Mr. Lambert, I presume?
At the end of the previous episode, Walt the Worst had disappeared into the van of Saul's guy who whisks terrible people away into obscurity. When we pick back up, we discover that Mr. Disappear People, aka Ed, is being played by Robert Forster, which is PERFECT CASTING obviously, and he is also in the process of disappearing Saul. Saul joins Walt in the basement hideout of Ed's vacuum repair shop, where Walt has been secreted away for several days already, and he is losing it big time.
Walt, as fuckbrained as ever, is scribbling his plans to have the Swastika-necks murdered, and wants Saul to give him the name of a hitman. Saul just looks at him incredulously, as Walt doesn't seem to be grasping the whole "you are out of commission as a kingpin now" part of being disappeared. Walt screams at Saul, because he is the worst, and Saul tells him if he really cares about his family, he'll just turn himself in and save them from their fate, which will definitely be worse than if he'd just died in the first place and never tried to preemptively provide for them by manufacturing methamphetamine.
But, of course, Walt doesn't really care about his family, five seasons of protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, and so he does not turn himself in, but instead travels to an isolated cabin in New Hampshire inside a propane tank. Which is pretty spectacular symbolism for this guy who is about to blow the fuck up. Somehow. At someone.
Meanwhile, the DEA is about to drop Marie off at the home she shared with Hank (RIP Hank), and see that someone has busted in and ransacked the joint, so they whisk her away quickly. Of course it was Todd, nicking the recording of Jesse's confession, which we all knew he'd do and thank Maude at least Marie is safe.
Back at Swastika-neck Central, they all watch the recording, and, as Jesse recounts Todd shooting Drew Sharp, the kid on the moped who stumbled across their Great Train Robbery, Todd gives a chilling little grin of satisfaction. It is horrible and Todd is horrible and I hate him SO MUCH.
Uncle Jack, head Swastika-neck, is mega-pissed that Jesse ratted out Todd, and he wants to kill Jesse right fucking now. NOOOOOOOOOOO! But once again, Todd stops him, and the explanation for why they have to keep Jesse alive and keep cooking meth even though they have Walt's $70 million now is exactly as I predicted to Iain after last week's episode, and I am so happy to finally have gotten something right! Todd argues that there's EVEN MORE money to be made in blue meth, and Uncle Jack realizes he's got a big ol' creepy crush on Lydia. So Jesse's life is spared for the time being.
In his cage, Jesse uses the reprieve he doesn't even know he's been granted to fiddle open his cuffs with a paperclip stuck to the photo of Andrea and Brock. Devoting his attentions to this potential means of escape clipped to the picture, rather than to the people in the picture, is a poignant foreshadowing of Things to Come.
In her figurative cage, Skylar sits with her hapless-looking attorney at a long conference table in a room with a bunch of federal attorneys. She tells them she knows she is in a lot of trouble if she can't give them Walt, but she has no idea where she is. She doesn't say it, but it's clear: If she had any idea where the fuck that nightmare of humanity was, she would tell them.
Across her face is an expression that reflects back the thought we are all having: She resisted leaving Walt, and resisted turning him in, back when she still had a sliver of a choice, because she didn't want Flynn to find out his father is a drug dealer. And now he knows anyway. And everything is in the shitter. And it definitely wasn't worth it. And how could she ever have thought that it was.
Back at home later in the day, Skyler sits on the couch smoking cigarettes and looking out the front window at a police car parked down the street from her house. She hears Holly cry and goes down the hallway to her bedroom, only to be greeted by three men in black ski masks, one of whom is Todd. They threaten her. They ask if she said anything about Lydia to the feds. She swears she didn't, and it appears that it never even occurred to her, that brief meeting at the carwash, until just now. They tell her if she mentions Lydia, they'll come back. "You really don't want us coming back."
Skylar has made some mistakes, but she is not a stupid lady. She knows damn well that she really doesn't want them coming back, and she promises to keep quiet about Lydia.
Some afternoon subsequent to this intimidation, Todd meets Lydia at the cafe that's their usual meeting place, and Todd is typically behaving like an eager puppy, and Lydia is typically disinterested. He assures her that Skylar will keep her mouth shut, and then keeps her interested in
Meanwhile, in Nowheresville, New Hampshire, Walt arrives at his cabin and the reality of his isolation hits him as Ed tells him there's no phone, no internet, no TV, no contact with the outside world if he doesn't want to get busted like yesterday. It turns out that the story of a chemistry teacher who gets cancer and breaks bad and turns into a massive drug kingpin overseeing an empire that stretches to Europe right under the nose of his DEA brother-in-law is a story of national news interest, and if you don't believe that's plausible, let me introduce you to the success of a show called Breaking Bad, which it just so happens is a fictional account of that very story!
Too bad Walt will never get to see it, because there's no cable at the cabin. (Meta!)
There's a little town eight miles away, Ed explains to Walt, but DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT GOING THERE. Ed will bring Walt supplies once a month, and if he catches wind that Walt has "left the reservation," he won't come back.
Obviously, as soon as Ed leaves, Walt puts on his Heisenberg Hat and marches down to the gate. But staring at the long, snowy road stretching out before him, he suddenly seems to grasp the gravity of his situation for the first time, and returns to the cabin.
Cut back to Camp Hellhole, and Jesse's face has healed some, so it's obviously a few weeks later. He's figured out how he might make his escape, and he asks Todd to leave the tarp off the top of his cage so he can look at the stars. Todd obliges. Much too soon, Jesse loudly gets himself out of the cage and immediately makes a run for it, past a security camera, launching himself at a fence topped with barbed wire, before getting caught by the Swastika-necks.
He begs them to kill him, but instead they throw him in a truck and drive to Andrea's house, where Todd puts on the full Meth Damon Boy Next Door Show to entice her out onto her porch, where he says, "Just so you know, this isn't personal," before shooting her in the back of the head. Jesse screams, and I gasp, and I cannot even bear to watch Jesse, whose already shattered self breaks into a million more tiny fractured pieces, being held together with nothing but fraying threads of vanishing humanity. It hurts to watch.
Uncle Jack coolly tells him, "Remember, there's still the kid." And I cannot imagine how Jesse can live with any more pain, and I hate the Swastika-necks with the fiery passion of ten thousand suns, so much that I forgot for a moment how much I hate Walt, and all I can hope at this point is that Jesse finds a way to blow that lab the fuck up, blow it to the goddamn moon, and take of all the Swastika-necks with him, and relieve himself of this life that will never give him a moment of joy ever again.
I don't want Jesse to die. But I don't want him to live, either. There are no happy endings for Jesse Pinkman.
Back in New Hampshire, several months have now passed judging by the state of Walt's hair and beard, and he looks gaunt and sick. He's all alone. No family. No friends. No one. Just as much in a cage as Jesse is. Ed brings him supplies, including chemo juice and a box of Ensure and new glasses, so he can feverishly read the Albuquerque papers and clip out pictures of his family, which he hangs above his bed as if they're just normal family photos.
Walt gives Ed an extra $10,000 to stay with him for an hour. It is pathetic. He tells Ed: "One of these days when you come up here, I'll be dead." And then he asks if Ed would deliver the rest of the money in the barrel to Walt's family. "If I said yes, would you believe me?" Ed asks. Walt has no answer. What a shitshow he's created for everyone.
That night, after Ed has collected his $10k and left, Walt lies in bed, and he is wearing a green shirt and white long-johns, which is an amazing throwback to the green shirt and tighty-whities. GREAT JOB AS ALWAYS, BREAKING BAD COSTUMERS! YOU ARE THE BEST! That green shirt also means he's thinking about money, and, sure enough, he packs a bunch of cash into the Ensure box and wraps it up for mailing.
The next day, he strolls down to the pub in the small town eight miles away and pays a waitress or patron to phone Flynn's school and pretend to be Marie. Once Flynn is called to the principal's office and gets on the phone, Walt starts babbling at him about how he's going to send money to Flynn's BFF Louis' house, but it's really for Flynn and Holly and Skylar blah blah I DID IT ALL FOR YOU etc.
And then Flynn just LETS HIM HAVE IT. "You killed Uncle Hank!" he shouts at his father. He yells at him for hurting Skylar. "Why are you still alive?! Why don't you just die already?!" Flynn yells, before hanging up on Walt.
It is AMAZING.
Walt, totally stunned (of course) that his son doesn't appreciate his criminal father who ruined their lives calling to say he's sending them a gift package from the Island of Whoopsileftyouintheshit, resolves to give himself up, and calls the Albuquerque DEA, giving his name before leaving the phone off the hook so the call can be traced. He takes a seat at the bar and orders a drink, then stops the barkeep from flipping channels when he catches a glimpse of his old Gray Matter pals Elliott and Gretchen, doing an interview with Charlie Rose.
They explain that Walt contributed nothing of substance to Grey Matter Technologies. Walt stares at the television.
When local police show up to arrest him, he is gone.
Once again, just when Walt is about to do the right thing for his family, his pride gets bruised and he can't resist prioritizing vengeance. Fucking Walt. WALT YOU ARE THE WORST YOU ARE SO TERRIBLE!!! ARGH!!!
Wow, this episode was terrific. A++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I have NO IDEA what's going to happen in the finale! I feel like Walt's going back to shoot up Gray Matter, punctuating his extraordinary deter as a drug kingpin with the sickeningly ordinary act of a disgruntled former employee shooting up his workplace.
Everything comes back to his being "in the empire business" to show he could BE something, after he left (HE!!! LEFT!!!) Gray Matter in a fit of pique and his former colleagues went on to become bazillionaires with the company.
Do you think Walt and Jesse are going to meet again? Maybe "I watched Jane die" was the last word between them. I would be okay with that. I would be okay with an ending in which we see each of them explode/implode in their own ways. That's my best guess at what's going to happen, and the purity of my wrongness about what will happen on this show could not be higher if Walt cooked it himself, so smart money's on SOMETHING ELSE HAPPENING.
What do you think will happen?
And why do you think Walt needed new glasses? Was that symbolic of something? Has the cancer gone to his brain? Nothing means nothing on Breaking Bad, right?!
What's going to become of Sklyar? And Flynn? And Holly? And Marie? I AM SO WORRIED ABOUT THEM.
I can't wait until next week!!!!!! But I'm going to have to!!!!!!
Shakesville is run as a safe space. First-time commenters: Please read Shakesville's Commenting Policy and Feminism 101 Section before commenting. We also do lots of in-thread moderation, so we ask that everyone read the entirety of any thread before commenting, to ensure compliance with any in-thread moderation. Thank you.
blog comments powered by Disqus