Where We Left Off
Walt killed off lovable grump Mike, then proceeded to tie up any loose ends by paying Todd's uncle to kill nine inmates that had information on Walt in two minutes. Skyler showed Walt his sizable pile of money and asked how much more he needed to be happy. Walt told her that he would stop selling drugs so Skyler brought the kids back home. Madrigal employee Lydia expands Walt's blue crystal product to the Czech Republic (and saves her own life in the process). Walt visited Jesse's house to give Jesse two bags, Jesse worries that Walt is going to kill him, but the bags ultimately contain a large amount of cash. Hank takes the most momentous potty break in TV history and picks up the copy of Leaves of Grass given to Walter by Gale Boetticher, finally realizing that Walter White is in fact Heisenberg.
Blood Money
The rest of this recap is a spoiler, so if you haven't seen the new episode yet don't read any further. The cold open is presented with an extra chill as the show enters its final stretch: skateboarders do some tricks in a pool that is eventually shown to be the pool of the White house. From the looks of it, the house has been condemned for quite a while (and the state of disrepair it is in is a little ridiculous considering we are presumably a few months passed Walt's 51st birthday and this is happening on his 52nd birthday, but the narrative of this show has encompassed just two years for the five and a half years it has been on). Walter is back at his former abode to get the ricin he stashed in the wall after most recently threatening Lydia with it. His beard is scraggly and he has hair again (so the chemotherapy that Walter begins taking again this episode must end soon), his clothes are stained and dirty, and his house has clearly been taken away from him. The interior of the house has graffiti on it, in big yellow letters reads "Heisenberg". The opening tells all: Walter won't only be exposed soon, he will be broken. There aren't any words in the opening segment until the neighbor recognizes Walt as he is leaving with the ricin. She is taken aback as he says hello, she drops her grocery bags and the credits start (who says the downfall of a meth dealing murderer can't be funny?) After the intro we're taken back to the exact where the show left off, with a slow zoom guiding us toward the bathroom door as Hank has just taken what seems like the longest and most suspenseful dump ever. He's shell-shocked, and the camera dreamily follows him to the back of the house where the family is having a nice get together. He tells Marie that they have to get going, and as they are driving home he is so astonished by his revelation that he drives his car into someone's mailbox, then promptly gets out of his car and has a panic attack. This seems like a false note for Hank, but considering the difficult mental state he was in after being shot (and by how quickly he recovers after crashing the car), the episode quickly recovers. Hank regains his determination and becomes the proactive hero DEA agent he was meant to be. The show shifts to the carwash owned by the Whites, and Walter appears to be adjusting to the normal job reasonably well. His suggestions to move around their inventory in the store are appropriately pedantic, as his desire to be in full control isn't gone. Walt suggests getting another car wash so that they can launder their remaining heaps of money more quickly and while Skyler seems initially reticent she does know of a place that could use a car wash. It is at this point that Lydia shows up at the car wash, seemingly determined not to have an A1 day despite Walter's insistence. Lydia is still dealing meth, but at only 68% purity (and dropping) she could lose the market she has cornered. She begs Walt to come back (for a nice sum of money) but Walter refuses. When Walt informs Skyler that Lydia is there for more than just a car wash, Anna Gunn's gives her best "I'mma get this bitch" face and makes a beeline to Lydia and gets her to leave without her car even being dry yet. Gunn's Skyler has been much maligned by fans for her insistence on being a decent person (in a bad, bad world), but her performance and character are tremendous in this episode.
Back at the Schrader house, Hank takes work off and gets some DEA agents to drop off some Heisenberg files at his house. Then the show goes into one of their patented montages, using a nice pop song while we take a trip down memory lane through DEA documents. We see Jesse's old license plate (while not being as subtle as a drug dealer should be, the license plate CAP'NCOOK is off the hook), footage of Jesse and Walt stealing methylamine, and photos of Tuco and Gale. It's almost half way through the episode when Jesse shows up, he is still in quite a bit of a funk because he has the misfortune of having a conscience (unlike Walt). He smokes weed with Badger and Skinny Pete while they discuss, as all stoners should, the implication of the teleportation process in Star Trek. Their conversation is hilarious, but Jesse is not amused. He heads over to Saul's office, and smokes weed in the waiting room while The Battle Hymn of the Republic's muzak plays, much to the chagrin of Huell, Saul's overweight bodyguard. A smattering of people wait for Saul, but Jesse gets in first only to find out that Saul was just getting a massage in his office (a good sign for the
spin-off show). Jesse has come to give away $5 million: half to Mike's granddaughter and half (presumably, but please confirm or deny in the comments) going to the family of the kid Todd murdered at the end of the great train robbery. Saul does his best to prove to Jesse that it is not a good idea, but his trademark sleaze is better suited to asking for money rather than telling someone to keep it. Jesse leaves in a huff and tells Saul just to get it done, showing that his personality has been influenced by Walt's controlling nature. After Walt embarks a new session of chemotherapy he goes to Jesse with the money Jesse gave Saul in tow. Jesse tells Mr. White that he referred to it as "Blood Money" (the title of the episode) and that's why he wants to give it away. Jesse indirectly accuses Walter of killing Mike, saying that there's no way he would have gotten away with the prison executions otherwise. Walter tries to manipulate Jesse for the umpteenth time, but Jesse's progression from season one really shows here as he has become too wise to fall for that shit again. Jesse ends up taking the money, but Aaron Paul's excellent and nuanced performance here show that he is certainly privy to the bullshit Walt is feeding him. Walt tells Jesse that he needs to stop focusing on the darkness behind him and to try to live an ordinary and decent life, he once again takes the mantle of teacher to Jesse's pupil assuming that his ability to maintain his composure is symbolic of his emotional maturity. This is the opposite of the case: Mr. White's ability to justify his actions may be his most villainous trait, he never admits to any wrongdoing. Jesse is confused and in a downward spiral, but this isn't the same kind of spiral he was in after Jane's death, he is sorry for what he has done rather than what he thinks happened to him.
Jesse is later seen asleep in a parking lot with the money bags sitting innocuously next to him. When a homeless man asks him for money he hands him ten thousand dollars, making him the most generous man to meet on the street since Eddie Murphy's character in Coming to America. This apparently makes him feel slightly better, as he decides to drive down the street of a poor neighborhood tossing money out the window while visibly upset: a crying Jesse Robin Hood, if you will. In a different show this would seem comically overdramatic, but Breaking Bad (and Aaron Paul) earn these grand gestures through the piles of emotional groundwork they lay down. Jesse is looking for any way to atone for his actions, is he going to have to be the one to take Walt down? But if Jesse wants to bring an end to Walt, he's going to have to get in line behind Hank. The episode is mostly dramatic yet restrained for the first 35 minutes, but the last ten minutes pump up the adrenaline. After Walt sees that he is missing the copy of Leaves of Grass and he finds the tracking device on his car (followed by an extended long shot of Walt looking out to see just who is watching him, which felt like it would have been the end of an episode if this weren't the last season) he heads over to Hank's to see how much he knows. In episode four of this season, Hank makes a passing reference of the great Michael Mann movie Heat, and this scene in particular owes a lot to that film. But whereas Heat already had the built-in panache of the meeting of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, Breaking Bad took five seasons to build up their stars to get to this point. Their confrontation does not disappoint, initially a coy conversation about whether or not the potato salad was bad, Walt seems to be satisfied to walk away leaving the tension high but untouched. Once again, while watching I felt that it would have been the show's M.O. to end the episode here, but Walt has come too far (and this is too close to the end) to stop there. Walt brings out the tracking device to ask Hank about it, and Hank responds by delivering a nice (and belated) knuckle sandwich to his brother-in-law. Hank is already convinced, and while Walt does not admit outright to being Heisenberg, he is too proud to deny it. He tells Hank that he is going to die from the cancer anyway, so prosecuting him would be futile, but Hank doesn't seem to care. When Hank says that he doesn't know who he is even talking to anymore, Walt responds in his brilliantly sinister fashion "Tread Lightly." While they both are trying to prove they have the bigger proverbial stick, the show reached its boiling point, and there's no sign they are going to turn down the heat.
Extra Crystals JESSE PINKMAN'S BITCH COUNT: Unfortunately 0, Jesse was a little too down to bust out his one-word catch phrase this episode, but I will keep an eye out for them for the rest of the season. The first real line of dialogue in the episode was Marie playfully saying to Walt "You are the devil!" Not very subtle, but a nice little reminder at the start of the second half of season five. This episode was written by Peter Gould, who is also a producer and the writer of the season one finale, and directed efficiently and effectively by Walter White himself Bryan Cranston. Some notable shots: the opening sequence showing extreme close-ups of the skateboards only to reveal that they were in the White house pool, the very high angle shot of Jesse and Walt on the couch showing the distance between them isn't growing because it is already fully grown, and the great low-angle long shot in the last scene showing Hank and Walter ready for battle. Space Blueberries and Chekhov's Guts in Space could be the name of the first two albums of Badger's band Twaughthammer. That conversation between Badger and Skinny Pete was hilarious, but it played for the exact right amount of time. As soon as Jesse walked out of the room I was grateful and I was reminded of this show's great editing. The dialogue in the last scene was quick and brilliant. My favorite quips from Hank to Walt "You don't give a shit about family!" and after Walt told him he had cancer, "Good, rot you son of a bitch." Cranston's acting was on full display, switching from WASP-y brother-in-law to confused to begging for mercy and finally to cruelly confident Heisenberg showed him in almost all of his iterations, and although his downfall is coming it seemed like he was the victor in this interchange. Semi-Realistic Predictions: Jesse's odds for being the person who turns in Walter are at an all-time high, it is getting to the point where I can't see a scenario where Jesse isn't responsible for Walt being forced to run away and change his identity. Furthermore, I think Lydia is going to play a big role later this season; her time in this episode was pretty limited but her presence reminds you that she is still a cog in the Breaking Bad machine (one that does not have any extra parts). Skyler is still putting on a face with Walt, and although his actions remain to be reprehensible to her it seems that she has gotten what she has wanted so far. But this may just be the calm before the storm, it seems that although Walt has killed off all of his enemies he no longer has any friends. That's a precarious position to be in when he relies on so many people to keep his secrets safe. Unrealistic Predictions: Holly White (Skyler and Walter's infant daughter) grows up to hate Hank for taking her father away from her and resorts to a life of crime and seeks vengeance on her uncle. The money that Jesse threw out his window reinvigorates the community and leads to an overall decrease of drug use in "urban" New Mexico, essentially preventing other kids from becoming like Jesse in the future. That's it for this week, comment if I missed anything or you have any other predictions for the show and I will be back next week with another recap of the best show currently on television.