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Boy, was this episode ever streamlined. I’ll probably be able to sum up the plot in one paragraph. Or probably not. There is a certain standard I’m expected to uphold here, of course. Much like the standard of crystal meth that Todd manages to approach (76 percent pure!) but not quite attain (it’s not blue). Lucky for Todd, Walt needs a favor (kill Jesse), and Todd has a price (come back for another cook). So Todd’s Uncle Nazi and his guys are commissioned to take Jesse out, nice and humane-like. Of course, Walt’s plan to draw Jesse out of hiding by approaching Andrea and having her call Jesse (i.e. the “I got your lady, kid” gambit) gets sniffed out by Hank immediately.
Meanwhile, Jesse's plan to hit Walt where he really lives means going after his money. To do this, Hank and Gomez fake Jesse's death in order to convince Huell that Walt's tying up loose ends. Huell gives up the intel about the rental van that Walt returned all dirty and full of shovels. Bad news: no GPS on those vans (thanks a LOT, ACLU). Good news: Hank and Jesse fake a photo of a barrel of money dug up from the dirt, which gets Walt to speed the fuck out to the desert in order to keep Jesse from burning it. When he gets there, he realizes he's been fooled and that he led Hank, Jesse and Gomez right to the money.Hank finally has his man, arrests Walt and calls Marie to let her know he got Walt and that he loves her. Justice served! Yeah, except Walt had earlier commissioned Todd and his uncle to take out Jesse, and when he found himself cornered in the desert, he called them with the coordinates. And despite the fact that once Walt saw Hank was with Jesse, he told Uncle Nazi to forget about it, Uncle Nazi always follows through on a job. So the Nazi gang shows up before Hank and Gomez can even call any authorities, and we have a standoff. Handcuffed in Hank's car, Walt screams to Uncle Nazi that the job is off. Imagine our great surprise, then, that Uncle Nazi and the Nazettes open fire, and the episode ends with a gunfight that I can't imagine too many people will be walking away from.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously: Hank kept Jesse from burning Walt's house down, and the two unlikely allies powered up on Marie's lasagna while devising a plan to get Walt's confession on tape. Jesse's paranoia got the better of him, though, and he bailed, assuring Hank that he's got an even better plan. Meanwhile, he threatened Walt again, which led Walt to call up Todd with a job for his uncle.
Speaking of whom, we begin this week at the new meth lab, which appears to be located in an airplane hangar. Todd, his Uncle Jack and the cartoon character that Kevin Rankin is playing are joined by Queen Regent of New Mexico, Lydia Rodarte-Quayle. Only Todd and Lydia have the sense to be wearing their hazmat suits and breathing masks. Uncle Jack's rationale when Todd informs him of the toxic fumes? "Let me worry about what I breathe, kid." Lydia's here, it seems, to see if the purity on this batch is an improvement over Declan's subpar meth. Indeed, Todd has been able to use his Heisenberg-Lite technique to up the purity to 76%, which is certainly a move in the right direction. But Lydia wants to know why it's not blue. Does that come later? Todd knows he's fucked up, but he tries to talk his way past it. Certainly, Uncle Jack and Herc are more than willing to squint at the same and pretend there's a "blue-ish" hue to it. They also make the argument that it's purity she wants, and they got her that. Lydia now has to explain to these barely-developed morons the concept of branding. Her buyers know what good product is because it's blue. That's the visual they associate with a quality product. The purity being "marginally" improved (oooooh!) is nice and all, but without the blue, they don't have their branding. It's a Crystal Pepsi thing all over again. Team Nazi doesn't really care about standards or branding, and their offers to food-color the batch ("like farm-raised salmon!") reveals them to be just as uninterested in excellence as Declan was. This season is really dedicated to the idea that Walter White was a better class of criminal because he cared more, huh?
After the meeting, Lydia is re-grouping in the outer hangar, while some kind soul decided to put "Oh Sherrie" on in the background. Uncle Jack and Herc have pissed off by now, so it's just Todd, and he seems genuinely chagrined and apologetic about overcooking the batch (his conclusion as to how the blue didn't happen). He's brought her tea, too, and she tells him to call her Lydia. She's nice to him, tells him she appreciates his effort. So Todd I guess decides this is his moment. He puts a hand on Lydia's shoulder and says the sexiest thing he can think of: "I can have my uncle talk to your buyers if you want." Suddenly, with Steve Perry belting out "Love Theme for Todd and Lydia," this scene isn't so much a business conversation as it is an occasion for Todd to stare moonily at a woman whom he couldn't begin to handle. She turns him down, in as nice a way as she can manage. But she's also smart enough to press any advantage she can get, so she breathily asks him to make her happy and make the cook better. He promises. With his eyes.
Todd's busy fingering the lipstick mark on Lydia's mug when he gets the call from Walt that we saw at the end of last week. The talk continues past that episode's cutoff point, as Walt names Jesse Pinkman specifically as his intended victim. Of course, the most important part of this scene is that Todd's ringtone is "She Blinded Me with Science." Which seems like more of a Gale Boetticher thing, but I digress. Todd barely reacts to Jesse's name, which is a credit to his poker face, since I'm assuming his giant, raging hate-boner for Jesse is just out of frame.
Credits. Elements.
After the break, Hank, Gomez and Jesse are all meeting under an overpass, with Hank and Gomez trying to figure out what to do . Gomez in particular is not at all interested in what "Timmy Dipshit" the plan-ruiner wants to do. But Jesse says they need evidence, only Walt's too smart to leave any lying around. Except, he says, for "some evidence that greedy asshole would never destroy." That'd be his money. None of them know where this money is, of course, but Jesse says he thinks he knows someone who does.
thing we know, we're back at the Purple Palace, and Gomez is returning with news that they've got this mysterious someone in a safe house somewhere, under the protection of one Agent Van Oster. This all seems legally grey-ish, and Gomez tells Hank straight out that if "this guy" so much as asks for his lawyer, Gomez is taking this whole operation straight to the bosses. Hank's fairly confident nobody will be asking for anybody. As he says this, he pulls some packaged meat out of a grocery bag. He unwraps what appears to be some kind of animal brains and drops it onto the floor, drawing Jesse's confused curiosity. Even more so when he drips the blood from the package over said brains. It all looks gross as fuck, but Hank is arranging it just so. He looks at Jesse and tells him, "You're up." I do love a plan where everybody gets their time to shine.
Cut to the safe house, which is really just a hollowed-out motel room. Agent Van Oster lets Hank and Gomez in, and we see that their witness in custody is in fact Huell. As you might imagine, Huell is really good at just sitting there and not talking, so this may be a difficult assignment for Hank. But he maneuvers the big guy pretty easily, actually. It doesn't hurt that Walt's done enough erratic things to make basically any action from him sound plausible. Hank declares that Huell is in "protective custody," because Walt has been tying up loose ends all over town, which translates into murder, of course. Hank says that have a tap on Saul's phone and picked up Walt saying he was going to "take care of Jesse" and then move on to Huell . Huell, quite rightly, doesn't buy it. The thing is, Hank doesn't exactly have to make an iron-clad case. He just has to say that they heard Saul give him up, that Kuby has gone missing, that there's a tracer on his phone, and that if he doesn't believe them, he can step outside and take his chances. By the time Hank gets to the point where he shows Huell the photo on his phone of Jesse lying on the floor with his "brains" blown out, Huell's switch gets flipped. Suddenly, he's like Homer Simpson at the chili cook-off. Hopping around in his seat, Huell's all, "What's he wanna kill me for?" Hank doesn't need to have that good of a reason for that, either. Maybe it's to tie up the loose ends over poisoning the kid. Or maybe… and Hank nearly does the Peter Falk Memorial "Nah, You Don't Wanna Hear This" fakeout … but maybe it's about killing the people who know where Walt stashed his money.
Huell says that really doesn't make sense, since he doesn't know where the money is. But he does just keep right on saying all he does know. He talks about the van, the seven barrels full of cash that they loaded into the van. Hank seems genuinely shocked at the description of the barrels (black, plastic, 55-gallon ones! Got 'em at Home Depot!), like he wasn't entirely prepared for just how much cash Walt had been able to pull down in such a short time. Huell also gives up the location of the rental car place, plus the fact that the van was filthy with dirt, and that Walt removed a shovel from the back when he returned it. This feels like an old Sherlock Holmes case, now, where the reader gets four pieces of evidence (a broken window, a buffalo nickel, an empty birdcage and six half-melted ice cubes) and then must solve the case. Anyway, that's all Huell knows. Hank manages to scare him a few more times about not leaving the room or using his phone. Nor discussing the case with Agent Van Oster, heh.
That night, Walt meets with Uncle Jack and Todd and Herc. Walt faces Jack and Herc, while Todd hangs in the back, behind Walt. All the better for the moment when Jack asks Walt if he’s asking him to off this old partner of his for "rat patrol" reasons, Walt has to turn around and tell Todd that Jesse, for all his impulse-control issues and failure to listen to reason, is not a rat. And then Todd delivers the most unearned smirk in the long, dickish history of smirks. And he follows it up by smirking AGAIN when Uncle Jack asks if Jesse is some kind of James Bond/Rambo badass. It’s at this moment that I realize that Vince Gilligan isn’t going for fan service in these final episodes, or else at that moment, Todd would have been descended on by spiders and consumed alive in a flurry of web and venom. Anyway, the point Jack is getting at is, why doesn't Walt just off Jesse himself? That question has a lot of answers, ranging from 1) Walt is a coward (in that he doesn’t think he can physically best Jesse, even with a gun) to 2) Walt is a coward (and can’t end Jesse’s life with his own hands). "Jesse is like family to me," is Walt’s answer, which is both bullshit and 100% true, somehow. Jack gets what Walt is nudging at: a quick, painless, bullet-to-the-back-of-the-head type deal. Walt hastily gets to the matter of pricing, but Jack says they don’t want Walt’s money. They want him to start cooking again. Just a short little reprise in order to get them back on track and recreate that nice blue color those Czechs seem to love so much. Walt says absolutely not and offers to triple the price. Jack says if he wants a humane death for Jesse, this is the price. Walt stares at them for a thousand hours before relenting: "One cook. After the job is done." The men stand up, and Walt takes part in the filthiest handshake ever on this show. He emphasizes that this execution needs to happen quickly. Jack says they can do it as soon as tonight, if Walt can give them a location. Walt doesn’t know where Jesse is, of course. "But I know how to flush him out."
After the break, we’re in the kitchen with Andrea and Brock. Hey, Andrea and Brock -- it’s been a while. How’s that aftermath of being poisoned working out? Obviously, this is Walter’s plan for flushing Jesse out, as we see when he shows up at the door. He re-introduces himself, reminds her that he’s "Jesse’s friend," and then says he’s here to talk about Jesse, in fact. She invites him in. Well, great, now you’ve invited him inside, which means he can enter her house whenever he wants to. Walt receives one hell of a cold reception from Brock, which is hilarious, but also probably a bit of TV showmanship. The old "kids and dogs can sense evil" bit. Walt gets down to business with Andrea. It’s pretty much the story you’d expect him to tell: Jesse’s doing drugs again and he’s nowhere to be found. Walt shrugs off the suggestion that he call the police (Andrea’s like, "Oh, right"), and when she tells him to call Saul, he says all Saul told him was that Jesse wasn’t in jail. Walt says he and Jesse got into an argument – "I won’t bore you with the details," he says, and then looks back at Brock, like, okay, calm down, we get it -- so Jesse won’t take his calls. Having led Andrea down the path, she knocks on the door he wants her to, as she offers to call Jesse herself. He even gives her the number for Jesse’s new Hello Kitty phone. The strategy here is simple: once Jesse gets the message from Andrea saying she’s here with Walter (which she delivers on cue), Jesse will recognize the implicit threat and come running. His work done, Walt excuses himself. Andrea’s like, “You could stick around to see if he calls back?” But Walter the Coward is in no way interested in sticking around this future murder scene. He even gives Andrea the "Call me -- better yet, I’ll call you" line of extreme blow-off. Andrea doesn’t seem to suspect much from this unassuming oldster, though why would you unless you had reason? He waves goodbye to Brock, who barely looks up from his Froot Loops.
Outside, Walt signals Herc and his extravagantly mustachioed associate that they’re all set. Walt reiterates that it should be quick, and he tells them to take Jesse away from here first, so Andrea and Brock have no idea. Gosh, Walter White sure has a lot of rules for making contract killing more humane.
Elsewhere, there’s a Hello Kitty phone playing Andrea’s voice-mail message. Only it’s not Jesse retrieving it but Hank. Good thing, too. I was not relishing the test of Intellect vs. Emotion that would have accompanied Jesse getting that call. Hank promptly hangs up: "Nice try, asshole." Hank heads inside where he has to deliver the bad news. He went to the van rental place and inquired whether the cars were equipped with GPS (the better to find out where Walt hid his money). They’re not. They used to be until "the ACLU or somebody" sued to have them removed. ARGH! Stupid ACLU or Somebody! Can’t we just have the security state we all so desperately need?? So Gomez is like, "Well, that’s it, then. Game over." Jesse protests that they can’t just give up, and Hank calmly says they’re not. He mentions Huell’s account of the dirty van and the shovels -- he’s willing to bet Walt buried that money. Gomez is like, "Awesome -- what good does that do us without GPS." But Hank says Walt doesn’t know they don’t have the GPS. Ahhhh, the deadly art of deception!
At the car was, it looks like it’s Take Your Flynn to Work Day, because Skyler is trying to teach Walter Jr. how to work the register. Things Junior is still having trouble with: counting out change to customers in that way where you backtrack to a $20 (which always seemed infantilizing to me, like, I can do math without this breadcrumb trail back to my original amount, thanks) and remembering to say "Have an A1 day." He doesn’t really understand the point of doing the latter, but Skyler tells him that it’s part of their brand. Ladies Be Loving Brandz this week on Breaking Bad! Junior just wants to go home and chill for a bit, since the gas fumes have to have dissipated by now. Ah, so that’s why Skyler’s got him at work with her. Keeping him close until the tweaking menace has been dispatched. Before she caves, who walks in but Saul Goodman! Skyler’s body goes rigid, wondering just what fresh hell this portends (is Walt dead? Is there danger?), while Junior openly gawks at the local celebrity in his midst. He does the totally uncool thing of being like, "Hey [Celebrity], you’re [Celebrity], aren’t you?" Saul is pretty cool about it, throwing out his "Better Call Saul" catchphrase and everything. Skyler tries to hustle him along before Junior can get in too many questions about Saul’s busted up face. At the same time, Walt (with Holly in tow) scurries up to the door, spotting Saul and then literally hiding around the corner from his wife and son.
Outside, Walt catches up to Saul, who apparently really did need the car washed if only to get rid of all the coke residue Jesse left in there. But also, the more important business: Huell is missing. Both men immediately jump to the conclusion that Jesse got to him -- a fairly safe assumption considering Huell’s involvement in the Brock incident that set Jesse off. By the way, can I just mention that the long shot of this conversation manages to include a giant "Better Call Saul" billboard in the background? Walt says that Jesse hasn’t poked his head out yet, but that could just mean that he’s off being high somewhere. Saul thinks it’s because he sniffed out the trap. "He’s not as dumb as you think he is," Saul admonishes, and quite rightly, too. From inside, Skyler watches the two men with extreme wariness. Walt notices that Saul is wearing a bulletproof vest underneath his shirt, and Saul’s like, "No shit -- murderous tweaker on the loose." Walt stresses that Jesse is only after him. "Then where the hell is Huell?" is Saul’s quite reasonable reply.
Back inside the car wash, Skyler anxiously asks Walt if there is any "news." That would be "news" on whether Walt has successfully murdered the boy he once taught chemistry to before looping him into an escalating life of violence and horror. Yeah, no news on that front yet. Meanwhile, Walt is placed in the frame where the "ICE COLD" promise on the soda machine sits right above his shoulder. Hey, Breaking Bad, when you’re right, you’re right. Walt then stares out the window, into the big scary world full of people who might want to murder him for what he’s done. He places his hand over the pocket with his gun in it, and then looks over to his wife and son. Classic image-poem that reads "My Family/Whatever it takes." It’s at this point that the text notification on his phone blinks. By the way, it’s supposed to be like 2010 in this timeline, right? So I guess Walt having a flip phone isn’t as egregious as it seems now. That’s exactly the right phone for an uncool dad to have in 2010. (Full disclosure: my dad has a flip phone in 2013, but for God’s sake, we can’t go by him.) Anyway, the text is simply a photo of a barrel wedged into the ground, unearthed enough to have removed the lid, revealing all that sweet, sweet cash inside. Boy, Hank is really proving himself to be something of a prodigy when it comes to cell phone art. Get this man a Tumblr immediately.
Walt, as you might expect, flips right out, and the soundtrack reflects this change of mood. Jesse phones him immediately and is like, "Look familiar, bitch?" Jesse really lets the “bitch”es fly during this phone call, I should note. He tells Walt there are six more barrels like that one that he just dug up out in the desert. Cut to Walt speeding down the road, blowing past red lights, still on the phone with Jesse, who explains about Huell giving up the intel on Walt’s money-burying plan. It’s almost embarrassing how easy it is to bait this particular hook for Walt. Jesse threatens to burn the money unless Walt gets his ass out to the desert, like, immediately. Walt squeals that he’s on his way and starts to beg. Jesse warns him not to hang up or put him on hold (again: embarrassingly easy to execute this trap) and that he’ll burn $10,000 a minute until Walt shows up. "Don’t you touch my money!" Walt seethes. "Fire in the hole, bitch!" is Jesse’s response. "There goes 10 Gs. Oh, nice orange flames." Like, this is kind of hilarious how obvious Jesse is being without Walt noticing. "Nice orange flames. Such a real fire. I’m absolutely burning your money that I 100% found for real, right at this minute. Not even kidding or perpetrating a hoax, bitch."
Walt speeds down the desert highway and starts telling Jesse about how he’s got cancer again and how the money isn’t for him but for his family, so, you know, please don’t deprive his family of all these ill-gotten gains. Jesse actually can’t fucking believe Walt is going the "think of the children" route, after all that’s happened. Walt screams an apology for Brock, though most of that apology consists of him saying that Brock is alive because that’s how he planned it. So. To clarify. Walter White’s argument as to why he’s not so bad is that he knew exactly how much POISON to give a GRADE-SCHOOL CHILD so as to HOSPITALIZE him but not KILL him. I’m so glad Jesse and Hank and Gomez are getting this whole conversation on tape, because that is priceless self-justification right there. Particularly when he caps it off with "Don’t you know me by now?" But Walt’s just getting warmed up. He’s flipped from apologetic to being angry that Jesse can’t see everything he’s done for him over the years. Sure, yes, he ran over those two gang members in his Aztec. He’s also painting the murder of Krazy 8 as a defense of Jesse. And I guess killing Gus too. All for you, Jesse. All for you. "Only you’re too STUPID to know it!" Not sure whether it was this bout of hubris or just part of the plan, but Jesse’s no longer responding. Walt screams into the phone as he approaches the burial site, petrified that he got disconnected and thus Jesse ill burn the whole stash.
Walt pulls up to the clearing and looks around warily. At this point, he’s still waiting for Jesse to ambush him with a gun. He pulls out his own gun, looks around and sees nothing. "Son of a bitch," he says, as he finally figures out the plot. He immediately removes the battery from his phone, like that will make a difference now. He’s fucked and he knows it. He finds a hiding spot behind a rock, and that’s when he sees the SUV coming up the path he just blazed for it. He tries to make a run for it, but to where, you know? His car is right there in the open. Nothing he can do about that. He scrambles to retrieve his phone and finds another rock to hide behind. From there, he calls up Uncle Jack and the Fightin’ Nazis, telling them he’s managed to flush Jesse out. Yeah, so to speak. Immediately, the guys begin to suit up. "I’m guessing he’s got back-up," he says, which is maybe the funniest thing -- that he imagines Jesse, Badger and Skinny Pete are here to end his life. So Jack’s men are about to head out. Walt gives them the coordinates from his lottery ticket. But as he finishes, he sees the men disembarking from the car: Jesse, Hank and Gomez. And even though he’s flipped the switch enough to want Jesse dead, it seems that his earlier pledge that Hank will not be sent to Belize is still intact. And if he can’t kill Hank, he can’t get out of this jam. It really is over for him. You can see it on his face. Barely breathing, he tells Jack not to come. The job is off. No mas. Jack’s all "WHUT?" about it, but Walt seems to mean it. He’s done. Hank knows it, as he yells for Walt to show himself. Even the commercial break has a finality to it.
After the break, Walt sucks it up and finally appears from behind the rock. It should be noted that Gomez and Hank have guns, but Jesse does not. Hank has Walt approach them. Slowly. Slowly. Slowly. He has Walt drop his gun. Slowly. He has Walt put his hands up. Slowly. Walk towards him, slowly. Hank is taking 0.00 chances here. Jesse is 100% waiting for the other shoe to drop. For Walt to pull another magic trick out of his ass. Ultimately, Hank has Walt turn around, lace his fingers behind his head and walk backwards towards him. Then drop to his knees. With Gomez inches away, rifle pointed right at Walt, Hank puts the cuffs on his Heisenberg. As Gomez pats Walt down, Hank takes a moment to brag about the photo he doctored of the money. He took it out back, by the barbecue grill where they used to be family once. Hank knew what would draw Walt out, see. The money. Of course, Hank is kind of taking credit for Jesse’s idea, but whatever. Jesse almost can’t believe he’s seeing Walt in cuffs. It’s hard to parse what he might be feeling, but a mixture of wary triumph and gnawing regret that it’s come to this have to be two major contenders. But then he remembers that this is a victory. He tells Walt he recognizes this place as where they did their first cook. He’s almost amused that Walt would be so sentimental. Walt just stares a hole through his head. He calls Jesse a "coward." Jesse spits in his face and the two men have to be physically separated.
Hank then tries, in vain, to get Walt to point out the exact location of the barrels. No matter, though. They’ll have the DEA out here digging soon enough. Hank offers to flip Gomez for the chance to read Walt his Miranda, but Gomez rightly says the honor is all Hank’s. You just have to know Hank won’t be able to get away with feeling this good for too long. And you ESPECIALLY know that when he makes a call to Marie to tell her, "I got him!" From a we’re-watching-TV perspective, it’s a numbskull move -- counting your chickens before you’ve called in back-up chickens. But in the context of this story -- where Marie has been the only person he could trust for several weeks -- it’s totally understandable. Even if the DEA ends up looking at him weird for having Heisenberg under his nose this whole time, he’ll be a hero to Marie. She even stops talking about the weird brain matter in her trash.
Meanwhile, Gomez has put Jesse in Walt’s car, and he and Hank divide up responsibilities. Hank will take Walt back for booking, and on the way he’ll call the tribal police and alert them to their presence. So, as of this moment, no one else knows they’re there. Gotcha. Perfect. What could go wrong at this late stage? Oh, right… that fucking Nazi bastard and his gang of lawless murderers who Walt set in motion and then thought he could stop with a feeble whisper that the job is off. On a cell phone. In the middle of nowhere. Yeah, raise your hand if you’re shocked that Jack didn’t/wouldn’t get the message. So two trucks full of weaponized Nazis get out, and from the back of Hank’s SUV, Walt is screaming for Hank to beware. Then, once the weapons have been drawn, he starts screaming at Jack that the job is off. Again, he either doesn’t hear Walt or doesn’t want to. Someone’s dangled the chance to murder in front of his face, and he doesn’t want to pass it up. Similarly, when Hank and Gomez identify themselves as federal agents, Jack either doesn’t believe them or wants to see some badges so they can get the jump on shooting them. Either way, Hank and Gomez are outgunned by a factor of six or more. Even goddamn Todd has a handgun drawn, which is about as good as Hank has it.
So this is the standoff. Hank and Gomez on one side ("DROP YOUR WEAPONS!"), Jack and the Nazis on the other ("Let’s see some badges! Actually never mind, we really just want to kill some people!"), Walt in handcuffs in the back seat ("JAAAAAAACK!") and Jesse hiding out behind Walt’s car. When the guns start firing, I can’t believe Hank and Gomez aren’t killed immediately, since they aren’t hiding behind the SUV yet. Walt gets low in the back seat. Jesse hides too. But bullets are everywhere. Who knows whose getting hit. The only one we know for sure survives -- based on the flash-forwards -- is Walt. And Hank, having just told his wife he loves her, is surely a goner based on all known laws of television and movies. Beyond that, we’ll have to tune in week, because we hit the credits MID-GUNFIRE. God damn it.
Joe R just hopes Todd bites it. He can be reached for lavish praise and nothing but at joseph.reid21@gmail.com.
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