In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
It's Walt's birthday, and he's celebrating by going car shopping for a pair of giant erect penises (one for him, one for Junior) and bullying Skyler into doing something for his birthday. Skyler fights back in her own way, first by merely inviting Hank and Marie over for birthday dinner and then by excusing herself from the dinner conversation to throw herself into the bottom of the pool. The fallout from this is that Marie and Hank offer to take the kids for a week or two, while Walt and Skyler get their shit together -- which it turns out was exactly what Skyler was angling for, to get the kids out of the danger zone of Walt's general vicinity. This leads to a hellacious argument between Walt and Skyler, where Skyler finds her voice and spins her wheels imagining ways she could keep Walt from influencing their kids. Ultimately, at a loss, she tells him she's going to wait for his cancer to come back and take him out for her.
Meanwhile, Lydia continues to crack under D.E.A. pressure. When her distribution/warehouse guy gets picked up by the Feds, Mike sends Jesse to pick up the methylamine. While there, Lydia spots a D.E.A. tracker attached to the barrel and freaks out. When Jesse brings the news back to Mike and Walt that their methylamine connection is now compromised, Mike figures out that Lydia planted the tracker herself, to give herself a good reason to bow out of the business. Jesse and Mike argue over whether he's got to kill her now (Mike takes the pro argument), but Walt lays down the law: the methylamine connection stays open, no matter who Mike has to not kill.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!You guys, I can't even deal with this opening segment. I'm going to try, but before I begin, I need to tell you how very, very much I neither know nor care about cars. Sorry. If you're looking for piercing insight or sharp wit on the subject, I am not your man. I know Walt has an Aztec that keeps getting wrecked via the many scrapes he's been in. Right now, he and Junior are at the garage retrieving the ol' girl after once again needing repair. The mechanic -- a kindly older sort -- explains about the parts he's replaced and how he used after-market parts in order to keep the whole thing on the insurance company's dime... and oh by the way, I think there was blood in your grill, but I guess you did mention hitting a deer, so whatever. Walt takes all this in and signs for the repairs, but when the mechanic notes that the notoriously unsexy car is "sturdy as hell," he starts to get that look on his face. That look that says he's feeling slighted by life's inherent unfairness towards him. So after reaching inside and pulling out his Heisenberg hat, he offers to sell the car to the mechanic on the spot. What's his best offer? $100? $50? Junior's not sure what Dad's doing and Benny is dumbfounded, but he agrees to the sale. Walt, for his part, gets a look at himself with his old hat on -- the hat that made him such a notorious image among the baddest of the bad in Albuquerque and Mexico -- and then the scene cuts to...
...Junior rolling into the driveway in his Skyler-approved PT Cruiser, followed by Walt screaming into frame driving this ludicrously slick, onyx-black, giant erection of a car. All the while, electro-hip-hop music plays in the background and Walt appeals to Junior to sign off on Dad's new coolness. Junior only thinks it's kiiinda cool, so we cut again, this time to Walt screaming into the driveway with his car followed by Junior screaming into the drive way with his new car: that red Challenger that Skyler made Walt return last season because it was too extravagant. So now we see what's happening. Walt knows he's got Skyler beaten down into catatonic submission, so no one can tell him what to do -- or what not to buy -- anymore. As both men ("men") rev their engines, director Rian Johnson (who helmed the overrated-if-you-ask-me "Fly" episode a few seasons ago) really turns up the dial on this scene, visually and aurally, in order to shove Walt's obnoxious adolescent-male wish fulfillment down our throats. Basically, if you're still on Walter White's side at this point in the narrative, Johnson is doing his best to make you choke on it. As you should.
After the credits, we return to our favorite nervous Nellie, Lydia, who is sitting in her fancy Madrigal office (glass walls giving her a 360-degree panorama of... the parking lot) and chewing her nails while on a conference call with a whole bunch of men speaking German. They all sound agitated, but don't Germans always? Whatever they're saying, Lydia reacts to it with dismay (she also stares down at her feet to notice that she put on two different shoes today). A phone vibrates -- not hers, but the special phone she keeps in her drawer for when Mike calls to tell her that she's got "visitors" coming in 30 seconds. She stashes the phone in time for Hank and the DEA to come knocking on her door. Hank greets her as "Ms. Rodart-Quayle," so hold that one in your pocket for your ultra-competitive Breaking Bad trivia nights and asks her to lead him and the men down to the warehouse. There, she points out the foreman -- who bears a not un-freaky resemblance to Lisa Vanderpump's husband Ken on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills -- and then tries to hide behind a rack of inventory while the Feds place this guy under arrest. Cut to Lydia briskly returning to her office, closing the blinds so her increasingly curious underlings can't see, and then screaming her head off into a pillow. She then collects herself enough to return Mike's call, informing him that Ron got picked up and freaking out about the furious looks he was casting at her. Mike, cool as ever, assures her that Ron isn't talking and this isn't a big deal. Lydia disagrees. She further freaks out that Ron was her "guy," the guy who took care of the thing with the barrels and the transportation of such. Now she has no guy. Mike is silent for a few moments before he tells her he'll send her a new guy. Then hangs up on her. Temperamentally, these two are just not a match. (Or maybe... the perfect match? Let's start shipping, you guys!)
Back at the White Family Penis-Car Lot, Skyler rolls up in her sad, responsible station wagon and can't even pull into the driveway. She takes a look at the new car stickers and sighs helplessly. Cut to dinnertime, where Skyler eats in silence and observes her son and husband animatedly, excitedly bonding over horsepower and other manly things. In a callback to last season, Junior playfully calls bullshit on Walt's claim that he ever did donuts, and Walt is in his glory as he assures Junior that his old man has a few tricks up his sleeve. Skyler's silence during all this is deafening, much as we know how she would normally react to such a development were she not incapacitated by fear of her drug lord husband. Also, I'm getting very impatient for her to get that breakdown haircut already. This wig is making everyone uncomfortable.
After a brilliant cut to a close-up of Skyler wrapping dental floss around her index finger -- from this close, it almost looks like a self-harming gesture -- she and Walt share the bathroom as they prepare for bed. Walt yammers on, justifying his auto purchases for the Disapproving Skyler he knows is lurking underneath all that silence. None of this is actual justification -- as everything in their marriage has been this season, this is Walter going through the motions of domesticity almost as a way to demonstrate to Skyler how things are going to be from now on. He explains, she accepts. He then drops $20,000 in cash on the sink counter as proof that they can afford such expenditures and she breaks her silence to confirm that Walt's back at the drug trade. He doesn't miss a chance to stick it to her, saying that he needed to make up that $600,000 they gave away to Beneke, for starters.
In the bedroom, Walt reads, Skyler moisturizes, and then she gingerly broaches the topic of perhaps sending Junior to boarding school in Arizona. He laughs her off and wonders why she's asking (he knows), and she downplays it as just thinking he might be better off outside this "environment" (she knows he knows). Walt seizes on "environment" and demands to know what's wrong with the environment at home (he knows she knows he knows), and she immediately backs down (she knows she's powerless). She lies down and Walt once again uses marital affection to intimidate her again, caressing her arm and kissing her shoulder and softly requesting/demanding that she plan a nice celebration for his birthday. "I don't know what you have planned," he asks (we know from last week that it was nothing), but maybe a party? And chocolate cake with chocolate icing. Oh no. You're not going to ruin chocolate cake with chocolate icing for me, you monster.
The morning, Skyler serves bacon and eggs for breakfast and Junior starts bitching when she plunks Walt's plate in front of him without doing their family's traditional "spell the bacon like the numbers of his age" thing. And, look, I know his heart's in the right place and that he's ignorant of the gravity of what's happening between his parents, but Junior is working my very last nerve this week with all the ways he's co-signing and reinforcing his father's awfulness. That said, I am somewhat encouraged that Skyler has gravitated from looking blank and checked-out all the time to looking silently perturbed at Walt as he faux-demurs that, well, it IS tradition. Goddamn Junior's all up in Skyler's business for leaving the 1 in 51 so puny. So she swaps out the puny piece for one of Junior's whole strips. Hey now! Showing some fire again!
Over at the D.E.A., Hank is marveling at his cork board of supervillains, with photos of all members of the meth ring -- Gus Fring at the center -- and strings of yarn connecting the players to each other. Hank and Gomez are puzzling over some gap in the chain, between the Madrigal exec who killed himself (who Hank calls "Burgermeister Meisterburger," to my great delight) and the warehouse guy they just picked up. Hank floats Lydia as a possibility, because Hank is now plugged into this case like the precogs in Minority Report, but Gomie brushes her off as too uptight for the drug world. Their new supervisor comes in and Hank shows him the board. Mike's on there and pursuant to my wonderings of last week, Hank tells his new supervisor that they're working on getting surveillance on him. (Still, Mike should probably assume he's already being watched, right?) Hank is stymied by the fact that none of Mike's guys are talking, and between that and some reports of the blue meth hitting the streets again, they're thinking someone has started the operation again. Still a lot of unanswered questions. Supes asks Gomez to leave him and Hank alone, and then he offers Hank a promotion to a supervisory position himself. The caveat would be that all his active cases would be reassigned, the Fring operation included. Hank says that his wife would kill him if he said no, but while his words say that he definitely wants the promotion, his eyes never leave that corkboard for very long.
At the latest Pop-Up Meth Lab, Walt and Jesse are packing up from the cook and Walt asks if Jesse can finish up for him, as it's his birthday and he "probably [has] a birthday party waiting for me." Cut to Walt in the driveway of his home, looking around and seeing no cars parked on the street. No friends and family waiting inside to surprise him. Walt's done too many things for the sight of him crestfallen at not getting a surprise party to be total consolation, but it sure goes a long way. Walt makes his way into the kitchen and asks what's up, and Skyler tells him her grand birthday plan: Hank and Marie are coming over for dinner, plus that chocolate cake he's been angling for. She's on the comeback trail, guys.
Meanwhile, Hank and Marie are on their way over and despite the fact that Marie swore herself to secrecy last week about Skyler's affair with Ted Beneke, this IS Marie we're talking about. So she sighs pointedly until Hank asks her what's wrong and she's all "I can't tell you because I made a promise to your brother-in-law only it has to do with infidelity and you'll not get one more word out of me, you hear??" Of course, when Hank jumps to the false conclusion that it was Walt who cheated (that second cell-phone makes sense now!), Marie can't resist correcting him that it was Skyler who strayed. Like Fort Knox, that Marie.
Hank greets Skyler at the door with the most exaggerated and hilarious greeting ever. "HEEEEEY THERE, FAITHFUL SISTER-IN-LAW!" he practically bullhorns to the neighborhood.
Cut to dinner on the patio out back, where Junior is once again trying my patience by bragging about being a speed demon out on the roads in his new car. I know this is just adolescent braggadocio and that he's a good kid at heart, but he's exhibiting signs of falling for the same masculine trappings that have warped his father into being such a monster now. For one thing Hank good-naturedly needles his nephew about how highway patrol's going to pick him up soon and his DEA connections will probably not go very far to protect his spoiled car-wash millionaire nephew. At "car-wash millionaire," Skyler blanches, but no one notices. Anyway, Junior takes his leave of the adults, as teens are wont to do and with him goes much of the energy in the yard. Hank keeps trying to broach different subjects -- Walt's impulse-purchase cars or the quality of the dinner -- and each time either Skyler's weirded-out silence or the shared secret about Beneke hanging over Hank and Marie's heads kills any conversation in mid-air. Without a word, and looking like she might cry at any second, Skyler stands up and starts busying herself with things away from the table. Everybody else decides to give her some space, while Walt tells a story about how his diagnosis was one short year ago. (Marie: "Seems like longer!" Heh.) It's both a heartfelt speech about how his family got him through cancer, but the fact that he can seamlessly weave in references to his surgery and recovery and also things like Hank getting shot (which was fruit of Walter's poisoned tree) makes it impossible to take at face value, if only for the viewer. Also making it hard to feel the love in Walt's words is the fact that Skyler is standing in a straight line behind him, facing the pool. You can't take your eyes off of her.
"There were times," Walt continues, "where I was sure I was done for." Self-mythologizing has never been too difficult for Walt. "But then someone or something would come through for me." He turns around towards Skyler, purposefully oblivious to her strange behavior, and reminisces about her taking care of him after his first chemo treatment. She never turns to look at him though, instead staring into the glowing blue of the lit pool water, until she finally starts to wade in. Marie is the first to call out to her, but Skylar's not stopping. Hank and Marie panic that she's not emerging from the deep end and by the time we cut to a POV from the pool, Skyler is almost touching the bottom. Her blue skirt is flowing in the blue water and soon enough Walt dives in to rescue her, a devil descending from above.
After the break, Nervous Lydia is jittering around the warehouse, trying in vain to find the switch that opens one of the loading-dock doors. Once she does, she finds Jesse on the other side and even though he insists he's "the guy" Mike sent, Lydia stammers and demands that he tell her Mike's last name. I really feel like "Ehrmantraut" is having its moment in the sun this season. Anyway, Lydia's like, "Sorry, not sorry. For all I knew you were one of those undercover cops they send into high schools." HA! I'm really coming around on Lydia, you guys. She leads Jesse to the rack where the methylamine barrel sits on the top shelf. As Jesse operates the forklift to bring it down, however, Lydia spots something on the bottom of the barrel and freaks. Looks like something has been stuck with putty to the barrel.
Back at the White house, Skyler's skirt drip-dries while Walt tries to explain to Hank that he and Skyler have had their "issues" of late. Hank stops him, saying he knows about the... you know. He wonders what Walt's move is here -- have Skyler talk to someone maybe? Marie's got a guy and look how great she's doing! Heh. "I just had no idea she was taking it this hard," Walt lies. Marie emerges from the bedroom, where Skyler is resting. After Hank disabuses her of the notion that Skyler was truly trying to commit suicide -- not in a pool with all of them there -- Marie gingerly broaches the topic of the "issues" between her and Skyler. Hank: "He knows I know." She then turns to Walt: this isn't unfixable. What would be great is if he and Skyler had space to work through this stuff. Marie proposes she and Hank take the kids for a while. Look after them for a day or two or "however long." Walt is very resistant to the idea, but Marie is more than happy to take it on. Hank thinks it's a good idea too, and Walt kind of knows he can't push back too hard. He does, however, ask Marie if this idea was hers originally? Actually, she says, it was Skyler's. "She really needs this, Walt."
Later, Walt enters the bedroom where we see the familiar sight of Skyler lying down, eyes open and facing away from Walt. He congratulates her bitterly -- "the kids are out of this environment" -- and tells her he knows she's awake. Skyler finally starts talking, saying that it isn't safe to have the kids here. Walt protests, seemingly sincerely, that it's never been safer. Skyler finds that hard to believe so soon after the events of last season, but Walt says it's different now: Walt's running things. "I keep the work at work," he assures her. Nothing will impact her and the kids. But Skyler knows he can't really promise that. He tells her that Gus was the threat, he was the danger. "I thought you were the danger," she says, sticking it to him a bit. Skyler all but admits that the pool stunt was a way to get the kids out of the house. Not just to protect them from Walt, though. There's blood on her hands too, what with Ted and all. Walt tells her she did what she had to do to protect her family. It doesn't make her a bad person. At this, she stands up and tells him to quit with the "bullshit rationales." She's in it now. Implicated up to her eyeballs. But she refuses to allow her kids to live in a house where "dealing drugs and hurting people and killing people is shrugged off as 'shit happens.'"
Walt is incredulous that she thinks she can keep them away for more than a day or two, but Skyler is adamant. She will NOT have them back home. Walt's face darkens at this and he asks her what she's going to do to stop it. There's some wheel-spinning on Skyler's part as she cycles through her options: maybe she hurts herself or otherwise shows Han and Marie that they're still struggling. Maybe she claims Walt beat her when he found out about Ted; maybe she sends Junior away to boarding school. Walt aggressively shoots those down as quickly as they come up. Skyler acting troubled only lets him put her in an institution; bringing Ted public only shames her as a whore in front of her children; and Junior is in no way going to agree to boarding school. He starts aggressively badgering her about this "joke" of an attempt to get their kids out of this "environment." "You wanna take me on?!" he demands. "WHAT'S THE PLAN?!" Finally, Skyler screams that she doesn't know. "I don't have any of your magic, Walt. I don't know what to do. I'm a coward." She says she can neither go to the police, nor stop laundering his money, nor do so much as keep him out of her bed. So what is she left with? She can wait. Hold on, bide her time... and wait. Walt, breaking his aggressive façade for a moment, asks what she's waiting for. Skyler: "For the cancer to come back." KILLER scene from Anna Gunn there and a moment both triumphant (she's out of her funk!) and despairing (she's got no options!) for Skyler. And if you're STILL of the opinion that the actress or the character is a drag on this show, then I'm officially stopping efforts to understand you.
After the break, Rian Johnson treats us to the arty and ominous sight of Walt shaving his head. The ultra close-up of a trickle of blood against his stubble is very Dexter opening credits. At the breakfast table, he gets a phone call from someone who seems agitated. Walt says he's coming and then the camera cuts to a long shot where Walt sits alone at a table that just yesterday was bustling with children and family and bacon. Now he's alone with his cereal.
At the new business HQ, Jesse appears to have contracted some of Lydia's jumpiness, as he shows Mike and Walt camera photos of the DEA tracker stuck to the bottom of the methylamine barrel, which means they can't use Madrigal for their precursor hookup anymore. And, as Jesse helpfully points out, it's not like they have any other sources of methylamine they can tap. Mike tells him to calm down for a second. He's hung up on the shoddy police work of ham-fistedly slapping a tracker to the outside of a barrel instead of dropping one inside. After he gets Jesse to confirm that it was Lydia who spotted the tracker first, he kind of grimly smiles to himself. He thinks Lydia put a tracker on the barrel herself, so it would look like the DEA was onto her, so they would be forced to exempt her from future dealings. So Lydia's got to go. Mike kind of beats himself up for not taking care of her two episodes ago. "That's what I get for being sexist," he muses. Jesse -- not a huge fan of killing small kinks in the pipeline, all things considered -- tries to convince Mike that they need to just tell her to quit freaking out; their source of methylamine is too important to cut off just because she's acting crazy.
This just illustrates the big difference in how these two operate. Mike's willing to ramp down production for a while if it means avoiding a loose cannon who could get them all arrested or killed; Jesse (and Walt) are far more willing to be reckless in order to keep business booming. Besides, says Jesse, Lydia's not a threat; she's just "uptight." Mike: "Now you're being sexist. This woman deserves to die just as much as any man." Well done, sister suffragette! Mike tells Jesse to get out of his way, just as Jesse says they have to vote on it. He votes that they have to vote on it and he appeals to Walt, who has been silently staring at his Heisenberg hat this whole time. Fingering a loose thread on it, in fact, if you're into metaphors. And much as Jesse might think it is this isn't a voting thing. This is Walt once again making the only decision that counts: the methylamine keeps flowing, no matter what. "We are not ramping down. We're just getting started. Nothing stops this train. Nothing."
After the meeting, Jesse follows Walt to his car, thanks him for the backup and hands him a box. In it is his birthday present to Walt: a wristwatch. Such a perfect son-to-father gift. Aw, Jesse. Badger and Skinny Pete raised you right.
Walt returns to his darkened home where Skyler is chain-smoking in the living room. Well, if the environment is already going to be toxic for her children, why not go the whole nine? Walt tells her that he stopped by Hank and Marie's, and Junior keeps asking what's going on, but otherwise it's fine. Also there will be some more money coming in soon and is she coming to bed? She says, "Yep," but then lights up another cig. Walt turns towards the hallway, but circles back to show Skyler his watch. See that? That was given to him by somebody who wanted him dead mere weeks ago. Pointed a gun at his head and was prepared to shoot. "He changed his mind about me, Skyler. And so will you." Great reading there, straddling the line between hopeful promise and boastful threat.
Cut to Walt settling into bed, placing his watch on the nightstand. The episode ends on a super close-up and amplified sound of the watch, ticking away. Twelve more episodes. Tick-tock.
Joe R is very into Anna Gunn at the moment. He can be reached for lavish praise and nothing but at joseph.reid21@gmail.com.
Think you've got game? Prove it! Check out Games Without Pity, our new area featuring trivia, puzzle, card, strategy, action and word games -- all free to play and guaranteed to help pass the time until your show starts.
What are people saying about your favorite shows and stars right now? Find out with Talk Without Pity, the social media site for real TV fans. See Tweets and Facebook comments in real time and add your own -- all without leaving TWoP. Join the conversation now!