Better Call Saul season 3, episode 2 recap: Witness
By David Rouben
Breaking Bad’s most menacing villain, Gus Fring, finally returns in the second episode of Better Call Saul. Here’s a recap of “Witness.”
Season 3 of Better Call Saul’s biggest promotional tool was the return of Gus Fring, so when he didn’t show up in a slow-paced first episode, people were naturally disappointed. While the premiere didn’t have a lot going on in terms of narrative, there was still some excellent cinematography and Dave Porter. But fans want stuff to happen, and for Gus to appear.
They at least got the latter. And knowing that Gus is a cold, calculated villain, it’ll be fascinating to see what type of foil he will provide for Jimmy and Mike in this season.
Better Call Saul season 3, episode 2 recap
Chuck is burning the midnight oil in his house, working on something. He’s with a private investigator, who’s holding a deck of cards from Caesar’s. Once he brews himself a cup of tea, he looks out his window, anticipating someone.
Mike followed the person from the end of last episode to an empty lot, where he gives two people a cup of coffee. He continues to tail him, but his device starts cutting in and out. At one point, he thinks it leads to a dead end, but the guy is actually under the bridge.
He tails him until the break of dawn, when he sees him head into a building — it’s Los Pollos Hermanos! At 7:30 a.m., Mike realizes he needs to get some sleep. However, the man goes back into his car, prompting him to start tailing him again.
Jimmy’s in the middle of a paint job that looks like it was crafted by an eight year-old in Microsoft Paint when someone named Francesca walks in for an interview. They’re looking for a paralegal assistant who can help with taking calls. Jimmy is high on Francesca, particularly her DMV experience, and wants her to start today. Kim wants them to look at more resumes, but he believes she’s overthinking it.
As Francesca takes her first call, Jimmy tells her to be more folksy for his elder clients. That leads to her putting on a Southern accent and talking about Cracker Barrel. But one of the calls is Mike, who tasks Jimmy with staking out at Los Pollos, perhaps because they’re onto him.
He wants Jimmy to look out for whatever’s in the bag that guy’s been carrying around. When he sees him go up to the counter, Jimmy pretends to put sugar in his coffee before switching tables to get a closer look at him. He notices the bag that Mike was talking about, but he never opens it.
When he gets up and leaves, Jimmy waits before going dumpster diving, which makes him look like a buffoon. He’s interrupted by a very familiar looking janitor, who helps him look through the contents. Gus retrieves a watch for him, but that’s all he can find. Jimmy reassures a very disappointed Mike that the guy left after five minutes and found nothing. Mike seems content with moving on without him and continues to stake out the restaurant.
Ernie shows up to Wexler/McGill to try and tell Kim about the tape he heard. He’s worried about breaking the confidentiality agreement, but Kim presses him while he fumbles through his words.
Kim asks Jimmy for money so that she can be his lawyer and agree to confidentiality. When he asks why, she tells him about the recording. Jimmy’s at a loss for words, but he has to get back to his clients.
After further digging, Kim concludes that the recording wasn’t illegal, but comes up with a loophole: Jimmy was concerned about Chuck’s mental health, and told him what he needed to hear to make him feel better. He’s not convinced it’ll work, especially since he knows Chuck’s smarter than that. Once Kim leaves, Jimmy rips up part of his paint job in frustration.
Mike is out in the middle of the road when his phone starts ringing. He answers the mysterious caller.
Howard comes over to Chuck’s house but forgets to leave his electronics behind. He’s impatient that eight days has yielded no solutions. Chuck reveals to Howard that he’s been staying up because he believes Jimmy will break in at midnight and try to steal the tape. Instead, he breaks in during the middle of the day and destroys the tape.
Jimmy’s furious that Chuck would con him and destroy their family over this. During his whole blow-up, Chuck uses Howard and his private investigator as a witness to what happened.
Final thoughts
It was nice to see Gus finally come back, full face and all. It’s unlikely that he transformed from innocent janitor to drug kingpin, so part of this season will be seeing how he fits into the narrative. Perhaps he was the one who called up Mike.
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It turns out Chuck won’t have to use his tape anymore. Obviously, Jimmy didn’t count on Howard and a private investigator to be at his house, but what he did was always going to be costly. He should’ve just listened to Kim and play up an angle in court. Instead, he has to deal with three peoples’ word against his. Even for the world’s (second) greatest lawyer, it’ll be damn near impossible to get himself out of this.