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If you thought this would be the week that Walt begins walking back the damage he did with his little drunken proclamation to Hank last week, you should probably think for a little while longer about what kind of a person Walter White is. This episode slathers on the reminders that Walt is a petty, egotistical, short-tempered man who is not nearly as smart as he believes himself to be. So we get an ordinary argument with Skyler where he pretty much tells her that he IS the meth business in New Mexico, and he's a killer who should be feared. Skyler naturally freaks out, takes a road trip to Four Corners, flips a coin, seemingly to let fate decide where she should go from here, but ultimately she decides to nudge fate along so she'll stay exactly where she is.
We also get Walt acting like a pissy dick with (an equally pissy) Bogdon, though he seems to pick up on Bogdon's taunts about Walt not being management material. Walt's attempts to "manage" Jesse are ultimately felled by Walt's chronic inability to not be a complete asshole on an interpersonal level. See, he's actually figured out that the robbery plot last week was devised by Gus and Mike in order to bring Jesse into their fold and undermine Walt. But since Walt phrases this all as, "It's all about me!" Jesse rightly calls him an asshole and goes back to hanging out with Mike, who is still terse and gruff but also kind of a little nurturing to our boy. (Meanwhile, Walt is left back at the lab and needs to bribe the laundry gals with mucho dinero to clean the equipment for him.)
Is Walt also a terrible father and husband? You bet! He knows Junior is determined to side with Dad any time he and Skyler are fighting (like now), and yet he still feels the need to buy Junior's love with a car. Junior, to his credit, is wise to it, so he decides to lean on his dad's guilt and go for the brass ring: a brand new sports car. Of course, when Skyler gets him, she and Walt argue about how the car runs absolutely counter to the cover story and will obviously have to go back. Walt, the complete and total heel, is all, "I'm worried that Junior's going to blame you for this." And she's like, "Oh obviously, jackass."
Meanwhile, Jesse and Mike are on a stakeout in front of some small-time meth dealers' shack. Seems these guys bought some of the blue stuff that the cartel heisted from a Pollos truck in the cold open. Mike tries to teach Jesse the value of patience -- guess how that goes. Jesse instead uses his vast experience lording over meth-heads to busy one of them digging a hole in the front yard (I need to learn how to better exploit the meth-heads in my own life this way!), while he heads inside to get the other one to come outside and face Mike's menacing glare. The other guy isn't so easily bamboozled, though, and he shoves a shotgun in Jesse's face. Jesse thinks fast, knocking Crankhead No. 2 out with a bong, while Mike enters and sees how Jesse manages to back up his recklessness with some degree of self-sufficiency. Not the ideal outcome, sure, but these two seem to be meeting in the middle -- and forging a much closer bond that Walt and Jesse currently share. Which should lead is to some dark places.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously, Mike had to shoot his way out of a Pollos truck hijacking, then later babysat Jesse and took part in a ruse that ultimately left Jesse feeling like he was a vital cog in the Gus Fring meth empire (and not just Walter White's lab boy). Walt and Skyler toasted to their new car-wash venture, but then Walt went and ran his mouth at Hank's house, causing Hank to re-think his theory that Heisenberg has been killed.
Another week, another cold-open inside a Pollos truck. Only this time, instead of Mike, it's two random yahoos, which means of course they're going to end up dead. This time, when the truck is stopped, they don't have the foresight that Mike had to crouch down for cover. And as dumb as these two are, their cartel counterparts are that much more clever. Instead of barraging the truck with bullets, they hook up the exhaust pipe to a tube and pump it right back into the cabin. A truck this size, you can imagine how much carbon monoxide that is. The cartel guys wait, snack on some fruit, while the Pollos guys wheeze. When they get desperate, they try to shoot out some oxygen holes, but it's too late. Pollos 1, Cartel 1. After the Pollos guys are dead, the cartel folk open up the back of the truck, search the buckets of fry batter for the one with the blacklight-sensitive star marking, and abscond with it. This is definitely not just another blunt message sent to Gus; it's -level shit.
Title card.
White house. Skyler is researching Gale on the computer and listening back to Walt's frantic voice-mail message from last week, over and over. Walt is passed out in bed, still in his clothes from the party. Skyler brings him coffee and waits for him to rouse himself. The mark of a true liar, he begins with the tried and (opposite of) true, "I don't even remember what I said last night, I was so drunk!" Skyler slowly starts in on Gale -- was he involved in Walt's business? After scoffing ineffectively a few times, Skyler repeats herself, and Walt assents by his silence. Who killed him? The people Walt works for? "Definitely not." People who, at some point, might want to do the same to Walt? "I seriously doubt it." Hmm. How telling, the different in word choice there. Walt "definitely" doesn't work for Jesse. But there's less absolutism in his sense that Jesse would never do the same to him.
Obviously, something has changed in Skyler's mind, about this whole drug-dealing operation she thought she'd made her peace with. And as usual, she's trying to put together the few puzzle pieces she has in any way she can, and she doesn't always connect them right. She thinks Walt's loose lips last night were a "cry for help"; he wants Hank to catch him. Walt openly mocks this train of though. "You're like Dr. Joyce Brothers, here," he scoffs. Oooh, nice topical reference, GRANDPA WALT. Skyler's serious, though. If he is in danger, they will go to the police. She means it. If it's between that and him getting killed, there is no choice. "You are no hardened criminal," she says. She then makes the Season 1 case for Walt -- schoolteacher, cancer, in over his head. The case we all wanted to make for Walt when this first started. She doesn't know that it's far too late for that. And the only way Walt can get her to stop talking about turning themselves in is to tell her himself. Of course, it's Walt, so he deliberately says it in the worst way possible. "Admit you're in danger," Skyler says. "Who is it you think you see?" he glowers. "Do you know how much I make? What would happen if I suddenly stopped going in to work?" Typical, self-aggrandizing Walt says the whole billion-dollar operation would come crumbling down without him. (Oh, Walt, do you even believe that one anymore?) "You think I'm in danger?" he asks, scowling and menacing and mean. "I am the danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot, and you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks!" Naturally, this has all completely scared the shit out of Skyler.
Time for another Bryan Cranston Shower Scene. Have not missed you. I wonder if it's a deliberate choice to show us his cancer scar -- to show how Walt is still vulnerable underneath this bluster. Anyway, when he gets out, he finds Skyler is gone. Her car and everything.
That night, Walt hits up the car wash, to exchange terse, pissy words (and the keys to the car wash) with Bogdan. Before you start feeling sorry for Bogdan, know that he's just as awful as Walt is, repeatedly baiting Walt with "Where is your pretty wife?" comments. He also makes sure to stress that their agreement was that Walt and Skyler would take the place "as is"; i.e. whatever's broke, they fix it. "So you are the boss now?" Bodgan continues to pole. He doesn't think Walt is management material. "Being boss is tough," he says, explaining unapologetically about why he was such a slave-driver. Walt maintains that he worked hard, but Bogdan doesn't think so. "Maybe when you are the boss, you will just keep your feet up and relax." He says it again: The most important thing is that a boss must be tough. "Can you be tough?" There are quite a few instances this week where observations and thematic truths are hammered home without much subtlety. This is one of those times. Walt glares at Bogdan, who is not finished: If Walt isn't up to the task of being tough, "You can always call your wife." Sometimes I forget this show isn't The Sopranos and that while Walt is a ruthless, angry, bad person, he's still a late-middle-aged schoolteacher and cancer survivor, not a shaved Kodiak who spent his whole life brawling like Tony was. Because I was honestly expecting Walt to just snap and beat him to death right there. Not that I'm not glad that this show doesn't have Walt do that. As bad as Walt gets, he's as defined by his limitations within the criminal world as by anything else. That makes him more interesting. Anyway, so in the office part of the building, Bogdan hands the keys over, and then goes to take with him the framed first dollar he ever made. Walt, taking every opportunity to be petty, reminds him: "As is." Bogdan realizes this is pretty much touché for how much of a jerk he was just being, so doesn't put up a fight. Still, after he leaves, Walt decides to confuse "being tough" with "being a dick," as he smashes the frame and uses the dollar to buy a coke from the vending machine.
Mike and Jesse are eating at a diner -- well, Mike is chowing down on something like looks like either a gross looking hunk of meatloaf, or cornbread stuffing, perhaps. Jesse, meanwhile, is stirring his coffee with shaky hands. "You okay?" Mike asks (actual concern!), and while Jesse is pissy at first, he softens and admits to going through withdrawal. So Mike has him off the junk, huh? And then he pushes his plate across the table and suggests Jesse eat something. Actual nurturing! Imagine. Mike gets a phone call and has to go. Jesse asks if he needs any help -- like a kid asking his dad to play catch. Mike doesn't, but he does pay the bill.
The day, Walt and Junior are at breakfast table. Turns out Skyler is still not home, though she called Junior to tell him not to worry. Junior asks his dad if this is about the gambling, and Walt kind of has to go with that, given the alternatives. Seems Junior has read up on gambling addiction and has decided that it's wrong of Skyler to punish Walt for having a disease. Ugh, the hero worship on this kid is at once adorable and heartbreaking and infuriating. Walt insists that this fight isn't about his gambling. "It's about choices. Choices I have made. Choices I stand by."
Later, as Walt drives Junior to school, Junior asks for confirmation that Walt's not moving home after all. Walt can't deny it. And rather than feel that guilt for more than a moment, he decides that school can wait -- let's go to the used car lot! When they get there, Junior sees through this shabbily transparent attempt at buying his love. "If you're gonna buy me off," he says matter-of-factly, "buy me off." Cut to: Junior returning home in his new Dodge Challenger. It's an obnoxious car, as all modern attempts to recreate classic cars are, but as far as this episode goes, I guess that's the point. Walt's all proud of himself, like an idiot. Short-term gains.
Walt shows up at the laundromat, where Jesse is waiting out front. He gives Jesse shit for actually showing up this time. Jesse wants to go to work, but Walt wants an update on the "field trips" with Mike. Walt wants an intel report, like Jesse's his spy, but he's finding out how seriously Jesse's taking this job. Walt can't believe Mike would pick Jesse for such a job. Not somebody who's actually tough? He essentially mocks Jesse as a poor choice for muscle, so Jesse flips him off. He says he's not an idiot -- he knows that this probably started as Gus getting Mike to babysit him and get him off crank. Like Skyler, Jesse's more perceptive than Walt gives him credit for...until he's not. He reminds Walt that he saved Mike from getting robbed, or maybe killed. "So maybe I'm not such a loser after all." Oh my God, does EVERYTHING with Jesse Pinkman have to break my heart? Here's what's worse: Walt figures it out. In like thirty seconds, he figures out that the robbery very well may have been a setup, to bond Jesse to Mike and to ultimately drive a wedge between Jesse and Walt. He's absolutely right. And it is AWFUL, because the idea of that -- and the idea that Walt so readily believes it -- hurts Jesse like you wouldn't believe. Jesse calls him an asshole, which he totally deserves. Walt then arrives at his own personal epiphany. "This whole thing -- all of this -- it's all about me!" Well! It's a funny, ironic line, I'll give that to the show. But it's another one this week that's just really on the nose. Jesse stomps away.
Inside the lab, they're not even done cleaning up when Jesse gets a call on the Batphone; it's Mike, and he's got a job. So Jesse pretty eagerly leaves Walt to clean up alone, which is more than what Walt deserves. In a huff, Walt charges upstairs and approaches a group of three older Honduran ladies working the washing machines. They don't hablan inglés, and Walter struggles to find the right Spanish to ask for their help. AYUDA, Walt! AYUDA! So the one who looks like Lupe Ontiveros is all, "No, actually, we're not going into the creepy secret hole in the floor where the scary people with guns are always going and not all of them come back out." But in Spanish. Walt explica that it will only take two hours, and -- "universal language" -- he offers to pay them one "Presidente Grant" if they help him out. Cut to the lab, where the ladies are in haz-mat suits, cleaning up, WHILE WALT SITS DOWN AND DRINKS COFFEE. "Put your feet up," indeed, Bogdan. He raises his mug to the security camera. Might as well be a middle finger.
Somewhere in New Mexico, Skyler drives across the desert, as always with Holly in tow. That kid is going to be hardened before she even knows how to talk. [Note: Here, here! - RS.] Skyler's destination is actually the Four Corners monument, which marks the perfect right-angle spot where the states of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico converge. And more importantly, where they sell Navajo frybread! Skyler heads to the big stone disk on the ground where the four states meet exactly meet and flips a coin. Is this maybe a thing the tourists do? To help them make tough decisions? Where their options number no more and no less than four? I feel like this moment is more archly symbolic than actually useful. If we're supposed to think Skyler is contemplating leaving Walt, why are Colorado, Utah, and Arizona her only choices? Or any of her choices? And when she does flip, and it repeatedly lands on Colorado, we're obviously supposed to see her nudging the coin back into New Mexico as her ultimately losing her nerve and deciding to stay. So all that way out for a purely symbolic gesture that ultimately she had no stomach for? It doesn't violate her character or the story, exactly. It just seems too ostentatious given the moment. Also, while I'm nitpicking (hey, the show almost never gives me reason to, so I need to make the most of it), I generally like the ways that Skyler's story departs from the Carmela Myth, but this sequence falls closer to that groove than I'd like it to.
Meanwhile, Mike and Jesse are in Crackton on a stakeout. Mike points out one particularly skanky looking shack and says the two dealers who live there are selling the blue stuff, only they didn't get from Gus's operation. So Mike and Jesse are going to wait for one of them to come outside, and then confront them. Jesse wants to charge in, of course, but Mike reminds him that these guys are heavily into the product and most likely armed. "What you may not know about meth-heads -- or maybe you do -- is that they're kinda unpredictable," Mike says. "I don't care for unpredictable. So we wait." Jesse, however, doesn't care for just sitting there, and it's maybe not entirely due to his withdrawal shakes. So he charges out, intending to pose as a buyer; he wants to be the hero again. So this total skeezer named Tucker answers the door, and if you ask me to describe what he looks like, I'll just cry, so I'll just say that he's nearly too spaced out to speak, which is fine, because whoever else is in the house is repeatedly screaming "TUCKER!" over and over again. So Jesse begs for the blue stuff, but gross-ass Tucker says they don't sell to strangers and slams the door shut.
Back at the car, Mike kind of smugly suggests they go back to waiting. But Jesse STILL won't sit still. Instead, he gets the shovel out of the trunk. "You may know this whole P.I. sit-in-the-car business," he tells Mike, "but I know meth-heads." After a weirdly showy shot from the POV of the shovel (how exactly did THAT advance the story?), it does seem like Jesse knows what he's talking about, as he starts digging in the front yard and immediately draws Tucker ("TUCKER!") outside. He watches Jesse dig for a bit and becomes deeply interested. Why's he doing that? Jesse: "You know why." Then he asks Tucker, "How deep do you think it is?" Whatever "it" is, Tucker definitely wants to find out. Jesse then asks Tucker to take over digging, and he does. Because being on meth is like getting post-hypnotic suggestions, I guess. This allows Jesse to slip inside while Mike looks on warily. Inside the horror show of a house, the TUCKER-yeller keeps yelling "TUCKER!" Jesse finds him, and he's not happy. He's gross, too. And pacing with a shotgun. Jesse spots the bag of blue meth and the tub of Pollos goo it came from. Screamy says the meth is not for sale. Jesse tries to draw him outside to find Tucker, but Screamy's too agitated. He puts shotgun in his face and says "We doesn't have enough for you!" Jesse backs off, saying, "We're cool. We're good." Screamy doesn't react to THAT choice of words well at all. "Don't put thoughts him my head!" he yells. Someone somewhere makes a noise, and Jesse brains the dude with a bong and grabs the gun. Mike then stalks in, surveys the scene -- less of an unambiguous hero moment for Jesse, as he really let the situation get away from him, but once again he prevails. Mike grabs the Pollos bucket lid and sees the phrase "¿Estas listo para platicar?" written on it.
Back at the laundromat, Walt and his lady migrant workers are emerging from the lab. He's kind of hilariously trying to evince some kind of camaraderie with them but they just take his money and laugh at him quietly. They're met by Tyrus, who is as unamused as ever. He says something to the ladies in Spanish and starts to lead them away. Walt wants to know what's up, so Tyrus tells him he's taking them to a bus, which will return them to their native Honduras. Walt gets upset and says Gus should blame him, not the ladies. Gus should out the blame on HIM. Tyrus fixes Walt with a look: "He does."
At the same diner as before, Mike and Jesse once again eat in mostly silence. Gus arrives, and Mike kindly asks Jesse to give them a minute. As they cross paths, Gus tells Jesse, "We won't be too long." Whoa, respect! A dangerous weapon, when used correctly. Mike explains to Gus -- and connects the dots for us -- that the crew who jacked the truck in the cold open gave the meth to Tucker and Screamy. This wasn't about profit, but a message: "¿Estas listo para platicar?", which Mike roughly translates to "Ready to talk?" Mike asks for permission to hire a ten-man crew to hit the cartel back hard, but Gus refuses, which Mike expected. Keep the war cold for now. And as for the message? Gus says to set up a meeting, see what they have to say. Gus asks how Jesse did, but we cut outside to Jesse before we hear Mike's answer. As Gus leaves, he addresses Jesse again: "I hear you can handle yourself." That's all, really. But as he goes to walk past, Jesse asks Gus why he chose him. Gus: "I like to think I see things in people." Damn it, they are playing Jesse just right.
Skyler returns home and sees the new car in the driveway. Inside, Walt is assuring Junior that the car isn't going anywhere. Skyler tries her best to keep upbeat and happy with Junior, who immediately starts defending the purchase -- "it gets great gas mileage!" -- and he's so adorable when he asks to drive the car just around the block. Which suits Skyler fine, since she'd rather have him out of the house for this talk she's about to have with Walt. Walt sets Holly down in between them - a defensive gesture if ever there was one. Walt begins an apology, but quickly downshifts into how he needs her to understand that she and the family are safe. "Everything that I do," he asserts, "I do it to protect this family." Skyler asks if buying the car was accomplishing that goal. Walt's like, okay, maybe the car is a little flashy, but Junior needed a car, and I'm his father and should be able to get him what he wants. Which is utter HORSESHIT. Junior didn't want the car until Walt started shoving bribery presents at him. Skyler says it goes back tomorrow, and Walt it will crush Junior. Skyler lets that particular bit of manipulation roll off, because she's more concerned with how the flashy car directly contradicts their story. It raises any number of red flags with the neighbors, much less Hank and Marie, or God forbid the IRS. "What were you thinking?!" Walt returns, "I was thinking that I wanted to do something nice for my son." Yeah, again nice try. But then Walt pulls out the big guns of assholery: "I just worry that he'll blame you for this." OHHHH, did that make me angry. Skyler doesn't even flinch, though, because she saw this coming. She has no doubt Junior will blame her. "Once again, he'll blame his bitch mother for taking away what his loving father has given him." But she's sticking by her guns on this one. And why? "Someone has to protect this family from the man who protects this family." BOOM.
Joe R may not have liked some of the lead-footed storytelling this week, but damned if there weren't some quotable lines. He can be reached for lavish praise and nothing but at joseph.reid21@gmail.com.