In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
Walt continues to act out against things like responsibility and good sense this week, starting with exploding the new Challenger rather than sending it back to the lot. But Walt's true focus this week is getting someone to assassinate Gus for him. And since Saul is too afraid of Mike to try and find an assassin among his pool of Mike-connected hitmen, Walt decides to manipulate Jesse into using his newfound access to Gus to their mutual advantage. He cooks up some ricin for Jesse to use on Gus at his opportunity, which comes when Mike brings him along for that cartel summit that was mentioned last week. Jesse has an opportunity to dose Gus's coffee, but when Mike entrusts him with a gun and some responsibility, Jesse keeps the ricin in his cigarette pack. Where it will totally not come into play later this season at all.
Later, Jesse goes back to group therapy, where he admits to killing Gale (though he talks about it in the guise of the titular "problem dog"). But he flips out and storms off when the no-self-judgment edict becomes too much to bear.
Meanwhile, Hank and Junior grab lunch at Pollos, where they're greeted by Gus, who offers Junior future employment and Hank a free drink. Hank secretly pockets the Pollos cup Gus hands him as evidence. Later, Hank goes to visit Gomez, as he takes the Gale case to the DEA. As he explains, he's worked the number that Gale wrote on the Pollos wrapper to an air filtration system, which got shipped to Gale. Hank tracked down a corporate connection between the air filtration system and Pollos and ultimately points the finger at one Gustavo Fring. Gomez thinks he's reaching. BUT! Hank used that Pollos beverage cup to get Gus's fingerprints...which he then found in Gale's apartment. Big Gulp.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!It's another gun-centric cold open this week, with Jesse in his semi-cleaned up house (the walls are still spray-painted, but there about a thousand garbage bags filled with God knows what) playing a first-person shooter game (don't ask which one -- I am not your guy for that question) with a gun controller. As Jesse stalks the computerized halls of whatever dungeon or space station this game is supposed to convey, he can't stop picturing Gale's face at the moment Jesse's bullet shot through his eye. The plastic prop in his hand keeps getting swapped out (in Jesse's head) with a real gun. It's all very harrowing. Ultimately, Jesse loses, and he's left, panting and sweating, with the question posed by the video game: Restart or Quit? Pointing the gun at the screen, ready to pull the trigger on "Quit," Jesse ultimately changes his mind. He's going back in.
Title card.
At the car wash, with Pretty Poison's "Catch Me I'm Falling" hilariously playing on the PA system, Skyler is updating Walt on Junior's reaction to having his car taken away (it's exactly the reaction Skyler anticipated). In a conversation that's relatively free of rancor, Skyler tells Walt that she made arrangements with the dealership for him to return the car and get most of his money back, save for an $800 restocking fee. It sticks in Walt's craw that he has to pay $800 for two days worth of a car, but Skyler notes that the law says the dealership doesn't have to take it back at all, not that Walt's been overly concerned with the law these last few years. Skyler also reminds Walt to talk to the general manager, Glenn, when he returns the car. The pure hatred in Walt's voice as he scoffs, "Glenn!" immediately made me think of GLENN. Skyler also instructs Walt not to "tangle" with anyone, since she can see he's in a mood. A mood that is not enhanced by the way Skyler reminds him to tip the guy who just finished washing the car. Oh, NOW Walter's pinching pennies?
But if you suspected that Walt's objection to returning the car has less to do with finances and more to do with the blow to his ego, you won't be surprised to see that, en route to the dealership, Walt found an empty parking lot, wherein he can do donuts while a Pretenders song plays on the soundtrack. I know Walt is no stranger to expressions of impotent male rage, but this is a pretty appropriate crystallization of that, right? This season has really broken the record for Walt's immaturity. He's shown plenty of bad characteristics before, but this season has really seen him regress emotionally; I guess with his feelings of infantilization re: Gus, it makes some sense. His donut spree ends with him getting the car jacked up on some parking barriers. So how's he supposed to get it back to the dealer now that he can't move it? He decides to do the Walt-iest thing possible -- he rolls up a newspaper, sticks it in the gas tank, and lights it on fire. He tries to do the Cool Guys Walk Away from Explosions thing, but reality isn't quite as cool -- it takes a lot longer for the flame to hit the gas. So he sits down across the lot and eventually calls for a taxi. He gives his location, and as he's asking how long it'll take, the car explodes. Finally able to say the cool thing he's been waiting for, he tells the dispatcher, "I think he'll be able to find me."
thing we know, Walt is Saul's office, trying to blend into the furniture as Saul finishes up a schmooze-heavy phone conversation with whoever's palm he had to grease to get Walt's car-burning charges bumped down to "Misdemeanor Trash-Burning." Of course, there are fines and penalties, to the tune of $52,000 (!!) -- all so Walt wouldn't have to drop $800 to the car dealership. This seems like a decent metaphor for how Walt has been conducting his life lately. Walt is unenthused by Saul's heroics; Saul thinks he deserves at least an "atta boy" for keeping the case out of the system (and thus keeping Skyler from finding out). But Walt is still bummed about the whole "Gus is going to kill me before I can kill him" thing. Oh, are we back on THAT again. Saul's like, "I thought Pinkman said he needs you too much." The "Pinkman says" part of that really bothers Walt, but he plows ahead to ask Saul about finding a "third party" to help him with his problem. Saul knows he means a hitman, to which he responds, "That's what the kids call epic fail." Oh, Saul. So hip. Walt just wants a phone number for a guy, but Saul's problem is that all the assassins he knows, he knows through Mike. And even if they go fishing out of network for someone, what are the odds that he'll be able to get past Mike to get the job done. I love the symmetry of Walt's two closest criminal cohorts deferring so much to Mike. That has REALLY got to bother Walt. Anyway, Saul's point is that merely "winging" Gus Fring isn't going to help anybody's situation. Walt is frustrated that he can't get near Gus himself. To which Saul's like, "Why don't you ask your partner about that last part?"
Cut to Jesse's house, where he's painting the walls back into non-horrifying shape (he's never gonna get the meth smell out of them, though). Walt is angry that Jesse told Saul about his talk with Gus before he told Walt. Okay, 1) Oh, after Walt was such a sweetheart to Jesse earlier?? But more importantly, 2) This is now two mentions of Jesse and Saul having conversations with Walt not present. Obviously, this is feeding into Walt's resentment, but it also makes you wonder what conversations may be happening that we're not privy too. Walt is interested in how close Jesse was able to get to Gus (answer: close enough). Jesse explains how it all went down, that Gus told him "I see things in people." Walt is again dismissive that this could possibly be true, and again, he's right, but he's an asshole. He again calls Jesse's current position at Mike's right hand into question, but this time he takes a slightly different angle: "Does he think you're that naïve?" Ah, reverse psychology. Gus can't think Jesse would possibly forget everything he's put Jesse though. He puts special emphasis on Jesse's "girlfriend" the sad fate of her little brother. (Oh, you mean the girlfriend that Walt didn't watch choke on her own vomit while he did nothing?) "The man looked you straight in the eye and told you no more children," Walt reminds him, "but that very night, that boy got killed." Gus can't possibly think Jesse is that "weak-willed." Again, reverse-psychology is a better tactic than Walt had been going with. But Jesse still sees right through it. He tells Walt to cut the sales pitch -- "I'll do it!" Do what, exactly? "I'll kill him. First chance I get."
Back at the car wash, Skyler is tallying up receipts, while Marie is criticizing the air-freshener scents ("Hemp? Really?) and making plans for a grand opening. She wants to throw a big ol' party to "let people know they won't have to face the eyebrows of doom when they come in." Heh. Skyler asks after Hank, and Marie says he's much-improved, especially in his disposition. The inadvertent reason for that rebound in mood, Walt, comes in with cases of soda on a dolly. He feigns friendliness, and Marie is happy to see him kiss Skyler on the cheek.
In the office, with Marie now gone, Walt starts unloading cash that had been hidden in the cases of soda. $274,000, "give or take." Skyler starts calculating ... $274,000 every two weeks ... $7.125 million a year? Walt, smugly: "Seven and a half even, before expenses." Walt revels in how much more it is than she expected, but as you probably expected, Skyler has logistical objections. To wit, no car wash does this well. Walt suggests she "save it for a rainy day." Okay, but where? Isn't finding a place to put all this money why they set up a money laundering op in the first place? Skyler also has a problem that the payments are in denominations of $50. Who pays for a car wash with a $50? Much less everybody? Walt doesn't want to hear about the problems of dealing with too MUCH money. Walt tells her this money laundering op -- and particularly this division of labor between them -- was her idea; it was what she wanted. Without anger, but quickly, Skyler responds, "I didn't want any of this." Oh right. She didn't. It's good to have these reminders -- perhaps for the benefit of the audience -- that Skyler is not some awful shrew out to ruin Walt's good time. She's trying to make sense of the fucked up circumstances Walt brought into her life.
America's Meth Kitchen. Walt is once again working solo, and the security camera is still following him. While he shows no signs of going off-routine, when he enters the break room -- outside the purview of the camera -- he suddenly re-applies his safety gear, goes to the toaster oven (!!), and pulls out a dish of perfectly cooked ricin. Also, of course we get a POV shot from inside the toaster oven, because before this show is finished, we'll have gotten a POV shot from every inanimate object in New Mexico.
Cut to Jesse, examining a vial of the ricin, incredulous that Walt could have made it in the lab. Walt thinks it's appropriate that he engineered the instrument of Gus's destruction right under his nose. Jesse doesn't think there's very much of it; there was more when they were planning to dose Tuco. Walt says it's no matter; it's enough to get the job done. As Walt says, Jesse can't go after Gus with a gun and live to tell the tale; with the ricin, he just slips it into Gus's drink, and 36 hours or so later, he'll drop dead, and everybody will figure it was a heart attack. "What about Mike?" Jesse asks. Suddenly, this question looms larger than it might have before. "Mike will have his suspicions," Walt allows, "but that's all they'll be." Jesse makes an "O RLY?" face, which annoys Walt. This inferiority complex between him and Mike does not bode well for him. "Please," he scoffs. "One homicidal maniac at a time." Jesse doesn't know when he'll see Gus again, if ever, but Walt just tells him to hold on to the ricin. "When you have the opportunity, be ready." To avoid a search, Jesse decides to put the ricin into a cigarette, which he then places upside down in his pack. "My lucky cigarette." Oh, like THAT isn't going to come back and bite somebody in the ass at the worst possible time. (Also, won't packing it in toasted tobacco affect the whole "tasteless, odorless" charm of the ricin?) Walt smirks: "Whatever you do, don't smoke it."
Hank struggles to emerge from the car in the Pollos parking lot. He's with Junior, and as he struggles his way across the lot, he jokes that they make "quite a pair." Junior says they could do drive-thru, but Hank is determined. This is not self-hating Hank from earlier this season; this is road-to-recovery Hank. Inside, Junior is explaining his pimped out Challenger, and Hank is beyond incredulous that Walt would have made such a purchase. But his incredulity fades after Junior explains that he had to give it back; chalking it up to a misguided impulse on Walt and Skyler's part to please their only son. Hank gives Junior a lesson: if he'd have gone for the used car, he'd still have it. Yeah, maybe Walt could've used that same advice. Suddenly, Gus approaches their table and greets Hank warmly. In the future, he says, a DEA hero like Hank eats for free. He asks after Junior's parents (as we all gulp at home) and offers him part-time work should he ever want it. Ohhhh, that could get messy down the road. Gus then offers Hank and Junior a refill, and Hank says he'll take a Diet Coke. Gus fills him up -- and we get a POV shot of the soda machine, I SWEAR TO GOD. Later, out at the car, Hank dumps out the Diet Coke and, out of Junior's sight, puts the beverage cup into an evidence bag.
After the break, Mike is driving, with Jesse in the passenger seat, a veggie snack platter on his lap. Today's going to be a busy day, Mike says, and his only instructions to Jesse are to keep his eyes open and mouth shut. They arrive at Gus's managerial outpost -- the chicken farm with the administrative trailer where Gus held the summit that took Jesse to task last year. This year, Jesse's on the team; or at least he's holding the snacks. Gus looks very serious, anticipating the upcoming summit with the Mexican cartel. Mike tasks Jesse with making coffee, which Jesse immediately recognizes as a prime opportunity to use his ricin dose. But he's interrupted by Mike, who hands Jesse a gun. Trust! Responsibility! Mentorship! Obviously, this means Jesse will keep the ricin to himself for now.
Gus has set up at least five chairs for the cartel delegation, but they only send one guy. They sit down to deal. Gus offers a one-time payment of $50 million, in return for the cartel leaving him the fuck alone; "an absolute severance." SpokesMexican says he speaks for his "employers" when he says, "You know what the cartel wants." (Um...do we? Do they want Heisenberg?) "Anything else would be a waste of time." So the question is put to Gus: yes or no? Gus is like, "This is no way to begin a negotiation." SpokesMexican: "This is not a negotiation." Well!
Outside the trailer, we see SpokesMexican leave, and if there was a resolution reached with Gus, we don't see it. They stare each other down for a moment before SpokesMexican leaves. With Gus not ten feet away from him now, Jesse reaches into his pocket for the gun Mike gave him, but he doesn't do anything with it. Because he wouldn't want Mike's trust in him to have been misplaced? That's what I'm going with.
In the car, Mike tells Jesse to put the gun in the glove box. He says he'd better teach Jesse how to shoot; "could be things are gonna get hairy." Jesse finally asks WTF is going on here -- is Jesse part of the team or something? Then, about Gus: "He said he sees something in me? Like what?" Mike suggests the answer is "loyalty ... only maybe you got it for the wrong guy."
After the break, Jesse is sitting on a stoop, fondling his cigarettes. Turns out, he's at the church where his old NA support group meets. And here's our old pal Jere Burns, who is pretty thrilled to see Jesse there. He invites him in, which you have to figure was what noncommittal Jesse was angling for.
Jere's talking point on this night is that we need to own our actions, but not act as our own judge/jury/executioner. Let the past go, or you're bound to relapse. Jere focuses on Jesse, who admits that he went back to crystal. Jere wants him to focus on the fact that he's sober now. "Four days," Jesse deadpans. "Big whoop, right?" After some small talk about how working at the laundry "sucks ass," Jere asks if he's got anything he's like to talk about. In fact, he does. He says a couple weeks back, he killed a dog. Ah, so that's how we're going to be talking about it. Jesse says he "put him down." Looked him straight in the eye; he didn't know what was happening, didn't know why, he was just scared. This red-haired older lady tries to help ease Jesse's obvious torment: he was suffering, it was a kindness. But Jesse's not interested in letting himself off the hook. The dog wasn't sick, he says, he was "a problem dog."
Well now the red-haired old wants to know the deal. "Did he bite someone?" Nope. This biker guys is like, "But you were back on the rock -- anything can happen then." No rock. And now this group designed to support each other through their worst actions WILL turn on Jesse, because in America, dogs matter SO much more than people. Legal implications aside, Jesse would probably have been better off just admitting he killed a man. Red-Haired Old Lady gets aghast and huffy, and even though Jere tries to get her to back off, she goes on the attack. "Who cares how you feel?" she says, railing against Jesse for killing a helpless, innocent animal. She's right, of course, when applied to Gale. (Hell, she's probably right when it comes to this hypothetical dog too. But no drug-addicted bitch shames Jesse Pinkman like this when I'm around!) Jesse says maybe she's right -- he should've done something different. "If you just do stuff, and nothing happens, what's it all mean?" He's talking consequences. "Kicking the hell out of yourself doesn't give meaning to anything," Jere says, evenly. They're talking about two different things, of course. Consequence and judgment. Responsibility and guilt. Jesse's clenching so hard, but it's not going to keep him from crying. "So I should stop judging and accept?" he starts yelling. "So no matter what I do, hooray from me because I'm a great guy?" Clearly Jesse's not ready to accept that. He's not forgiving himself any time soon, and he's not going to stop this particular tirade until Jere stops being so goddamned nice to him. "You back your truck over your own kid, and you, like, accept? What a load of crap!" Jere tries to make allowances for the way Jesse is struggling right now, so Jesse goes for the self-incriminating jugular: he confesses to dealing meth at the meetings. Jere is finally out of words. "I made you my bitch!" Jesse says. "You okay with that? You accept?" Jerry, quietly: "No." So, you know, congratulations, Jesse?
America's Meth Kitchen. Walt and Jesse are cleaning up from the latest cook. Walt asks for a hand within the tank, and when their heads are both submerged in the tank, Walt asks for a progress report on the whole "murder Gus" mission. Jesse lies that he hasn't seen him. They go back to cleaning, but Walt's got a distrustful look on his face.
At the DEA offices, Hank and Marie arrive and warmly greet Agent Gomez, Hank's old partner. Hank, tellingly, is taking great pains to walk with the aid of merely a cane, not the rolly-walker he had earlier. He's profane and jocular with Gomez as usual -- working overtime to appear as the same old Hank. Back in a conference room, Hank and Gomez are met by Agent Merkert, who is effusive about Hank's road to recovery. Hank congratulates Gomie on his promotion, but soon it's time to get down to business. He presents the Gale Boetticher case to the two men, stressing the fact that this "nerd's nerd" is also a world-class meth cook. Connects Gale to the blue meth and says he thinks he's Heisenberg's cook (thanks, Walt!). He shows them the Pollos wrapper, and says he tracked down the number scrawled on it and connected it to the product number for an industrial-strength air-filtration system that costs about 300 grand. He tracked the system down and learned it was delivered to Gale, but no record of payment. Still digging, he found that the manufacturing concern that made the system, Madrigal Electromotive, is highly diversified, and one of those diverse holdings is a humble local restaurant chain: Los Pollos Hermanos. Now he mentions the incongruity of finding a fast-food wrapper at the vegan nerd's house. What if, instead of a meal, Gale was there for a meeting? Hank finally arrives at his hypothesis -- he points to a photo on the wall of this very conference room: Agent Merkert shaking hands with one Gustavo Fring. Awfully convenient theatrics, Hank, but I like it.
Hank asks: what do they really know of Gus? He's got the money to run a meth business of Heisenberg's size; maybe he's got the connections too? The friend-of-law-enforcement thing is a good cover, after all. Merkert thinks he's really reaching, and Gomez is like, if the meeting was at KFC, you wouldn't suspect Col. Sanders, right? Then Hank does this hilarious Columbo thing, where he's like, "I guess you're right. What was I thinking? ...Only, one more thing -- why are Gustavo Fring's prints found in Gale's crime-scene apartment?" BOOM. Y'all just got HANKED!
Joe R would watch a show where Colonel Sanders runs a drug ring. He can be reached for lavish praise and nothing but at joseph.reid21@gmail.com.
It's Tubey Time! Make sure that your favorite shows, actors, reality stars and characters get the recognition they deserve by voting in our annual Tubey awards. It's where fans have total control over what rates as the best and worst of the past year in a variety of categories. Vote now!