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It doesn't take much convincing for Walt to get Jesse onboard with starting the business up again. He realizes he also needs Mike for the distribution/security arm of this new business, but despite a rather contrite Walt and Jesse asking him nicely (and offering to make him an ownership partner), he turns them down.
Meanwhile, the Gus Fring fallout is reaching far and wide, all the way up the chain to Pollos Hermanos corporate parent Madrigal (we see one of the Madrigal executives commit suicide rather than answer drug-enforcement questions). Back in the states, this translates to the DEA hauling in all the Pollos-connected people they can for questioning. Enter Lydia, a heretofore unseen member of Gus's power structure who sits on the Madrigal board, who approaches Mike scared to shit that a chain of eleven men whose snitching could bring the whole house of cards down. She wants Mike to take them out, but he tells her, in no uncertain terms, that they're his people, and they've been chosen because they won't snitch. Of course, the heat's really getting turned up -- Hank and Gomie haul Mike in for questioning, and despite his stone façade, they really rock him with news that they found out about the offshore account Gus kept in Mike's granddaughter's name. He then finds that Lydia has begun the process of taking out the eleven herself, which means Mike has to go kill HER, which he almost does. But in her frantic concern for her daughter, Mike sees his own desire to protect little Kaylee, so instead he decides to strike up a deal -- with her, but more importantly with Walt -- to re-start the flow of meth through the Albuquerque streets.
Oh, and Skyler White seems pretty depressed, barely getting out of bed and not speaking a word to Walt. Which makes it all the more terrifying when Walt ends the day in bed with her, willfully ignoring her despair and instead kissing up on her and caressing her and ... I don't even want to think about it, you guys.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!As has become the custom on this show, we kick things off in a place we've never been before. In this case, it's an industrial food-testing lab in (from the sounds of it) Germany. Bright lights, cold surfaces, gleaming white countertops matching the white coats worn by a team of food scientists testing out a line of fancy new condiments on a solitary, suit-wearing subject. Whoever this guy is, he's not feeling it. He plows through each dipping sauce without enthusiasm -- despite the fact that there is a combination French/Ranch dressing that leaves me verrrry intrigued (and I could listen to that researcher say "Franch" all day -- grabbing a new tater tot before the lead researcher can even describe the sauce, before just pushing the sauces aside and digging into the bowl of tots, sauce-less. What a joyless taste-testing this turned out to be!
This executive, Mr. Schuler, gets word that "they" are here and waiting to meet with him. As he heads out of the lab, we see we're at Madrigal Elektromotoren, some kind of conglomerate, in its fast-food division, where at the moment, the Los Pollos Hermanos sign is being taken down from the gallery of chain logos. Schuler joylessly, lifelessly trudges past a room filled with law-enforcement agents. Inside, one of them is staring at the same photograph we saw in the cracked frame last week, of Schuler and Gus Fring side-by-side on a golf course. (In last week's recap, I mistook Schuler for Max, Gus's late partner in chicken and meth distribution.) Schuler bypasses the room and instead takes a portable shock-paddle resuscitation kit off the wall and heads for the bathroom. Between the German and the dread and the institutional setting, this is all starting to feel like the lost Hostel TV adaptation, and indeed, once in the bathroom, Schuler ignores his secretary's knocks from the outside (the agents are QUITE insistent on speaking with him), places one receptor from the kit on his chest and the other, just the wire, into his mouth. Then he charges the machine and waits a moment before the shock kills him on site. This show being what it is, Schuler falls off the toilet, which proceeds to automatically flush. The machinery of the world will always churn on, even (especially) after the wicked men who profit from it meet their end.
Credits & Elements.
After the credits, we're treated to another visually-arresting scene that manages to serve both economical storytelling and artistic television. It's also, like much of last week's episode, a bit of narrative house-cleaning from last season's finale. Since it was discovered that Brock has been poisoned by Lily of the Valley and not ricin, Jesse has become obsessed with what actually DID happen to that ricin dose that disappeared from his cigarette pack. Of course, he has no idea that Walt (via Saul ... well, more specifically Huell) lifted it off him, and Walt's obviously not about to tell the truth about that. Walt tries to convince him that it fell out in the lab and it burned up in the blaze, but Jesse is crazed at the idea that it fell out of his pocket at some point and could still cause major damage. Another little one could find it and it'd be all his fault. The guilt this kid is willing to put on his shoulders.
Anyway, so what we see is Walt constructing a fake ricin dose out of table salt and placing it inside another cigarette, to match the original (which Walt has in a plastic baggie from Saul last week). He then takes the original cigarette, removes the vial of actual ricin, tapes it to the inside of an electrical socket plate in what appears to be his bedroom, and screws it back into the wall. So let's all tip our hats to Anton Chekhov and wait for that nasty little surprise to re-assert itself in the narrative down the road. [Note: And he flushes the original, now-ricin-free cigarette down the toilet, thus getting a sewage alligator hooked on smoking. The nerve. -- Rachel.]
, it's off to Jesse's house, where he and Walt montage the fuck out of a top-to-bottom search for this wayward cigarette. Like... inside the stuffing of pillows. I don't even know, you guys. Tip of the hat to Walt for the patience to go through with such a meticulous charade, just so he can, at the end of a long afternoon, point to the whirring, crawling Roomba and suggest that Jesse see if maybe it picked up the cigarette they're looking for.
Surprise, surprise, it does, and when Jesse finally has the thing in his hand, he completely breaks down. The fear, the guilt, the relief, it's all pouring out of him. Mostly the guilt. His own carelessness could well have been the cause of Brock's near-death, even if it wasn't. Whatever relief he might have felt last season when he learned it wasn't ricin poisoning is gone again. It might as well have been. And on top of that, he nearly killed Walt over his jumping to conclusions. Of course, WE know better. We know his conclusions were 100 percent correct. And now Jesse's CRYING? And feeling SAD? And Walt's trying to make him feel better by saying how they "have each other's back"?? Hold me back, you guys, because I am about ready to tear Walter White's throat out of his body. Look what you're doing to Jesse, you MONSTER!
So the part about having each other's backs (why I oughta...), says Walt, is something they should keep in mind, "as we go forward." Jesse's head kind of perks up at that, pulling him out of his shame spiral for the moment. What exactly does Mr. White mean by that? See, Jesse, lacking the self-awareness that he's on a TV show, doesn't realize there are still 15 episodes to go and thus re-starting the meth business is pretty much a foregone conclusion. He's still under the impression that "getting out with our lives" is a possibility.
Cut to Mike's home, with the telltale "drawing by granddaughter posted on a fridge full of beer" accoutrements. In my favorite attention-to-detail touch of the week, Mike retrieves a bottle of beer AND an Ensure from the fridge as he settles in to watch ... I'm going to say The Caine Mutiny, but I can't swear to it. File that one away for thematic resonance, if that's the case. [Note: Turns out Vince Gilligan is a fan.]
Ideally, Mike would be left alone to drink and tube and grimace at his still-healing chest wound, but he gets a knock at the door from Walt and Jesse, which he answers grumpily but without specific objection. Walt's there to offer a brand new three-way partnership in order to start up the meth business anew. After all, he says, there's a market for their product out there. It's been coming to this for a long time, but we're finally, officially at the point where Walt's "I have to" justifications for remaining in the business have all disintegrated and he's finally just saying "there's gold in these streets, and I plan on getting the biggest cut of it I can." He tells Mike that he and Jesse have the cooking aspect of it down, but they need Mike for things like distribution, support, and logistics. For one thing, they need a steady supply of "precursor" to get started again. He allows that the profits will be smaller at first, but each one of them will be getting a larger cut now, as owners. Mike doesn't hesitate much before delivering a "Thanks but no thanks" to Walt. Unlike last week, when Jesse (in my opinion) used the sway he has with Mike to get him to comply, he stays silent. Instead, Walt makes a dispassionate plea for putting personal differences aside and making a smart business decision. But Mike plainly says that Walt is trouble. "The kid here doesn't see it," he says, but he knows Walt is a time bomb, "tick-tick-ticking," and he has no intention of being around when he goes off. Walt, again swallowing whatever annoyance of frustration he's feeling, says to sleep on it, maybe reconsider in the morning. This is all shades of Gus after he made Walt the offer to join the Pollos team. He holds his hand out to Mike, who -- eventually, reluctantly -- shakes it.
On the other side of town -- and the law -- Hank and Gomez arrive at the federal building for what turns out to be a meeting with the corporate heads of Madrigal, who all flew in from Germany on their G-5 jets. (Hank: "Are those the ones where the wings go up [on the ends]?") The man who appears to be the Madrigal CEO talks to the Feds about how the recently departed Schuler ran their restaurant division. Despite the instructions of his attorney, the CEO isn't shy about condemning Schuler's actions, as they were harmful to Madrigal at large. At this, a mouse-faced, dark-haired woman looks down the table with concern. The CEO is confident that Schuler's actions were isolated, but if they turn out not to be, he will welcome the Feds finding that out for him. He pledges Madrigal's full cooperation and transparency.
Later, Hank and Gomie share a whiskey with Supervisor Merkert, who is being ushered into retirement, as unofficial punishment for not rooting out the Fring meth empire before it (literally) blew up on them. He tells Hank that he should have listened to him all along, though Hank brushes off any kind of mea culpa. After a little talk about the evidence room break-in last week, Merkert begins to muse about Gus Fring, and specifically about how one Fourth of July weekend he had the man over to his home, barbecued in the back. He still grills fish in foil pouches the way Gus showed him. They laughed, traded stories, drank. "And he was somebody else completely. Right in front of me. Right under my nose." As he's saying this, we get a look at Hank, who looks troubled and deep in thought. Are we only supposed to think he's imagining Walt -- the man under HIS nose all this time -- or is he actually beginning to suspect his bro-in-law? Anyway, fare thee well, Supervisor Merkert! I won't miss having to look up old recaps to remember your name all the time!
After the break, Mike sits at a diner and reads his paper when the disapproving woman from the Madrigal board enters and grabs the booth behind him, sitting so her back is to his. Of course, when she goes full Sally Albright while ordering her tea (this place serves Lipton and ... Lipton), Mike knows exactly who it is.
When the waitress leaves, Mike's all "You coming to me, or am I coming to you?" but the woman wants them both facing forward and not looking at one another. Mike: "...I guess I'm coming to you." Mike! We love Mike. The woman is just hilariously wound up, though; when the waitress returns, she makes a big point of calling Mike "Dwayne" and saying she can't believe they just ran into each other. Fran the Waitress: "...You need anything else, Mike?" We're all having a bit of fun with this chick, whose name is Lydia, by the way. Mike begs her to calm down and take off her Jackie O sunglasses. She first wants to know who killed Gus, but Mike tells her --- as he apparently has before -- not to worry about it. So instead she hands him a list of eleven names and embarks upon a stammering monologue about how those eleven men were all on Gus's payroll, publicly, and they all have ties that lead to Pollos, to the laundry, and all the way up the chain to Madrigal; they're all going to get picked up by the Feds, and if just one of them talks -- and there's always one -- they're both, Lydia and Mike, sunk. Mike correctly infers from this that Lydia is requesting that he take these eleven men out, murder them to tie up loose ends. She gets hella cagey, all "I didn't say that, but if you think that'd be wise." Mike, in fact, doesn't think it would be wise. He explains to her that these eleven guys are his guys, and they don't talk. They were picked to be his guys because they won't talk. They are extravagantly compensated to ensure that they won't talk. And while he appreciates that Lydia is scared, and he's not sure what kind of movies she's been watching (I dunno -- movies where master criminals use giant magnets to achieve their evil ends?), but "here in the real world, we don't kill eleven people as some kind of prophylactic measure." He makes sure she understands, drops a bill on the table to cover their bill, and walks out. Strangely, Lydia does not seem any less petrified.
At home with the Whites, Walt enjoys an idyllic breakfast with Junior and baby Holly before Junior has to run off to school. All that's missing is Skyler, whose cereal bowl sits conspicuously uneaten (just past that shaker of salt Walt used to perpetrate a vile lie a bit earlier). Also, of note: the White house is a Raisin Bran Crunch house. Either Skyler does the food shopping or there's a part of Walt that's not entirely irredeemable. He goes to the bedroom to rouse his wife for work, but she is not interested in joining the world today. He prods at her to get up and take a shower -- all the while, I should note, the scene is being filmed from behind her back and low, so we can only see half of Walt's head -- and she's either too depressed or too cowed to argue. Skyler's bummin', y'all.
Well, it's time. Time for Mike to get called in by the DEA for questioning. On his way in he passes Chow, one of the men on Lydia's list of eleven. Mike asks him how he's holding up, and Chow says fine. But right about now, Chow looks like one of those guys at the end of a Korean revenge movie, and both he and Mike can see it.
In his questioning with Hank and Gomez, Mike is stoic as he waives his right to an attorney and gruffly goes through his cover story: he works corporate security at Pollos, doing background checks, loss prevention, that sort of thing. Hank, for his part, is playing the glib shitbag cop who wants to rub how much he knows about Mike's Philly cop past in his face. He wants to know what else he was doing in Gus Fring's drug empire, but Mike's like, "Drug empire?" They say they have a guy who can put him inside the superlab, but Mike calls their bluff. He holds out his hands for cuffing, but they don't have the evidence, so they can't. Mike: "You wanna state that for the camera?" He goes to leave, and Hank and Gomie almost let him out the door before they bring up the $2 million they found in his granddaughter's name in Gus's Cayman Islands accounts. Twelve accounts in all, for various members of Gus's power structure. Hank fucks with Mike about how they figured Kaylee was the muscle for the organization before they realized it must be her grandpa. One day, Hank promises, one of Mike's guys is gonna roll on him, and then they WILL put the cuffs on him. Or he can talk now, and he might be able to keep some of that money for Kaylee. Mike stonewalls, but as he turns to leave, he grimaces. Shit's fucked.
Better Call Saul! Walt, Jesse, and Saul are having a strategy meeting. First order of business, per Walt, is to find a new place to cook. No more RVs this time. (Jesse, hilariously, sticks up for "The Crystal Ship," which is a nickname for the RV I'm not sure I remember being used before, though I could be wrong.) Walt tasks Saul with finding them a new place -- some place safe and secure, though Walt says he doesn't want to drive too far out of town like before. Somebody's feeling uppity. In town is trickier, Saul says, but Walt's like, "If Gus could find a place, so can you." Then there's the matter of that "precursor" they need to start cooking. Jesse says they have everything they need but methylamine. Jesse floats the idea of cooking the fake shit, but that's out of the question; Heisenberg does not cook substandard blue meth.
Saul pipes up with a story about a man who wins the lottery; the thing he does isn't go buy another lotto ticket, you know? A peeved Walt wonders what lottery he's supposed to have won. Saul says being alive after all that's gone down is a pretty nice jackpot. Walt counters that he's currently broke, after sending all his money to Ted Beneke, and in fact $40,000 in the hole to Jesse after last week. "There's gold in the streets," Walt says, "waiting for somebody to come and scoop it up. But I should quit NOW?"
Mike's at home, playing Hungry Hungry Hippos with Kaylee when he gets a phone call from an agitated Chow. He says the DEA wants to talk more, and more importantly, they took all his money; and he needs his money. Mike asks what Chow's asking of him. Chow doesn't know. But he wants to talk and asks Mike to come to his house. Mike gives him two hours. When Chow hangs up, we see he's being held at gunpoint.
Mike rolls up to Chow's house and looks around. Inside, the gunman puts the silenced gun to the peephole, waiting for the knock. Instead, he hears a soft, rhythmic thudding on the other side of the door. He eventually looks out the peephole himself and sees a pink blur passing in front of his sight line. Cut to outside, and a child's plush pig with a windup cord is hanging from the top of the door, whirring and spinning. After a moment, he's greeted by Mike and his gun behind him. The hitman drops his gun and turns. Mike has him sit down on the couch to Chow's corpse. He tells Mike that Lydia was to pay him $10,000 for every name on the list, and $30,000 for killing Mike. Mike doesn't look proud of that last part, but he should! We realize the hitman is just another name on that list; the Feds froze his accounts too and he needed the money. "Are you ready?" Mike asks him. He barely waits for an answer before he fires three shots into him.
After the final break, we find Mike hiding out at a home where a young girl and an older women count in Spanish as she brushes her dolly's hair. We find out why he's here when Lydia arrives home and the girl runs up and hugs her mommy. Lydia instructs her nanny and walks down the hall, where she's grabbed and silenced by Mike, out of sight of her daughter. Lydia calls out to Dolores that she's going to take a bath and she should put Kiera to bed and go on home. Dolores almost makes it down the hall to where Mike and Lydia are, but Lydia tells her to go along. Same with Kiera. They must be used to giving Lydia a wide berth at bath time.
In her bedroom, Lydia begs Mike not to hurt her daughter, and Mike says not unless she screams. He's waiting for Dolores to leave before he offs Lydia, and in the meantime, she begs him not to shoot her in the face. She doesn't want Kiera seeing her like that. "Nobody's going to find you," Mike tells her. Lydia freaks out all the more at that. She can't just disappear. Her daughter can't think I abandoned her. She keeps getting louder, Mike keeps telling her to keep her voice down, the whole escalation is tense as fuck. Dolores finally leaves leaves. It's time. "Promise me I won't disappear!" she shouts, then closes her eyes and puts her head down. But Mike either can't or won't do it. It's the daughter thing. He sees Kaylee in Kiera's place. He finally asps Lydia, "Can you still get your hands on Methylamine?" She says maybe. Why?
Cut to Mike leaving and calling up Walt from his car. He says he's reconsidered; he's in. "Good," says Walt, before going back to washing dishes with his smug, evil smile.
Meanwhile, Skyler is back in bed, not asleep but not awake in any useful way. She's lying on her side facing away from Walt as he joins her in bed. "It gets easier, I promise you that," he tells her. "What you're feeling, about Ted, everything? It'll pass." He rests his head on her, kisses her, rubs her arm. She doesn't move; she doesn't resist. She just stares ahead, terrified. Oh dear. "When we do what we do for good reasons," he says, "we've got nothing to worry about. And there's no better reason than family." Kiss. Kiss. AAACCCKKK.
week: MARIE!
Joe R reminds you that last year's rule remains in effect: if something bad happens to Marie, this whole place burns down. He can be reached for lavish praise and nothing but at joseph.reid21@gmail.com.