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Skyler is seriously working OVERTIME trying to craft every corner of her and Walt's cover story. This week, she scripts out a dinner-party conversation for a trip to Hank and Marie's house. Once there, she and Walt deliver the entire story of Walt's descent into lucrative card-counting. While there, however, Hank tells Walt and Junior about this case he's working on, and -- via a perfectly horrifying karaoke video -- introduces Walt to his murder victim/meth cooker, Gale. Even after learning that Hank has Gale pegged for Heisenberg, Walt freaks out about getting caught and just the general shit direction this whole meth-dealing idea has become.
Walt finds Jesse at his sad den of sadness and tries to scare him into the idea that he might have left fingerprints or something at Gale's house. But the nihilism is strong in Jesse -- stronger still later, when Mike clears Jesse's house of the army of meth-heads, them presents the bound-and-gagged lowlife who stole Jesse's giant bag of cash. Jesse didn't seem to care when he first noticed the money missing, and he isn't about to give Mike the satisfaction of caring that Mike intends to commit murder in his living room. He's barely living as it is.
The upshot of this is that Mike goes to Gus -- who is having his old problems with cartel retaliation -- and convinces him that Jesse's "uncareful" behavior is becoming a liability far beyond how much it would piss off Walter if they got rid of him. And by episode's end, Walt goes looking for Jesse at his home, but he's gone. He's being driven out to the desert by Mike. And it doesn't look good.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously on Breaking Bad: Jesse shot Gale. Gale's murder investigation fell into Hank's lap. Jesse was handling his PTSD poorly, enacting the scabbiest version of 24-Hour Party People ever. Skyler convinced Walt to let her in on his business by creating a cover story for their newfound drug millions. And Gus had his people slaughter the head of a rival cartel down in Mexico.
Funny the show should mention that, because it looks like Gus's issues with rival cartels are what bring us to this particular cold open. And "cold," in this case, is both figurative and literal, as Mike sits in the back of an El Pollo Knockoffo truck, stoic and refrigerated and watching his breath cloud up in front of him. As is Mike custom, he's stoic in service of his task, but eventually the truck stops, and there's a commotion outside. Screeching tires, agitated voices; Mike grabs for his gun out of instinct, and after things start sounding particularly dangerous, he crouches down behind some boxes. Not a bad idea, since a pair of bullet holes appear in the back doors, streaming bright and terrible sunshine into the truck. It should go without saying at this point, but really: the filming of this scene is just really gorgeous. Mike stays low, and suddenly, it starts. A hail of automatic-weapon fire makes Swiss cheese of the back of the truck. Vats of Pollos goo are punctured, leaking out their disgustingness all over. Somehow -- despite a rather thorough canvassing of the entire truck -- Mike isn't a pile of shot-up meat at this point. We know this because when the shooters open up the back doors and walk into the truck, two quick gunshots send their corpses flying back out again. Mike! He exits the truck -- the frost on his parka meeting the blazing Mexican sun -- and looks around. Annoyed, per usual. He's even more annoyed when he reaches back under his hat flaps to find blood. Fortunately, the bullet just grazed the top of his ear. Unfortunately, we all have to look on as Mike pushes the flap of ear (currently hanging by a thread of skin) back into place. It flops down again. Quite a living this guy makes.
After the title card, we see Skyler lying awake in bed at 3AM. She turns the light on so she can jot something down on a legal pad she's keeping on her nightstand. She checks some printouts with gambling statistics and makes some more notes. Cut to a support group meeting she's dragged Walt to. While he nods off, she's paying rapt attention to the speaker, who's talking about how gambling destroyed his life. One more cut and we're back at home, as Skyler is on the phone with Marie, finalizing dinner plans. She assures her sister that nobody's going to bring up the fact that they're paying Hank's medical bills. "We just want to bring everyone up to speed," Skyler says. Seems Skyler has decided that, with the purchase of the car wash imminent, she and Walt are going to have to really lay out their cover story to explain how they got the money to buy such a thing in the first place. If you're thinking that Skyler is really into explanations and cover stories, this episode is for you, because: welcome to the A-plot.
After she gets off the phone, Skyler starts dealing blackjack hands for Walt. If he's going to sell the idea that he made millions by learning to game the casinos, he should probably get good at the actual game, right? Of course, even with Walter (exasperated like WHOA) successfully counting cards, playing his percentages, and making the right calls as to hitting and staying, he still can't win them all. Skyler gets frustrated, but this plan is a fool's errand. He's just not going to get unbeatable at cards in the span of an afternoon tutorial. Besides, as Walt points out, he's supposed to be in recovery. Why would he even need to be around cards at all? This idea actually lands with Skyler, and she says he's right. How often do you think THAT gets said around the house these days?
up, Skyler hands Walt a packet of notes -- "bullet points," she says, providing the episode title with its most literal antecedent. They need to get their story straight, Skyler stresses. "We need to be word perfect." Walt scoffs at the idea that they need to sell Marie on a story they already told her, and he refuses to believe that Marie hasn't told Hank. He's all, "MARIE??" I like this moment, because it's yet another instance where cocky Walter is not nearly as perceptive as he thinks he is. Because if he knows Marie even a little bit, he'd know that she knows better than to tell Hank they're taking charity. Walter still scoffs at the notion that Hank would turn his nose up at their offer. Skyler's incredulous eyebrow about hits the ceiling. "Did you take money?" she asks him. She brings up Gretchen and Elliot and their offer to pay for his cancer treatments. "I seem to remember that you'd rather sell drugs than take help." She says they've already laid the groundwork with Marie, but "coming clean" -- she catches herself and corrects to "pretending to come clean" -- with Hank and Junior will be the best thing for them. Walt seems to agree in principle; he just can't stand the idea of these scripts Skyler has produced. And the scripts are really dumb. Overkill. But the degree to which Skyler has plotted out every inch of this conversation is impressive. It's kind of ... Gus-like? Anyway, Skyler gets to her opening salvo, a bright, shining gem of a line I want to render in full: "We want to tell you the whole story. It's a doozy, so hold on to your hats." Walt looks at her like she's got three heads. They continue like this, haggling back and forth about wording -- Walt would never say "I'm terribly, terribly ashamed of my actions" (TWO terriblies?!) -- but Walter's main objection is that Skyler's story makes him look bad. Weak. Like the bad guy. He gripes that Skyler didn't include the part where she f*cked Ted. Skyler: "I'd say for a fired schoolteacher who cooks meth, you're coming out ahead." He says he doesn't want Junior to think less of him, but Skyler rightly calls bullshit on that one. This story at least has him winning at gambling; she's still the "bitch mom who wouldn't cut you any slack." This stops Walt short. "I'm sorry," he says, sincerely, looking her right in the eye. "I'm sorry I put you through all this." They have A Moment. Then: "How's that sound?" Walt asks. He's not being petulant -- he's honestly trying to help Skyler with her script. "Two 'sorry's," he notes. As a marriage, this is still fucked up, but they're starting to work better as a criminal duo. She continues to over-script the moments (he should stare at the floor; she considers telling Marie something emotional and possibly tearing up), and he kind of needles her for her obsessive attention to detail. She snaps back that maybe lying doesn't come as easily to her as it does to him. I dunno, Skyler, you're taking to it pretty well. The bottom line, she says, is that they have to convince Hank, a DEA agent, that their TOTALLY SUSPICIOUS story is not at all suspicious. Game on.
That night, the Whites arrive at Hank and Marie's house, with Skyler taking deep, nervous breaths. Marie, as you can imagine, is thrilled to see them, and even Hank is putting on his best face for company. He does manage to stick in a few jabs about what a lousy cook Marie is, just in case we were worried about not being mad at him anymore. The ladies head for the kitchen, and Marie suggests Hank show the boys his "rock collection" (yeah, yeah, "mineral collection"). Junior does his best to sell the notion that a teenage boy would be interested in such a thing, and Hank shrugs off Walt's attempts to help wheel him down the hallway. Cut to Hank's room, where he's showing Junior a piece of manganese rock that has turned pink. Junior asks why pink, and Hank explains that the manganese oxidizes, like rust. Predictably, Walt jumps in from there, his pathological need to be the smartest guy in the room exhibiting itself once again. "Oxidation state" this, and "minus-seven, plus-two" that. Hank is visibly crestfallen that he's been out-nerded on his own pet hobby. Luckily, he's got a backup hobby, and he asks Junior to grab his case file. He explains that he's been consulting on a case, and he grabs a DVD out of the file. After confirming it's not "a dead body or anything" (you know, on Junior's behalf), Walt puts the DVD in, and he's greeted by something even more terrifying. In truth, it is a dead body; it's just that in this case, Gale Boetticher hasn't died yet. He's just performing the world's most embarrassing rendition of "Major Tom (Coming Home)" that has ever existed. Hank and Junior are howling, but Walt is frozen in place. Once again, Hank has found himself on the trail of Heisenberg, and the telltale corpse is singing off-key right in front of him. Junior asks who this guy is, and Hank answers that it's "Albuquerque's public enemy number one," strangely enough. ...Actually, after experiencing this performance, he may be right.
After the break, Skyler is following her script perfectly at dinner, having just finished her and Walter's tale of gambling and misery (and hundreds of thousands of dollars). Walt is doing a remarkable job of seeming shell-shocked, mostly because he IS shell-shocked by this Gale business. Hank's very non-skeptical reaction is more of a "Holy shit, Walt, I didn't think you had it in you." But the one reaction Skyler called to a T is Junior's, as he beams at his dad and calls him a "stud." He asks how much Walt won, and Skyler interrupts to say simply that it's enough -- after taxes OF COURSE -- to buy a car wash, and maybe a couple college educations. Yes, whoever ends up adopting Junior and Holly after Walt and Skyler are brutally murdered by the cartels will have quite the nest egg to provide for them with. Junior continues with his admiration for his dad, asking why he quit (your bitch mom, probably) and if he can get a car for his birthday. Okay, Junior, that adorbs smile you just flashed is going to keep me from yelling at you for that crap, but just barely. Walt speaks up now, and whether he's too frazzled to remember anything else he came up with, or else these are the only words from Skyler's speech he can latch onto, he looks downward and says he's "terribly, terribly ashamed" of what he's done. The table fails to burst into spontaneous sobs -- sorry, Skyler; no Oscar for you -- but they certainly aren't questioning Walt's penitence.
Walt then excuses himself to go to the bathroom and books it to Hank's room, where he rifles through Gale's file, shitting a brick that he's going to find something incriminating about himself or Jesse. After getting a good look at crime-scene photos of Gale's corpse, he finds the lab notebook. That lightning-storm plastic cover just kills me. Before he can look through it, however, Hank comes rolling down the hallway. Walt heads him off, and Hank almost cancels out three episodes of shittiness towards Marie by offering to be a friendly ear for his bro-in-law should he ever need it. Walt's genuinely touched by the offer, I think, but the quickness with which he makes a similar offer to Hank (you know, if he ever needs help with, oh, say, a case) is almost chilling. The selflessness of Hank's offer, followed by the utter manipulativeness of Walt's could give you a shiver.
Cut to Hank and Walt poring over Gale's lab notes together. Walt's examining every corner of the notebook, while Hank explains to him what he already knows about the high quality of the blue meth. Thus far, the notebook's clean (though my favorite touch is the suuuuper fleeting glimpse of a Ron Paul sticker affixed to one of the pages; hell of an endorsement, that). Hank says they figure Gale was the ever-elusive Heisenberg, which twigs Walt's inner egotist like you would not believe. Hank asks some more chemistry questions, while Walt puzzles over what turns out to be a recipe for vegan S'Mores. Or in Hank's words, as my friend Lindsay pointed out, "vegan Schmores." Apparently Gale threw a whole lot of rando crap into his notebook. But apparently no furious diary entries about Walt firing him that one time. In fact, the one possibly risky aspect of the book is a dedication at the beginning, "To W.W., my star, my perfect silence." Hank laughs at how queerball that sounds, while Walter quietly stews, not only because he's riding the razor's edge of incrimination but because he's once again reminded that Gale idolized him, and Walt ordered his murder. Hank ponders the possible identities of W.W.: "Woodrow Wilson? Willy Wonka? ...Walter White?" Walt tries to laugh, but I'm not sure he's got any breath left in his body. What looked for a moment like honest, heart-stopping suspicion on Hank's face now has settled into mere puzzling curiosity. Walt gets a bolt of inspiration and grabs the book back; he thumbs through and ... yes! There's a sketch of one Walt Whitman, accompanied by a poem. "The learned astronomer." Certainly describes OUR W.W. Hank laughs at what a "freakin' brainiac" Walt is for figuring it out. He then laments that he always wanted to be the one to catch Heisenberg, and alive, not dead. He compares himself to Popeye Doyle, and Walt, ever the know-it-all, is like, "I don't think Popeye Doyle ever caught the bad guy either." At least not in the first one. "Day late and a dollar short," Hank mopes. As they exit Hank's room, Walt prods for information about Gale's killer. Hank tosses off something about fingerprints and a "person of interest" spotted at the scene (though that last one is almost certainly Victor, may he rest). "They'll track down the shooter eventually," Hank assures.
thing we know, Walt is furiously knocking on Jesse's door, but if the meth hit is rockin', don't bother knocking, because nobody can hear you. In fact, Walt has to shove the door open because some passed-out fat dude is in the way. I like the continuity in junkies here. Fatty is the same guy whose mouth Jesse was throwing crumpled up hundos into; that motor-mouthed guy who isn't Badger is still monologue-ing about crazy shit. I guess it's encouraging that Skinny Pete and actual Badger don't seem to be around anymore. Maybe they went back to the meetings?? Anyway, Walt surveys the house like the horrifying crime scene that it is, and eventually finds Jesse on the stairs, buzzing some dude's hair off (he's already taken care of his own) and paying as little attention to Walt as possible. Walt finally has to drag him into the room in order to get him to listen. He explains about the murder investigation and the fingerprints. Jesse says there's no way he left any evidence at the scene, because if he did, Hank's hard-on for him would have made sure he was picked up immediately. I'm sorry, sue me for being shallow, but I am incredibly distracted by Jesse's dead-eyed, shaved-head look, which is eighteen kinds of appealing to me, and the implications of that really freak me out. Walt decides to be thorough, so he urgently walks Jesse through every moment of Gale's murder, making him scour his memory for moments he might have slipped up -- touched a doorbell button; left behind a bullet casing. The fact that Walt doesn't realize how much it's killing Jesse to re-live that night doesn't exactly let Walt off the hook, either. He's literally shaking the answers out of Jesse, who is trying SO HARD not to remember. Finally, he breaks away from Walt, throws some more money into his den of washouts, and ... cut to Walt getting thrown out the front door by a pair of them. Not that Walt didn't deserve it, but how depressing is it that Jesse can't even muster the will to throw Walt out of his own house?
After the break, it's to the strip mall to meet with Saul. And contrary to what his demeanor has been the last few weeks, it's Saul who is calming Walt down and telling him not to worry. Walt thinks that Hank's prior knowledge of Jesse's connection to the blue meth could lead him right to Jesse as Gale's killer. Saul's like, "What's he gonna do, roll up on his in his little scooter?" He admits that might not have been so sensitive. But the point is: don't worry about it. Of course, Saul hasn't seen Jesse's current living conditions. "It's like Skid Row," Walt raves, kind of adorably old-fashioned. "He has actual hobos living there." Walt continues down the path of fucked-up directions things have gone lately, from Mike "sucker-punching" him to Gus and his box-cutter." "Let me ask you," Walt says, in all seriousness, "when did this stop being a BUSINESS? Why am I the only person capable of behaving in a professional manner? " Oh MY, Walter, have we gotten our feathers ruffled lately, huh? If the methamphetamine business can't be run with strict ethics and best practices, what business can?! Saul thinks better of responding -- best to just let Walt rant. He's feeling the pressure of trying to keep his family and Jesse safe, and of this car-wash idea that he's now committed to. Walt says Skyler is clinging to this idea that he has this neat-and-clean job where he puts on a white lab coat from 9 to 5, and when his contract is up, he'll be able to walk away from it all. "How did everything get so screwed up?" Oooh! Oooh! I know this one! Saul admits Walt does have "a little shit-creek action" happening; but, to continue his metaphor, "you can buy a paddle." In this case, that means disappearing. Off the map completely. Saul knows a guy, of course. A "disappear-er." For a substantial fee, of course. "This is an end game," Saul assures him. No coming back from it. It's a bridge too far for Walt, who never seems to opt for the choice that gets him out of the business completely. I mean, we wouldn't have a show if he did, but it's hard to ignore the pattern either. Saul brings up the fact that Jesse seems to be the top guy on the list "when it comes to imminent demise." Walt is convinced that Gus won't risk the police coming after Jesse.
Speaking of Jesse, he's got a girl passed out in his bed upstairs, and he's headed out -- for work, I guess. He passes by Chatty Cathy on the couch, talking the ear off of some dude with mouth tattoos about full-body scanners. Jesse tries to drown Chatty out by blasting the music, but that doesn't work. Finally, he asks Chatty to make sure there's pizza here when he gets back, but he has to run upstairs to get money from his giant satchel of his cash that he keeps in a dresser drawer. When Mouth Tats sees the handful of cash Jesse returns with, his eyes go wide. Jesse doesn't much notice, because Jesse's not really in the business of noticing things these days.
After an afternoon at work -- where Walt noticed with increased paranoia that the security camera seems to be following Jesse exclusively -- Jesse returns home. He tosses some baggies of the blue stuff to his pizza-gorging subjects, heads upstairs, and sees that his sack of money is completely gone. And rather than flipping out and turning his houseguests upside down to find it, he simply flops onto his bed, and resumes a video game with this skanky girl in knee-socks he brought upstairs with him. Just completely dead.
After the commercial, Jesse gets a rather sudden awakening from a looming Mike. Seems while Jesse was snoozing, Mike was getting to the business of actually catching Mouth Tats with Jesse's sack o' cash. These are the benefits of being in cahoots with the guy staking out Jesse's house out front. In the plus column, Mike has cleared Jesse's house of its disgusting human vermin. In the minus column -- I guess -- is the fact that he and Stakeout have bound, gagged, and blindfolded Mouth Tats and are threatening to execute him right in front of Jesse. But the nihilism is strong in this one. Jesse steps over Mouth Tats, grabs his bag of money, and then heads back upstairs. "You want to know what's for Little Miss Pissed-in-His-Pants?" Mike asks after him. Nope. He really doesn't. On top of what I think is his actual lack of giving a shit, Jesse also knows what Mike is up to, and he says so: "Is this the part where I'm supposed to beg you not to [kill him]?" Jesse asks if this is supposed to make him promise Mike that he'll straighten up and toe the line. If you're looking for year's Emmy clip for Aaron Paul, I'm sure he'll have more climactic moments as the season goes on, but you can start here. Just complete wild-eyed emotional ruin, masking itself as sociopathy. Mike warns the little "shithead" that he's on thin ice, but Jesse just laughs. Right in his face, just laughs at him. "You ain't gonna smoke that dude in there," Jesse scoffs. Else why'd he blindfold the guy? He points his fingers to his temple with all the verge and intention of flipping the bird, then continues on upstairs, telling Mike to let himself out.
Poor Mike's ear looks like it's bandaged up with masking tape. That can't be healthy. This is what I notice as he meets with Gus in Gus's office. Mike says that Jesse has become "increasingly uncautious" and is essentially a risk they don't need to be taking. "I know that he and Walter come as a team and that Walter won't like it," Mike says. But it has to be done. Gus just looks silently back at Mike and considers.
Back at America's Meth Kitchen, Walt finishes mixing ingredients in the giant vat when he notices that Jesse still has not arrived. He calls Jesse but only gets his voicemail, which sets Walt's already elevated paranoia clean off the charts. He speeds to Jesse's house, leaving his third consecutive voicemail. Walt's concern is being masked real nicely as fury right now. He pounds on Jesse's door, gets no satisfaction, and ends up going through a window. Nobody's home. He heads upstairs and sees Jesse's empty bed. But when he places yet another phone call, he hears Jesse's phone vibrating on the nightstand. So Walt books it back to the lab, where he marches right up to the security camera, glowers his best glower, and bellows, "Where is he?!"
That question is answered, for us anyway, by a cut to Mike driving down the highway in the desert. We've been trained by the sepia tone to think this is Mexico, but maybe not yet. Jesse's in the passenger seat, staring out the window. Did he even put up a fight when Mike came to take him away to his likely death? Mike finally asks him, "You wanna ask where we're going?" Jesse: "Nope."
Joe R knows in his head that Jesse is probably not going to die. Still, YIPES. Please don't think less of him. He can be reached for lavish praise and nothing but at joseph.reid21@gmail.com.