Episode Report Card Joe R: B+ | 8 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT "I Guess I'm Coming to You"
By Joe R | Season 5 | Episode 2 | Aired on 07.22.2012
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.It doesn't take much convincing for Walt to get Jesse onboard with starting the business up again. He realizes he also needs Mike for the distribution/security arm of this new business, but despite a rather contrite Walt and Jesse asking him nicely (and offering to make him an ownership partner), he turns them down.
Meanwhile, the Gus Fring fallout is reaching far and wide, all the way up the chain to Pollos Hermanos corporate parent Madrigal (we see one of the Madrigal executives commit suicide rather than answer drug-enforcement questions). Back in the states, this translates to the DEA hauling in all the Pollos-connected people they can for questioning. Enter Lydia, a heretofore unseen member of Gus's power structure who sits on the Madrigal board, who approaches Mike scared to shit that a chain of eleven men whose snitching could bring the whole house of cards down. She wants Mike to take them out, but he tells her, in no uncertain terms, that they're his people, and they've been chosen because they won't snitch. Of course, the heat's really getting turned up -- Hank and Gomie haul Mike in for questioning, and despite his stone façade, they really rock him with news that they found out about the offshore account Gus kept in Mike's granddaughter's name. He then finds that Lydia has begun the process of taking out the eleven herself, which means Mike has to go kill HER, which he almost does. But in her frantic concern for her daughter, Mike sees his own desire to protect little Kaylee, so instead he decides to strike up a deal -- with her, but more importantly with Walt -- to re-start the flow of meth through the Albuquerque streets.
Oh, and Skyler White seems pretty depressed, barely getting out of bed and not speaking a word to Walt. Which makes it all the more terrifying when Walt ends the day in bed with her, willfully ignoring her despair and instead kissing up on her and caressing her and ... I don't even want to think about it, you guys.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!As has become the custom on this show, we kick things off in a place we've never been before. In this case, it's an industrial food-testing lab in (from the sounds of it) Germany. Bright lights, cold surfaces, gleaming white countertops matching the white coats worn by a team of food scientists testing out a line of fancy new condiments on a solitary, suit-wearing subject. Whoever this guy is, he's not feeling it. He plows through each dipping sauce without enthusiasm -- despite the fact that there is a combination French/Ranch dressing that leaves me verrrry intrigued (and I could listen to that researcher say "Franch" all day -- grabbing a new tater tot before the lead researcher can even describe the next sauce, before just pushing the sauces aside and digging into the bowl of tots, sauce-less. What a joyless taste-testing this turned out to be!
This executive, Mr. Schuler, gets word that "they" are here and waiting to meet with him. As he heads out of the lab, we see we're at Madrigal Elektromotoren, some kind of conglomerate, in its fast-food division, where at the moment, the Los Pollos Hermanos sign is being taken down from the gallery of chain logos. Schuler joylessly, lifelessly trudges past a room filled with law-enforcement agents. Inside, one of them is staring at the same photograph we saw in the cracked frame last week, of Schuler and Gus Fring side-by-side on a golf course. (In last week's recap, I mistook Schuler for Max, Gus's late partner in chicken and meth distribution.) Schuler bypasses the room and instead takes a portable shock-paddle resuscitation kit off the wall and heads for the bathroom. Between the German and the dread and the institutional setting, this is all starting to feel like the lost Hostel TV adaptation, and indeed, once in the bathroom, Schuler ignores his secretary's knocks from the outside (the agents are QUITE insistent on speaking with him), places one receptor from the kit on his chest and the other, just the wire, into his mouth. Then he charges the machine and waits a moment before the shock kills him on site. This show being what it is, Schuler falls off the toilet, which proceeds to automatically flush. The machinery of the world will always churn on, even (especially) after the wicked men who profit from it meet their end.
Credits & Elements.
After the credits, we're treated to another visually-arresting scene that manages to serve both economical storytelling and artistic television. It's also, like much of last week's episode, a bit of narrative house-cleaning from last season's finale. Since it was discovered that Brock has been poisoned by Lily of the Valley and not ricin, Jesse has become obsessed with what actually DID happen to that ricin dose that disappeared from his cigarette pack. Of course, he has no idea that Walt (via Saul ... well, more specifically Huell) lifted it off him, and Walt's obviously not about to tell the truth about that. Walt tries to convince him that it fell out in the lab and it burned up in the blaze, but Jesse is crazed at the idea that it fell out of his pocket at some point and could still cause major damage. Another little one could find it and it'd be all his fault. The guilt this kid is willing to put on his shoulders.