A spoilery summary from TV Guide:
A shocking discovery unsettles Skyler; Walter Jr. leans on his father to make a special purchase; Mike gets surprise help from Jesse.
Ah good, I can stop spamming the old thread. Where was I? Oh yeah:
- Walt is a stupid asshole.
- It’s Dewey! (from Justified) I hope they don’t kill him yet and he becomes a reoccurring character. Bonus points if Mike throttles him about in almost every episode that he appears in.
My jaw hit the floor when Walt finally got out the word “limpio” I thought he was trying to say “I need Gus”
Putting them on a bus to Honduras also kinda surprised me. I thought Gus would have had them killed.
Lastly, I’m kinda surprised that reefer system has a way to take in fresh air…and that the bad guys happen to have a hose that perfectly fits it.
ETA, nevermind, the ‘encore presentation’ is on, and I see they just disconnected a recirculation hose and connected the blower to the exhaust.
What was going on with Skyler and the coin at Four Corners?
Was she deciding on a state for some reason?
Is there a tradition of flipping a coin at Four Corners, for good luck or something?
Maybe he did have them killed and just didn’t want Walt to know.
I got the feeling she was trying to decide if she should leave him/run away/keep driving. When she pulled the coin back into NM, that was her way of telling herself (or us) she just couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Walt can really be a dick at times. He took a gigantic dump on Skyler with the car thing. You really shouldn’t do stuff like that to loved ones.
And she really shouldn’t have told Walt Jr that he was moving back in on Tuesday without discussing it with him first.
I want to say they’re in the middle of a power struggle, but that’s not really the case. She’s the alpha and he can’t stand it, every once in a while he has to prove to her (and to himself) that he’s allowed to make decisions about his own life and that’s what’s been going on for the last two episodes or so. The car, telling Jr he’s not moving in, telling Hank he got the wrong guy etc.
Nothing compared to the dump he took on the Honduran ladies. While they weren’t among his loved ones,
he let them into the top secret lair of a super villain who he’s seen cut a trusted employee’s throat without sweating; he had to know that wouldn’t end well for them. I thought that was one of the dickiest things he’s ever done.
Was it me or was Mike actually impressed with Jesse this time? And Jesse’s allegiance is definitely shifting. You’d think that if Walt could see through the fake robbery he could see the way to prevent the loyalty is to be more paternal to the guy.
No Hank this episode.
Walter’s biggest dick move was with Bagdan’s dollar bill.
I really enjoyed this, but I have one big complaint, which is that the discussion of the champagne from last week or the week before is still unresolved. How is it so much part of their cover story that they got a gambling windfall big enough to buy a car wash, but not to splurge on a nice car for their beloved son? I really wish that was addressed better.
Keep in mind that Bogdan was selling them a business that he thought was leaching dangerous chemicals into the ground, and which would soon be receiving government sanctions and fines. Walt knew why Bogdan kept insisting that they were taking it “as-is” – he was trying to rip them off. Walt may not have been totally justified in taking Bogdan’s first dollar, but Bogdan wasn’t acting like a stand-up guy, either.
Besides which I don’t think he ever got over the humiliation of having to wash that student’s car (his nadir before he broke bad) and Bogdan had just brought it up.
This is key. As much as the audience may not like Bogdan or his opinions about running a business, the kind of boss he describes (and he is) matches Gus pretty closely. The fact that Walt–for all his bravado–can never be this kind of boss is why he’s losing so badly in his ongoing battle with Gus.
I read Walt’s chiseling of Bodan out of his first dollar as really satirizing Walt. Only an overconfident fool would think he scored some great victory, and I almost laughed out loud when I saw him brooding like a faux kingpin with his Coca-Cola trophy in an empty carwash.
Look at how Gus, with a single line–“I like to think I see things in people”–has a much bigger impact on Jesse than a rerun of Walt’s usual bad-father rant.
And regardless of whether or not he’s right, Walt’s final line in that scene–“This is all about me”–comes off as selfish, and that’s the last thing Jesse would respond to. Again, Walt has delusions of grandeur, and he’s not really equipped to play with real gangsters. He may be essential to the business, but Gus, Mike, and even Skyler have cornered him with his ineffectiveness. Despite the obscene amount of money he makes, in many ways he’s in the same subservient position he was at the start of the series.
I doubt the financial details are ever going to be addressed, so we’ll just have to let it go.
Who do the Whites have to worry about? Hank and Marie are snowed, for now. Saul’s taken care of the official end. The IRS isn’t going to know or care that Walt Jr. has a spiffy car. Skyler’s rant about the champagne was just Skyler being Skyler, wanting some control, and the writers showing us that she’s becoming fully involved.
The one thing that bugged me about this episode was the truck left on the road. Anyone passing by would see it and stop, or call a trooper. Gus must have some system set up so he immediately knows if a truck runs into trouble, so his people can get to the scene and take care of it.
I thought this was the best episode of the season so far. Skyler’s afraid of Walt, and she knows he’s Heisenberg. Did she know before? She’s got to be wondering what he’s done, to be the “one who knocks on the door”. She needs to get out of there, and she’s deluding herself if she believes Walt when he tells her the family is safe.
Favorite part was seeing the difference in management styles between Gus and Walt. And seeing Jesse standing there, thinking, after Gus praised him. We don’t know what Mike told Gus about Jesse, but Gus knew what Jesse needed to hear.
I agree on the best episode comment. I was bothered by how shoddy the writing was in the previous episode, but this one redeems the writers convincingly.
The way they’re building characters it’s obvious that one of their main tasks is to outwit the audience. I wouldn’t put money on how any of them turn out in whatever time frame thay have. Two years, more or less? Even Walt, Jr. is getting some darker tones. I guess the baby is going to stay a baby, right?
That whole business with the ambush of the truck bothered me also. Is someone going to find a “Los Pollos Hermanos” truck with bodies, bullet holes, and a cargo of illegal meth? That would be the end, wouldn’t it? The hammer would come down on Gus’s whole enterprise. I think, as you said, that Mike must have quickly had it removed and garaged someplace safe.
The other thing that bothers me is the way the cartel sent the message. Leaving it with two meth heads was no guarantee that it would get to Gus.
It was a nondescript message, something like “let’s talk” if I remember correctly. Why not leave it inside the truck, or phone him, or send him a letter timed to arrive immediately after the ambush?
It seemed like the writers put it in as an excuse for the whole scene with Jesse and the meth-heads and a way for Jesse to redeem himself with Mike.
Okay, obviously it was an excuse for that, and that’s what writers do, and isn’t necessarily a problem. But it should make sense on it’s own.
She figured it out last week when Hank said that Heisenberg made those lab notes and Walt jumped in and said they were copied from someone else.
I have to admit, I’m still waiting for her to ‘jump his bones’ after one of his power trips. Honestly, I thought she was going to tear the shower curtain off in a ‘you make me so horny when you talk like that’ way. Of course, I know I’m wrong, I think it effectively emasculates her. Kind of the same thing she’s been doing to him for a while know. But of course, he had to take it one step too far. He couldn’t stop at “I’m not in any danger” He couldn’t stop at “There’s danger around me, I knew Gale, I know who killed him, he’s not going to hurt me*” He had to go out and suggest that he’s also a killer. He took her from picturing her life as Carmella Soprano to Karen Hill.
*I really liked his response when she asked if he works for the person that killed Gale.
I assume they sold it to the meth heads. No reason the cartel shouldn’t make money from their robbery.
That’s correct. Mike said “They sold it to a couple of nobody’s”…Oh, wait, I get what you’re saying. I’m not sure if they just assumed Mike could track it down (of course the meth heads could have thrown it out) or if they weren’t all the concerned with this message getting through because they would just send another and another…
Also, this is the second (third?) truck that’s been hijacked, why doesn’t Gus have a second vehicle following behind his deliveries from a safe distance to keep an eye out for this kind of thing. Sure, it might not work more then once, but at least they could stop one ambush.