us an update as to how Saul is adjusting to life on the run. Obviously paranoid, he races home and skips town for a few days. Upon his return to work at Cinnabon, he sees the cabbie while on his lunch break. The cabbie claims to be a fan of Saul the lawyer and gets him to say his catchphrase.

We have no idea what this guy’s intentions are, and Saul, being a wanted man, can’t afford to have people knowing where he’s hiding out. Saul then calls the vacuum repair man (the late Robert Forster), who you might recall from Breaking Bad, is the best in the biz at relocating wanted criminals. However,  Saul recalls his request and says he will fix it himself, which is code for “that motherf*cker is dead”. If they follow the trend set by the previous seasons, this might be the only glimpse we get of current-day Saul for the rest of the season, which is disappointing to me. As intriguing as the prequel storyline is, I need them to incorporate more post-Breaking Bad Saul into this show. He’s being hunted down by the Feds and is an extremely “hot” criminal- how am I supposed to not want to see more of that? Regardless, it was good to see what Cinnabon Saul was up to, and I hope to be seeing more of him than in previous seasons.

Then we are back to prequel Saul, picking right up from where we left off at the end of season four. He was just reinstated as a lawyer and has decided to change his professional name to Saul Goodman – his alter ego as the phone salesman to criminals. I really thought it would have been a huge reveal when he decided upon the name of “Saul Goodman” but it really wasn’t made to be a big deal at all last season. Like, he never even talked about it. He just had business cards with that name all of a sudden and all of us at home were just like “oh, okay, guess that’s how it happened!”. Either way, Saul has made the realization that he will always be “Chuck McGill’s loser brother”, which couldn’t be more accurate. He has to carve out his own niche in this city, and do it without the connection to his older brother’s legacy.

Lalo Salamanca is determined to continue a legacy as well, that of his family name, which is being threatened by Gustavo Fring’s operations. Lalo’s actions last season has led to the delay of Fring’s meth superlab’s construction, as well as partial responsibility for the death of German engineer Werner Ziegler. Nacho, who is now working for both Fring (secretly) and the Salamanca’s, is forced to admit to Lalo that the meth they’ve been selling lately, which is supplied by Fring, is stepped on. Subsequently, this forces a meeting between Lalo, Fring, and Juan Bolsa.

Fring claims the reason his meth has not been pure is because Werner was overseeing the construction of a “chicken chiller” for Los Pollos Hermanos, and stole two keys from Fring’s operation. This then forced Fring to falsify the weight of his batches by adding foreign substances. Obviously we as viewers know this is all bullshit, only said to cover up the meth superlab he is really building, and while Bolsa believes the story, Lalo sees right through it. While Lalo is not 100% aware of what Fring is up to, he does know about a “south wall”, which he was able to learn about last season in his call with Werner – something that would not be necessary for a chicken chiller.

The Magic Man

Jimmy is now officially Saul Goodman, and he has put on an event to:

  1. Get rid of the rest of the pre-paid phones he has.
  2. Build a client base for his new life as a lawyer for Albuquerque’s hardened criminals.

The best part about this entire scene was seeing how a name change can influence the style of a person. Not that he was well-dressed before, but…let’s just say a red suit wouldn’t have been acceptable office attire at Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill. I guess changing his name to Saul Goodman was what influenced the ridiculous color schemes that were his signature in Breaking Bad.

Back to Europe

Now that their boss is dead, there’s really no reason for Werner’s crew to stay, so they are headed back to Europe. Further proving that Gus and Mike are the two most careful sons of bitches ever, they even spread out the airports that each guy is flying out of. They split six guys up throughout four airports, making them drive on their own to Denver, Dallas, El Paso, and Phoenix. The highlight of this scene was when Mike landed a right hook on Kai after he basically said Werner deserved to die. Aside from Kai being a complete prick, before escaping, Werner was Mike’s guy, and he took no pleasure in having to kill him, so disrespecting him in any way wasn’t going to sit well with the ol’ geezer. Safe to say Kai got what he deserved.

After sending the Europeans on their merry way, Mike and Gus discuss next steps in their operation. Gus says he will continue to pay Mike even though they will not continue construction as long as Lalo is around sticking his nose in everything – understandably so. However, Mike is still pissed that he had to take out Werner, so he basically tells Gus he can keep the money and shove it up his ass. Gustavo Fring isn’t the type of guy you say no to, but Mike is also not a guy you fuck with (an outstanding feat for a 73 year-old man), so we know there won’t be any serious retaliation from Fring.

To cap off the episode, we have Saul’s trusty UNM film students (now posing as a TV news crew) rush up on a prosecutor in the courthouse, who Saul claims is prosecuting an innocent man – his client, Carl Gravenhorse. They’re basically just filming a commercial to spread the word about Saul Goodman, but we are also blessed with an iconic Saul Goodman terrible suit color scheme.

Saul then meets Kim (can’t believe I haven’t mentioned her until now) in the courthouse as she is trying to convince her clearly guilty client to take the plea deal she got him. She was able to get him five months in prison instead of years, but he wants to take it to trial to hopefully get off scot free. This guy already has a baby, plus his wife/girlfriend is pregnant with another on the way, and he’s willing to risk going away for years.

So, Saul comes over and starts talking to Kim like he’s from the district attorney’s office, which she is completely against. What I don’t understand is that one moment Kim is all about the scam and then she’s completely against it out of nowhere. Remember last season when she and Jimmy went to Lubbock and switched out the building plans for Mesa Verde? I want that Kim back. But the funny thing is…she still went along with it because it ended up working! However, this exchange between Saul and Kim showed that it might be the beginning of the end for these two lovebirds. And surprisingly, it’s not due to the fact that they have the least sexual chemistry of any couple I’ve ever seen. I don’t know…I just don’t see it. Regardless, it’s  Saul Goodman’s time to shine, and Kim is clearly going to be a hindrance to his evolution as a criminal mastermind.

The episode was also dedicated to the late, great Robert Forster, rightfully so. He will be truly missed by TV and movie fans everywhere, but his magnificent work will live on forever. 

And if you haven’t seen Jackie Brown, that’s your homework for this week. 

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