Don’t you think these two were in some sort of competition from a get go?
From the first cook (flashback) and the first disagreement, it was all a downhill and the whole show is about Walt breaking bad so much so that Jesse is in that mortal-fear-yet-respect state of mind.
I’ll have to listen again to be sure, but all through that call – which went on for awhile – Walt was never specific about what he’d done. Not a word about a dangerous business or meth or millions of dollars of drug money or deaths. Someone who didn’t know could have thought Walt was ranting about Skyler not supporting him in the car wash business.
I’m down with the theory about Jesse eventually killing Walt. Because I could see no reason for Walt to have told Jesse about Jane, except he knew that would hurt him so badly that Jesse would want to kill him, IF he lived. It’s not like Walt had a moment where he was all, “Well, they’re going to kill Jesse, so I’d better clear my conscience.” Walt knew fully well that Jesse can cook to the same purity Walt can. And Walt knew the Nazis needed a better cook. And he knew he’d have to go on the run, so why not give the Nazis the one other decent cook in the whole show?
The first phone call to Skyler – the very first scene – told me that Walt was much more calculated the entire time than I’d given him credit for. It sort of appeared that he stumbled into this meth cooking business, but now I’m starting to wonder. Perhaps telling Jesse, and giving him to the Nazis was also as carefully calculated as the last phone call to Skyler.
So let me ask you guys. Which would you rather die of, cancer or a merciful bullet to the head? I think Walt will turn out to have orchestrated far more than (at least) I thought he was capable of.
Walt’s wallet, which is how he was able to give the coordinates to Uncle Jack.
I think Walt has it. If I remember correctly, he pulled it out of his wallet to read the coordinates off to Jack.
But even if so, maybe they could trace where Hank called from, and find his body that way. And Marie could testify what Hank said in his call. That would link Walt to Hank’s death.
Wasn’t Walt reading the coordinates off the ticket when he called the Nazis?
At some point that wasn’t shown Walt took the lottery ticket off the fridge. He had it in his wallet with him when he went out to stop Jesse from burning the money. That was how he gave the exact coordinates to the badder guys.
Unless he had more than one ticket printed, which is possible but I don’t believe was shown. Plus it would require a Sherlockian bit of deductive magic for someone to realize a lottery ticket on the fridge was a map.
As for me on the question of why Walt has returned in the flashbacks: It comes down to the end of the phone call when he says “I still have stuff to do.” Is that a meaningless lie or indicative of an actual plan. If that “stuff to do” is set in motion whatever brings him back in the flashback then it has to be something he already knows.
Oh, so you’re objection isn’t my lack of a medical credential that would certify me to offer diagnoses of fictional characters, you just don’t like it as a matter of aesthetics. God knows psychopaths have never been used as characters in dramatic television before, such would be unthinkable.
I can’t find the comment now (I’m on my phone), but I’d like to second whoever the poster was who pointed out that a lot of this is Jesse’s fault. It bugged me that Mike always blamed Walt for taking down Gus, when really that was all on Jesse. He just had to kill the drug dealers who killed the kid. A kid so fucked up, incidentally, that he killed Jesse’s friend Combo and was barely related to Andrea.
All the shit that resulted from that was from Walt saving Jesse’s life, time and again. Sure, he ruined Jesse in the process (by making him kill Gale, something he’s never been able to get over), but it was all a result of Walt trying to protect Jesse.
If it weren’t for Jesse’s quixotic need to vengeance, Walt and Jesse could still be cooking under the laundry and hundreds of people would still be alive.
No way.
Walt was ready to watch Jesse get put down right in front of him. The only reason it didn’t happen was because of Todd’s stepping in. I don’t think Walt gives any shits at all about whether or not the nazis can still make pure meth.
This makes a lot of sense. I was thinking a couple of episodes ago that we haven’t seen any of Walt’s tricks lately. And it may not make sense for Walt to save Jesse, I do think they have to meet up again somehow.
It was revenge. Jesse betrayed Walt by teaming up with Hank, so Walt wanted to hurt Jesse the worst way he could. He was ready for them to kill Jesse right then and there.
We just finished watching the show. I’ve not read through the entire thread, but my prediction: The Nazis have taken the money and left, Todd wants Jesse to cook as a way of getting into Lydia’s pants, Jesse will manage to kill Todd and escape, he will then kill Walt’s family. So Jesse is the one Walt goes gunning for at the end.
Remember: Someone is going to scrawl “Heisenberg” on the wall of his house, which is clearly abandoned in the flash forward to the future. Something really, really bad is going to happen there.
It’s odd how hung up you are on this point. From what we have seen Todd is the text book definition of a psychopath.
Why, he almost looked like a certain pink teddy bear fished out of the White Family swimming pool, didn’t he?
I hadn’t even thought of that until this morning. What a reference.
Not odd at all, if you’ve read his posts in other threads. He gets quite exercised about things.
Oh, I guess I didn’t notice before.
Wrong again. It’s both. You simply do not know enough about him to call him a psychopath.
They’ve been used as horror or thriller props or as mechanical macguffin threats. A psychopath always stands outside human drama.
I think Jesse’s eye was just swollen shut. If they’d gone further and blinded him he might’ve been in too much pain to work.
It looked swollen shut to me.
I find it interesting that the fact they are Nazis is actually irrelevant. The only reason we know they are neo-Nazis is because of their tattoos. I’ve yet to hear them do or say anything white-supremacisty.
Not only did Jesse betray Walt by ratting him out to Hank, that lead directly to Hank being in the middle of things and getting killed. Since nothing is ever really Walt’s fault since it would all just work out if everybody did what he said, Hank being dead is Jesse’s fault.
If whatever brings Walt back is information that we already have then I don’t see it being a plan to kill Jesse (he thinks Jesse is dead or as good as) nor to fend of an attack by Jesse. Jesse already viewed Walt as a supervillain who can’t be caught and from his point of view it happened again. They had him dead to rights and once again everybody else ended up dead and Walt walked away. If he escapes Todd, I don’t see him wanting to poke the bear.
One thing I expected, to make the destruction of Flynn/Jr. complete was for Walt (because why should anybody come out the other end of this remotely whole), during his fight with Skyler to say something like “just two days ago you were telling me to kill people.”
And among everything else this episode does reinforce what someone said about the show giving us what we expect in ways we don’t expect. In all of the discussion last week about how the DEA would know to come down on Walt as Heisenberg, I don’t think anybody had “Walt will knowingly confess to the police and essentially give Skyler permission to admit to everything she knows.”
And I loved the fight. I literally had this sequence over 20 seconds:
Oh no! Skyler’s going to kill herself
Oh no! Skyler’s going to severely wound Walt.
Oh no! Walt’s going to accidentally kill Skyler.
Oh no! The knife is going to go flying and stab Holly.
Oh no! Flynn Jr. is going to fall on the knife.
Oh no! I haven’t a fucking clue what is going to happen.