AMC/Netflix
…and exhale. The drop-off in intensity after Breaking Bad‘s return is inevitable but no less a shock to the system. Early morning driver Scrotey Oxycontin follows the hundred dollar bill paper trail to Jesse Pinkman, flat on his back on a playground roundabout. It turns out playing Robin Hood in the hood does attract attention. We’ll get back to Jesse MoneyFlinger in a hot minute but right now we have bigger fish to fry. The moment T.O.W.K . is out of his garage Hank phones Skyler, tells her he knows what he knows and before you know it they’re on a cosy coffee date in a shitbox diner not unlike someone in The Booth at the End, appropriately enough for someone who made a deal with the devil. Skyler is crazy shook and well she might be. But Hank is very quick to assure her everything will be just fine. It’s OK, he says, because he’s on her side. Yeah, she’s heard that one before, big boy.
Frankly, Skyler ain’t trying to hear about Hank’s plan for her to flip on Walt, move in with the kids to his place and hope for the best. She GTFO to lawyer up but not before she learns of the cancer bomb Walt dropped. Of course Walt’s cancer could be back but who knows with that guy? He’s in a proper tizz, knowing that Hank knows, knowing that Skyler has met with him and knowing that his masterpiece, his Sistine Chapel ceiling of crime could be crashing around him any moment now. What do you do when everything’s gone to shit, the clock’s kicking down and your options are disappearing faster than Nathan Cleverly‘s credibility? Better call Saul.
What do you do when everything’s gone to shit, the clock’s kicking down and your options are disappearing faster than Nathan Cleverly’s credibility? Better call Saul
Saul is already on Walt’s big pile of money and gets Huell and Kuby to fetch it. With regard to the Hank problem Saul politely suggests a final fatal solution. “It’s an option that worked very well for you in the very recent past”. How very dare you, says Walt, he’s family. What was Saul thinking of asking the mass murderer if he considered killing an option?
When Blewall and Pubey arrive with the money Walt does what any criminal mastermind would do and drives out to the desert and buries it in a big hole. He commits the GPS coordinates to memory, gets a lottery ticket with those numbers and sticks it on the fridge. Those really are the winning numbers should someone be able to decipher them. It could be someone’s lucky day.
Not the lieutenants in Lydia‘s operation, unfortunately. When a ‘buck your ideas up’ talk from Lydia doesn’t work Todd and his scrote uncle machine gun massacre them and it looks like there’s a new meth cook in town. The old employees will be dismembered, wrapped and dumped in multiple locations. This is the meth game’s idea of a severance package.
Back at Casa White Marie pays her sister a visit and once she finds out exactly how long Skyler has known about Heisenberg she takes a large slice of umbrage and whacks her harder than Hank hit Walt. Lest we forget that Skyler is the second craziest woman in the family Marie tries to kidnap the baby and Hank has to drag the loon away. Marie wants Hank to spill to the cops but he knows it’s a career ender. Heisenberg under his nose all these years? Please. He needs proof. He doesn’t have that yet but he does get a few minutes in an interrogation room alone with Jesse, a few minutes we’ll get to in the next episode. He’s going to need more than an industrial strength magnet to manoeuvre his way out of this one.
The verdict: Can’t cook, can’t breathe.
Marks out of 10: 8