But why would he want to create an alibi for himself when he’s committing a crime at the Denny’s? And presumably he’s going to be committing a crime with the machine gun in town, so all he’s doing is ensuring that someone remembers that he was in Albuquerque right before some bad criminal shit went down.
Really, he’s creating the opposite of an alibi.
Good catch.
Presumably, he wants to be remembered. Whether or not it’s for an alibi remains to be seen.
Maybe Walt’s on a goodbye trip. He writes 52 in bacon just like Skyler wrote 50 in bacon. Nice memory. His big tip ensures the waitress remembers him but it could also be Walt doing something nice for a stranger. If he doesn’t plan to survive what’s coming, he’ll be doing little things like that – relive good old memories, make new ones, spread some joy.
How do we know he’s in ABQ in that first scene?
I really don’t have an explanation, but just look at the facts…he made a 52 out of bacon, he told the waitress it was his birthday, he showed her his ID, he left a $100 tip. She’s likely to remember him for the next few days.
If he didn’t want to be remembered, this all would have happened in the parking lot or in the desert or at a library or he would have ordered his food, ate it, went to the bathroom and did his thing, paid and left a 15% tip and left. He made damn sure that she can ID him.
As for the other details. I can’t answer that. I think it’s safe to assume that know one knows or can prove that the gun/car transfer took place there, but he’ll probably be using this as an alibi to cover up something else. I just don’t know what yet. I’m guessing something, somewhere is happening to someone and they’re going to try and pin it on him (or at least this version of him). But he’s got proof he wasn’t there. He’s pretty good at setting things in motion and walking away.
The only other thing I can think of is that he may need to prove Walter White never had that gun. That this other guy (can’t remember the fake ID name) bought it.
But I’m still running with the alibi thing. (An alibi for something we’re not aware of yet. Not an alibi for not buying the gun)
Don’t worry guys - I’m sure off-camera Walt Jr. swooped in to save the day.
I think it is strange he only changed his first name when he went to New Hampshire. At least he kept teaching science. 
Funny, but she called him Mr. Lambert.
I think you’re way off-base with the “creating an alibi” thing. You’re also drawing a false dichotomy between “wanting to be remembered” and “not wanting to be remembered” when it seems very likely that he just doesn’t give a fuck either way.
And everything in his appearance and behavior tells us that he just doesn’t give a fuck. Besides having a cough, he has hair - the presence of hair seems to indicate that he’s no longer undergoing chemo treatment. He’s also dressed quite shabbily, something that he never really did before.
As for his behavior, any time we’ve ever seen him plotting and scheming, he’s always careful, calculating and on-edge, not at all nonchalant, like he is here. Every single thing he does and says is completely withdrawn and aloof, like he just doesn’t care anymore.
And if he was setting up an alibi:
Why decline the initial offer of a free meal (with valid ID), not knowing that the waitress would press the issue and give him another chance?
Why do it under his false identity? What good does that do?
Why meet an illegal arms dealer there, which is presumably all on camera? Not the best of alibis, to follow a shifty guy into the restroom, them leave immediately afterwards without eating your meal.
Why switch cars right there, blatantly out in the open, leaving behind his car that presumably matched his identity?
Like someone said, what he did is all pretty much the opposite of creating an alibi. But obviously, I don’t think he was trying to actively incriminate himself either - he just doesn’t give a fuck either way.
Agreed.
It seemed just a coincidence that the waitress kept conversing with him. He made the “52” for himself, because of the memories.
I think what the scenes show us is that at some time in the future (around a year ahead), Walt will be rich, but without friends and without a wife.
And also that his cancer is back. Frankly, Im kind of disappointed in that direction. I was hoping that he would try to build a drug empire again, like he did earlier. And make a lot of mistakes, but still succeed. That was fun to watch.
Three might be other reasons not to wear a ring such as preserving a false identity. It might be too soon to conclude that he’s no longer married.
Agreed…especially the wacky professor salvage yard guy!!!
Salvage yard guy is also Mr. Heckles from the early seasons of “Friends.”
“You’re disturbing my birds.”
“You don’t have birds.”
“I could have birds…”
There were cameras somewhere? In the Denny’s?
That’s certainly possible, but it’s unusual enough that we should have been shown the cameras explicitly (in my opinion), if they’re going to be important to the plot.
I dunno, I’m still going with the alibi thing. But I don’t want to answer so many nitpicky questions that my prediction ends up wrong just based on guessing at lots of details. It maybe totally off base, but I’d hate to be more or less right, but wrong just because I went off on so many tangents defending it so I’m going to leave it where it is.
So just to boil down my two quick predictions from that scene:
1)I think this was an alibi
2)I think we’ll see the waitress again in a future episode (in person, on camera or at least someone talking about something she said…“The waitress said/stated that…”)
The writers are pretty much fucking with us. I think that this is going to be just like the season with the plane crash. We’ll see little bits and pieces every episode and in the end it will be something completely different than what we could have imagined.
Maybe we should be watching the episode titles for the episodes that have these “flash forwards”. The four episodes in season two that foreshadowed the plane crash were titled, in order:
“Seven Thirty-Seven”
“Down”
“Over”
“ABQ”
They probably wouldn’t use that same trick again and I can’t imagine what “Live Free or Die” could be the beginning of, but who knows?
He doesn’t want to be in hiding anymore. He is either going to “live free” or “die”.
I don’t think it’s unusual for Denny’s to have cameras. But I’m saying I don’t think they’re going to be important to the plot, so there would be no reason to explicitly show them.
As I said previously, the straight-forward reading of the title is that he was “living free” in NH, but for whatever reasons, he decided to stop the chemo and come back to go with the “or die” option. Yeah, it could be misdirection, but it doesn’t seem like it.
There’s pretty much no way the whole thing with killing Gus will go unanswered. In the current timeline, Walt is all smug and saying that he won, but that’s just hubris - no way he gets off that easy. All the major cartel guys could have killed Gus many times, but there is something about his past and his connections in Chile that makes even them too scared to kill him, due to the presumable repercussions.
And towards the end, Gus was quite aware that Walt wanted him dead. With all of his resources, there’s little doubt he’d set up some hell to rain down on Walt and make good on his threats to go after his family. It might even be that someone else has access to the money tucked away in the Caymans, and some of those funds are to be used to put out a hit on Walt and/or his family. With a price on his head in the millions, that would be ample reason to assume a false identity and move to NH.
and they were, FWIW, episodes 1, 4, 10 & 13.
And also, LIVE FREE OR DIE is the state motto of New Hampshire, which is where Walt was assumed to be living now.