Yup, that was the interview!
BTW. Holly was sitting up well on her own and waving bye-bye. That kid is about 7 to 8 months old. Maybe 9. Consistent with Munch’s estimate, more or less.
A lot of people have suggested that at some point someone in Walt’s family (usually Skyler or Holly) was going to wind up on the wrong end of that ricin. We have no idea where they are in the Walt 52 sequence, but if any of them die before the flash-forward, now we know they’re not going to die that way. And Walt probably isn’t getting that ricin to kill Skyler. That stuff is pretty much only going to be useful in a face to face situation, right? He’s not poisoning the water supply. So who is he hoping to meet while also packing that gun as backup? Someone connected to Lydia? I don’t think it can be Hank- that ship has sailed by that point. I guess he could ruin someone’s product if he wanted.
One of the interesting points in this week’s Walt 52 scene is that it’s obvious the public found out Walter White is Heisenberg. His name was spray painted inside the house and Carol was terrified to see him. (Did anyone else notice that when she dropped her groceries, a bunch of oranges rolled out of the bag? I thought that was a deliberate Godfather echo.) I never stopped to think about what that might look like. So Flynn probably knows everything. I assume Walt fled just ahead of the DEA, so most of his money and everything else are probably gone. For a while I’ve felt they were setting things up so his fate would mirror Mike’s: he did horrible things “for his family,” but then the money for the family went away. But it makes sense to think he’s come back to protect his family or attempt some crazy last-ditch score.
That scene between Walt and Jesse was heartbreaking. I thought last season that if Jesse discovered the truth he would come after Walt in a rage, but even though he plainly didn’t believe Walt’s story, he’s just sad and resigned instead, crushed under the weight of his guilty conscience. Not that he’s wrong to feel all that guilt. He seems to be back at that place where he doesn’t care if he lives or dies. Life in prison would seem to be the best case outcome for him at this point.
Any reason why Walt might not have tagged the wall in one last “fuck you” to everyone else (and himself, maybe)? He ‘won,’ got away, and left a last taunt for those who came to investigate? I’ve only watched the episode once, but I read the scene as either ‘Who came into my home and did this’ or as ‘I remember the place I was in when I did this, and it’s both alien and comfortable.’
The wonderful thing is that we’ll find out in a few weeks!
It would make for a good delayed suicide method if he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory and wanted to make sure that he would still die if he was somehow captured or incapacitated. Or, if he was trading himself in for a hostage and wanted to die before they had a chance to torture him too much.
I guess it’s possible; they’re going to surprise us with some things for sure. That’s not how I’d bet personally.
If he was faking his birthday, do you think he’d have gone through the motions of creating the bacon “52”? Do you think the director would have wasted time on it?
Excellent episode. I was surprised that the Hank/Walt situation came to a head so quickly. I thought Walt was just going to let Hank investigate him, since he was out of the business and the GPS tracker wouldn’t yield anything interesting. Though, I suppose that’s not how Walt does things; as Jessie said, he didn’t want to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. That, and there’s a decent chance Lydia would try to talk to him again and Hank would see it.
I’ve been missing the “Walt is a badass chemist” moments from earlier in the series: mercury fulminate, thermite, etc. I keep hoping that the M60 is actually going to be used in some crazy chemist fashion, rather than the intended usage, but that makes no sense whatsoever. In 5A, when Saul was showing off Vamonos Pest as a prospective cook site, Mike said something like “There’s a police precinct a block away. If push comes to shove, it’s going to be Custer’s Last Stand.” I think a big shootout would be somewhat disappointing as an ending, but that could have been some foreshadowing.
I’m guessing he came out of hiding to see Walt Jr. in his debut as Danny Zuko in his 12th grade class’s production of GREASE, though I might be wrong. It could be Nathan Detroit in Guys & Dolls- depends largely on his school’s drama teacher and what plays they can afford the rights to and how long since they’ve done those two plays.
Long shot: RENT, with Walt Jr. as Mark.
It already had him visiting Saul and Jessie earlier that day. Not sure how hard it’d be to erase the memory on the device to hide that. Or at least erase it without making it obvious that it had been erased.
But as someone said upthread, once someone started looking into Walt, they’ll almost certainly find something. There’d be no support for his gambling story, the books for the carwash are crooked, he shares a lawyer with Gus, there are stacks of money under his house, people who worked at the drycleaners saw him come and go, Skinny Pete and Badger have seen him and are probably not exactly hard to crack. Jesse seems increasingly willing to come clean.
So trying to warn off Hank, rather then letting him fish around for weeks (and possibly get more police involved) was probably his best shot.
As I’m not big into Broadway, the real question for me here is: In which of those productions does the character mentioned eat breakfast? That’ll decide it.
So one night a $20,000 stack of bills appears on your porch in a run down neighborhood of ABQ. The same night hundreds of thousands, possibly a few million, dollars appears in yards and porches and sidewalks around the city, tossed out like the world’s best Mardi Gras beads from some anonymous benefactor. There’s no proof that any of the money is stolen or that the anonymous benefactor doesn’t have 100% legitimate rights to toss it around.
So long as you turned it in to the cops and it was never claimed in whatever the time frame was, would you most likely be allowed to keep that money?
I wonder what kind of investigation cops would launch for such an event; no provable crime has been committed after all (yeah, it’s all drug money, but you can’t prove it- could just be an eccentric software or bottled water or cosmetic millionaire who likes to toss out cash).
I’m guessing most people would be shady (smart?) enough never to admit that they got one of the mystery stacks, especially after word got out that it was happening to others. I wonder what sort of social problems that would cause in a ghetto; I can see people getting killed if news got out they got one of the mystery stacks, even if/especially if it was a false rumor. Certainly if anybody saw the old homeless man flashing a stack of Benjamins to buy his cigarettes he’d likely be a bleeding demised old homeless man. I wonder if things like this will happen and deepen Jesse’s depression.
GUYS & DOLLS has a diner scene… so, there it is then! Good call.
They also let RJ Mitte show off his range in this episode by having him eat dinner with Walt and Skyler instead of breakfast.
No, those would all constitute justifiable use of the M-60. Quit trying to redeem Walt. If he shot up a Rogers and Hammerstein musical, then he’d still be evil.
I hadn’t thought of the confrontation possibly being a smart move. Thanks for that.
Well Walt did make a hell of a home made bomb to blow up Gus. That’s more chemistry than I could pull off without killing myself. I could be fanwanking a little here, but I think you could chalk the gun up partly to the character switching from Walter White to Heisenberg. Also, he’s shot a couple of people by now (the guys in the lab, Mike) and he’s learned how easy a gun makes that. Unless you’ve got to get somewhere where guns are prohibited, why re-invent the gun?
On the other hand, this show hasn’t been predictable for me, so I certainly could be wrong.
Any thought to Hank’s “mineral” hobby playing a part? That seemed too detailed to drop.
I wonder how difficult ricin would be to make for a master chemist. Hank seemed to whip it up fairly quickly from store-bought ingredients (mainly castor oil) the first time, and it seems like it would be easier to make some more than to rely on a vial in an abandoned and vandalized empty house still being there.
Especially as obsessive as he got.
I think Hank’s obsessiveness with the minerals was just a side affect of his PTSD and trying to take his mind of his shooting, his inability to walk, etc. Once he snapped out of the self-pity thanks to the new lead from Gale’s notebook, he started working on his physical therapy and being nicer to Marie and we haven’t really heard anything about minerals since then - except when he used “mineral show” as a cover to go snooping around Gus’s hideout with Walt. In other words I think the mineral storyline has served its purpose.
Yet again, it’s something I originally thought would play a bigger role but no longer do. BB is such a tightly scripted show that everything seems like a Chekhov’s something, but so far it’s been the little details that have been foreshadowing, while the big, obvious “this is going to be important” items have played a different role.
In this case, I think there is a theme to the show that everybody has their drug - something they cling to unhealthily to deal with psychological stress, whether it’s actual drugs for Jesse, Skylar’s smoking, Walter Jr’s eating, or Marie’s stealing. For Hank, it was his job, but when that was taken away, he turned to [del]rocks[/del] minerals. Hank chose something innocuous, something that he could give up easily when the need disappeared, something that most people would regard as a neutral or pro-social hobby, and he still managed to nearly destroy his marriage and bankrupt his finances with it. Because he chose a relatively harmless obsession and was able to channel his energy back into the case eventually, he avoided disaster, but even a psychologically and morally strong person with lots of support and who makes all the right choices can come close to the edge of the pit. The potential for self-destruction lurks in us all.
Hank buried himself in his mineral hobby because he wasn’t sure he could do his job anymore and needed something to occupy his time. The Heisenberg case saved him from that and I think that was the end of its relevance. When those files arrived at Hank’s door I thought it might be new minerals, but he doesn’t need them anymore. He’s not going to let go of this case unless it kills him. I think he’s willing to sacrifice his career if need be - it’s hard for me to imagine it won’t cost him that - but he’ll have to try to find a way to protect the rest of his family.
I’ve found myself thinking a lot about what was running through Hank’s mind while he spent those days going over all that evidence in his garage. He knew the truth as soon as he saw the book at the end of last season, and of course he’d want to confirm it but he took a lot more time than he really needed. Was he turning over every stone, trying to find some way he could be wrong? Was he trying to understand how Walt turned out to be this two-faced and evil? Was he trying to figure out how he could have failed to notice before? He could have listed a lot of reasons for punching Walt in the face.
The obvious answer is that he’s looking for something that can stand up as proof in court…