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Okay, so first thing's first: we open the fifth season with what is apparently a flash-forward, to Walt -- who's sporting hair, hipster glasses, a fake New Hampshire ID and fake name, and the telltale cough of someone whose lung cancer has maybe come back -- purchasing a no-fucking-kidding automatic rifle. So things are going well in the future!
Back in the present, we pick up right after Walt and Skyler's phone call, where Walt declared that he won. Skyler and the kids return home, though she is rightly scared as shit at what her husband is now capable of. Walt has bigger fish to fry, however, when he realizes (at about the same time that Hank discovers at the scene of the burned-down America's Meth Kitchen) that Gus's ever-present security cameras were obviously feeding to somewhere and, knowing Gus, he kept a record. So Walt and Jesse race out towards Mexico to find Mike, while at the same time Mike gets the news of Gus's demise and hauls ass to New Mexico. They meet in the middle and forge a HELLA-tenuous alliance to retrieve/destroy the hard drive that is, by now, in police evidence. Delightfully, it's Jesse's idea to use magnets that ends up being the winner, and it all adds up to Walter White taking the step to comic-book villainy by using a giant junkyard-sized magnet to destroy the laptop from outside the evidence building. Of course, the damage the magnet causes to the evidence room also leads the cops to Caribbean bank account numbers Gus kept hidden behind a photo of him and his Pollo Hermano, but otherwise a rather successful venture. Wait until week when he gets his hands on that weather machine!
In other news, Saul pays Skyler a visit to let her know that Ted Beneke is awake and in the hospital, after last season's attack. Skyler is horrified at the turn of events that she's ultimately responsible for, and when she goes to visit Ted at the hospital -- where he's wearing one of those halo-collar things like that one guy in Office Space -- he is petrified of her. Ted promises Skyler he won't say anything about anything and begs her to spare him and his family. Skyler sees him looking at her the way she was looking at Walt earlier and, while freaked out at what she's become, says the only thing she can think of: "Good."
Walt pays Saul a visit, and Saul is suuuuper eager to sever his ties now that he feels he has an opening. But, see, Walt is pretty much in charge now. And he makes sure Saul knows, in no uncertain terms, that he stops working for Walt when Walt says. Then he heads home to Skyler, lets her know he knows what happened to Ted, wraps her up in the creepiest, most predatory hug of all time, and tells her he forgives her. Welcome to the home stretch, you guys. Walt is TERRIFYING.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously: Walt took it to Gus Fring but good, not only blowing him to kingdom come but burning his entire superlab to the ground. R.I.P. America's Meth Kitchen. We also saw how far he would go to attain dominance, specifically poisoning young Brock in order to turn Jesse against Gus. Hell of a guy, that Walt!
We open the new season, as we have many a Breaking Bad season, in an unfamiliar environment, not sure of where we are in time and space. Disorient me, Vince Gilligan! Lay me down right here and disorient me! We're at what turns out to be a Denny's, where Walter White sits alone at the counter, not eating his eggs and bacon and hash browns (does that count as a Grand Slam? I was given to understand that a Grand Slam included a pancake). A word about Walt's appearance: he's got hair on his head, for one. He looks scraggly and unshaven. He's wearing some oversized hipster glasses. He's changed. Of course, he's still paranoid and grumpy, those things have not changed. He breaks up his bacon and fashions the number 52 out of the pieces, laying them over the eggs and hash browns. He tells the chatty waitress that it's his birthday. [Note: An eagle-eyed forum member also pointed out that it was his 50th birthday in the pilot episode. This time around, though, Walt gets real bacon instead of imposter veggie bacon. He's also not wearing his wedding ring! -- Rachel.] She tells him birthday celebrants eat free, but he brushes her off. She's all, "Really? Because free is good. Even if I was rich, free is always good." He's convinced, and he reluctantly shows her his ID -- a New Hampshire ID, in fact. White the waitress chats on about New England, Walt clocks a man who enters the diner and heads right for the restroom. Walt waits the appropriate amount of time before following him in.
Hey there, Jim Beaver, patron saint and frequent guest star of critically-acclaimed male-driven cable dramas! Last we saw Jim, he was selling Walt the titular .38 snub in last season's second episode. Looks like there's another arms deal happening, as the two men stare straight ahead at the washroom sinks as Walt slides Lawson an envelope of cash and Lawson wants assurances that Walt won't get caught taking it across the border. Walt assures him it's never leaving town, and after Lawson tells him he printed out some instructions on how to operate "it," he hurriedly takes off. Alone, Walt stifles a cough (red flag) and then pulls out a bottle of pills and takes one (RED FLAG). So ... is his cancer back? That's certainly the impression we're meant to have.
Back in the dining room, Walt leaves a $100 tip under the plate of his uneaten breakfast and heads outside, as Chatty Lucy the waitress tells "Mr. Lambert" to have a good day. In the parking lot, Walt (still coughing some) takes a bag out of the trunk of a New Hampshire Volvo (license plate motto: "Live Free or Die") and heads down to the car waiting for him. A car with a nasty-looking semi-automatic rifle (an M62, in case you're into that sort of thing) in the trunk. So. Shit's gotten REAL.
After the credits, we're back to the end of last season, and we get to again experience that phone call where Walt confirms to Skyler that he went all The One Who Knocks on the old folks home. Or in his words, "I won."
Walt then returns to his darkened home and performs a hard clean on the kitchen that even The Hairpin would admire. This becomes necessary when your home is littered with the evidence of bomb-making. Walt bags everything incriminating and takes the bag out to his trunk. Then he prepares a drink but remembers one last thing: into the trash bag goes that lily of the valley, so I guess we can rule out Jesse spotting it while having a hang in Walt's backyard.
Skyler and the kids return and Walter Jr. (I guess I'm giving up the ghost on "Flynn" since everybody else has) is talking a mile a minute about the events on the news and how Uncle Hank is going to be a hero now. Has there ever been a more purely likeable total annoyance than Walter Jr.? I'm gonna say no. Skyler, meanwhile -- and get ready for a haircut on her in the episode or so, because it is Wig City for Anna Gunn right now -- brushes past the boys with barely a word for Walt. After nodding his way through Junior's enthusiastics for a bit more, Walt joins Skyler and baby Holly in the bedroom. He gingerly asks her what's with the cold shoulder, like he doesn't already know. Isn't she happy he's alive? That they all are? "I am relieved, Walt," she says, still kind of crying. "And scared." Walt foolishly asks what she's scared of, again like he doesn't know. "You," she says. Obviously. She walks out, not too scared to leave Walt with the baby, and he coos to her while looking at his demon face in the mirror and raising a glass to his own perverted accomplishment.
After Walt relaxes for three whole second, he suddenly realizes something, and with an "oh, shit!" he sets out to extinguish whatever the fire is. Speaking of, cut to Hank, in full haz-mat gear, descending into the fire-gutted shell of what used to be America's Meth Kitchen. As we hear the snap-whiiiiine of Gomez's camera as he documents every inch of the place, Hank limps along with his cane (but getting around pretty well, considering), marveling at the size of the place. Gomie implores Hank to just say "I told you so" already ("before you need, like, dialysis or something"), but Hank is too busy being wide-eyed about how closely this matches the drawings he found in Gale's (R.I.P.) notebooks. Gomie also notes that the two bodies they found were not identifiable, as "apparently the teeth do this popcorn thing when it gets too hot." This show has taught me SO much. So no evidence. Hank seems almost impressed. Suddenly, he points his flashlight upwards and spots the stump of what Hank theorizes is a camera. So ... that's something.
Reliably, the screen gets nice and amber so that we know we're going to Mexico. (Also the free-roaming chickens on a dirt road, is kind of a giveaway.) Feeding those chickens, in his pajamas, is Mike. Mike! Nearly forgot about you in all the hubbub of last year's finale. He's up and walking, so that gunshot wound appears to be healing nicely. He also appears to have named the chickens, and has taken particular -- if gruff -- interest in the welfare of "Wendell." Never leave us again, Mike. Mike gets the news from his caretaker: Gustavo is dead. Cut to Mike speeding across the desert to get back to the States. Halfway there, he sees another car, coming directly his way, and after an old-fashioned game of chicken, both cars skid out of each other's way. And of course it's Walt -- and Jesse! -- in the other car, because both sides have realized the same thing at the same time: they're fucked. Mike is taking the position that Walt fucked up and has no idea what he's gotten himself into, taking Gus out. In fact, he's so certain of his position that he pulls out his gun in hopes of ending Walt once and for all. But Jesse -- sweet Jesse, object of Mike's paternal affections -- stands in between his two mentors and begs Mike to listen to them. "What is it with you guys?" Mike asks, hopelessly. Meanwhile, Walt is smug as fuck with Mike, knowing Jesse won't let him get shot. Walt says they all have bigger fish to fry. Namely, the video feed. Mike says it led to a laptop in Gus's office at Pollos. Jesse underlines the point that if the cops get to it -- and in a moment, we see Hank and the DEA claim and tag said laptop, so yeah, they got it -- all three of them will go down. Mike is pained, physically and emotionally, and he holds out his hand. Walt doesn't know how to respond. "Keys, scumbag," Mike growls. "This is the universal symbol for throw me your keys." I see little cartoon hearts around Mike's head as the three men make their uncomfortable drive home.
Back at Jesse's house, Mike is on the phone posing as a cop, finagling the info that the laptop is indeed in evidence. He concludes that "we're boned" and thus heads out. "You know how they say it's been a pleasure? It hasn't." Walt's all, "Not so fast," and wants Mike to tell him exactly where the laptop is being held and what the building is like. Mike scoffs at Walt's hubris -- he thinks he's going to be able to break into this evidence locker and steal this thing? They've built these rooms like bank vaults, only with 24/7 police guard, for the expressed purpose of keeping degenerates like Walt from breaking in. Jesse asks Mike to give Walt a chance -- "He's good with this kind of thing." Besides, Walt says he's not thinking of getting the laptop out. After all, they just need to destroy what's ON it. Mike thinks he's talking about another bomb -- he already hit a nursing home, after all; what's a police station after that? While Walt and Mike argue over the semantics between a "small incendiary device" and a bomb, Jesse keeps trying to pipe in: "What about a magnet, yo?" He's the adorablest, I swear. Finally, on his third try, he hollers: "MAGNET, YO!" He follows that up by pantomiming a metal object being sucked into a magnet. I'm seriously so glad Jesse Pinkman is back in my life. (P.S. I basically only ask people for GIFs these days, but seriously, if you can make me a GIF if Jesse doing the magnet dance, I would be so grateful.) [Note: For y'all.]
To the junkyard! Walt, Mike, and Jesse are meeting with Old Joe, who we last saw back in Season 3 when Hank had Walt and Jesse cornered in the RV, and who is played by supreme Hey! It's That Guy! Larry Hankin, who's been everyone from Fake Kramer on Seinfeld to Mr. Heckles on Friends to the police officer who incredulously asks a frantic Catherine O'Hara, "You want us to go to your house ... just to check on him?" in Home Alone. The men observe the giant crane with the giant magnet move a regular-sized car across the lot and haggle about how much it would be worth it to Old Joe to let them take it off his hands. Walt first wants to know if it's "feasible." Old Joe takes a minute, then muses, "We're living in a time of string theories and god particles," (TIMELY!) so who knows what is and isn't feasible. The idea is to place it in a U-Haul-type truck, drive it up to the evidence facility, and ... you know, let it magnet things. Joe invites the men to step into his office to talk money. Walt kind of quietly pulls Jesse aside and says he doesn't exactly have money right now ("My wife...it's an IRS issue"), so Jesse spots Walt his share. Now Mike REALLY doesn't get Jesse's insane loyalty to this man. He once again takes the opportunity to tell Jesse to take that money and skip town. Jesse makes sure Mike knows that this is a three-man job, and they can't do it without him. Mike is dubious as fuck, but you know he won't leave Jesse.
In her office at the car wash, Skyler is reading up on the Gus Fring story online when Saul stops by. She actually says, "Ugh" when she sees him. Obviously, she had told him before never to meet her here at work. He had to, of course, because ... the police may call. Saul then gingerly broaches the subject of Ted Beneke. And in the history of the universe, nothing good has ever come from a conversation with OR about Ted Beneke. Saul tells Skyler that her example, should the cops come calling is Sergeant Schultz from Hogan's Heroes: she knows nothing, she sees nothing. Why? Well, because there was an "incident," an "act of God," with Ted. Basically, "we've got a problem." Skyler jumps to the conclusion that Ted's dead, baby. Ted's dead. That's okay, Skyler, the audience was led to believe the same thing. But he's not dead. In fact, he just woke up.
Back to the junkyard, where the gang has piled a fuckload of batteries into the back of the U-Haul to power the giant magnet. Old Joe is being quite thorough in making sure the guys don't have anything metal on them that could be ripped from their person. Watches, necklaces, earrings, rings. He asks Jesse specifically if he's got a cock ring to remove. I'll check preserve my dignity, thanks. Oh, what about credit cards, Joe asks. They wouldn't want to have those out of commission when Miller Time comes later. Mike finally pipes up and says he can see a lot of outcomes of what they're about to try, but none of them involve "Miller Time." Positive mental attitude, says Old Joe! When it comes time to test, Jesse grabs a dummy Dell (which apparently was just lying around) and stands 40 feet from the side of truck. Old Joe hands Walt this GIANT dial, and Walt turns the magnet on and pushes the dial up. The magnet clamps to the inside wall of truck, pushing the truck to the side a bit. Jesse reports that the laptop still functioning fine, though, so Walt tells him to start walking towards truck slowly. After a couple steps, the screen pixels out before shutting the computer down entirely. "Yeah!" Jesse yells, "That did it!" Suddenly, Dell goes FLYING out of Jesse's hands and smashes into the side of the truck. Jesse waits a bit, then: "YEAH, BITCH! MAGNETS!" Walt turns to Joe and asks if he can take the 21 car batteries they used for this test and add 21 more. Just to be safe. Mike, never one to let Walt have a moment, muses that if everything goes flying in that evidence room, it will make a lot of noise. There goes the element of surprise. Walt says no matter; after 60 seconds, they'll be gone anyway.
Skyler gets off the elevator in the hospital, looking scared as shit. She makes her way to Ted's room and kind of peeks inside and asks the nurse if it's not a good time. Oh, it's a wonderful time to see Ted, head-shaved, in an elaborate halo collar, looking like maybe he can't speak or think. Skyler's voice breaks up as she says, "Hey Ted." Turns out, he can hear and speak and think just fine. And he's as scared of Skyler as she is of him. As she tries to stammer out some kind of an apology, he assures her that he knows what happened was an "accident" and the he's said nothing to anyone and will say nothing to anyone ever. He's got children, a family; he doesn't want any more trouble. Skyler sees how he sees her and it freaks her out, maybe more than Walt did earlier. "I will never breathe one word of this" he says.
What can Skyler even say to that? She can try to set the record straight, even though given everything that's happened, Ted is very right to be afraid of her. Tell him she's has a change of ruthless heart? What good does that do, anyone? She says the only thing that she can say right now: "Good."
Certain Breaking Bad episodes can come heavily on the thematics, but this one hits it just right, I think. It's clear that much of this episode is about how we see our own power reflected in other people. Walt sees how Skyler is afraid of him. Skyler sees that same fear (if not worse) reflected in Ted. Jesse, at least to me, seems aware of the power he has over Mike -- that if he asks him to, Mike will stick around. Not in a malevolent way, but Jesse still knows it. It's a nice way to tie the storylines together.
That night, at the police evidence compound, Mike wearily sets about his tasks: spraying over the security cameras and hot-wiring the gate open. He signals Walt and Jesse in the U-Haul, who make their approach. They drive up to the exterior wall they need, but the curb and the carport canopy make for an awkward fit. They're a good few feet from the wall. No matter, Walt turns the dial on and starts the magnet. Inside, a cute bald cop is entering data when his computer screen fritzes out. Inside the evidence room, a telltale paper clip slides off a desk. One by one, the metal objects in the room start moving. Pretty soon, it's everything that's sliding, tipping, and crashing over. Jesse is antsy to leave, lest they get caught (he still calls Walt "Mr. White" which I find so adorable and sad). Walt is relentless, though, and he cranks the dial up as high as it can go. Inside the evidence room, everything metal is stuck to the wall in a circle. Outside, the force of the magnet is so strong that it tilts the U-Haul over. Jesse hollers as Walt struggles to turn the magnet off; inside, the cops assemble, assess the damage inside the locker, then rush outside to find the culprits. But by the time they do, the U-Haul is empty and Walt and Jesse are long gone.
Cut to the getaway car, where Jesse is so exuberant he's hopping around in his seat. Mike tells him to slow his roll -- how is this worth celebrating when they left the truck and magnet behind? Walt blithely says he made sure there is absolutely no trail to the truck, the magnet, anything. It's all untraceable scrap. Mike scoffs that Walt thinks he's got all the answers, but in this case ... he kinds does. Walt assures Mike that his cartoon-villain plan to foil the police with giant magnets worked. Mike's like, "How do we know?" Walt: "Because I say so." Walt sits in the back, supremely confident in his own master criminality.
After a nice time-lapse shot of industrial Albuquerque, we cut back to the police getting about the sure-to-be tedious task of inspecting each piece of evidence for damage and then re-bagging it. Read a number; clock the damage; photograph it. Over and over. They get to the evidence from the Gustavo Fring case. The telltale laptop is cracked, the glass display screen is shattered, and I don't have a ton of hope for the data on the hard drive. item: a framed photograph and his dearly departed Pollo Hermano. You guys, it still makes me sad. Now they're both dead. And hopefully in Gay Meth Entrepreneurs Heaven (they should have a LOT of space to stretch out). The glass on the frame is broken and the photo has slid slightly out of frame. The inspecting officer finds something behind the photo not originally on the manifest: a piece of paper with what look to be foreign bank account numbers on them. New wrinkle!
The offices of "Better Call Saul!" Walt is meeting with his trusty attorney in order to figure out what to do about this whole "Skyler gave my money to Ted Beneke to keep the IRS away" scenario, and Saul is trying very hard (not that hard) to keep from saying he told Walt so. He throws some shade Skyler's way, saying he told her, "Let's involve Walt in this discussion," but she wouldn't go for it -- though he does add that Skyler was really trying to protect Walt. All this time, Walt sits in silent, intense judgment of Saul and his current situation. When he finally does speak -- slowly, deliberately, darkly -- he takes issue with the "Let's involve Walt in this discussion" part. That was all the fight he put up? He didn't think to call Walt about it anyway? Saul reminds Walt that he was "a tad preoccupied at the time," which, as I recall, was when Walt was busy getting into fistfights with Jesse, then returning home to drunkenly bare his soul to Junior. "So," Walt continues, just as darkly, just as evenly, "you took it upon yourself to give away $622,000 of my money to a man who had been sleeping with my wife." Saul tries to explain that both Walt and Skyler are his clients, as he does his best to serve them, despite the fact that there are obstacles, here and there, "ethically." Walt nearly snorts at that last word. "You're not Clarence Darrow, Saul," he says. "You're a two-bit bus-bench lawyer. And you work for me."
Saul, to his credit, sacks up and reminds Walt that Clarence Darrow never had a client ask him to lift a ricin cigarette off of anybody. He produces the incriminating object in a Ziploc baggie. You'll recall the widespread speculation after last season's reveal that it was Saul's goon Huell who lifted the ricin off of Jesse's person while he was frisking him, and Saul all but confirms that here, saying that Huell's "hot dog fingers" could have easily slipped and caused a whole lot of damage. The bottom line, for Saul, is that it's been a hazardous line of work, being in the Walter White business. He never signed on to be an accessory to poisoning a kid. He tells Walt to take the ricin and get the hell out. They're finished, professionally. You can't blame Saul here. Up until now, the dynamic with Walt has been such that Saul at least held some cards. Hard to blame him for not realizing he's holding nothing now. Walt gets up without a word, walks around to Saul's side of the desk and menaces him back to one of the pillars in his hilarious oval office. "We're done," Walt says, "when I say we're done." Saul can't even look him in the face. So that's another client retaining Saul's services through intimidation. Who could have expected being a drug lawyer would lead to this?
Walt returns home, to a place that seems more shadows than it's ever been before, and makes his way to the bedroom, where Skyler is folding laundry. She's still stiff when she sees him. Still not able to relax. He steadily approaches her, not with the same menace he approached Saul in the scene, but not NOT that same menace either. He tells her that he heard about Ted, and her immediately reaction is to say Ted promised not to talk. She's either scared of Walt being angry at her or Walt taking action against Ted, and probably both. Walt just looks at her, places his hands on her arms, and pulls her into the least loving, most power-playing hug of all time, before whispering to her, "I forgive you." It is CHILLING!
Joe R wants everybody to be very judicious with the "YEAH, BITCH! MAGNETS!" thing over the few weeks. He can be reached for lavish praise and nothing but at joseph.reid21@gmail.com.