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You guys! I had just gotten to the point where I was remembering Victor's name without having to look it up! But let's not get ahead...
So Jesse definitely killed Gale -- shot him right underneath the eye -- but he doesn't so much flee the scene, so when Victor gets there, he hauls Jesse into the lab, with Walter and Mike. And there the four of them sit, waiting for Gus, who everybody expects is going to be fucking PISSED. When Walter starts spouting off about how Gus is going to have to keep him alive because now he's the only one who knows how to cook the blue stuff, Victor springs into action, starting up the batch. Seems someone was paying attention while he lurked around for half of Season 3.
Meanwhile, Skyler discovers Walt's Aztec in the driveway the morning (she drives it three blocks away so Flynn Junior doesn't notice), which sets her on a snooping mission. She scams a locksmith in order to gain access to Walt's condo, where she's properly creeped out by that glass eyeball.
Saul's about as paranoid as you can get, and that's before he finds out that Walt didn't come home last night.
And while Hank goes through the hellish and unbearably slow recovery process, he's becoming angrier, more insular, and kind of obsessed with Ebaying mineral rocks. Marie's playing the brave little toaster for now, but how long can her enthusiasm last?
Back in the lab, though, Walt (and an unresponsive to the point of catatonia Jesse) are less than pleased to see how successfully Victor's been able to follow the meth recipe, but things really ratchet up when Gus arrives. Without saying a word, he removes his suit and dons a hazmat parka -- preparing for wetwork. While Walt gets louder and more frantic about how Gus NEEDS him, Gus just silently brandishes the titular box-cutter ... and slashes Victor's throat wide open. (Sending a message? Just plain crazy? Gus's motivations are murky.) Walt, Jesse, and even Mike are totally gobsmacked, and Gus finally breaks his silence with one command: get back to work. Victor's body gets disposed of, and Walt and Jesse (who, surprise, is acting like his soul's been removed from his body) talk about this new world order: Jesse feels like they've all displayed their murderous bona fides and are thus on equal footing, But Walt seems to realize that on a long enough timeline, it's going to end up being Gus's life or their own.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously on Breaking Bad: Oh God, it just all went to hell, didn't it? Skyler found out Walt dealt drugs, kicked him out of the house, softened, then invented an elaborate cover story and decided to help him launder his money through a car wash. Meanwhile, Jesse Pinkman downward spiraled like you wouldn't believe, but Walt bailed him out of a firefight with two dealers by killing said dealers with his Aztec of Destruction. By then, drug/fast-food kingpin Gus had quite enough with Walt's drama and was planning on killing him and replacing him with fellow chemistry whiz Gale. Walt caught on and the plan was to murder Gale, but he got waylaid by Gus's men (Mike the fixer and Victor the silent) and so it fell upon Jesse -- poor, (occasionally) sweet Jesse -- to save their lives by knocking on Gale's door and shooting him in the face. Also, at some point, Hank got shot and paralyzed. Holy shit.
Season 4 opens up with the traditional pre-credits short film, this time taking us back several months, maybe a year or so, to when Gus, Victor, and Gale were first assembling the industrial-strength meth lab that I've come to know as America's Meth Kitchen. Gale is opening the box of one of the big-ass meth vats by cutting the binding straps with a box cutter that not only is getting like six loving close-ups but also serves as the title of the episode. So, you know, file that one away. The look on Gale's face, by the way, is the unrestrained glee of a boy on Christmas morning (he even says as much to Gus). As was established last season, Gale isn't in this for the power or the money or -- God forbid -- the meth. He's in this for the science of it all. For the chance to cook the best he can cook. He produces a baggie of the blue meth for Gus -- a sample that Gus had asked him to get analyzed -- and declared that it's "quite good," at least in terms of sheer chemical purity. Gus tells him he can discard it, but Gale, in his own meek way, prods for more information. This is their competition, yes? Gus, ever the information hoarder, says as far as he's concerned, they don't have any competition. "After all," he smiles vacantly, "how pure can pure be?" As he walks away, Gale does maybe the bravest thing he's ever done and says, "...Pretty pure." He explains to Gus that what he can do, through diligent and hard work, is get their meth to about 96% purity. Which is great. But this blue meth that he just analyzed is 99% pure, maybe even a smidge more than that. And in that 3% lays a great bit of difference. Gus is still resistant to the idea, mostly because he has no respect for the man who produced it. "He's not a professional," he declares. Gale wonders aloud that if this man isn't a professional, he's not sure what that makes him. He says he's not trying to talk himself out of a job or anything, but he sees the lab Gus is assembling here, and he knows Gus wants the very best. So shouldn't he go after a man who can deliver that very best? It's no big secret what the show is doing with this scene. In the last microseconds of Gale's life, we're flashing back to a moment in time when he expressly advocated for the man who would ultimately be responsible for ending it. The irony is simple and it's cruel, and as Gale picks up Chekhov's Box Cutter and gets to work unpacking the piece of equipment, we cut back to Gus's face. Also simple and cruel.
Credits. After which we don't get so much as a second's worth of mercy as we're thrust right back in front of the barrel of Jesse's gun as he fires. As I tried to explain last year, Jesse didn't shift the gun to his right; the camera just moved us right into Gale's shoes. BANG, we're dead. Jesse, with red eyes and tears on his face, tries to catch his breath at the sight of what he's done, and he stumbles back out the doorway. After a quick fade to black, the camera starts canvassing Gale's apartment -- remember all the knick-knacks? -- while a neighbor makes the call to the police. All the while, Gale's phone buzzes impotently, with Mike on the other end of the line, trying to warn him. We pan up from a puddle on the kitchen floor to find the tea kettle with a bullet hole in it. ...So did Jesse miss? Maybe grazed Gale and he's still alive? Wounded and out of commission -- certainly unable to serve as Gus's backup plan anymore -- but also unable to finger Jesse for the crime, les he incriminate himself for meth-cooking? Yeah, that would work out nicely for everybody, right? Jesse doesn't have murder on his conscience, Gale gets to keep his silly little life, and nobody gets punished! Come on, Breaking Bad, that season of relatively little soul-scarring horror just writes itself!
Nah, that shit isn't happening. A small crowd of horrified neighbors has gathered in Gale's doorway, and they're soon joined by Victor, whose rescue attempt is too late. Without really thinking about it -- and above Old Man 911's objections -- Victor strides into the apartment to make sure that Gale's really dead. Boy, is he! Shot right below the left eye, his brains blown out onto the carpet behind him. Goodnight, you insufferable brown-noser. Victor strides out into the night and stomps straight into the easiest hunting job he ever got. Because there's Jesse, sitting behind the wheel of his parked car, unable to move. Victor, enraged, puts the gun to Jesse's head and tells him to drive.
Back at the lab, Walt and Mike sit across from each other, impassive as usual. Remember how last season it seemed like Mike was warming up to Walt, even had a certain respect for him? Tonight, Walter's become such an ass-tear for him that even that's gone from his face. Victor shows up, leading Jesse in at gunpoint and sitting him down to Walt. He them stomps over and angrily kicks over a table of cooking materials. Mike kind of pulls him to the side and asks if Gale's gone. At this, Walt turns to look at Jesse, but Jesse won't take his eyes off the floor. That's as good as answered, just as Victor finally confirms it with words. "Oh, Jesus! Oh, shit!" Mike exclaims, while Walt's face reads the same. Actually, Walt's face carries an appropriate mix of relief, horror, guilt, and the seed of whatever self-justifying anger he's going to conjure up to make sure everybody knows this was his only choice. Mike gets from Victor that while Jesse wasn't seen by the neighbors, Victor was, though he claims that he passed for a typical rubbernecking neighbor. Mike stands silent for a moment, then figures he'd better get this over with and goes to make the call to Gus. It's such an effective dramatic device to have a guy as fearsome as Mike be so intimidated by Gus.
Time-lapse to tomorrow, where Skyler is answering her doorbell to Marie. HI, MARIE! Oh, it's been too long. She's there with a stack of Hank's latest medical bills and an abashed look on her face. She tries to tell Skyler that if this is in any way becoming a burden ... but Skyler won't let her think of it. So Marie then changes the subject to the tell-tale Aztec parked in the driveway. Obviously, that means Walt spent the night, which means he and Skyler are on the road to mending fences, and this is all happy news for Marie. And I'm guessing Marie could use some happy news. But Skyler doesn't have the first clue what she's talking about, until Marie actually points out the Aztec in the driveway. At which point Skyler gets concerned, because that shouldn't be. After Marie makes her retreat, Skyler tiptoes back to the bedrooms to make sure Flynn (who I can't keep calling Flynn as it's now been two seasons since he dropped that moniker, and I guess we're going with "Junior" now? Whatever.) is playing his music loud enough so he can't hear. Then she gets into the Aztec and drives it across a couple blocks, parking it on a cul-de-sac well away from sight of her home. She may be involved in helping Walt launder money, but Priority 1 still seems to be keeping the fallout out of her home. She gets out of the car and begins her walk of shame home, trying to look inconspicuous in the biggest, bulkiest, flowiest peach robe in New Mexico. Back home, Junior's out of his room but none the wiser.
The lab. All four men are sitting in silence, because what's left to do until Angry Dad shows up? Walt, however, is not one to be happy with a stalemate when he knows he still has the high hand. He declares that they've all got another 15 minutes before he and Jesse need to start up another batch. Victor doesn't want to hear Walt speak one single word, but words are where Walt gets to show everybody how much smarter he is than the rest of them, so he continues that the important thing is to not interrupt Gus's beloved flow of production, right? And since Gale is currently airing out the back of his head at home, he and Jesse are the only people who can make that happen. While Walt is making his case to Mike, Victor gets up, seemingly throwing a tantrum. But as he picks up a gas mask, turns on the power grid, and begins prepping the tanks, Walt starts to catch on. Jesse's still staring at the floor in the corner, but Walt just gets scowlier and scowlier. By the time Victor starts pouring liquid ingredients, it becomes clear: Victor knows how to cook. I mean... somebody should have seen this coming, right? The guy's been basically auditing Walter's classes for weeks now. Still and all: gulp.
Outside the offices of Saul Goodman, Attorney at Law -- a.k.a. the strip mall -- some grungy looking man in a sling is trying to open the clearly locked door to the building. He's finally sent on his way by this enormously fat security guard with a pointy head and waking apnea. Saul's secretary looks at this big fatass with disdain, intermittently flipping the pages in her magazine, then fields a call from Skyler, but when she intercoms into Saul's office, he doesn't respond. Because Saul has jumped the tracks ever since finding out Mike was less "his guy" and more "Gus's guy." Saul's tearing his office apart looking for recording devices, even checking under his fake Styrofoam pillars. Cut to Saul, on a pay phone down the road (with Pointy as his lookout), trying to assure Skyler that Walt's disappearance is nothing to be worried about. Skyler thinks the Aztec in the driveway is absolutely something to be worried about, but Saul's like, "Well, maybe he carpools. It's good for the environment." Skyler, incredulous: "He carpools? To his job at the meth lab?" At the words "meth lab," Saul freaks out like any good paranoid, corrupt lawyer would, that Skyler would say such things on an unsecured line. I'm looking forward to a season-long battle of wills between these two. After Saul assures her 100% that Walter is fine, he hangs up, then turns to Pointy and asks if he's got a passport. Always with that escape route, huh, Saul?
Somehow less than 100% assured, Skyler instead drives out to Walter's bachelor pad, baby Holly in tow. When she finds the door locked, she 411s up a locksmith, who of course can't just let her into a locked apartment without any proof that she lives there. It's not his call -- it's the law. But Skyler White is making strides down the road to criminal behavior, so we see she's cooked up a whole story about how she got her purse stolen from her, with all her identification inside, and she really needs to get inside -- not for herself, see, but for the BABY! See how she's holding a BABY! How could she be up to anything nefarious with this BABY in her arms? She plays the "hysterical woman" card, freaking out about how she might've been stabbed by this purse snatcher. The locksmith is this perfectly lovely old man, who offers to take her down to the shop where she can call the police and file a report. But Skyler's not looking for kindness, she's looking for her way. And finally, she plays her trump card, as she feigns some kind of panic/asthma attack. Her medicine is locked inside the house, see? She lists and swoons and urgently asks the locksmith to take Holly before she falls down. Handing over her infant daughter as part of a con to get inside her husband's condo so she can snoop around. This is new, lawless ground she's breaking right here. [Note: Besides the whole not-reporting-Ted's-book-cooking thing, of course. -- RS.] Obviously, this one works, as we cut to the deadbolt turning. She even manages to get him to agree to billing her by mail. Quick study, this one.
Once the poor, kindly locksmith leaves, Skyler gets to work snooping. What she's looking for, I don't know. Clues to where Walt is now, or is she using this as an excuse to pry even further into the part of her husband's life that he kept from her? The apartment is almost comically bare, and it's kind of fun (if morbidly so) to contrast Walt's Spartan existence with Gale's life stocked to the brim with tchotchkes. She checks the underwear drawer (tighty whiteys, obvs) and then the kitchen, where she finds the plastic eyeball that Walt's been using as a conscience for over a whole season now. Nothing of any substance, though, and certainly nothing that points to just where Walt is right now.
Meanwhile, Marie pulls into her driveway and takes a few deliberate moments to steel herself before heading inside. Which tells you all you need to know about how Hank is adjusting to at-home care. It's funny, because Season 4 started essentially one second after Season 3 ended, so it's not like there's been this hiatus for Hank and Marie to establish a new order to their lives. But with all the murdering and running over with cars and hiding out of last season's finale, we've been away from Hank and Marie for at least a few days now. Long enough for them to settle into Hank's existence as an outpatient. Long enough for Marie to learn to dread what waits for her inside. Hank's not really the broken man he was in the hospital. He's just an angry, bitter man, who sits in his bed, buying moon rocks online ("bidding on minerals," he pointedly corrects Marie), resenting the incremental progress he's making in physical therapy, and dreading the moment he has to ask his wife to help him hoist himself up on top of his chamber pot to take a shit. Marie tries to sell his latest PT session as "breaking new ground," which earns her a burst of bitter, sarcastic anger from Hank about how he walked about a centimeter further before shitting his pants than he did the day before. Marie, not quite unflappable but putting on a good show, insists that it's progress. You guys, I love this lady so much. I need her to have a life that doesn't involve this much shit and misery.
Back at the lab, Victor continues to cook, while Walter does the only thing he can do at the moment: play hall monitor. He kind of passive-aggressively notes that all of them -- him, Jesse, Mike -- should be wearing gas masks while Victor goes about the cook. Mike, while not entirely hostile to Walt, is mostly still annoyed that this is how his evening turned out, so he's not getting up for anything. Jesse: still staring at the floor. Mike crosses the room to be annoyed in private and pour some coffee (from poor dead Gale's elaborate coffee tubes). Walt, trying to engage Jesse in some kind of conversation -- as well as grasping at some kind of thread of superiority -- mutters that he bets Victor forgets to add the aluminum. "Guaranteed," Walt smugs. And indeed, Victor has stopped in his tracks, like he's trying to remember the step. Out of earshot, Walt taunts him: "You don't know what you're doing, do you?" But after a moment to collect his thoughts, Victor does indeed grab a bucket of aluminum and adds it to the mix. And then the door above opens. It's Gus. And you guys, he is SO PISSED.
Victor barely suppresses a smile as he acknowledges the boss -- kind of a "Look at me! Look what I learned to do!" grin. What follows is a maddeningly -- almost hilariously -- meticulous scene where Gus silently enters the lab, his no-doubt expensive shoes on the pristine lab floor echoing with great menace. He stares down Walter for a moment, then silently crosses the lab, Victor's scowl-smile pretty much telling the tale of how fantastically Gus is going to murder Walt and Jesse. Gus arrives at the rack of hazmat suits and begins changing clothes. Walt, cornered, does that thing he does: He starts talking, urgently, frantically, about Gale. About how he didn't deserve to die, but when faced with the same choice: Gale or Walt? Gale or Jesse? Walt says he'd make the same choice again. And since it was Gus who set those options in front of Walt in the first place, well... whose fault is this, really? "Gale's death is on YOU," Walt says, pointing for emphasis. Gus doesn't see that part, though, because he's still meticulously removing his suit clothes and hanging them neatly on hangers. Look, just because he's preparing for wetwork doesn't mean he has to be messy about it. Walt continues to rant about how Gus backed him into a corner, forced him to defend his own life. Jesse, still staring at the floor, closes his eyes for a moment, hit with another memory of what defending his and Walt's lives meant for him tonight.
Gus dons the bright-orange hip waders, and Walt moves on to Phase 2 of his argument: if Gus kills them right now, he has NO ONE to make product for him. He turns to Victor all, "Yeah, I said it!" Victor calmly says he's been watching Walt for weeks and knows every step to his cook. This offends Walt on a level deeper than simply arguing for his life, of course. He nearly stands up to get in Victor's face before Mike (a hilarious "WHAT do you think you're doing?" expression on his face) sits him back down. Walt begins firing off a hurricane of chemical questions, contingency plans, worst-case scenarios, all sorts of arenas where Victor's well-observed copycat routine would ultimately fail him. Victor is following a recipe, says Walt. Gus needs an actual chemist if he wants to keep the product at its current level of quality. By this point, Gus is finishing the snaps on his poncho. It's almost time. He crosses back to the four men, pulls open a drawer -- Walt and Victor still hollering at each other about recipe vs. expertise -- and produces Chekhov's Box Cutter. Obviously. Victor scowl-smirks -- something I really wish we'd seen more of last season, because it's terribly effective -- and Walt starts to beg. Jesse, in a detail I just fucking LOVE, has finally taken his eyes off the floor and is now fixated on the box-cutter blade as Gus snakes around both him and Walter. "You kill me, you have nothing!" Walt begs. "You kill Jesse, you don't have me." And I know under the circumstances, Walt hasn't earned this in the slightest, but my heart was kinda warmed by that last statement.
Gus -- still silent -- walks out from behind Walt, towards Victor. Walt makes his ever-more-frantic closing argument: "You're too smart for this. Let us go back to work." Gus suddenly breaks his placid façade, grabs Victor by the head, and violently rips the box-cutter blade across his throat. Walter and Jesse jump back in horror, of course, but it's Mike whose reaction I'm really watching. Mike, who is so rocked by this turn events that he reflexively draws his gun. The look on his face -- abject horror and disbelief that even Gus would go this far -- suggests a game-changer, if not here, then down the road. I have zero idea where this season is going, but I would put money on Mike having some kind of decision to make. Gus savagely holds onto Victor's head, ensuring the blood gushes freely from his neck out onto Walt and Jesse. An intimidation tactic, yes, but I'm struck by the idea that Gus wants this to go as quickly as possible for Victor. That poor guy. He'd just gotten good at something too. He bleeds out, as around him, a triangle of faces cycle through some emotions. Gus's placid expression is back to fury. Walt's horrified. Jesse's damaged catatonia has now become an intense hatred. He's back in the game. And all the awfulness that that implies.
Gus throws Victor's body down at Walter's feet, then stalks back to the clothes rack and begins the meticulous process of washing up and changing back into his fancy suit. Walt, speckled with fat drops of blood, looks like he might have a heart attack. Mike's brain is cycling through so many thoughts he can't even remember to look annoyed. Gus, now dressed, stalks back across the room, up the stairs, almost to the door. He turns back and looks down upon his still-employed cooks. "Well," he finally speaks. "Get back to work." Today's motivational seminar is officially over.
After the break, Walt and Jesse get to the unglamorous task of trying to dispose of Victor body, while Mike stands around and looks perturbed. Walt grabs an empty plastic vat and lays it down sideways, instructing Jesse on how they're going to stuff Victor in, feet first. Of course, Victor's dead weight and the vat keeps sliding. Mike watches this morbid Stooges routine for a moment before his get-it-done instincts kick in and he gives Walt and Jesse a third hand. With Victor finally in the bucket, the guys all don gas masks, and Walt wheels out a cart full of hydrofluoric acid in jugs. Mike says he's never used this stuff to dispose of bodies, but Jesse's like, "Uh, trust us, it works." Yeah, just don't put it in your bathtub. Mike tosses Chekhov's Box Cutter into the vat, and then Walt and Jesse start pouring the acid. Cut to: the filled vat, looking bright pink through the translucent plastic, with delightfully gross chunks of Victor still breaking apart inside. This show! Bravo, man. Walt makes sure the outside of the vat is washed completely clean, and before you know it, the vat gets slapped with a hazardous sticker, loaded onto a waste-removal van, and taken out of their lives forever. Murder by mass production.
Back inside, Walt's mopping the floor of the last of Victor's blood. Then, in a transition that's so intentionally over-the-top gross it becomes funny, the blood-soaked mop swirling around the blood becomes someone swirling a French fry in ketchup at the local Denny's. Bon appétit! Jesse and Walt sit at another booth, in their matching Kenny Rogers t-shirts and white jeans -- guess the clothes with Victor's blood on them had to go. I like to think that these hideous matching ensembles were picked out with extreme spite by Mike himself. Jesse gets to work on his mega Grand Slam breakfast -- clearly his catatonia of a few hours ago has been replaced by an equally disturbing return to normalcy. Walt is now the one who can't seem to function. He asks Jesse how he's going and gets a non-verbal, "It is what it is," reaction. Ugh, this poor kid. Walt then asks about what their move should be, considering that Gus is going to try to kill them at the opportunity. Jesse -- speaking without his usual bitch-and-yo dialect -- says this morning was a pretty damned good opportunity, and Gus didn't take it. He's not going to be able to find another chemist to replace Walt -- not someone who he can trust with the product and knows will keep his mouth shut. "Bet it took him years to find Gale," he says. "Bet he's sorry now," he adds, with a dark laugh that lands like a sharp stick to Walt's side.
"At least now we all understand each other," Jesse continues, pantomiming his knife across his throat for added effect. He's right, too. In the last 48 hours -- or however long ago Walt murdered the two dealers before they could kill Jesse -- each of these three men have killed in order to preserve their little fucked-up business arrangement. "We're all on the same page," Jesse says, darkly. "The one that says, 'If I can't kill you, you'll sure as shit wish you were dead." He laughs a mirthless laugh and takes a big ol' bite of pancake. Looks like another season in hell for Jesse Pinkman.
A cab drops Walt off at home -- Skyler's home, not condo home -- and within like 2.5 second, Skyler's out on the driveway. She explains parking the car three blocks away, notes his weirdo new clothes, and peels off the size sticker that's been on his shoulder this whole time. No questions about where he's been, just a quiet, "You okay?" "Right as rain" is Walt's unconvincing reply. Walt begins his three-block trek to find his car, holding up his ill-fitting pants as he walks.
Meanwhile, the police have set up quite a crime-scene operation at Gale's place. Crawling with cops. Every speck of blood is being cataloged, every tchotchke inventoried. The useless cell phone that Mike tried to call him on. The bullet-punctured tea kettle is being measured for trajectory paths. This one's going to be examined inside and out. Which means it's not great news that, not two feet from Gale's corpse, lies a notebook -- with a nerdy, couldn't-be-more-Gale lightning-storm cover -- that is labeled "LAB NOTES." Gulp.
Joe R will probably have to go a few months before pancakes -- much less French fries and ketchup -- seem as benign as they used to. He can be reached for lavish praise and nothing but at joseph.reid21@gmail.com.