In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
Jesse and his dead girlfriend discuss the more *ahem* feminine elements of Georgia O'Keefe's art, but since his girlfriend is dead, he totally wins the argument, except that he's Jesse, and his girlfriend is dead, so he still loses.
Hank is struggling in physical therapy and strangely having his entire extended family watching him try to walk isn't helping. But Skyler wants to see what she's paying for with Walter's money, so there she is, just watching Hank work out while Walter brings home the meth bacon. Meanwhile Jesse's Narcotics Anonymous-type support group drug sales are nonexistent, because people in the group are high on life and glowing with positivity. Jesse decides to show the sales crew how it's done. He brings home a newbie, sexes her up, and gives her the hard sell. But then her kid and grandma come home, and totally dampen the mood and Jesse's Willie Loman impersonation.
In a rare treat, Walter gets to come to dinner with his family, but just because Skyler wants him to put out… the money for Hank's therapy. But obviously, Skyler won't just accept the gigantic check (gigantic in the sum sense, not Ed McMahon sense) and insists on knowing if the money is untraceable before she can give it to Hank and Marie. Then she insists on meeting Walter's "guy". So off they go to meet Saul. And strangely, Skyler and Saul seem to have the start of a beautiful friendship. Well… until Saul suggests that laser tag would be the logical step in Walter's money-laundering portfolio. That is just too much for Skyler or really anyone except Saul. Later, Walt finally tells Skyler that he has a full-time contract to make drugs, and instead of freaking out, she joins the family business. She pulls up in front of the carwash Walt used to work at and tells him to buy that business and launder money the right way. If they buy the carwash, people will believe it. Obviously Saul doesn't see it the same way. Where Skyler sees believability, Saul sees trouble and people asking questions.
Jesse gets closer to his lovely, lonely lady friend from group, but when she finally offers to buy some crank from him, he freaks, because now he knows she has a kid. This doesn't go over super-well with her, because shut UP, drug dealer. Isn't the one benefit of hanging out with druggies their supposed non-judgmentalness? Anyway, they talk it out, and Jesse says that if she wants to talk about what she's been through, he is happy to listen. She spins a sad tale of gangs and drugs and how her little brother Tomas was initiated into a gang and ordered to kill some random drug dealer. Jesse perks up when she spills the details about Tomas biking past the dealer and shooting him through the neck. Jesse looks like he's going to die, because now he knows that Tomas killed his best friend.
Walter explains Saul's pro-laser tag stance and concerns about the carwash to Skyler. They can't buy the carwash unless they find a disinterested manager to run the business. Skyler volunteers for the job. Well, as a paid volunteer, natch. Then she confesses that she never filed the divorce papers, so they are still legally married. Since she can't testify against him in court, she is the perfect manager for the carwash.
Walt gets a surprise invitation to Chicken Man Gus's house for dinner and despite all the creepy foreshadowing, Walt doesn't end up cooked whole like that guy from The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover. Instead Gus just offers him some friendly advice, namely: Never make the same mistake twice.
Jesse goes and buys some crystal from Tomas. He clearly has revenge in his heart, not his sales quota.
--LuluBates
Want more? The full recap starts right below!After a "Previously On" segment that once again featured Jane, it's not entirely surprising that our opening segment is a flashback to when she was alive. She and Jesse are in an art gallery, staring at a stark painting of a black box, and Jesse is cutely complaining that he was promised paintings that looked like vaginas. Aw, it looks like these two kids did end up seeing that Georgia O'Keefe exhibit after all.
The difference in Jesse's demeanor from then to now is readily apparent and heartbreaking. For a moment, in this flashback, we get sweet, adorable, lovestruck Jesse from before everything went to hell. Jane keeps cooing to Jesse art lessons about how not all O'Keefe's work "evoked an erotic nature," and Jesse keeps cutely needling her about how this here piece ain't like no vagina he's ever seen, yo. They made a good couple. You know, before the heroin. Jane tells him this particular painting is of a door.
Back in the car, Jesse continues to argue his point. He doesn't get why anyone would paint a door, over and over again, dozens of times. Jane says the subject was the same, but every time she painted it, the experience was different. Jesse thinks such repetition is "psycho." Jane points out that that logic says she should only smoke this one cigarette, or have sex just one time, or live just one day. "It's new every time," she says. He still doesn't get the door, though. Why get so hung up on a door that she had to paint it 20 times to get it perfect? Not perfect, says Jane. "Nothing's perfect." Jesse stares at her and says some things are. He kisses her, then she cuts the tension by saying it was so sweet, "I think I threw up in my mouth." People. Let's make a pact. We throw up in toilets or trash cans or alleys behind bars from now on, okay? Let's keep it out of our mouths and find a new metaphor, 'kay? Anyway, I'm not gonna let it get in the way of my enjoyment of Jane and Jesse, though it's going to be short-lived. Jesse and Jane go once more around about O'Keefe's door -- Jesse says she kept trying to perfect it; Jane thinks she was trying to make the moment last. Jane then extinguishes her cigarette, and we see it's the same one that (improbably) was still there when Jesse noticed it last week.
Credits. One of these floating numbers is the atomic weight of my heart after seeing Jesse and Jane in happier times.
At the hospital, Hank is being lowered from a harness onto a set of parallel bars for his physical therapy. Marie is encouraging him like a (mildly) less scary Bela Karolyi (you can shove your more timely references, Bela is still the gold standard for scary gymnastics coaches). Hank winces and yells out in pain, while Marie is all, "Pain is weakness leaving your body!" If that phrase isn't on a bottle of Gatorade tomorrow, something is terribly wrong. Hank's response -- "Pain is my foot in your ass, Marie!" -- is even better. And Marie hits back with an invitation for Hank to lift his leg high enough to do so. I do adore that woman. Anyway, Hank can't/won't do it, and he demands for his PT to raise the harness back up. The pain is one thing, and it seems severe, but it's also not hard to see why Hank would be embarrassed. If for no other reason than the harness makes him look like he's wearing a diaper. Plus, his ample upper frame combines with it to give the illusion that he's one of those 'roidy guys with giants chests and little chicken legs. The poor guy. No wonder he yells at an encouraging Flynn to go find some friends. Flynn, to his credit, doesn't hold Hank's anger against him. He and Skyler take it out to the hallway.
Marie follows them out, having to deal with the awkward and unpleasant business of handing Skyler Hank's first medical bill. She tells Skyler to brace for the amount, but Skyler takes it in stride. Marie once again asks if Skyler's sure she and Walt can do this. Skyler smiles and says she's sure. I honestly can't wait 'til the day Marie finds out about the drugs. Because I have no idea how she'll react. Anger, that she had to feel like she was accepting charity when in reality she was being paid off to assuage Walt and Skyler's guilty consciences? Pragmatic appreciation that, whatever the circumstances, Hank got taken care of? I could see her going either way.
America's Meth Kitchen. We get a meth's-eye-view of Jesse smashing the glass-like sheet into delicious blue crystals. When I get a job at an industrial-sized meth lab, that's the job I want. I can be Hammer Guy. As Jesse scrapes said crystals into a bin, Walt watches him with intense suspicion. No one's hiding anything here. Walt's watching and he wants Jesse to know it. When Walt says he'll do the measuring on this batch, Jesse gets indignant. "Just say it!" he yells, "you think I'm stealing!" Walt hushes his idiotic little companion and points around the room, in the universally recognized "This place is probably bugged, dummy" gesture. Which will do him a ton of good if the lab is also equipped with hidden cameras. Which, knowing Gus, it almost certainly is.
That night, Jesse makes it to his NA meeting, where Badger (sorry -- Brandon) and Skinny Pete continue to skulk around. Jere Burns sees some new faces in the crowd, and though I half expect to see Saul in on the scam, it's actually some honest-to-God new group members, including a pretty young brunette named Andrea whose only contribution -- after a few moments of searching for what to say -- is that she doesn't want to be here. Jesse sparks to this attitude, though whether it's because he's attracted to her or if its because her attitude makes her a good prospect for sales is kind of muddled.
During a break in the action, Jesse hits the snack table, where Badger and Skinny are chowing down on donuts. After some hilariously formal "introductions," ("My name is Brandon ... and this is, I believe, Peter?"), Jesse pulls them both to the side and tells them product is going to be slow-flowing, what with "Grandpa Anus" on his case. He asks after the selling, but Badger doesn't have good news on that front. He sold a "teenth" ... to Skinny. But otherwise, neither one of them has been able to get over the queasiness of selling to people who just want to get better. "It's like shooting a baby in the face," Badger says. "It's not natural." Jesse's furious that he's risking his ass to score product and they're "too pussy" to sell. He wants the stuff back so he can show them how it's done. Starting with Andrea, it seems. Jesse sidles up to her, introduces himself, and confesses that he doesn't really want to be there either. He not at all subtly escorts her to the door. Man, when Badger and Skinny Pete are questioning your moral decision-making? Yikes.
After the break, we get the same kind of POV shot that we got with Jesse staring down at the sheet of meth. Only this time it's Skyler staring down at a pot of water. She dumps in some pasta (into non-boiling water? Girl, that shit's gonna be mushy!) and goes about the rest of her dinner prep. Flynn sees an extra place setting and asks if Marie's coming to dinner. Skyler says no, Walt is. And despite Flynn's recent cold-shoulderings towards Walt, he seems happy to hear it. Unlike the more awkward recent family get-togethers, this one feels like old times for the Whites. Flynn jokes with Walt about boring baby Holly to sleep, or about the car he wants to get now that he's eligible for a provisional license (he wants a 'Stang!); Walt suggests something with bicycle cards in the spokes. The smile on Skyler's face as she watches the three of them getting along so well goes a long way towards making you understand why she does what she does this week.
After Flynn heads off to his room, Walt hands Skyler the check for Marie's first bill. Skyler looks at it and asks who "Ice Station Zebra Associates" are. Walt tells her it's a loan-out and not to worry about it. But Skyler clearly wants to worry about it. "I have a guy," Walt tells her. "My guy is a top guy." Skyler is somehow not convinced (I know!) and starts talking about New Mexico tax code and such. Already, you can see Skyler investing herself in this enterprise. She's bringing her finance expertise to the table. She wants to participate. But Walt doesn't even want to give her Saul's name. "This money has to be unimpeachable when it reaches Marie and Hank," Skyler stresses. Walt says it is ... or it will be. When Skyler is somehow still not convinced after that confidence-inspiring statement, Walt plays what he thinks is a trump card, asking her, "Do you really want to know?" The look on Skyler's face says she does.
So it's off to the truly horrifying waiting room outside Saul's office. Take all the places you least like to wait for service -- the emergency room, the DMV, the unemployment office -- and combine them into one. Crying babies, cholos with bleeding head wounds, hookers, coughing. I just took an antibiotic simply having to watch that scene.
The interaction between Saul and Skyler is like watching a slow-moving car wreck, or one animal devouring another in the wild. She clearly hates him regardless, while he keeps trying to win her over with flattery. Well, Saul-brand flattery ("Clearly, Walt's taste in women is the same as his taste in lawyers: only the very best...with just the right amount of dirty."). Skyler wants to get right down to business. After telling Saul she knows how money laundering works (putting the kibosh on one of his awesome jelly bean-based teaching examples), she asks about specifics. "Where are we saying this money came from?" Saul says Walt came up with this great story about gambling winnings, actually. Walt is forced to interject that it was actually Skyler's story. For the only time in this scene, it's Skyler who looks abashed, while Saul fawns over her with praise for her deceitful mind. Saul then says that the "gambling winnings" will then be used as seed money for a small business. And what is this business? Laser tag! You know, with the lasers? And the kids? And the ... you know, vests? Skyler knows what laser tag is. She just finds it somewhat laughable as a business for Walter. "Do you even know Walt?" Skyler asks, a question with more implications than even she realizes. Saul knows one Walt. The drug kingpin. The angry, petty criminal. Heisenberg. Saul knows Heisenberg. He doesn't know Walt the schoolteacher; the husband and father. Skyler is rapidly waking up to the former. Saul's still totally in the dark about the latter. Anyway, Skyler says laser tag just doesn't add up. "It adds up perfectly," Saul insists. "Walt's a scientist. Scientists love lasers." Saul Goodman, don't ever change. Skyler's not nearly convinced. "'Hey, everybody!'" Skyler begins, with mock enthusiasm, "'Walt suddenly decided to invest in laser tag!' Really? That's what we're supposed to tell our family? Our friends? The government?" Not surprisingly, Skyler's approaching this from a PR perspective. How are they going to make this look to their family and friends? How good a story can Skyler come up with so she doesn't have to always think of how big a lie it is. We saw her spin that gambling story last week. More than the security of not wanting to get caught, Skyler is looking for the security of a narrative that makes sense. Ask your nearest philandering politician. Or Survivor jury. Or recovering drug addict. The narrative is important.
At this point, Saul is pretty fed up. He's not about to take this kind of abuse from some Blondie Come Lately who hasn't been shepherding criminals for the past however many years like he has. "You," he says, pointing right at Skyler, "don't need to be involved." He stands and insincerely thanks them for stopping by, clearly expecting Walt to back him up and back Skyler off. The helpless look on Walt's face tells him that's probably not what's going to happen.
Jesse's at Andrea's house, on her couch, using that tried and true sales technique: letting his sexy lips do the talking. Um, metaphorical talking. When they come up for air, Jesse lays on the libertarian angle pretty thick, wondering why alcohol is perfectly legal while...other things...are not. Andrea is reluctant, so Jesse then wonders why they have to keep fighting urges to feel good. And also, has she heard of this blue meth the kids keep talking about? Andrea keeps stressing that she can't get caught using again; Jesse whispers that the trick is not to get caught. It really seems like he's wearing her down ... until an adorable little grade-schooler comes bounding through the front door. Sucka! Jesse's balls travel all the way up to his lungs, as Andrea tries to discreetly button up. She also tries to convince her grandma -- who was watching young Brock here -- that Jesse is a friend from her rehab group. A "sponsor," really. Grandma just mumbles her disapproval in Spanish and leaves. Latina grandmothers, will you ever stop to see how your words affect others??
So Jesse meets Brock, who's too young to get weird about this guy who was just a minute ago crawling up on his mom. Jesse, as we may recall from last year's adventure with Spooge and Skank, is really adorable with kids, and he fist-bumps Brock to prove it. Still, Andrea leads him to his room, so she and Jesse can talk around the issue of methamphetamine some more, perhaps.
Skyler and Walt are driving home; she's still amazed at what a wad Saul was, while Walt admits he's clownish, but Skyler really should not be involved in this anyway. But Skyler says she's in. "This is what happens when you decide to pay our bills with drug money." As either an attempt to scare Skyler off, or just in the interest of full disclosure, Walt tells her his involvement in the drug game is ongoing. He's got a contract-like situation with a guy. It's all very safe and professional, of course! (Safe! Professional!) But he can't simply quit. If this is a surprise to Skyler, she doesn't register it. Instead, she drives the car into a parking lot. As she and Walt stare at the establishment just outside our range of vision, she tells him this is the way to launder his money right. And then we see they're at a car wash. The car wash Walt used to work at, no less. This gives him a personal connection to the front business, and more importantly (at least for Skyler), it's a narrative that makes sense. "This is what we buy," Skyler says. She immediately corrects herself -- "You. This is what you buy." -- but I'm not sure if anybody believes she wasn't right the first time.
Back outside the church where the NA meeting just let out, Jesse smokes and waits for Bandon and Peter. They ask him if he "did the deed" with Andrea yet, and Jesse acts annoyed by the question, which is how you know he hasn't. "The deed" being selling to her, of course. He asks why Badger and Skinny are even here, since they "can't get [their] nut up to sell." Skinny looks right at him and goes, "I'm on Step 5!" Brandon flashes a pair of fingers and goes, "Deuce, yo." HAHAHA. Man, I loved that. Jesse can't even respond, and brushes past them when Andrea exits the church. It doesn't look like Jesse even attended this meeting. Just smoked and waited for his target. They put their arms around each other as they walk away. And Skinny remarks to Badger that "Dude needs to come into the fold.
At Taco Sal (Jesse must be really committed to pissing Gus off if he's even eschewing El Pollo Knockoffo), Jesse dines with Andrea and Brock, and tries to impress the kid with rudimentary "magic tricks." I will say, dripping the soda on the crumpled straw paper and making it "grow" is a pretty good one. Brock is similarly impressed. "It's science and stuff, made it do that!" beams Jesse. I like the mirroring of Saul's equally simplistic view of "science," thou
1 2 3 4
gh Jesse's is way more endearing. Brock then asks if Jesse does tricks with firecrackers like Tomas does. Who's Tomas? Andrea, looking troubled and nervous, says Tomas is her kid brother. "And we don't talk about him." The three go back to eating, but Tomas is hanging in the air, a little bit.
Walt in Saul's car, having had him drive out to see the car wash. Saul's still defensive of his laser tag idea, and he says any cover will make sense if he sells it well enough, but the biggest drawback he finds with the car wash idea is that there's no "Danny." Allow him to explain. Danny's the guy who runs a laser tag business. And he got into shady dealings with Saul because he built that laser tag business up from the ground and will do whatever it takes to keep it afloat. "In other words, Danny can be trusted completely." Corrupt, is the word Saul's looking for. They have no idea if the guy currently running the car wash in his argyle sweater and "old man eyebrows" is corruptible. Which makes it a bad investment.
Having just Done It, Andrea beams up at Jesse and asks if he wants to stay for dinner. She also, very gingerly, says if he's holding, they could do a little something. Rather than pounce like the meth panther he clearly thought he was, Jesse is ... well, kind of appalled. Isn't Brock coming home in a few hours? And she wants to get high? "What kind of mother are you?" he accuses. As you might expect, Andrea gets agitated at that remark. She jumps up from the bed and is all "How dare you, with your zero-point-zero life responsibilities, tell me I don't take care of my son?" She says the day Brock was born, she vowed she wouldn't let what happened to Tomas happen to him. Jesse backs off and apologizes. She lights up a cigarette and sits down. He asks about Tomas, and she talks about how the gangs run the neighborhood. They took Tomas in, had him slinging at 8-years-old. "Then, when he was ten," she says, "for some initiation, they made him kill somebody." Jesse's taken aback, as any normal person would be. Andrea talks about seeing him several days after the fact, and he recounted the story to her like it was nothing.
Jesse prods a bit more, and she says the guy he shot was some dealer. "From an outside crew." That perks Jesse's ears up quite a bit. "Right around the corner from here." That does too. We all remember it. Jesse didn't see it, like we did, but he sure as hell heard about it. He asks when this was, and she says a few months back. "It won't happen again," Andrea vows. "Not to my son." But by this point, Jesse's face has regained that inconsolable anger it held after Hank beat him up. He's got a score to settle.
Back in Hank's hospital room, Marie bursts in with the "great news" that Hank is set to be released by the end of the week. Hank's voice has taken on a grim monotone, and when he says he has no intention of going home until he's well, it's not exactly a self-motivating moment. It's kind of heartbreaking, watching Marie and Hank speak at cross-purposes like this. She thinks she's being encouraging, telling him the doctors think he's healthy enough to go home, that he's getting stronger every day, and that he'll be just as comfortable at home. Hank, however, who sees not progress but pain in his PT sessions, isn't about to re-enter his old life as this shell of a man he's become. And when Marie tells him their home has been entirely set up to fit his needs -- i.e. hospital bed, harness -- he flips out. "You get that out of my house," he says, almost in tears. "Today." He says the only way he's leaving the hospital is if he walks out. I wonder when Hank's anger and shame are going to abate enough for him to question how they're paying for all this medical treatment.
Back at the Whites', Walt is explaining the concept of a Danny to Skyler, and how without a Danny, the car wash isn't really an option. Skyler asks if they can't just find one, but obviously that's, as Walt says, easier said than done. They sit in frustrated silence, then Skyler speaks up: "What about me?" And there it is. She's been wading into this pool for weeks now, but with that offer, to be the Danny of Walt's money-laundering, meth-cooking, totally illegal/immoral lifestyle, Skyler has put herself fully on the other side of the line. Walt immediately objects, of course, but Skyler's argument, such as it is, is a sound one: Who else can they trust with this? "If I'm in this, I'm going to do it right." Walt tries to tell her she's not in it. They're not married anymore, they're divorced. Skyler's like, "Well...about that." Turns out she never filed those divorce papers. Walt, to his credit, manages to not look smug, like he would have several weeks ago. Skyler hauls out that old saw about how married couples can't be compelled to testify against each other in court. And whether that's true or not (I ain't no fancy big-city lawyer), neither Skyler nor Walt believe that's the full reason why.
Back at America's Meth Kitchen, both Walt and Jesse are somewhat zombiefied, reeling from their recent revelations. Only Jesse forgets to put on his respirator, causing Walt to yell at him. Before they start cooking, there's a call on their little Batphone. They exchange quizzical looks and, with a deep sense of foreboding, Walt answers. It's Gus, and just like he always does, he turns something threatening (a mysterious phone call) into something domestic and innocuous (an invitation to dinner). Of course, Gus does the opposite -- turning the domestic and innocuous into something threatening -- just as well, so Walt can't be comfortable while dining with his boss.
The horrifically placid suburban home of Gus Frings scares me more than any of those dusty Mexican hovels where Tortugas got beheaded or statues of Santa Muerte got crawled to. It's aggressively beige, the kind of beige that actually allows Gus's tan sweater to pop. He invites Walt in the kitchen to help him cook, doing that thing he does where everything he says sounds like "I'm about to cut your heart out and serve it in my spicy chicken tacos." Example: he pulls out a giant kitchen knife, holds it in front of Walt for an uncomfortable few seconds, before turning the handle around and offering it to Walt so he can "slice the garlic."
Walt is appropriately suspicious as to why Gus asked him out here, but I'm surprised he asks him as much out loud. Gus delivers some platitude about working together and breaking bread together. As with most things surrounding Gus, you have to just let him get rolling for a while before you arrive at any truth. So Walt sits at his dinner table and listens to him yammer on about flavors and senses and how both take him back to his childhood. Ever the teacher, Walt mansplains about how it is that scents are tied to memories. It's through the hippocampus. I kid Walt about the mansplaining, but it's actually one of his more endearing qualities. Even if you can see that Gus receives it with a mixture of admiration for Walt's brain and a kind of Tony Soprano-esque resentment of anyone who might threaten his dominance in any area. So Gus decides to re-assert his dominance by offering to help Walt with this piece of advice: "Never make the same mistake twice."
One mistake Walt may be making twice -- partnering up with Jesse -- appears ready to blow up in his face, as Jesse pulls his car up right across from young Tomas. If you hadn't figured it out before now, it becomes clear: Tomas is the little shit that plugged Combo last season. He's still working the same corner. Jesse asks the kid for a teenth of meth, and balks at the $300 price tag. From behind Jesse, we see that familiar black car round the corner. Tomas nods it over, and Jesse hands his money to the bangers inside. Things are feeling awfully, sickeningly familiar, as Tomas reaches inside his pocket. But he pulls out a bag of meth this time, instead of a gun. As Jesse stares at the k
1 2 3 4
id, most likely in horror that this is really what's become of this ten-year-old child, Tomas irritatedly tells him to bounce. He's still got that little-kid whine to him. Jesse stomps away from the kid, rage in his eyes, though I honestly can't tell if it's "I'm gonna kill that little shit" rage or "I can't believe I'm caught up in a business that does this to little kids" rage. Stay tuned, I guess.
Joe R can't speculate as to how this season's going to end for more than a few minutes before the dread creeps in. He can be reached for lavish praise and nothing but at joseph.reid21@gmail.com.
Is Breaking Bad the best show on TV? A case can be made.
Discuss this episode in our forums!
Want to immediately access TWoP content no matter where you are online? Download the free TWoP toolbar for your web browser. Already have a customized toolbar? Then just add our free toolbar app to get updated on our content as soon it's published.
1 2 3 4