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OHGOD!
Okay, so after a particularly oblique cold-open where a little kid finds a tarantula in the desert and we're left to wonder how many of the principal characters will be murdered by that spider by the end of the series, we get back to the matters of the day: dealing with Lydia's methylamine trackers. Walt first takes advantage of Hank's friendship to plant bugs in Hank's office, and then the Trio kidnaps Lydia and forces her to make a call reporting the bug to Hank, so that when he follows up the phone call, they can know for sure that the police didn't plant the tracker. Which at first seems to be the case -- the D.E.A. didn't plant the trackers. The F.B.I. did. So Lydia's life is spared, but they're still out of methylamine. It's Lydia who actually presents a solution: rob the freight train with a tanker full of the stuff. This would prove to be exceedingly difficult and dangerous, not to mention they'd have to kill the two conductors in order to have no witnesses.
So Jesse comes up with his second masterstroke idea of the season: stop the train with a disabled vehicle, then drain the methylamine tanker from below while replacing what they take with water, so that when the tank is weighed, it won't show any signs of trouble and thus no one will know there was even a heist. The three men enlist the help of Landry from the exterminator business, and Jesse stresses how serious it would be if they got caught for lifting this much methylamine.
The heist itself is predictably tense, and there's a close scrape at the end, but Walt, Jesse, and Landry manage to pull it off. And there is much rejoicing ... until the kid with the tarantula from the cold open is suddenly watching them. How much has he seen? We'll never know, as Landry impulsively pulls out his gun and shoots the kid down. No witnesses. Holy shit.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!This is probably the most elliptical cold open we've had in quite a while. At least the tater-tot dipping scene (ahhh, memories of "Franch") ended up including the federal agents and the Pollos logo by the end. This scene, beginning to end, has seemingly nothing to do with the Breaking Bad plot as we've seen it so far. Which, if you're me, means you watched it all the more intently. There's not much to it. Young teenager (kid's maaaybe 14 at best, likely younger) rides his motorbike around the desert, stops when he spots a tarantula, picks it up. Does the tarantula have blood on it from a Mexican cartel massacre? Is the tarantula the reincarnated spirit of Gustavo Fring? Is the boy a very young Hank Schrader, learning a valuable lesson about not keeping dangerous creatures too close to you? ...No, not really. This is just a kid, finding a spider in the desert and putting him in a glass jar for the journey home. There's one thing, though. Off in the distance, you can hear a train whistle. Not loudly enough to startle the child or even indicate he hears it, but it's there. Gathering steam.
Smoke! Elements! Vince Gilligan!
Walt pays Hank a visit in his fancy new office and asks Gomez for some alone time with his bro-in-law. He compliments Hank on his new job and his fancy new watch ("Good for you"). [Note: Anyone else think that this watch will eventually incriminate Walt and be the final clue that leads Hank to figure out he's Heisenberg? No, just me? -- Rachel.]
Ostensibly, this meeting is a State of Skyler report. Today, she went to work, which is a good start. Hank wonders about that therapist idea they floated last week. Remember? Marie's "rock star" shrink Dave? Walt lies that Skyler is already seeing someone, a Peter Something in Rio Rancho. Walt gets emotional, or at least pretends to, and he thanks Hank and Marie for taking the kids and asks if he can come visit, to which Hank is like, "Of course!" Walt gets quiet for a moment after that, and Hank prods for what's wrong. Finally, Walt takes the dramatics up another level: "Skyler doesn't love me anymore," he says, through tears. How much real is in those tears? Maybe more than we'd like to give Walt credit for? Anyway, the breakdown does have a purpose: "She says I'm a bad influence on the kids," he says. Hank assures him he's a great dad. Is that what this visit was for? Absolution from Hank? Turning Skyler's family against her? Hank gets up and closes the blinds so no one will see a grown man cry. And since he's uncomfortable with male emotion like this, Hank scurries out to grab Walt a cup of coffee.
Good thing Walt knows how Hank would behave when confronted with the tears of an in-law, because with Hank out of the office (and the blinds so helpfully closed, another masterstroke of Walt's clairvoyance), Walt quickly gets to the work of attaching a device to Hank's computer and a bug to the back of one of Hank's framed photographs. Now he'll know what the cops know.
Just in time, Walt finishes closing up the photo frame, making it look to Hank as if he's just staring forlornly at a photo of a happy family, like unhappy family members do in the movies. Hank tells him not to worry. "It's always darkest just before the dawn."
What a coincidence, because it's pretty dark for Lydia Rodarte-Quayle right about now, as she's been abducted by the Three Amigos and placed at a table in a dark room. As Mike cuffs her to the chair, she stammers about her little girl, a decent enough trump card before, but Mike is in no mood. He tells her that Walt and Jesse are willing to give her more of a chance than he is, so he hands her a script to study and has her phone up one Hank Schrader.
Forced to follow the script exactly, with no funny business, upon penalty of Mike shooting her in the head, Lydia informs Hank of the tracer she's found on the bottom of one of her barrels. She keeps it cool (or Lydia-cool, which is not all that cool) as she tells Hank that she wouldn't want to interfere with an official investigation, she's just wondering what she should do about this thing. A quizzical Hank tells her to just set the barrel aside and wait to hear back from him. After hanging up, Hanks calls Gomie in and asks about the tracker -- whether he knows anything about trackers being put on methylamine barrels at Madrigal's Houston warehouse. Gomie says his team didn't do it. This is all transmitted to Walt, Mike, Jesse, and Lydia in their underground bunker via Walt's fancy new wiretaps. It's all Mike needs to hear to prove Lydia placed the tracker herself, and Lydia starts to panic, knowing what this means for her.
The Amigos convene, and Mike lays it out for them: now that Hank's been tipped off, he's going to think someone's trying to heist the barrels, so the Madrigal warehouse will be under tight surveillance. This annoys Walt because now it REALLY puts the methylamine out of play. Mike says they can get to the Madrigal warehouse first and take away as much methylamine as they can carry before Hank gets there. Talk then turns to Lydia's fate, and she starts hopping around in her chair, claiming innocence. Jesse believes her, because he is still pure of heart and decent of character, but Walt immediately sides with Mike: she's gotta die.
This all becomes a moot point because, much like in that Simpsons episode where the town historian keeps finding more lines on the town-charter parchment, the wiretap on Hank's office keeps playing, and Hank has called up the FBI and asked them if they might have done something as stupid as attaching a tracker to the outside of a barrel at Madrigal. The agent is like "Uhhh ... why, did someone find it?"
Lydia and Jesse are relieved, but Mike still obviously wants to kill her, just because. Not least of which is the newly relayed information that the Feds put trackers on EVERY barrel at Madrigal, meaning the methylamine is completely off limits to them now. Jesse agrees with Lydia's assertion that she actually saved their asses by spotting the tracker, but Mike is done trusting her. He tells Walt and Jesse about how she put a hit out on him, which takes both men aback (Jesse: "Like the MAFIA?"). Lydia starts yelling something about methylamine, about how she can still hook them up. Not with the barrels in the warehouse, of course. She's talking about "an ocean of the stuff."
After the break, we see Jesse has convinced Mike to let Walt talk to Lydia about this little plot of hers; to "trust" Walt, so you can imagine how well that goes over. Inside, Lydia wants Walt to swear on his children's lives that they won't kill her. As a trust exercise, Walt wants to know if she really put a hit out on Mike; she says yes, and the reason why once again brings up the thorny issue of the hush payments they're shelling out to Mike's associates. Lydia doesn't know it, but she and Walt are on the same side of this issue. She doesn't trust that those imprisoned men will remain quiet; they know everything about her and some of them know about Walt, the master chemist. Walt takes this in and then changes the subject to the ocean of methylamine. [Note: But not without at first telling Lydia that she has no leverage here and he is, as always, the one who knocks, natch.]
Cut to Lydia presenting her plan to all three men. She lays out a map (convenient!) and explains that a train leaves Long Beach at 3:00 PM, destined for Flagstaff and parts beyond. If that train is pulling a tanker full of 24,000 gallons of methylamine passes through a dead stretch of New Mexico desert where they'll be cut off from any and all communications, how stupid do three drug dealers have to be to try to rob it? Show your work. Jesse's like, "Rob it? Like Jesse James?" Lots of love for ol' JJ these last few episodes. Mike thinks this is all a quick way to have the three of them thrown in jail for the rest of their lives. So Lydia explains the concept of this stretch of "dark territory," where any of the train's usual fail-safe alarms and other communications to control will not be operational -- no cell service either. The fact that Lydia has to preface this info dump with "what you don't know, and I do, because my job requires me to keep track of my buyers' shipments" makes me think the writers were at least a little aware of how contrived this whole plot could seem.
Walt asks how they'll even know which car is which, and Lydia says she can provide a manifest that gets uploaded to the Madrigal server six hours before the train is set to reach the dead zone. You know, I get the complaints that it's a stretch to think Lydia could have pulled an elaborate plot like this out of her ass in a pinch, but I could also easily buy that as Lydia worked at Madrigal, these tidbits of information fell into her lap, and she slowly pieced together the perfect what-if, maybe not ever intending to use it. She's a jittery loose cannon, but she's also been involved in a criminal enterprise for years. Not out of the realm of possibility that she's been keeping an eye on possible cracks in the system she could exploit all this time.
Mike's problem is that they'll have to off the crew. Walt and especially Jesse argue that they wouldn't, but Mike says it's his experience that there are two kinds of heists: "those where the guys get away with it, and those that leave witnesses." Lydia, in a moment I kind of loved, is like "Oh, sorry, suddenly you guys are all anti-murder?" She has a point.
At the Purple Palace, Hank and Marie are doing baby things with Holly, with Hank jokes that he's not going to give Holly back. Hmmm ... Anyway, they turn to the subject of "Emo McGee" (Junior) and how he's been all moody and not taking this exile well. You can't entirely blame him, can you? Marie calls to "Flynn" and offers to heat up lasagna, and Hanks asks if he wants to watch Heat, but Junior's like, "Nope. Keep talking about me, though."
Back at Jesse's, Mike is advocating eschewing the methylamine and opting for a pseudo-cook for a few months. Walt says it'll cut down their output by 25 percent and they'll have to eat $80,000 on all their equipment that's no good for a pseudo-cook; they'd be in for a fraction of the profit. Mike argues that "Making less money is better than making no money," which cheeses Walt off. Walt says that's the case for Mike only because he has these golden parachutes to pay out to his incarcerated nine.
They resume the same old argument, as the camera pushes in on them in the foreground, Jesse on the couch behind them, once again the child-of-divorce angle being strongly pushed. And in an almost exact repeat of the season premiere (lots of echoing in this episode), Jesse comes up with an idea so that Dads will stop fighting: what if they can rob the train without anyone realizing anything has been robbed?? Walt and Mike turn to him, all "...Magnets, you say?"
After the break, they're out in the desert, walking the tracks, measuring the distance from a road crossing to an overpass bridge; Jesse declares it's perfect. Cut to the Vamonos crew helping them dig two holes in the ground below the overpass while Mike plays the part of the grumpy lookout. After the holes are dug, two plastic barrels are placed in the ground and buried but for the holes at the top; then a tanker of water (wherever they got THAT) pulls up and they fill up the one jug with water.
Confused? Allow Landry from Friday Night Lights (whose name is still officially Todd, but I'm going with Landry) to act as your surrogate. He asks Walt to explain it to him, and Walt magnanimously allows Jesse to expound upon his own plan: "It's all about the weight, yo." They're going to steal 1,000 gallons of methylamine and replace it with water so that when the train gets weighed again in Texas, no one will know anything's been stolen. Jesse takes a moment to be super foreshadowy, impressing upon Landry the seriousness of boosting methylamine in a post-9/11 age: no one, absolutely no one, can know they did this.
Walt then shows off a little as he tells Landry about how methylamine weighs slightly less than water, so they're replacing the thousand gallons of methylamine with about 920 gallons of water. It's actually the most endearing Walt's been in weeks, maybe seasons, as he slips back into teacher mode, even brightening up when student Landry asks whether the end users will realize they've gotten watered down methylamine. It only amounts to 4 percent dilution, he says, "But yes, you're right; they will notice. At which point they'll blame China for sending a marginally weaker batch." "You guys thought of everything!" Landry enthuses. Walt smiles a little at this; Jesse smiles a LOT.
Walt returns home to Skyler calling to Junior from the hallway; he's locked himself in his room and refusing to leave. Okay, now Skyler is calling him Flynn? I figured Marie was just being Marie, but is Flynn back on now? Did we miss a scene where Junior reverted in a fit of pique? Don't get me wrong, I prefer Flynn. I just don't like getting jerked around like this. Walt gets Flynn to open the door at least. Poor Flynn is so confused; this came out of nowhere, and he's angry and scared and lost and he just wants someone to give him a real reason why this is happening. Walt plays the "because we're your parents and you're our child" card and follow it with a "please do as I ask" for good measure. Cut to a slammed front door and Flynn headed back to Hank and Marie's.
Alone with Skyler, Walt says this phase will pass, but Skyler tells him not to bother to talk to her like they're on the road to reconciliation. She's not ever changing her mind about him. He refuses to accept that; she's his wife, after all. "I'm not your wife," she snaps back, "I'm your hostage." She lights up and offers Walt a deal: she'll launder money, she'll keep secrets, but the kids stay at Hank and Marie's. Walt insists the kids are not in danger, but Skyler, ever the skilled debater, brings up Walt's own words from last week, when he tried to prove to her that people come around on him; remember when he bragged about someone holding a gun to his head? "There's nothing you can say that'll convince me there won't come a day when someone will knock at the door looking to harm you or me or all of us. And when that day comes, the children cannot be here." This at least shuts him up. "You agree to that, and I'll be whatever kind of partner you want me to be." Walt assents with his silence. "By the way," he snits, "you're visiting a therapist from Rio Rancho. Peter. Last name is up to you." As he leaves the room, Skyler looks at his dirty clothes and sniffs, "Out burying bodies?" Walt sneers back at her: "Robbing a train." [Note: Could you imagine if Skyler knew about that time the evil twin cousins sat on her bed with a huge shiny axe?]
Lydia sits in her office, late at night, and true to her word, she gets the manifest and contacts Mike. Later that morning, everything looks to be set. We can hear a train whistle in the distance. A truck drives up and parks itself across the tracks. The driver, the stooge in Saul's employ played by Bill Burr, gets out and makes like his vehicle is disabled.
Now, just to have this on the record, I have no idea how the team determined that the train would stop with the exact right car on the overpass bridge, especially since they didn't know where the tanker was on the train until six hours ago, nor the lengths of all the other cars; let's just chalk this one up to Walt's juicy chemistry club brain and Jesse's entrepreneurial spirit and move on from there.
Train approaches, train arrives, train crosses bridge, train stops exactly where they need it to. Once the train finally halts, Walt sends his boys into action; everything moves very fast: pumps are assembled, hoses unfurled, barrels uncovered. Bill Burr farts around with the conductors, trying to avoid arousing their suspicions by basically acting like the folksiest jerkoff you've ever seen; he gets them to check out the engine for him, and when they're sufficiently occupied, Walt sends Jesse and Landry up the embankment to the train. Jesse takes the below-tank action of siphoning the methylamine, while Landry heads to the top of the tank to set up the water replacement, with Mike keeping a watchful eye from the lookout post. The music is all tense and Jesse and Landry are working very hard unscrewing these giant bolts with giant wrenches and such; but everything seems to be going well.
So the methylamine starts draining, Bill Burr continues to try to stall the conductors, Mike continues to look out for any problems, and Walt begins the pumping of water into the tank via Landry's hose. You get the feeling we're one wrong move away from catastrophe here. The conductors are annoyed at Bill Burr, but not suspicious yet. Suddenly, Mike spots something that makes him go "uh oh." THERE'S the bad news we've been waiting for.
Another car pulls up, a truck, actually, and despite Bill Burr's best efforts at obfuscation, the driver offers to help push the disabled truck off the tracks. So now there's a ticking clock at work. The truck is pushed off the track; Mike radios to Walter to get out; Walter stubbornly wants to finish the job; the conductors get back in the train. Walt holds fast; Jesse notices that the bell is ringing and yells back to him. Walt waits for the last possible moment, when the methylamine hits the very top of the tank, before he yells "CLOSE IT UP!" Jesse and Landry race to close up the hatches as the train starts to move. Ultimately, Landry has to jump off the train in motion, while Jesse has to LIE DOWN FLAT AS THE TRAIN ROLLS OVER HIM. Luckily, the methylamine was in the last car on the train, so he doesn't have to wait long for it to pass, but still. Nerve-wracking!
He descends the hill back to Walt and instead of punching him in the face like he should, he gets all "YEAH, BITCH!" about it, and he and Walt and Landry cackle at a heist well done, slapping each other on the back and congratulating.
So what's the catch? It's Breaking Bad; there will always be a catch. Walt turns off the pump motor and ... there it is. The kid from the cold open is sitting there on his motorbike about 10 yards away, watching them. He gives a little wave. Jesse and Walt both have "We're fucked" looks on their faces. Landry gives the kid an awkward little wave back. Jesse looks at Walt for a split second, and in that second, Landry reaches into his waistband and pulls out his gun. Jesse sees it too late. He yells out "NO!" but Landry has already fired, hitting the kid in the chest and knocking him off the bike, presumably dead. Jesse's hands go to his head and the breath leaves his body. We get a shot of the tarantula trapped in the glass jar, which I guess is a metaphor, but mostly Jesse needs a hug. A big one.
Joe R wishes Landry would stop killing people on TV shows. He can be reached for lavish praise and nothing but at