Breaking Bad 5.10 "Buried" 8/18/13

So they’ll need to uncover the bus and then lift it out of the hole in the ground. And I’d recommend strapping down everything so it doesn’t move when the bus/lab is being moved.

At Walt’s 51st birthday dinner, as Skyler was steeling herself to jump in the pool, Walt told a story about his worst night of the previous year, when he spent the entire night on the bathroom floor with Skyler putting damp cloths on his forehead. It was a nice call back last night to see the exact situation again.

I also really loved everything about the Huell scenes. From Scrooge McDucking it to Walt calling them out on some of the money missing. And Huell’s transparent eagerness to help bury the barrels of cash.

Does Walt even know exactly how much money was in the pile? When Skyler took him to the storage unit the first time, she said she had given up trying to count it, and had “no earthly idea” how much was there. And Walt certainly wouldn’t be able to tell if some was missing just by glancing at those barrels. Which means that Huell and Kuby probably could have helped themselves to quite a bonus and gotten away with it, had they known.

They did take some. Walt said “close enough”, and Huell and not-Huell shared a glance. It was clear that Walt knew they stole some but not enough to matter.

Why do they have to move it at all? Lydia said they’d see a $50m shortfall if they couldn’t turn out a better product. I’m guessing she can set up a new lab if she needs to and destroy that one.

I don’t think they touched it. One of them said “Mexico, just saying” the other one said “10 men dead in two minutes, in jail, just saying”. They could have, he wouldn’t have noticed, but they didn’t know he wouldn’t know.

Yeah, I think that glance between them is ambiguous. Seems to me that the look on Huell’s face when Walt says “close enough” could mean: “See? I told you we could have filled up a bag and he wouldn’t have known.” Although I guess that it could also mean that they did indeed take some.

If Huell didn’t take any of the cash, he’s far more honest than you’d expect to find among the henchmen of crooked lawyers.

I think the pile was bigger than the one Skyler showed to Walt in the previous season. This one looked about the size of a king-size bed.

I don’t think the Lydia’s problem with Declan’s operation was just the 68% purity, but rather the refusal to acknowledge that 68% was unacceptable and changes needed to be made. Even if he was only able to produce 74% before, if Todd and his crew agree with Lydia that the purity of the produce is a a high priority, then it’s worth making the switch. With work and possibly some recruiting, Todd’s crew could probably get the purity higher.

And if she’s not already, Lydia should cut them in for a piece of the Czech profits, so they have an incentive to produce a high-quality product. It was my impression that Declan wasn’t part of a profit-share, but rather than he sold his product in Arizona and sold some wholesell to Lydia to sell on to the Czechs.

I still think Lydia will try to get Walt and/or Jesse back on board, because… otherwise, where’s the drama?

Maybe Todd will promise a certain percentage, realize that he won’t be able to do it, and try to “convince” Walt to give him a refresher course…

Anyone else suspect the henchmen attached some sort of tracking device to one of those barrels? Maybe at Saul’s direction?

Wouldn’t it have crossed Declan’s mind that the “trouble” that suddenly showed up in the middle of nowhere had something to do with Lydia? I’m surprised he told her to stay down in the bus/lab while the rest of them met their fate.

That’s a good idea. Perhaps that explains why Walt is apparently broke in the flashforward?

I believe by taking over Declan’s lab the way they did, Lydia and Todd have also now regained access to the methylamine (sp?). Was it ever established where that ended up when Walt bailed?

I like how it seems that Hank is putting himself in danger a way that parallels Walt’s path. Every minute that Hank doesn’t report what he knows will make it look more like he was protecting Walt when the truth finally comes out. So he needs that much more evidence when he comes forward to guarantee that he’ll be seen as a hero.

Walt always needed just a bit more money to make sure his family was alright once he was gone. Like Hank now, he had many opportunities to get out/cut his losses. But the longer he stuck with what he was doing, the more risk he was taking on. Eventually he became so corrupted that he appeared to care more about power than for his original goal. It’ll be interesting to see if something similar happens to Hank.

That first scene was tense. I kept expecting the guy finding the money stacks to come to a bad end and then a cut to the credits.

Jesse is so dead to the world, I’m not sure if that would even have an effect. He might think that no matter what he does, that bad things happen, and not cook anymore, since bad things would happen whether he cooked or not.

Also, I’m not sure how much Lydia knows about Jesse’s cooking abilities or his connection to Andrea or Brock.

That’s what I was wondering. Is there a law against having a big bag of money? I think you are limited in what you can carry in or out of the country without declaring it, but he was just going around Albuquerque. Maybe they’ll hold onto the money, and do further investigations, but let Jesse go.

Didn’t occur to me. Partly because Saul and the henchmen know how angry and dangerous that Walt can get. If Walt found a tracker, they know things would get unpleasant. At most I would think they’d look at the odometer to see how far he drove, and from that they could get a rough estimation of where it was buried, but it would still be almost impossible to find.

Yeah, that was the first thing that occurred to me, was that the trouble must be connected to Lydia. I would have thought it’d be the first thing that occurred to Declan too. But I guess Declan had just thought she was some weird twitchy businesswoman in over her head, he wouldn’t think she’d bring that sort of trouble with her.

Broke guys can’t buy hot M60 machine guns. Hell, most of them are too broke to buy a Denny’s breakfast.

The glance meant that they didn’t take any.

Didn’t Hank ask his supervisor to set up a conference call with the big boss? I thought he was setting up the meeting in which he’s going to come clean.

He was, but finding out that Jesse was back in the picture changed the plan.

The original plan was to get a statement from Skyler saying that Walt was cooking meth, but he couldn’t get that. So he decided to go to the DEA, present them with what he had and cross his fingers that they didn’t say ‘you’re fucking nuts…and fired’ and they would just say ‘we’ll take it from here, you’re fired’. But when Jesse showed up he decided that he might be able to get a full confession out of him with Walt’s name all over it. That is way more then he could have dreamed of.

I suspect those barrels will remain forever buried. The legs of Ozymandias.