Better Call Saul recap: Season 3, episode 3, ‘Sunk Costs’

Mike and Gus made contact, and Chuck’s end game was revealed to Jimmy in this week’s episode of Better Call Saul.

If you fund yourself feeling nostalgic for Breaking Bad while watching this week’s episode of Better Call Saul, then you were not alone, as the opening scene definitely had that feeling of Walter White hustle, if just for the briefest of moments.

We finally got to see the moment we were waiting for: Mike and Gus’ origin story. The point in time when these two men met and decided they would form a partnership. Well, at least the first stirrings of one, anyways. Gus Fring is back on our television screens, and we are all better for it.

Image Credit: AMC

I think knowing that Gus absolutely despises Hector, makes his restraint with Mike all the more delightful. Gus is in this for the long game…he is playing chess, not checkers, and you had better settle in because this game won’t be over for a long while. Gus’s line to Mike:

"“I can’t allow you to kill Hector. However, I am not completely unsympathetic to your sense of justice.”"

This lets the audience know that he is already running a gambit against the Salamanca family. And so it begins. The Gus and Mike show. Now, all we need is to add one part Walter White, and one part Jesse Pinkman, and we’ve got ourselves a recipe for another hit show.

Meanwhile, Jimmy is getting arrested because, well, his older brother Chuck is a huge a-hole. Let’s just face it. There is no way in heck that this relationship can be salvaged. In fact, before the cops come to haul Jimmy off to jail, he reminds his brother that there will come a day that he will need him, but it falls on deaf ears.

Image Credit: AMC

While Jimmy is being fitted for his jailhouse finery, Kim is alerted to his problems, and just like that, she rides to his rescue…but oh, what’s this? Jimmy insists on cleaning up his own mess!

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And it’s here that we find out what Chuck’s end game really is. A special “outside” prosecutor has been brought in, and he’s offering to wipe Jimmy’s slate clean, on one condition: Jimmy must give up practicing law.

Well, Kim will not have it. She says she will fight alongside Jimmy. And isn’t this nice, and lovely, and even a little tragically romantic? Just when she thought she was out, Jimmy pulls her back in…although unintentionally, I’m sure.

Before we go. Let’s talk about Mike and that time hop to the opening scene. He’s back, and he’s throwing those gosh-darn sneakers up on the wire. It’s clear that we’ve hopped back through time. Oh, what a masterful storyteller Vince Gilligan is. Pay close attention to the fact that Mike shot holes in those sneakers and the powder that fell onto the ice cream truck that needed to go through customs. Now, remember how I told you Gus was in it for the long game?

Better Call Saul airs Monday nights on AMC.