Episode Report Card Joe R: A- | 3 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Oh Danny Girl
By Joe R | Season 3 | Episode 11 | Aired on 05.30.2010
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 next 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 next 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.