Boy, this season is a pressure cooker.
Leave it to Skyler to come up with a ruse like that. The ignorant, air headed, slutty girl who was hired not for her skills but for her “skills”. I’m not sure that’d actually work with the IRS, but it was highly entertaining. I loved her line:
“I just punch the numbers into the Quicken.”
“Quicken?! You use Quicken for an operation this large…”
“Have you tried it? I just love it! It’s like a calculator on your computer!”
Also, how could Gus be so stupid? Knowing his car was being tracked, he should know of all people that looking too clean can sometimes appear more conspicuous.
He should’ve drove to other places during the week. Drive to some odd or remote places and warehouses, total dead ends, as to really put Hank on a wild goose chase to create some red herrings and buy more time. Best case scenario, is that that alone might’ve been enough to dissuade Hank from pursuing Gus further.
It seemed odd to me as well. Even if he actually stayed at the restaurant all week (so he’d have an alibi), the employees would be able to tell Hank that he’s normally only there for an hour or two each day but in and out quite a bit.
I’m guessing this has a lot to do with the fact that Gus knows the DEA is not on board with this investigation and that Hank is going rogue, doing it all on his dime, without backup, the departments support/blessing/knowledge and without any warrants. Also, anything evidence he gets from the bug will be inadmissible in court. Not that it matters because he could just say “Oh, I was just driving by and happened to see his car at this laundry so I made some calls and found that they’ve been buying those HEPA filters”
[QUOTE=cmyk]
I loved her line:
“I just punch the numbers into the Quicken.”
“Quicken?! You use Quicken for an operation this large…”
“Have you tried it? I just love it! It’s like a calculator on your computer!”
[/QUOTE]
Oh yes. Another bit, from memory: “Well Quicken didn’t show it in red, so it must have been okay.”
I agree that was a surprising blunder from Gus, or at least a missed opportunity. For example, he could’ve dropped by the local amusement park one morning and had the tracker ride the roller coaster all day long. Or, drive out to a remote patch of desert, and drive/write “Go get bent, Hank” in large cursive letters on the New Mexican landscape.
On second thought, those ideas are more amusing than helpful.
I love that Gus has survived to become the regional leader of one of the bloodiest businesses in existence, survived years of being in bed with the Mexican cartel and whatever the hell went down in Chile (and while Walt doesn’t know about the swimming pool incident he should figure out “right age for the Pinochet era” [and either side had casualties] and “vetted by Mexican cartel=not a careless man”) and clearly the smartest man in the room for at least 99 out of every 100 rooms he walks in, but Walt thinks Jesse Pinkman (former chemistry class flunkout, occasional drug abuser and frequent screw-up) can easily take him out without arousing his suspicion or hopelessly botching it.
This also makes at least twice that Jesse’s had access to Gus’s food. Do you think Gus knows about the ricin and is testing him (a bit less conspicuous way of standing cruciform in the crosshairs)?
Yes, actually I did, despite the broken glasses. He could have fumbled and dropped them. I guess after the whole Season 2 deal with the bear in the pool which turned out only to be related by cause/effect rather than a direct incident or investigation involving Walt, I’ve come to suspect the intro-teasers.
But Jesse doesn’t know that Hank is onto the chicken farm / distribution centre.
I must say, Skyler has never been that much of a sympathetic character to me. When she gets devious like this (and we’ve seen it when she got the locksmith to let her into Walt’s place for example) I find her much more interesting. She was great in the audit scene.
But Mike did know.
I think there were several hints, in addition to this, that indicate Walt’s cancer is back.
There was this drop of blood at the opening scene. Could be from the fight. But.
Walt said, “Ah, we’re both dead men anyway, what does it matter?”
Walt bummed a cigarette off Jesse. Walt doesn’t smoke, but figures, Eh what’s the diff?
I think there were at least two other veiled hints that Walt has realized he’s either going to die of cancer or be killed in a meth war. I viewed all of his actions in this episode through that lens.
We can’t just take Jesse’s Cartel story at face value. I think Jesse believes it. However, this could be just another way of getting Jesse trained as a more competent cook. Gus has to plan around Walt’s death whether from cancer or Gus himself.
There have been way too many meetings at Jesse’s house this season, it has to be bugged. Remember the thorough job Mike did of bugging Walt’s house?
[QUOTE=Chopper9760]
There have been way too many meetings at Jesse’s house this season, it has to be bugged. Remember the thorough job Mike did of bugging Walt’s house?
[/QUOTE]
Plus we know that Mike can and does come into it, and it’d be the easiest thing in the world to bug since Jesse leaves for hours at a time. There’s no way it’s not bugged.
I liked that Jesse wouldn’t play Gus’s civility “I’ve invited you into my home and made food” game and interrupted him with “A month ago you were going to have me killed and buried in the desert”.
I’m guessing in addition to the non-Federal bailout she’s providing Skyler’s going to use her expertise with “Quicken” to use Ted’s company to really do some laundry. Fake receipts for $45 car washes will only baptize so much cash, but a failing multimillion dollar company could probably wash the sins off a multitude.
You can’t be indicted for appearing too clean. I think that’s Gus’s only concern here. Hank is on to him and there’s probably little he can do to change that short of killing Hank. All he can do is not give Hank any solid evidence that might convince Hank’s superiors. Appearing ridiculously squeaky clean achieves that. Anything else and he opens himself up to making some stupid mistake.
Actually, my first thought was that Gus was playing Jesse. Jesse will be taken blindfolded to a location where he will teach the recipe to a cook supposedly employed by the Cartel. But that cook will actually be Gus’s man. That way, Gus would have the recipe, and Jesse and Walt would both be expendable. Gus can give up Walt to the Cartel to end the war, and the unstable Jesse can be eliminated.
That may or may not be what it actually happening, but the thought should at least have occurred to both Jesse and Walt when they learned that Gus wanted Jesse to teach someone the recipe.
ETA: Oh and the sniper was also Gus’s man, which is why he didn’t shoot Gus. The idea being to scare Jesse into giving up the recipe.
Help me out here. I’m sure that’s where they’re going with this, but I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around it. So, he needs 600K+ to get bailed out. I assume the plan would be for Skyler to give him the money and then either ‘work’ for him as consultant at, say, $150K a year or actually work for him as a CPA for, say, $100K a year or so. But what I don’t understand is how he gets the money? The only way I see for that to happen is for her to go back to work for him so she can cook the books.
Is that the plan?
Also, I loved the way they got us to think he wasn’t even going to try to do anything about the situation and then he drove off in the Geo Metro.
The problem with him appearing squeaky clean is that Hank will know something is up and just get in his car and follow him. Remember, Hank is operating on his own. He doesn’t have any rules to follow. He doesn’t have to get any search warrants, he doesn’t have to convince anyone. Not at this point anyways.
The Cartel didn’t kill him when they had the chance back in Mexico. I’m not sure they would do it now. For some reason they need him around. The only thing I can assume is that without him, something (probably the distribution) fall apart. They must need him alive.
Otherwise, why not just kill him at the restaurant and snatch Walt and Jesse up? Why not just grab those two during the night? For some reason, the Cartel needs to keep Gus content. It could be that the writers just don’t want to go down that road because there just isn’t time to explore it so they don’t get into it.
The cartel can’t kill Gus, which is why he was willing to walk right into the sniper’s fire.
Remember when they told him in the flashback that the only reason he’s alive is “they know who he is.” The cartel is afraid of his connections back in Chile. They can’t kill him without bringing down an even bigger war on themselves.
Hank already know’s that something is up. There’s probably little or nothing that Gus can do to change that.
Hank can’t just get in his car and follow him. He needs a driver and, while he’s willing to use Walt to do something like plant and retrieve a GPS tracker, he might be more reluctant to involve him or anyone else in a dangerous business like tailing a drug lord.
Is this a guess or fact? Because I didn’t pick up on that but it might just be me.
It looked to me that the sniper was the same guy who represented the cartel during the “negotiation.” (The “yes or no” guy.)
Just a guess.
yep