The same leisurely, low-key pace resumed, as established in the first four shows, where the only violence was Episode 1 -- the truck blasted to oblivion by the twin cousins of psychotic Season 2 dealer Tuco Salamanca, whom the Mexican cartel has hired to assassinate Heisenberg.
Another flashback opened the episode, quickly identified by a Walter White who has a full head of hair. He gives Jesse his life savings to get an RV.
Jesse's reactions are typical of his pre-rehab self: all night wine ("Dom Pering-Don," the stuff James Bond drinks, yo!), women and song, total debauchery at a strip club. He and his homies are chuckling over the fact that they're blowing the money of a sorry middle aged fella who trusted Jesse to spend it wisely. (It is appropriate that the strip joint's name has something to do with atomic bombs, not only reflecting new Mexico's connection to A-bomb history, but tying in with the explosive lives of Jesse and Walter.)
With dawn's arrival, Jesse finds he has only $1,400. His pal, Christian "Combo" Ortega, knows where he can get an RV right away, despite it being 6 a.m. Off they go to a house marked with a terra cotta sun with a creepy smiling face, money is exchanged, and Jesse is told to get out of there fast. Easy to extrapolate that Jesse has just bought himself a stolen vehicle, which he then proceeds to crash into several garbage cans along the way.
Chicken baron and secret drug lord Gus Frings (Giancarlo Esposito) continued his "gentle persuasion" to bring Walter back. In Episode 4 it was a Los Pollos Hermanos bag full of cash casually tossed into the window of his Pontiac Aztek. In this show, it was an entire state of the art lab in the basement of Gus' commercial laundry, coupled with a job quota of 200 pounds of meth a week. The pay's fantastic, and Walt can set his own hours.
Walter said "no," again, even after admiring that veritable chemist's wet dream of a lab: spacious, airy and stocked with the sleek coolness and sheen of stainless steel that spins the wonders of science, even the illegal ones.
Gus asks him why Walt got into cooking in the first place. He says it was for his family.
Family is everything, Gus agrees. Family is the most important thing of life, bar none. Walt can cook for them, for their future. A man's gotta do what he's gotta do. He is the provider, and he always will be for family. Cook, if not for himself, then again for them. But Walter is adamant -- no more sky blue meth! He's done!
Later Walter is shown cradling Holly, in one of the tense breakfast scenes with Skyler and Walter Jr. (Flynn). Family is the only thing, the best thing, embodied in a tiny infant unaware of her dad's nefarious turn.
Skyler continues her relationship with Ted Beneke, who invites her to move in with him. Her attorney, tired of her wishy washy attitude about Walter, seconds the idea of getting out of her old house, as staying at there would make her an accessory after the fact for Walter's illegal enterprise.
There were a couple shots of Skyler staring down at her well manicured, painted toenails, in a thick terry bathrobe in Ted's bathroom. She could resolutely declare that Ted's thermostat regulated, specially heated bathroom floor is the "best invention ever," but could not decide what to do about living arrangements or ending things with Walter. The next scene in both cases was Skyler setting the table for breakfast, down to proper flatware placement and cloth napkins, a gesture more associated with suburban stability.
Skyler snoops into the room Walter shares with baby Holly. She hauls down Walter's Big Gym Bag of Cash and gazes at it, her mind in turmoil over what to do. In a later trip to the room, she finds Walter's stuff gone and his signature on the divorce papers.
There was another kind of divorce, as the partnership of Hank and Agent Steve Gomez ended. Hank rejected the promotion to the "Super Bowl" of the drug wars, DEA El Paso, in order to follow his obsession with the blue meth and Heisenberg.
Marie's dreams of a Georgetown townhouse melted away. She phoned Skyler and cried on her shoulder, so to speak, about Hank's emotional volatility and her own marriage's problems.
Gomie is now headed to El Paso, as Hank later finds out abruptly, and certainly he is a better fit than Hank, as the guy speaks the Spanish that Hank lacked and earned him a razzing last season. At least, until Danny Trejo's Head-on-a-Tortoise blew a few of them up.
Hank's task of tracking down the 29 early 1980s RVs like the one our Cookin' Couple used begins disastrously, much as his career path has been going this season, what with the panic attack and an unnecessary brawl with a couple bikers in a local bar a couple episodes ago.
Hank and Steve are staking out a doppelganger of Walt and Jesse's lab that is set up in a placid campground. Steve checks out the RV but cannot see inside. Leave it to Hank to climb up the luggage rack ladder to the top, stealthily slide along the roof, peer in -- and spot a portly middle aged couple in their underwear playing cards. The guy spots Hank, who then has a lot of 'splaining to do as sunrise comes. Not a great start to the Great RV Hunt.
Walter hides in the closet in Holly's room, having a nasty argument with Jesse, who wants the other half of the money. The argument over rights to the blue meth recipe rages, and again there is no resolution.
Later Jesse is at Saul Goodman's Statue of Liberty Office of Legal Larceny, again screeching for the money.
Walter shows up to give Jesse the other half of the moola. He also mentions Gus' offer was $3 million for three months. He is now ready to cook!
Saul is happy to take 15 percent. A pissed yet empowered Walter -- the stronger man we are seeing emerge this season -- bargains him down to 5 percent. He rubs salt in Jesse's wounds with the fact that Gus wants only him, and the younger man was only a pawn to achieve that goal.
Jesse is upset that "his" attorney is now dickering with Walter, to which Saul says he only backs winners.
Jesse storms out to the parking lot, grabs a loose chunk of concrete that just happened to be there, and throws it at Walter's car windshield, making it a twin of the shattered window Walter received from the debris of Wayfarer Airlines Flight 515 at the season's beginning.
Saul is better at making money than in reconciling couples. I wish that our Odd Couple of Narcotics could be reunited. Because what we need from them is -- more. However, DEA Agent Hank Schrader could change things...
Finally, the Great RV Hunt takes a much better turn when Hank visits the house with the creepy sun decoration. It's Combo's family home, and Mrs. Ortega tells Hank that her RV was stolen some time ago. She gives the agent permission to search Combo's old bedroom, which has marijuana curtains and and just happens to have a photo of the dead guy with Jesse taken the night of the strip club craziness. One step closer to Heisenberg, and unknowingly, one more closer to his own brother-in-law.
No comments:
Post a Comment