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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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