Episode Report Card Joe R: A | 8 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Leverage
By Joe R | Season 3 | Episode 13 | Aired on 06.13.2010
ul to just tell him so he can be on his way. Saul gets more irritated and starts to sit up, but Mike puts out a hand and tells Saul he's good right the hell where he is. Saul begins to get a glimmer of the power imbalance he's at here.Mike takes a seat. "Now when I say I'm looking for Pinkman, we both know why, don't we?" Do we? More specifically, does Saul? He doesn't say otherwise, so maybe Saul knew all along that Mike was on loan from Gus. Anyway, Gus cautions Saul from saying/doing anything that would annoy him. Saul threatens to do just that when he cites attorney-client privilege, of all things, as his reason why he can't tell Mike anything. He says if he spilled on Jesse, Mike would then worry that he'd one day spill on him. Where's the trust in that? "I trust the hole in the desert I'll bury you in," Mike threatens, steady as you please. Saul gets the picture. "Saul," Mike continues, "don't make me beat you 'til your legs don't work." Okay, now Saul REALLY gets the picture. Saul, in probably his most admirable moment, tells Mike he just can't tell him. "I just couldn't live with myself." Aw. Concern for Jesse Pinkman turns weasels into men. Of course, one sudden move from Mike and he's a weasel again, leaping to his feet and offering Mike a workaround. Say if perhaps Saul had written down Jesse's current location on a notepad. A notepad eerily similar to the one Saul is now pulling out of his desk drawer and laying on the center of his desk. "Do not touch anything on my desk," Saul fake-admonishes, then leaves the office for a Nescafe. Of course a Nescafe. He goes, and Mike checks out the notepad, which says Jesse's at a trailer park in Virginia. So...worse product placement: Nescafe, for when you're feeling extra cowardly, or Staples, which is the brand of notepads you want to think of when you think of grizzled hitmen hunting down sweet-if-misguided drug dealers?
Next thing, we see Saul driving Walter out to the laser tag emporium -- sorry, that's "Lazer Base" -- though Walt keeps telling him he's wasting his time and Walt's going in on the car wash. They get out of the car and walk into the closed, for-sale building. Saul lets the both of them in, and as they cross the threshold, we see Victor's car creep into the parking lot behind them. What a pest. I bet he has no friends.
Inside, Saul turns the lights on, and since all the tables and game apparatuses are covered in plastic, the room takes on a Blade-Runner kind of futuristic feel. Or sitting shiva at the Super Mario Brothers' house. Saul gives the guided tour until they're about halfway through the floor, at which point Walt testily tells him he can cut it out now. "We're good." Saul takes issue with Walt's terminology, though I guess his point was that they're no longer within range of any listening devices. Unless Mike put one in Saul's bluetooth, which ... hey, why didn't Mike just put one in Saul's bluetooth? Anyway, Saul vents about how incredibly not "good" this whole thing is, with the sneaking and the getting threatened and all. "Over and above," he repeats. He is SERIOUSLY going to consider upping his rate if he manages to survive this. He turns to his left and points, "And that goes double for you, hip-hop." And he's pointing at JESSE! Jesse, who's not on the run in Virginia at all! Oh, they've all got a plan, this is excellent. They...do have a plan, right? Saul says they won't have long before Mike realizes he's been sent to a dead end, so they better figure out something. He leaves Walt and Jesse to conspire, while he goes and plays Tetris.
Jesse asks Walt how he's holding up. "I got my old job back," he says. "At least until they kill me and Gale takes over." Sigh of relief. That's from me, by the way. Happy to know Walt wasn't in the dark about Gus's plan. He's been trying to stonewall Gale's incessant requests for guidance on the cooking process, but it's been tough with Victor around. "The only thing saving us right now might be Gale's fastidiousness," Walt says, with neither admiration nor disdain. Walt's detached professionalism here is admirable yet creepy. Anyway, fastidious or not, once Gale has Walter's method down, it's over for Walt. Jesse asks what should they do. Walt looks right at Jesse: "You know what we do." Jesse -- whose brush with death has clearly made him hyper-sensitized to it rather than desensitized -- drops his gaze and says there has to be a better way. In fact, Jesse can't believe he's suggesting this, but he tells Walt to go to the cops. He's got a goldmine of shit on Gus and the cartel -- he'd be a dream witness for the DEA. "For your family," Jesse says, not quite pleading, but he's not far off. He says he can hit the road and survive. "We had a good run," Jesse says. "But it's over."
Walt looks back at Jesse, steady as ever, and issues a proclamation. From the Desk of Walter White: "Never the DEA." I saw a couple people make the argument that beyond pure stubbornness (which is Walt's greatest natural resource), Walt's anti-DEA stance is a warped way of protecting Hank from the embarrassment of having the great and terrible Heisenberg end up being his own brother-in-law. Due respect, I don't think that thought crossed Walt's mind for a moment. If anything, despite whatever guilt he might feel for Hank's condition, I think Walt still would rather die than have to surrender to Hank and his buddies. Mostly, I think this is about not having to admit to his kids and himself that not only did he become a serious drug dealer, but he failed at it.