I think it’s more the second than the first. He’s asking himself, “What did I miss?”
He’s a boss now. He has people at his disposal and he could have a bunch of them working with him or doing some of these things for him. Instead he’s working by himself in his garage and trying to keep it a secret.
There was a big point in the show at the beginning showing that everyone has a little ‘dark’ in them. You wouldn’t look at Marie and think “shoplifter” and you wouldn’t look at Walt and think “meth lord.”
People are trying to make more of that bit of flavor then I think the show writers really have intended.
He did list a couple:
[ol]
[li]You drove into traffic to keep me from that laundry.[/li][li]That call I got telling me Marie was in the hospital… that wasn’t Pinkman. You had my cell number.[/li][li]You killed ten witnesses to save your sorry ass.[/li][li]You bombed a nursing home.[/li][/ol]
But yeah, he’s trying to figure out if he has a case.
I still think they are basically just punting on it. They seem to have introduced it originally as something they would delve into later; and then as things went along they found more interesting paths to take and have tried to just drop it. I interpret Walt telling Jesse that he doesn’t want to go into the details as basically the writers not wanting the headache of having to think up the details. Still, my memory of an earlier rendition of the story is that it seemed to imply that it came down to a love triangle.
I agree with this, except if you listen carefully they were talking about it in the 5A finale, as part of the half-heard overlapping dialogue that signified everything was mellow and smooth sailing…right before Hank found the book.
My son and I were discussing why he might have done it in his garage instead of having people research it at work. My theory was that he might have cottoned onto the fact that some information had somehow leaked from the office although he did not know how (we know it was because of the bugs planted); so he might have feared that there was a spy there. My son had a different idea which also struck me as a good one: simply that he was afraid people at the office would figure out what he was up to and that he would be in trouble for being so close to Heisenberg as we have talked about. Hank wants to figure it out as much on his own as he can, and then leave his options open as he decides what to do about it.
The previous ASAC got canned because Gus Fring was right under his nose so Hank is probably trying to figure out a way to put Walt away without losing his job.
He also got an ass reaming from his boss because he wouldn’t stop tailing Ermantrout. It’s been my personal experience that people who have Captain Ahab complexes are invariably ridiculed and dismissed. He could justify his actions by pointing out that the blue meth is still out there, but at 68% purity, there’s no guarantee that it still looks the same or is even still in crystalline form.
I thought the deal Walt and Jesse made with Lydia was to make the blue meth for export to the Czech Republic so if anything there should be a whole lot less (if any) blue meth available in the Southwest.
I think its mostly the first option. Suddenly everything fell into place on a gut level, but the enormity is so great he needs to run down every detail to see if he could be wrong. We can see from the specifics he mentions that he’s put together a lot, and probably realizes how entangled he looks, so beginning with the first issue and moving to the second, it makes sense that he not investigating at the office.
INTERPOL and the DEA have each other on speed dial. If a duck were to even fart in the Czech Republic, Hank would know about it.
I got distracted by the fact that Hank’s coffee was still steaming hot after he’d gone through one or two full file boxes. Coffee cools pretty fast.
Perhaps Walt will use Hank’s mineral collection to make gunpowder and bullets.
Isn’t Walt’s big leverage that Hank took Walt’s money to pay for his rehabilitation? It’ll be up to Hank to convince prosecutors/jury that he had no part in Walt’s business as a LEO facilitator.
Not to mention that he’s obviously realized that Skyler must be complicit (he demanded that the kids come stay with them), so busting the Whites may not only put him into hot water at work, he might also catch hell from Marie. He also has to consider the effect that would have on Walt Jr. and the baby. He’s smart enough to have already known to tread lightly without Walt having had to remind him.
I am surprised that Walt didn’t mention the source of the funds that paid for Hank’s medical care. Also, that he didn’t try a carrot/stick approach by pointing out that everybody loses if Hank plays cop, but that he’s got plenty of money for everybody if he stays quiet. Instead, he escalates it with threats. But Walt being an idiot and letting his warped sense of pride get in the way isn’t exactly out of character, I guess.
My guess is that Hank won’t do anything to Walt, the investigation will simply stop. But Hank knows enough people in the drug underworld to begin quietly dropping hints about who Heisenberg is, who he’s killed and where he lives, basically making Walt’s life a living hell from behind the scenes.
I don’t agree with this. We’ve seen signs that show that Hank and Marie are very deeply in love with each other, even if much of the time they are squabbling or irritating each other. So, I don’t believe Hank is going to be too quick to write Marie off.
Furthermore, while Marie is loyal to her family, she is also very outspoken when she thinks someone has done something wrong. I don’t think it’s a safe assumption that she’s going to side with Skyler.
Do we know whether Walt finished his Ph.D.? If not, he wouldn’t be able to teach chemistry even at a two-year community college.
What an odd juxtaposition.
No, not at all. A lot more happened in that episode than I had expected.
Uhhh … Thanks? (Are you Vince Gilligan?)
The “drop dead” for episode threads is when the episode has been shown. As others have said, if you use spoiler boxes for things that aren’t spoilers, then it ruins the utility of spoiler boxes.
I’m with Marley. It didn’t seem “rushed” to me at all. In fact, it seemed very refreshing, rather than dragging the whole thing out for several episodes, which is what I expected.
Albuquerque is in a desert. If you don’t water your lawn regularly, it’s going to start reverting quickly. Think about what the area around Hank and Marie’s house looks like.
I agree with DSeid. We know that something pissed Walter off and his reaction was to cut all his ties to Gretchen and Grey Matter. That establishes Walter’s anger and insecurity, and propensity for making rash and extreme decisions. The actual details would be too mundane to be of interest, but my guess is that it had something to do with Walter’s feeling threatened by Gretchen’s wealthy family and her presumably hot-shot brothers. Maybe one of them said something that Walter took the wrong way. Who knows.
But we can be fairly certain that to anyone else, it probably wouldn’t have been a big deal, but it drove Walter to extremes. That’s why it’s probably better not to go into it. — Think about how much of a letdown it was when we finally did learn Kramer’s first name. There’s nothing you can fill in that blank with that’s going to be bettter than the blank.
I don’t think that this was it; otherwise, Gretchen wouldn’t have been so shocked by Walter’s sudden departure. It would have made much more sense to her if it was just a love triangle. I’m fairly certain that Gretchen didn’t get involved with Elliot until after Walter took off.
My understanding is that it’s not hard to poison yourself accidentally with beans. It’s probably not that hard to make ricin even if you aren’t a master chemist.
Walt would still need at least some lab gear to make more ricin. When he made the first batch, he had the RV, and the second time he made it in the Superlab. At the moment he doesn’t even look he has a place to shower, let alone a lab.
Did Walt seriously make the second batch of ricin in the Superlab? With the cameras and everything? Wouldn’t Gus have known something was up? Even a layperson could tell the difference between a bulk cook and a small-order action.
Oh that’s true. It’s not going to be all sunshine and roses for the people who find the cash. Some might be hassled by the cops even though they didn’t do anything. And I can imagine a death happening and being reported on the news and Jesse being further depressed.
I am curious to see what the cops do after hearing about the money showing up. I would think that they would guess it was stolen drug money that a do-gooder was throwing out, though I don’t know how they would proceed after that.
That’s true that Hank might be suspicious of people at the office. Hank might be thinking that if his nerdy brother-in-law is a drug kingpin, then why couldn’t people in the DEA also be connected to the drug business. Hank’s probably not trusting anyone at the moment.
Maybe I’m misremembering, but I thought Hank said to bring Skyler and the kids over. If so, maybe Hank doesn’t realize how much Skyler knows.
Yeah, he had a toaster oven in the little room off to the side, he must have felt comfortable that there wasn’t a camera in there.
WRT The White House. On the podcast Bryan Cranston (who directed this episode) said he specifically brought in lots of flowers and greens for Carol’s house to make Walt’s house look really drab by comparison.