Witness
Written by Thomas Schnauz
Directed by Vince Gilligan
Air date: April 17th, 2017
The proprietor of Los Pollos Hermanos realizes his latest customer didn't come for the Pollos Classic.
"You pulled that heartstrings con job on me?! You piece of shit! 'Oh, my brain used to work, I'm sick, I don't know what to do!' ASSHOLE!"
— Jimmy McGill
Mike pursues the signal of the tracking device as it switches hands between a meeting of henchmen. He follows one of the henchmen as he collects pallets from dead drops around the city. In the early morning, the henchman pulls into a fast food restaurant and walks inside carrying a knapsack. When the henchman leaves, the readout for Mike's tracker indicates it is still inside the restaurant. As Mike pulls away, the camera pulls out to reveal the name of the restaurant: Los Pollos Hermanos.
Jimmy and Kim have a job interview with Francesca Liddy, a former MVD clerk, who Jimmy hires on the spot as WM's new receptionist. One of the calls she fields is from Mike, who asks to meet with Jimmy. The next day, Mike has Jimmy walk into Los Pollos Hermanos to observe the henchman's next visit. Jimmy's lack of finesse and suspicious behavior eventually tips off Gustavo Fring, who helps fish out Jimmy's watch when he gets stuck in the trash can looking for evidence, but also realizes Mike is onto him. Jimmy reports back to Mike and says he saw nothing suspicious.
Ernesto reluctantly drives to WM to inform Kim of the tape in Chuck's possession; Kim in turn informs a devastated Jimmy. Kim does legal research and finds that Chuck can't do anything with the tape, but Jimmy angrily leaves to confront Chuck. It turns out this was Chuck's plan all along: have Jimmy learn of the existence of the tape and anticipate him breaking in to steal it. This is just what Jimmy does: he breaks down Chuck's door, pries open his desk, and destroys the tape in Chuck's face. But with Howard and Chuck's PI present to witness everything, Jimmy is now on the hook and faces jail time.
Meanwhile, Mike sees a black SUV pull up to the back of Los Pollos Hermanos, and sees the signal of the tracker moving when it leaves, being driven by Victor. Mike follows the tracker out to a deserted road in the middle of nowhere, where he sees the gas cap containing the tracker lying in the middle of the road with a ringing cell phone, which he answers.
Tropes in this episode:
- Acting Unnatural: Mike tells Jimmy to go into Los Pollos Hermanos and pretend to just be an ordinary customer while keeping an eye on the courier inside. So of course, Jimmy couldn't look any more obvious constantly glancing at the man, staring at him from his table, and moving from table to table trying to keep him in his field of vision. His act is so unsubtle that Gustavo sees right through it while sweeping by and alerts the courier to leave.
- Almighty Janitor: Gustavo is introduced sweeping the floor of Los Pollos Hermanos and later the parking lot, and interacting with an unsuspecting Jimmy.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Or the Anti-Villain wins depending on your view of the character, but so far Chuck is winning the sibling war by pulling Jimmy's strings.
- Batman Gambit: Chuck relied on Ernesto hearing that part of the confession that played for him in "Mabel" and going straight to Jimmy to warn him – or close enough, as he went to Kim instead, who then informed Jimmy.
- Zig-Zagged with Chuck's broader plot to entrap Jimmy. He assumes that when Jimmy discovers his confession is taped, he will act rationally and carefully to destroy it, breaking into his house in secret in the dead of night. In reality, Jimmy is less worried by the tape than absolutely enraged by Chuck's deceit, and he kicks down his door in broad daylight in order to angrily confront Chuck. Of course, that works just as well, if not better, for Chuck's purposes.
- Call-Back: Jimmy removes the painter's tape from his office wall with the same technique that Chuck showed him in the last episode until he becomes so enraged by the confession tape that he simply rips the last of it off of the wall instead.
- Call-Forward:
- Both played straight and subverted, in that Kim asks for a dollar to become Jimmy's attorney – and settles for $20 when Jimmy doesn't have change. Jimmy will do a similar "put a dollar in my pocket" to Walt and Jesse, with Jesse having to fork over $5 when he doesn't have change as well.
- Gustavo's first onscreen appearance is practically identical to his first scene in Breaking Bad: greeting Jimmy in his capacity as the manager of Los Pollos Hermanos, with Jimmy initially none the wiser to Gustavo's real nature and motivations.
- Celebrity Paradox: Jimmy refers to The Price Is Right, in an episode set only a couple of years after Aaron Paul (Jesse Pinkman) made an energetic (and later memetic) appearance.
- Didn't Think This Through: Ernesto doesn't want to have a phone record of him spilling the beans about accidentally discovering Chuck's tape of Jimmy's confession, but also doesn’t want to go into the Wexler-McGill out of fear of confronting Jimmy. So he asks Kim to talk to him in his car...by phoning her on her landline, thus leaving a phone record anyway.
- Early-Bird Cameo / Five-Second Foreshadowing: Gus’s Volvo is seen in the parking lot Mike is watching a few minutes before the Los Pollos Hemanos sign is finally revealed.
- Foreshadowing: Jimmy's threat to burn Chuck's house down foreshadows the end of the season and Chuck's death, when Chuck burns it down himself during his final breakdown.
- Idiot Ball:
- Jimmy, talk about juggling with all the idiot balls at once. You break Chuck's door down, talk about and destroy the tape, and threaten to burn Chuck's house to the ground, in front of Howard and a third witness. Bonus points for the fact Jimmy has previously used Mike to remove money from the Kettlemens' house, and could have done so here. Somewhat justified since he was so enraged that his brother would stoop so low in his Batman Gambit, and people who are angry tend not to think rationally.
- Jimmy is given a task by Mike to monitor Gustavo's courier incognito. His multiple failures to act casual in the restaurant allows Gustavo to see through him and tip off the courier. This is almost certainly why Mike used him for the job.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Played with. Chuck tries to reassure Howard that he knows his brother well enough to know that he will try to break into his house at night and destroy the incriminating tape while Chuck is asleep, with Howard and Chuck's private investigator as witnesses to the event. Cue Jimmy banging on the door and yelling at Chuck to open up...where he goes on a rampage to destroy the tape while angrily threatening his brother, thus incriminating him even worse than before.
- Internal Reveal: Jimmy and Kim both learn about Chuck's secretly recorded tape from the Season 2 finale.
- Musical Nod: The music that plays as Mike is following the bag man with the tracker bears a resemblance to a reverse form of "Goodbye" by Apparat, the song that played when Gustavo walked to his doom.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Had Jimmy simply taken Kim's advice and simply waited to come up with a game plan before going to confront Chuck, his older brother would've had no way to properly prosecute Jimmy, and also would've had a harder time convincing Howard that all the effort he was going through would be worth it. But Jimmy's impulsive nature quickly and easily destroys all that, with Howard and Chuck's private investigator as witnesses to Jimmy breaking into his home and threatening to burn it down.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Jimmy has one when he hears Francesca say the name "Ehrmantraut" out loud. He's not expecting Mike to kill him or physically hurt him, but he's definitely worried about what Mike has in mind.
- Mike himself has one when he notices a cellphone on top of his gas cap and tracker, in the middle of the highway. He now realizes his mark has just reverse stung him as well. He may be wanting to meet up with whoever's been tracking him, but he's well aware that he's put himself in a risky situation.
- Jimmy has another and even bigger one when Howard and the private investigator emerge to act as witnesses to Jimmy breaking and enter Chuck's residence and destroying the tape. His expression belies that it's now sinking in what Chuck's plan really was all along.
- Rage Breaking Point: After everything Chuck had already put Jimmy through, the former coercing a confession from the latter and secretly taping it is finally enough to have Jimmy completely lose his shit, as he breaks down the door and completely destroys the tape while angrily threatening to burn the house down in retribution.
- The Reveal: A minor one: we finally learn what happened to Chuck's wife Rebecca: she divorced him.
- Reveal Shot: As Mike drives away from the end point of his chase, the camera moves to show that it's Los Pollos Hemanos, heralding the arrival of Gustavo Fring.
- Revenge Before Reason: Despite Kim's insistence on waiting before doing anything with the information of Chuck's tape, Jimmy is so enraged at his brother that he impulsively goes over to his house, breaks in and destroys said tape, with Howard and a private investigator there to witness everything. Nice going, Jimmy.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After a brief bout of Tranquil Fury, Jimmy loses his shit over Chuck's secret tape. He breaks down Chuck's front door, pries open the desk drawer with a fireplace poker, destroys the tape in Chuck's face, and threatens to burn the house down before Howard and Dave the PI make him stop. Judging from Chuck's reaction, he might have been worried that Jimmy was about to straight up kill him.
- Rule of Symbolism: The episode goes out of its way to highlight everything symbolic about the new Wexler/McGill logo. First, the "M" portion is, as Francesca notes, "a little bit crooked." Jimmy also notes to his own unease that it looks like a stock market crash line. Lastly, Jimmy carefully rolls masking tape with his thumbs when removing it from the logo, in the manner Chuck told him to use in the previous episode. As he thinks more about Chuck, however, he rips off the remainder of the tape haphazardly. This not only shows a further internal break with his desire to please Chuck, but it rips the fresh paint and leaves the "M" portion significantly more crooked than before.
- Start of Darkness: Francesca is introduced in this episode as a chipper office assistant to Kim and Jimmy. She's years away from becoming surly and jaded, willing to bend the truth to get clients for Jimmy, and it appears this moral flexibility is part of what keeps her along for Jimmy's entire conversion to Saul.
- Title Drop: When Howard and David the private investigator enter Chuck's study and declare themselves as witnesses to what Jimmy just did.
- Tranquil Fury: After assuring Kim all is fine and she leaves the room, Jimmy furiously rips the rest of the tape off the wall of his paint job, clearly holding back a lot of anger over Chuck's newest betrayel.
- Visual Pun: There are street signs in the alley that Mike is parked in across the street from Los Pollos Hermanos reading "Dead End" and "Speed Bumps Ahead", the former being indicative of the dead end that Mike's tracker pursuit has hit, and the latter foreshadowing Mike's upcoming career as Gus's enforcer.
- Wham Episode:
- The confrontation between Jimmy and Chuck has been a long time coming, and almost rivals that of Hank and Walt in "Blood Money", with Hank being Jimmy and Walt being Chuck respectively. Jimmy also comes across as how Jesse felt towards Jimmy/Saul about Walt poisoning Brock, "AND ALL FOR THAT ASSHOLE, MR. WHITE!".
- On top of that, it's also the episode that properly sees Gus's return to the franchise.
- Wham Line: It's minor amidst Jimmy's rampage at Chuck's house, but he lets slip one particular detail that wasn't made clear before now:Jimmy: No wonder Rebeccanote left you! What took her so long?
- Wham Shot:
- We see that Gustavo is truly aware of what Jimmy was really doing when, while sweeping the sidewalk in the parking lot, he looks up at the camera with a knowing look on cue with Jimmy driving away.
- A minor one when we see Victor driving the Escalade, largely on account of our foreknowledge that he is destined for Gustavo's box cutter special.
- Who Would Be Stupid Enough?: After being confronted by Howard over the seeming implausibility of his scheme ever working, Chuck admits that Jimmy probably isn't so stupid that he'd try breaking into his home in broad daylight. Which Jimmy nonetheless proceeds to do not thirty seconds later.
