'Better Call Saul' Recap: To Bear Witness

WARNING: This recap for the “Cobbler” episode of Better Call Saul contains spoilers.

In which Jimmy almost ruins his new romance for himself, and pie for the rest of us.

Mercedes Boy
Jimmy starts his day with a meeting at HMM about the Sandpiper case, and it means he gets to see Kim, who has rearranged the seating so she can play a game of stealth footsie with her new boyfriend. Afterwards, they share a cigarette in the parking garage, and a chat about his new place in Santa Fe — the “finest in temporary corporate housing,” he says — turns into a talk about how he’d like to buy a house somewhere between Santa Fe and the ABQ (i.e. where Kim lives). He would like some acreage, and he should get horses, Kim adds, and that talk drifts into how we should get a smoker, a change in subject they both happily notice.

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And then Jimmy’s day only gets better, because his new Davis & Main company car, a Mercedes, is delivered to his old office at the nail salon. He looks a little wistful when a tow truck hauls away the Suzuki Esteem, but all’s good with the Mercedes, save the fact that it has a sunroof. Jimmy, as we recall from Season 1, had a really bad experience with a luxury car sunroof.

Mike & Pryce & Nacho
Mike’s work day, on the other hand… not so much. The coffee in his cup shakes, and he looks up from his parking garage attendant booth to see why: Pryce is approaching in his yellow and red Humvee. He spots Mike, and Mike tells him to pull over so they can talk. When he tells Mike he’s been summoned to the police station by detectives who want to follow up on the theft of his baseball cards, ex-cop Mike immediately knows what’s going on. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised I have to tell you this, but it’s probably a bad idea for you to willingly talk to the police, being a criminal and all,” Mike says. Pryce doesn’t see it that way, of course, and even after Mike explains the cops have invited him there for a “fishing trip” for info, Pryce insists he’s getting those baseball cards back. Since Pryce’s inevitable downfall should he talk to the cops will also likely mean Mike’s, Mike tells Pryce to cancel the police station visit and let Mike retrieve his stolen Topps and O-Pee-Chees.

Mike’s plan: he knows Nacho is behind the theft of the cards, so he tracks him down at his family’s upholstery business — visibly shocking the usually unflappable Nacho — and tells him he’s got a carrot/stick offer for him. He either gives the cards back, or Mike will tell his psycho crime boss Tuco Salamanca that he’s got a side hustle going with Pryce. In return — the carrot — Mike will make sure he gets some cash, by having Pryce agree to turn over the Humvee to Nacho in exchange for the return of his cards.

That exchange goes off without a hitch (unless you count Pryce’s broken heart when Nacho tells him he’s taking the Humvee to a chop shop for cash), and Mike just has one more thing to deal with before he and Nacho are out of the Pryce business altogether.

The Office
The confidence Jimmy exhibits in his dealings with the rest of the world doesn’t seem to carry over to the Davis & Main office, where he’s working on the Sandpiper case. He thinks he may have found a new and major piece of evidence against Sandpiper, and he shyly — Jimmy… shy — approaches Cliff Main’s office to tell him. Cliff invites him in, and tells him he might be onto something with the new findings, and Jimmy, uncomfortable, goes back to his own office. Does he not feel comfortable in this white shoe firm? Does he not feel worthy of the job? Does he find it hard to believe a firm like this is trusting him with a case this big? All of the above?

Meanwhile, Chuck, having learned from Howard that Jimmy has been hired — for a partner track position — at D&M, has not so coincidentally decided now’s the time to force himself to go into the HHM offices for the next Sandpiper meeting. His unannounced arrival throws everyone — they all have to give up their electronic goodies — but no one more than Jimmy, who starts to stutter when Chuck’s arrival interrupts his riff. Kim puts her hand on his leg under the table and that jolts him back into his Jimmy-ness, but after the meeting, Chuck calls him over outside the conference room.

“What are you doing here?” Jim asks.

“My name is on the building,” Chuck says.

“What are you doing here?” Jimmy asks, less patiently.

“To bear witness,” Chuck says, before Jimmy’s phone rings and the elder McGill brother walks away.

Jimmy answers his phone. “It’s Ehrmantraut. You still morally flexible?” Mike asks. “If so, I might have a job for you.”

“Where and when?” Jimmy responds, still rattled by Chuck’s presence, which, of course, was Chuck’s point.

The Pie Guy
Jimmy accompanies Pryce — real name: Daniel Wormald — into an interview room, with two detectives. DW gets flustered right away, as Mike knew from the beginning he would, so Jimmy tells him to get some air, that he’ll talk to the cops.

And his story is this: Mr. Wormald’s baseball cards have been returned; they were stolen as part of a lover’s spat. This, of course, doesn’t quell the cops’ suspicions about Wormald being involved with drugs, as Mike and Jimmy knew it wouldn’t, so Jimmy unleashes one of his best, by which I mean worst, tall tales yet.

Wormald and his lover had a dispute over a videotape, which is why the lover took the cards. What’s on the tape? It’s a fetish tape, Jimmy says, pretending he doesn’t want to tell them what’s on it. But he does: it’s Wormald performing a “squat cobbler.” A “Hoboken squat cobbler.” Also known as a “full moon pie,” a “Boston cream splat,” a “Simple Simon the a–man,” and a “Dutch apple a–.”

“It’s when a man sits in pie… and he wiggles around,” says Jimmy, creating a whole bunch of new entries in the Urban Dictionary. Wormald does this while crying, he adds, making it a “cry baby squat… more specialized. Not all pie sitters cry, but I’m gonna tell you something. This guy, he’s a regular Julianne Moore once he gets the waterworks cranked up.”

“You got to be s–tting us,” one of the detectives says.

“You think I would make this up?” Jimmy says. “Hey, the world is a rich tapestry, my friend. But trust me on this… you don’t wanna see it.”

But they do. Which is why, when Jimmy and his client leave the police station, he breaks the news to Pryce: “There is one little hanging chad… you’re gonna have to make a video.”

Related: 'Better Call Saul’ Postmortem: Star Rhea Seehorn Talks Jimmy’s New Romance

“They’re Never Gonna Find Out”
Jimmy goes home, with leftover pie props (unused ones, he assures Kim), and recounts his police station exploits with his girlfriend. “Jesus, you can tell a story,” she says, laughing along with the gross tale as they eat pie in bed, until Jimmy mentions the video he actually had Pryce create.

“You fabricated evidence?” she asks. “You used falsified evidence to exonerate a client.”

He doesn’t see it that way. Even when she asks what would happen if Davis & Main finds out, Jimmy doesn’t think it’s a big deal. It wasn’t a D&M client, he argues, it was off the clock, a favor for a friend.

Jimmy’s attitude about the scam seems to give Kim an insight she didn’t have before, and she’s not only unamused, but worried, as she connects the dots to how these kinds of actions could easily trash her own career.

“I didn’t see you complaining when Ken the douchebag paid our bar bill the other night,” Jimmy says. Kim says that was different; they were just screwing around, and it had nothing to do with work.

“This… fabricating evidence… Jimmy, this could really hurt you if they find out, if you get caught,” Kim says. Jimmy says they never will.

“Seriously?” Kim says. “You sound like every dumb criminal out there. If you keep this up, they will find out. For what, Jimmy? What is the point?”

She gets silence, as he keeps eating pie.

Kim: “I cannot hear about this sort of thing. Ever again, OK? I mean it, Jimmy.”

“You won’t,” he says. But does that mean he won’t do anything like that again, or that he just won’t tell her about it?

Legal Briefs:

— Kim gives Jimmy a gift to celebrate his new Davis & Main gig: a travel coffee mug that says “World’s Best Lawyer,” which she has customized by adding “2nd” with a Sharpie in front of “Best.” “Just keepin’ it real,” she teases.

— Chuck plays, or tries to play, a song on the piano: Gabriel Fauré’s “Sicilienne.” And the woman’s name written on the sheet music, the name Chuck runs his finger over: Rebecca Bois. Wonder who that is, and if she might have something to do with why Chuck is so resentful of Jimmy?

— Neither Mike nor Nacho is impressed by Pryce’s beloved Humvee. Mike refers to it as “this blinking neon sign of a vehicle that says ‘drug dealer,’” while Nacho, in perhaps the best line of the series so far that is not uttered by Jimmy, calls it a “school bus for four-year-old pimps.”

Let’s hear your feedback, Saul fans: Do you think this pie caper is going to lead to Jimmy’s downfall at D&M? Is this the exact sort of behavior Chuck assumes Jimmy will engage in and blow up his career? How long do you think Kim will stick around for Jimmy’s pranks? And now that Mike and Nacho have settled their business with Pryce — for now — do you think they’ll become business partners?

Better Call Saul airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on AMC.