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Walter's chaffing ever so slightly under his current situation, manifest at first by mouthing off to a cop and getting pepper-sprayed, and later by breaking into Skylar's (his) home to take an incredibly tense shower. But we'll get back to that. First, Walt is approached by Saul, who is disappointed to learn that Walt may be out of the game for good in light of Skylar finding out about him. Not all that keen on the idea of his gravy train grinding to a halt, Saul approaches two people. One is that Cleaner guy who prepped Jesse's house after Jane died; Saul tells him they may have a "wife problem," and so the Cleaner goes and plants a listening device in the White home.
The second person Saul approaches is Jesse, who comes to collect his half a million. Saul wants Jesse to get Walter back cooking again. In return, Saul helps Jesse swindle his parents, who are selling their home. Saul uses the fact that there used to be a meth lab in their basement to make them accept less than half of market value. The previously unemotional Jesse manages to get a decent "fuck you" smirk out of revealing himself as the buyer to his parents.
Meanwhile, the Cousins make it to Albuquerque and track down Tuco's decrepit old uncle and get him to literally spell out the name of Heisenberg's real identity. With Walter White's name in pocket, Les Cousines Dangereuses break into Skylar's (Walt's) home -- while Walt is busy singing in the shower -- and look ready to axe the shit out of him. Lucky for Walt, Saul's Cleaner is listening in and makes a call... to Gus. Who in turn texts the Cousins. And just like that, they're gone. It's a great big circle of life in the Albuquerque drug trade, and Walter's aware of just about none of it.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously on Breaking Bad: Skyler discovered Ted Beneke was cooking his books but decided to keep working there anyway, because moral ambiguity and human weakness is the stock on trade of cable drama. Tio couldn't speak but still wanted revenge on Walt and Jesse for killing his nephew Tuco. Jesse's parents cut him off after discovering the meth lab he was running out of his basement (in the house they owned). Skyler busted Walt for dealing and traded her silence for Walt's absence. And Walt turned down Gus's $3 million offer to cook for one more month.
Time-lapse photography of the desert (always captivating) leads to a shot of Walter White driving down an empty desert road in the middle of the day, singing along to America's "Horse with No Name" (the ingles version of this week's episode title). He crosses paths with a cop car, which immediately U-turns and flicks on its lights. Walt looks momentarily worried (something incriminating in the car(?) we're led to think) before returning to his default emotion: totally pissed. The cop approaches and asks Walt if he knows why he's been pulled over, in that passive-aggressive way cops do. Walt starts to argue that he wasn't speeding, but the cop's like, "No, your windshield." Then, a brilliant cut to Walt from behind the cracked glass (up 'til this point the camera was inside the windshield -- clever work, there.
The cop asks for license and registration, which Walt digs out, but he thinks he's got an out now. He explains that his windshield is cracked because of the plane crash. He was in the debris zone, see? His plea for unearned sympathy is as pathetic as it is a fairly direct parallel to his meth situation. Extenuating circumstances! Caught a bad break! Sure, I persist in breaking the law, but only because of this terrible thing that happened to me! The cop is showing no sign of being impressed by Walt's tragedy, nor in backing off that ticket he's writing, which just gets Walt angrier.
Oh, by the way, the cop is wearing a blue ribbon, which Walt "helpfully" points out is in remembrance of the victims of the crash -- not, as I theorized last week, for lung cancer. It seems pretty obvious now, but thanks for indulging me in my wrongness anyway.
So the cop bottom-lines it for Walt that the car is unsafe to drive with the windshield cracked in a hundred places, and Walt gets so angry, he gets out of the car. Which, obviously, is a no-no. Walt gets righteous about how "This is America and I have rights" and "hellfire rained down on my house where my children sleep," and the cop keeps telling him he needs to get back in his car. He unholsters his pepper spray, which just makes Walt more insane. "Oh, this is perfect! Pepper spray the man who's just expressing his opinion under the First Amendment!" SMASH CUT TO: Walt getting shoved into the back seat of the police cruiser, whimpering and red-faced. Welcome to Breaking Bad.
Hank's debriefing the DEA folk about the chicken truck the Cousins torched at the end of last week. Besides impressing me with his more-accurate-than-not pronunciation of "polleros," Hank's also pretty on the ball about what happened with these six charred corpses and a shot driver. This is pure Juarez-style cartel happenings, and he'd like to find out why it's crept north of the border (the truck got torched in Laredo). After the meeting, Gomez makes a crack about it being 29 days since they've seen any of Hank's blue meth on the streets. "It's still out there," Hank says softly (hopefully?). Then Hank gets a phone call from the local PD that is obviously about his increasingly rageful bro-in-law.
With his 45-day chip hanging from his rearview mirror, Jesse drives up to the comfortable suburban home which he used to live in. It's up for sale now. Jesse peers in the front door, but doesn't knock. His dad's in the yard, though, and approaches him gingerly. They try to small talk about the fix-up job the Pinkmans are doing on the house, but after all that's happened between them, nobody really knows how to have a conversation anymore. Mr.Pinkman lists all the improvements to the house -- "fumigated the basement" acts as a kind of conversational landmine, what with the meth lab and all. Jesse's still not the same Jesse. He's clean, so he's not so ... ridiculous anymore. But it's hard to miss the darkness that's crept in. The sadness. He does get to deliver one perfectly Jesse line, though: "You know, fixing up the place totally increases its resale value. I read that in, I wanna say, like, Time magazine." Jesse says the whole enterprise is great and asks if maybe he could get a tour of the place. Dad backs off sharply, though, making an excuse about the workers. Jesse gets it. Once a screw-up meth-head who was corrupting his little brother, always a screw-up meth-head who was corrupting his little brother. Dad does manage to squeak out that Jesse's looking good now. Healthy. Jesse wonders if maybe he could come by some time for dinner, but that's met with a noncommittal "sometime." Jesse gets it. That's probably Jesse's biggest cross to bear in this young season so far. He gets it.
Walt sits, handcuffed, in the hallway of the police station, listening to Hank list all the reasons why they should go easy on him. He looks disgusted. Once again, Walt's complicated sense of pride is on display. He'll practically beg for sympathy about a plane crash he knows he's responsible for, just don't try to do him any favors about his cancer. Walt apologizes to his arresting officer like one of his least convincing high-school students, but with Hank's word, that's enough. Well, and I guess the pepper spray was punishment in its own right. In Hank's car, Walt explains that Skyler is divorcing him AND doesn't want him to see the kids. Hank clearly thinks the last part is fucked up so, again, Walt happily reaps ill-gotten solidarity from Hank. I'm starting to suspect Walt's value system is a bit skewed.
With the pink hue still glowing about his eyes, Walt does his laundry at the Laundromat when who should appear but Saul Goodman, admonishing, "What? You don't write? You don't call?" Cut to his apartment, right after Walt has spilled the whole tale of Skyler leaving him to Saul. Saul says it's not as bad as he thinks. There's too much blowback for Skyler to ever come clean about the meth. What with the consequences for Hank (who'd have let a kingpin exist right under his nose) or the kids (obvious reasons) or herself (she'd lose the house, at least). Walt tries to explain that it's not the legal consequences he's concerned about -- he's lost his family. Saul has fewer insights on that subject. As in ... well, none. "After a certain interval of time, well ... there are other fish in the sea." As Saul starts talking about the wonderful opportunities for sex crime inherent in Thailand and the Czech Republic, Walt silently wishes he were dead. But then Saul gets back on track: time to start cooking again. Walt's silent for a moment. Then: "I can't be the bad guy." Saul wasn't there for Jesse's talk last week, so he has no way to respond to this. "We'll revisit," he negotiates, then with a "don't hang yourself, huh?" he's off.
Outside, Saul gets in his car (license plate: LWYRUP) and places a phone call. It's to his pal Mike the Cleaner. The guy who helped Jesse after Jane died. Like all shady criminal facilitators, Mike is watching his grandchildren play at a playground. "We may have a wife problem," Saul tells him. "We need eyes on it." Mike jots down an address.
At the Walt-less White home, Flynn's moping in his room while his computer displays the current $13k+ total of the Save Walter White Fund (Sponsored by Geocities). Yet another target of Walt's prideful scorn for sympathy, if you'll recall. Skyler peeks her head in and gets summarily ignored by her son. She gazes over at the computer screen. Now she gets to see the fund as the tragic sham that it is (though I wonder if she's caught on to where the donations are coming from?). She leaves Flynn to his headphones.
At dinner (Hank and Marie brought takeout), it's uncomfortably quiet, save for Hank giving Marie shit for eating sushi. Skyler announces that Flynn is looking for a part-time job, so if Hank hears of anything ... "My name is Walter Jr.!" Flynn yelps. "What? You can't even say his name?" It's a cheap shot, and he knows it. Skyler tells him she'll call him Mary Queen of Scots so long as he lets her know that's what he wants to be called. And honestly, I'm calling him Flynn. Because a) it's shorter to type, b) it's a better name than Walter Jr. and he's gonna come to his senses about it sooner or later, and c) you get one name change with me and that's it. That's why P. Diddy will always be P. Diddy, to me. Same with Rebecca Romijn-Stamos. "Dad didn't even show up 'til 4th period!" Flynn goes on. "And his eyes were all red like he's been crying or something." Hank: conspicuously silent. Flynn accuses Skyler of forcing Walt to stay away (um, guilty), and says that even though she doesn't love Walt anymore, he does. "Why you gotta be such a...such a..." You know what's coming. You hope it sticks in his throat. "A bitch!" Hank stands up to assert some boundaries here, but Skyler calls him off, and Flynn retreats to his room. Marie leans over and reassures Skyler that she has her reasons for this. To that end, Hank finally just up and asks, "I know it's none of my business, but ... keeping Walt from the kids?" "You're right," says Skyler. "It is none of your business."
Outside, the door has barely shut behind them before Marie starts spinning her wheels about what Skyler's reasons could possibly be. I've known this person. I've been this person. She has! To! Know! Hank doesn't think it's so hard to figure out. Walt was cheating on her. Hank says he knew it ever since that second cell phone was discovered. Marie doesn't buy it. If it were merely cheating, Skyler would have told her by now. You know, not only is Hank making himself look bad by being so clueless, but I'm starting to think if we gave Marie resources and manpower, she'd have Walt -- and the whole town -- on lockdown within a week. Obsessives who aren't afraid to be obnoxious can get shit done. You tell me Hank couldn't use her on his task force?
Saul's office. Outside, it still looks like he's in a strip mall. Inside, however, he's got his office tricked out so it looks like a lost set from The West Wing. Looks like somebody went and got himself some marble columns with his drug money. He's haggling with someone or other via his extra-obnoxious Bluetooth when Jesse shows up. He's here to collect his half of the cash. While Saul yammers on about what a shame it is that Walter's out of the game, Jesse clears off a nearby table so he can count the money. Not that Saul is the type to skim a little off the top AT ALL. Saul wonders if Jesse might talk to Walt and ask him to reconsider; Jesse's silent throughout his whole pitch. He finally looks at Saul and asks him if he'd like to do a job for him. Saul is intrigued.
Walt's returning home to his bachelor pad when he walks by the building's outdoor pool and stops in his tracks. Now you tell me how he ends up eagle-eyeing a Band-Aid floating in the middle of the pool. Maybe after the airplane crash he's just more attuned to foreign objects floating in pools? Like that's his X-Men power? Regardless, he fishes the Band-Aid out, face full of disgust, as per usual. But his expression brightens considerably when he walks up to his apartment and sees Flynn camped out by the door.
Cut to an old folks home. You can tell because ... well because of all the old folks, sure, but also, it's got all the ancillary signifiers. Board games. Jello cups. People asleep in front of televisions. Gandchildren who never visit. An old lady drops a puzzle piece (that too), and from our perspective on the ground, we see the now-familiar skull-tipped boots of Les Cousines Dangereuses. In their shiny suits and meticulous facial hair, they stride past the blue-hairs and find the old man in the wheelchair by the window. There's Tio, looking angry as ever, with his bell attached to his chair because he can't speak. Cousin peruses the board games on the shelf until he finds what he's looking for: Ouija. Santa Muerte and/or the Parker Brothers would be proud. Cut to the Cousins pointing to various letters on the board and Tio dinging his bell (as angrily as possible) whenever they hit the right one. It's a decent enough method if they're looking for the name of a guy, but it's not entirely practical if Tio's looking to write his autobiography, Memoirs of a Floor-Shitter. Also, they're not using the oracle like you're supposed to. Anyway, Tio dings a few more times, and the Cousins jot down the letters, until they finally have a name: WALTER WHITE. They show the name to Tio, who's so angry he seems to be chewing his own face off. DING, DING, DING, DING, DING.
Skyler's at work, agonizing over Ted Beneke's cooked books. Ted checks in on her and makes a fuss over baby Holly, who's sitting in her little kid-carrier contraption on the floor. I'm going to consciously resist any opportunity to demonize Skyler. The fans of this show are all like Flynn a little bit, emotionally attached to Walter and angry at anybody who wants to call him on his shit. They won't need my help in finding reasons to hate Skyler. Having said that: day care, Skyler. Or at least a more comfortable spot to spend the day. Anyhoo, Skyler is still super uneasy about performing her job while knowing the records are falsified. In particular, she can't sign off on these quarterlies. Lest you -- or Ted, for that matter -- think that she's making a moral stand here, she qualifies that, if he's gonna do this, it can't be so glaring. She points out the unsupportable figures, but when Ted asks about possible ways around the problem, Skyler begs off. She won't tell him how to commit fraud more skillfully; she'll just sign off on it once it comes back and is "less glaring." It's a completely arbitrary line in the sand, and it totally weakens her position when dealing with Walt. I understand why (meth is scarier than tax fraud, for one; and it puts their family in more immediate danger), but I can't deny that she's being a hypocrite. She knows it too.
Before Ted leaves, Skyler asks him, "What if your kids found out? How would you explain it to them?" Ted gives the usual explanation: feet of clay; everything he did, he did for them. "Truth is, I haven't thought that far ahead," he says. "Just trying to keep my head above water." Skyler takes it all in, but she's annoyed anew when she gets a call from Walt, telling her that Flynn got dropped off at his place.
We switch to Walt's POV, who bargains Skyler down to him dropping Flynn off at home, rather than at Beneke. Flynn continues to beg Walt -- anyone, really -- to tell him why this is all going on. Walter can't. Not without giving himself away. Flynn tells him that everyone -- Hank, Marie included -- "knows you didn't do anything wrong. Everybody's on your side." Which is, of course, great for Walt. He gets to be the martyr while Skyler is the bitch. He lays some empty platitudes on Flynn about how they're going to put the kids first, which shuts the kid up, even if it doesn't answer a blessed thing. Then Walt heads to the bathroom to spruce up, as if his Listerine-scented breath would give Skyler such sensory overload that she'll totally forget meth.
In a Fan
cy Lawyerin' Conference Room, Saul is joined by Jesse's parents and their Very Professional Lawyer. Jesse's mom recognizes Saul as "that lawyer on late-night television," and Saul gleefully repeats his catchphrase. Pro Lawyer is impatient to get to the point so Saul does: His client (anonymous, but "for these purposes, picture him as a giant bag of money") wants to purchase the Pinkman's house. Today. For cash. Pro Lawyer couldn't be more dismissive in suggesting Saul get on with it. Saul lays out his paperwork and says there's only "one hair in the soup." The price. The Pinkmans are asking for $875,000, but they're willing to haggle. Saul offers 400 grand. Pro Lawyer thinks it's a joke and suggests Saul just get to the number he's willing to bargain up to. Saul says $400k is his final offer. The Pinkmans, understandably, get up from the table. "How could you possibly think that we would entertain this?" Pro Lawyer lectures. "I don't know," Saul says, calm as can be. "I just thought some allowance was in order once I heard about the meth lab. The one that used to be in the basement." Saul doesn't see any disclosure of said lab in the Pinkmans' paperwork. So, again, the formerly righteous are being brought low by sins of omission. And Saul's practically gleeful in telling them that some would consider their omission "fraud in the service of concealing a felony." With a smile, he threatens to bog down the sale with legal proceedings, at best; file criminal charges at worst. Or else they can take the $400k he's offering. "How 'bout it, Counselor?" Saul asks the man who until a minute ago had been glaring down his nose at him. "Do you concur?"
Walt pulls into his erstwhile driveway with Flynn and a, frankly, gigantic pizza box. Like Skyler's going to be impressed by his largesse, or something. Skyler answers the door but won't accept the pizza, covered as it is with strings. Flynn sulks past his mother in the doorway without a word, while Walt tries to sell Skyler on the virtues of -day pizza and civil conversation. She's not having it. They've discussed everything they're going to discuss, and he needs to go. "...I got dipping sticks," is Walt's last-ditch effort. And a noble one, I must say. There aren't many circumstances I could see myself turning down dipping sticks. Skyler does.
Rebuffed, Walt trudges back to his car, angrier by the step, and ultimately snaps and tosses the pizza box into the air. Which is when the most amazing thing I have EVER seen happens. The pizza comes flying out of the box, is launched up into the roof, and lands -- face up (!) -- about two and a half feet up the roof. You couldn't do that again in 100 tries. I've made known my joy and shame at that Minute to Win It show on NBC where you basically do a bunch of stoner parlor tricks in a minute's time. What Walt did right there should be the million dollar challenge on that show. Hell, the BILLION dollar challenge. Nobody's ever going to do it. If Skyler had seen Walt do that with her own two eyes, she'd start smoking meth and giving Walt a handsie right then and there. Alas, you kind of had to be there, and she wasn't. Walt drives off with the pizza lying accusatorily on the roof.
The morning, Walt wakes up on the floor of his apartment, face-down in a pile of popcorn. Wild man. He peers across the room, where he can see the teddy-bear's eye that is still under his bed. The phone rings and goes to the machine, and -- because we live in TV land, where voice mail is still audible as it's being recorded -- we hear Skyler yell at Walt about finding the pizza on the roof. She tells him to pull it together or she's going to have to get a restraining order. At "restraining order," Walt leaps up (banging his head on the table) and grabs the phone, but Skyler's already hung up. He has a mini-freakout, even attempting to grab his crotch and sneer "restrain this!" but none of it really works for him. He's still the nerdy chem professor, even after a year of meth-dealing wickedness.
The Pinkmans are loading some potted flowers into their car -- I guess because sprucing up the house any more than they have is kind of pointless now that they've sold it for half their asking price. Dad rationalizes that breaking even isn't so bad, especially in this economy, but Mom laments that Jake -- Jesse's brother -- had his heart set on space camp, and now that's not happening. They see Jesse pull up and immediately go into a defensive crouch. Emotionally-speaking, at least. They tell him it's not a good time, but he walks right past them and to the front door. Mom screeches at him that they've just sold the place and the new owners will be coming by any minute and what does he think he's doing. With a conspicuous lack of expression on his face -- which makes him seem all the more hostile -- Jesse flashes a set of keys at them. "I bought the place," he says, as he unlocks the door and shuts it behind them. He's the bad guy, remember?
Skyler and Flynn exit the house and head off for work/school, all while Mike the Cleaner watches from his car down the street. Once they're gone, he gets to work (though not before making note of the roof pizza, which has somehow not been devoured by birds): he drills a small hole into the outside wall at the back of the house and inserts a small listening device, then pulls a potted plant in front of it. All the while, Walt has pulled into the driveway and gone to enter the house, only to find that the locks have been changed. Mike stays out of sight, as Walt rounds the back of the house, looking for a window to climb through. Finally, frustrated as all hell, Walt removes a grate and crawls into the space below the house. Not if you paid me. The cobwebs are the least of his worries, but there sure are a lot of those anyway. And also, didn't we establish last season that there is rot in that foundation? Anyway, Walt manages to crawl up through the removable floor panel in his utility closet. At which point a ladder falls on top of him. Okay, now Walt's just Sideshow Bob.
Mike makes it back to his car and is all set to leave when he sees another car pull up in front of the White house. And out step the shiny suits and skull-tipped boots of Les Cousines Dangereuses. They remove an axe from the trunk and head inside, while Mike looks on with a not unconcerned expression. The Cousins stalk through the house, while Walter is oblivious because he's taking a shower. Which is a completely petty and territorial move on his part, but for the moment it's keeping him from getting axed. For the moment. (Also? The camera pans down on Walt so we can see the scar from his operation; though at first it seems like yet another gratuitous Bryan Cranston nipple shot. Will this show never stop exploiting him for his body??)
So Walt's in the shower, singing "Horse with No Name," of course, while the Cousins sit down on his bed and wait for him. One Cousin drums his fingers on the incredibly shiny blade of the axe, while the other notices that, along with the clothes he's left out for himself, Walt brought along his plastic eyeball. For... what, luck? Meanwhile, Mike's listening in, getting an earful of Walt singing. He places a call, says "There's something he should know about." Is he calling Saul? Nope. He's called a flunky in a giant warehouse, who relays Mike's message ... to Gus.
Walt's done with his shower and begins toweling off (I feel cheap on your behalf, Bryan Cranston). But he's not getting a face full of axe yet, because the Cousins get a text message. All of one word: "pollos." That's enough, though, because when Walt emerges from the bathroom, the Cousins are gone.
So all in one moment, the drug universe on this show just opened up in a big way. Saul, Mike, Gus, now the Cousins, all wrapped up in the same food chain. Walter has no idea of the scope of any of this as he's crooning away in the shower. Something tells me he's going to find out.
Joe R will be telling his grandchildren about that pizza toss. He can be reached for lavish praise and nothing but at