BCS 3.02: "Care to Elaborate?"

[canyonwalker]

The first few episodes of Better Call Saul season 3 continue to tell a fascinating story about supporting character Mike Ehrmantraut. In my previous blog I wrote about how Mike turns the tables on mysterious adversaries who are following him since the season 2 finale. He traces them to the fast food restaurant Pollos Hermanos— which we fans of Breaking Bad know is owned by drug trafficker Gus Fring— but doesn't yet know who's behind this gang.

In episode 3.02 Mike continues staking out Pollos Hermanos to figure out who the bag man is handing off the bags of drug money to. He enlists shady lawyer Jimmy McGill— the titular character who hasn't yet changed his name to Saul Goodman— to pose as a restaurant patron and watch what the bag man does inside. The bag man enters, orders, sits down with the bag at his feet, then leaves— taking the bag with him. Jimmy checks the trash can after the mysterious man leaves, thinking maybe he made a dead drop, but finds nothing. And Gus Fring intercepts Jimmy, asking if he needs help as he rummages through the trash. Gus and his gang are now onto Mike/Jimmy, and the tables turn again.

Mike's tracker device shows that the beacon he planted in one of the money bags is moving from the store. He tails a driver in a black SUV to the desert outside of town. When the beacon stops moving on an empty desert highway, Mike realizes he's once again the mouse, not the cat, in this game of cat-and-mouse.



Mike approaches the beacon carefully, stopping behind a crest in the road and then rolling forward slowly. He sees in the middle of the road the gas cap he planted his beacon in. Sitting on top of it is a cell phone. As he approaches on foot the phone rings.

I've gotta stop right here to say it is amazing that this show— a not-animated, not-science fiction/superheroes, not-James Bond level spy movie show— successfully uses the trope of "Protagonist finds a cell phone in a crazy place and answers a call on it from the antagonist". It's amazing how they make this believable. It took a lot of damn fine plotting and writing to build up to this scene.

The great writing continues as Mike negotiates the call from his adversaries. They inform him they're going to approach him and ask him not to try using a gun. But Mike is ready with one of his acerbic quips.



The adversaries roll up in two black SUVs. Gus Fring, whom Mike doesn't know yet, emerges from one. There's an enforcer on each side of him; but Mike is unbowed. He holds up the hand-written note from his windshield in the season 2 finale— "DON'T"— and prompts Gus, "Care to elaborate?"