He wasn’t Mike’s lawyer, though, was he?
I predict that at some point before the end of the series, Walt will go full-on Heisenberg on Hank, intimidating him (or trying to) and reciting a list of everything that implicates his brother-in-law.
He’s surely been keeping a list these things and planning a defense in case it comes to that. Gotta love dramatic irony.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here. By “reciting a list of everything that implicates his brother-in-law” do you mean Walt would be implying that he can make it look like Hank was complicit in Walt’s activities?
Well, maybe not complicit, but still career-endingly blind to criminal behavior occurring under his nose, not to mention using the proceeds to fund his PT.
Suddenly, Hank’s hard-on for Gus Fring looks like he was trying to divert attention from his BIL. The moment it comes out, Hank is out on his ass.
Got it.
Yeah, I think this would be a pretty sweet move.
One question that has sorta been bugging me throughout watching this show: it appears one of the central conceits of the show that purer product is really, really important and the skill set required to make it really, really difficult to acquire. Walt is of course obsessed with this. But everyone else buys into it, too - it drives the plot that Walt’s skills are not easily replacable and are in high demand. Jesse is flown down to Mexico last season to show hardcore underworld chemists ‘how it’s done’.
How realistic is this? My ignorant impression was that, basically, any trained person can make the stuff - even Jesse was making it before meeting Walt, and assorted bikers and low-lifes can make it. The users are shown to be essentially brain-challenged addicts often living in filth. In the real world, is purity of product (a) so valued by users, and (b) so difficult to achieve?
I have no idea.
The problem is that we have already been shown, when Hank beat up Jesse, Hank’s willingness to face the music and take his punishment when put to it. So it is by no means a certainty that this tactic would work on him - indications are that he may not be corruptible in this manner.
It’s the difference between off-brand cola and Coca-Cola…
No, there’s no way they appreciated it and they’re probably not measuring the purity of their meth in the first place. (This is where Declan asks “So what?” and Walt starts talking about the Yankees and Coca-Cola.)
I would think the short version is that he was participating in a criminal conspiracy. He was distributing drug money (or suspected drug money until the DEA can prove that’s what it is), and in effect that would make him part of Gus’ drug operation. I’m assuming the lawyer understood this meant he was facing very serious charges, which is why he rolled over in a hurry. Not that he seemed like a stand-up guy anyway.
Eh. It was a desperate stalling tactic intended to buy Mike a little time, and that’s all it did. Everybody knew it wouldn’t stand up in court, and it was obviously thrown out since the DEA was tailing Mike again during this episode.
Or bathtub rotgut and Moet. Crystal meth isn’t that hard to make, but the idea here is that Walt applies to make a much better quality product that is more enjoyable for users and his manufacturing is more efficient. Walt has also managed to never have his meth lab blown up, which is kind of a problem for brain-challenged drug addicts making the stuff at home.
My prediction for the finale, Walt tries to take down the Fring 9, but fails to get one. Hank founds out about Walt, forcing him to go on the run. Then the whole next season will take place in the “one year later” future.
The thing about the Diet Coke speech that keeps bugging me: When Walt says “Would you want to live in a world without Diet Coke”, I was waiting for Declan to say “Sure…if I was selling the next best thing” or something along those lines.
Declan doesn’t care about the Blue Meth, he just wants it off the street. That’s the only reason he actually wants the methlymine to begin with.
His plan was to get Jesse and Walt to retire for 5 million each. It wouldn’t surprise me if he borrowed that 15 million from some other cooks with the promise of paying them back 20+ million to get them to retire as well.
No he wanted to make money. People weren’t buying his stuff apparently because blue was better. Now he gets 35 percent on the blue meth, I guess he’s smart enough to do the sums and work out that the increased volume of sales makes up for his lower percentage than using his own cook.
I get that this is the idea. What I’m asking is if there is any real-world reality to it. Do methheads really want the quality Moet over the bathtub rotgut? And is the quality so hard to make that hardcore Mexican cartel chemists (never mind brain-addled bikers) can’t make it without Walt’s trade secrets?
I think that’s the gist of what Declan did say: his answer was something like “So if I waste you right here and now, there’s no more Coca-Cola. See how that works?” He didn’t care about the technical achievement of pure meth. He was won over when Walt said he and his people will make more money distributing the blue meth instead of making their own because the blue stuff is better, more expensive, and made more efficiently.
My guess is that better meth wouldn’t be such a huge hit in the real world, but as a conceit for a TV show it doesn’t bother me. I think that most people making meth aren’t trying for super high quality because it’s more labor intensive. It’s a combination of not knowing how and not caring about the details.
That seemed like a fairly good system to me. I guess maybe they could have used multiple banks, but other than that, they’ve got a secure way to transfer cash and verify that it is being picked up.
I’m not sure that all of the accesses were being tracked - some of it was probably just because they can’t show everything, but the lawyer wasn’t shown signing in for the 10 boxes. I think he’d worked the manager lady so that she didn’t feel the need to register everything her baked goods supplier did in the bank.
Partial evidence of that is that he asked for access to a tenth (Kaylee’s) box - I’d feel fairly safe in saying that one wasn’t written down (and gives a slight chance that her money is still safe - the lawyer might not even be on the owner list for that box).
The boxes put some space between Mike and the money also - he gives it to the lawyer, who has a defensible reason for access to the families’ boxes. He deposits the money early in the month, they pick it near the end of the month. If Hank hadn’t had the idea to tail him (and it was mostly a guess on Hank’s part), they’d still be golden.
I do think there is a timing issue - I can’t see that the lawyer would have been back to the boxes twice (or more) in the time between Hank ordering the tail, and Gomez turning up to catch him. The manager obviously had been leaned on - so it had to have been at least the second visit since the tail was ordered.
Also there have to be nine other people with accounts and key access to those boxes, so that the nine convicts’ families can pick up the money. Nine boxes shared between the same man and nine different people. The clerk has to put her key in nine different times, each with a different person, in addition to the nine times she does it with the lawyer. And the man makes sure to bring cake, drawing attention to himself. Only in the real world would a setup like that fail to draw the attention of bank officials and cops. Certainly not in a fictional world.
Given they like to and continually seek to surprise us, there may be a partial redemption of Walt somewhere down the road. I would think that maybe as he gets blown up or something, he somehow does a good deed on the way out. Or again, as they like to surprise, maybe he gets redeemed and lives.
I’d have to watch the episode again, but I don’t think the lawyer was accessing the deposit boxes opened by the bank employee. As soon as she left the room, he produced his own key and started opening different boxes, didn’t he?
It’s the efficiency that is the main point. The better quality meth is just a bonus. Methlymine is expensive and difficult to come by. If the old method yields x pounds per gallon of methylmine and Walt’s method yields 1.5x pounds/gallon, the numbers make a lot of sense.
That’s a little much. Her grandfather has been a cold-blooded murderer ever since he got thrown off the police force – or possibly before. He may be a somewhat more sympathetic character than Walt, but he’s a hardened, murdering criminal also, since long before he met the master cook. Certainly whatever happens to Kaylee as a result of this gang is first and foremost in his own ledger book.