So Walt’s cancer is in remission. I think we knew this was inevitable. I’m glad they’re handling it the way they are: Walt’s entire life is turned up-side down again, and he may have been putting himself and his family in danger for no good reason.
Jessie’s “Oh, wire!” in response to Walt’s question about conductive elements was great, as was his spiel about building a robot or dune-buggy from the 'bago. Promising to give Walt’s share of the money to his family was another great moment.
Maybe I missed something, but could anybody make sense of the upcoming preview? Is Walt finding a new partner?
I Loved the ending, Walt punching the crap out of towel dispenser. I think it really signifies the frustration with the dilemma that he’s in now that he might actually survive the cancer. Also the doctor’s “No more secrets…” line might be some interesting foreshadowing. I didn’t catch the preview, I prefer to go in blind. But I’ve noticed in the past that sometimes the previews for this show can be intentionally misleading.
Another excellent episode. We see the strong support that Walt is getting from his family, the continuing dimness of Jesse along with glimpses of his humanity, another example of Walt’s ingenuity, and finally the crushing effects of Walt’s ethical dilemma when he gets the “good” news about his cancer prognosis. All in all a very strong episode.
My interpretation of the towel dispenser beatdown was that Walt was upset that he no longer had a reason to cook. There were times when he seemed to really get off on the danger and the power he had as Heisenberg.
But yeah, it makes more sense that he’s angry because he got himself into a bad situation when if he would have just waited, things would have been okay.
I think it’s a combination. He couldn’t really do nothing when he was diagnosed, he knew finances were tough pre-cancer. He had to treat the cancer to live and in order to do that, he had to cook.
I think he’s just pissed that he has to keep lying to his family. Every time Walt gets his head above water something drags him back down. Now he knows he’s got to keep wrangling Jesse and lying and maybe deal with Saul.
Maybe he figured a call to Skinny would be easier to explain away than a call to a criminal attorney?
I loved the scene when Walt punched the hell out of that towel dispenser, and how you could see his face in it like a mirror. Almost like he’s giving himself a beatdown.
The previews for the next ep makes it look like walt bumps into “the other idiot who’s not ‘skinny’.” I wonder if Jesse is going to try to ‘go straight’ for a little while, leaving one of the stooges to buy the meth making products, or if it’s one of the stooges trying to go out on their own?
It almost seems like the whole thing amounts to an independent study course in chemistry for Jesse. (Between cooking the meth and making the battery, he’s actually getting something of an education.) Maybe he’ll ultimately redeem himself by straightening out and going back to school (perhaps to study science?).
You’re right, but I suspect he’s learned more (particularly about proper procedures in the chem lab) from Walt while engaging in the illegal manufacture of meth than he did as an actual high school student.
From the comments on the Sepinwall blog (thanks for the link, BTW):
Ah. I’d missed entirely how the remission is actually another death sentence for Walt. The slow, desperate death that was his life pre-meth.
In his meth life, he gets to exact revenge and be right and be powerful and feared and be an enigma.
I wonder if leaving his wife all that meth money was actually a sub-conscious fuck you to her being an average middle class partner in an average middle class life. For being a metaphor for all he didn’t get (because a loving wife really isn’t enough, nor what he deserves in his mind). I wonder if somewhere down there he harbors a seething resentment for her in the way narcissists attach blame to everyone but themselves. He’d have to know that he’d put Skyler in the awful position of knowing where the money came from, needing it, and having to make the choice to continue the double-life post-Walt-mortem.
There were times when he seemed to really get off on the danger and the power he had as Heisenberg.