Great episode. First thing I want to say is that it was great to see Badger and Skinny Pete back on the show. Every time we see them it's comedy gold. Before we get too much further into it, let me share this video with you of my favorite Badger-Skinny Pete moment: the argument about zombie games.
We saw them in this episode mainly to illustrate how far Jesse has come since the beginning, when he was little more than a street-level cook, dealer, and user. Now that he's not on the same level as Badger and Skinny, I don't expect to see them again, unless Gilligan feels the need to leaven some of the heavy drama coming up and throws them in for comic relief.
There were about 41 minutes of this episode that had no Badger or Skinny, and that's what I should be getting to now. In the cold open, we see Mike, undercover as a paralegal, going to see Dennis in jail. You may remember Dennis as the manager of the laundry; he was the guy who let Gomie and his partner in to snoop around last season. The point of this scene is to say that Mike is keeping his word to his guys about their hazard pay, the money they would get when things went pear-shaped. Dennis, and by extension all of the guys, are understandably worried. The boss is dead, the business is gone, the DEA took all of their money. They want to believe Mike will make good, but they just don't see how it's gonna happen. Mike, in a real honor-among-thieves move, visits each one to give them his personal assurance that he will "make them whole." I had two thoughts as the opening credits rolled after this scene: 1. Mike is a real stand-up guy, a Hufflepuff to the end, and 2. Walt is not going to like this one bit. It's the second thought that becomes the central conflict in the end in a terrific scene.
The final scene is Mike, Jesse, and Walt and 3 stacks of cash, the bounty from their first cook as owners of the business. (I'll get to that in a minute.) Mike breaks down their expenditures, taking cash off each pile as he does. He saves the biggest one for last: legacy cost, 117k each. An argument ensues, and it's hard not to see Walt's point a little bit: he killed Gus, and he doesn't like having to pay Gus's guys for their silence. They are Mike's guys, it should come out of Mike's end. Mike disagrees, primarily because he wants to honor his deal with them, but also on pragmatic grounds. Any one of these guys could really put the screws to all 3 of them if they felt they were not being taken care of. Gilligan wants us to see both sides, and we do, but I come down on Mike's side: they pay the guys because that's what you do.
Walt agrees, until Mike leaves and he and Jesse are alone together. Walt starts talking about Victor and why Gus killed him. At first, Walt says, he thought it was a message to him and Jesse not to fuck with the boss. Now that Walt is sitting in the big chair he sees it a little differently. Victor took the liberty of cooking a batch, he took the liberty of going into Gale's apartment and getting seen. We're led to understand that Walt thinks Mike is now taking liberties with their money, and that Mike just may be in Walt's crosshairs now. This is a Walt we are becoming more and more familiar with: ruthless, calculating, almost sociopathic in his self-interest. For the record, I want to say that it would be a huge mistake for Walt to turn on Mike. Not only is Mike the only one who has the business and supply contacts, but he could smell Walt coming a mile away. The quickest way for Walt to get himself killed right now would be to go after Mike.
Onto the middle part of the episode: setting up the business. There's a lot of good stuff here, most of it pretty light in tone. We start with a close-up on Mike's face and hear this odd sound, kind of like breathing, but also kind of like snoring. Who could it be? It's Huell! The big guy is standing in front of the door to Saul's office, apparently sound asleep. Inside, Saul is worried about bringing Mike into the operation because of that time Mike threatened him for Jesse's whereabouts. Walt tells Saul to grow a pair: threatening people is what Mike does; he probably threatened someone before breakfast. Now they have to find a new place to cook, and we get a few quick scenes of potential sites. One is a box factory, where we get to see Walt wax poetic about a simpler time in his life; the moment is soon crushed by pragmatism. The steam and salt in the air at this location would ruin the product. Next, a tortilla factory, which is no good because the tortillas would start smelling like cat piss, not to mention that food production facility is subject to unannounced government inspections. Here we get a funny Jesse moment, as he grabs a tortilla off the production line on the way out. Next up, Lazer Tag, the place Saul's been pushing on them since last season. They didn't even get inside before the boys put the kibosh on it.
What they finally settle on is not one place, but many: they make a deal with a pest removal company whose employees are all small-time crooks. The pest removal guys get a job bug-bombing a house, which means the owners go away for a few days and a tent is placed over the entire house. No one in the neighborhood goes near it, no one complains about funny smells. They go in, they cook a batch, they bug-bomb on the way out. It's as brilliant as it is devious. Walt and Jesse figure out what they need, Junkyard Joe gets the equipment, Badger and Skinny buy them roadie cases, and they've got methylamine from Lydia. Next we get the first cook, and probably the best cooking montage we've seen on the show.
2 more things I want to talk about: Walt's manipulation of Jesse and Scarface. Walt playing Jesse for a sucker is really nothing new, but the way he does it now is so effortless and apparently guilt-free. This time he uses a kernel of truth from his own life, telling Jesse in regards to his relationship with Andrea and Brock that secrets have a cost, that they drive people away and take a piece of your soul. This is true, and you believe Walt as he's saying it, but it's dirty because he's leading Jesse to break it off with her, which he does. Their relationship is starting to remind me of Tony Soprano's relationship with his nephew Christopher; there's a love, a familial bond there, but the business comes first, and anything's fair game for the big guy to do to the little one. This dichotomy between the familial bond and the machinations of a crime lord was one of the central themes throughout the entire run of the Sopranos, and it's coming to the fore here as Walt assumes the "Don" role. It's really fascinating to watch, and we hope that things will turn out better for Jesse than they did for Christopher.
Scarface. Finally, after Gilligan telling anyone who will listen that Walt's journey is that of "Mr. Chips to Scarface," we get an explicit in-universe reference to Brian DePalma's gangster opus, which is probably one of the 3 seminal gangster movies. (The other 2 are The Godfather and Goodfellas, but the point can be argued.) In the season opener, we saw Walt buying an M60 machine gun, which is not quite the same weapon as Tony Montana's "Little Friend," but close enough. It's well known that Scarface is the story of the rise and fall of Cuban immigrant Tony Montana, who comes to Miami with his best friend Manny, played by Steven Bauer. Breaking Bad fans will recognize Bauer as Don Eladio, the head of the Mexican cartel who killed Gus's partner Max and was later poisoned by Gus. If you can imagine the rise and fall of Tony Montana as climbing and ascending a mountain, Tony made the summit by killing his boss and taking over his business. His downfall was caused first by picking the wrong guy to be his money launderer. He was caught on camera laundering millions of dollars. (I remember this scene, with the camera hidden in a wall clock, very well because on the old VHS copy I had, that was the last scene before you had to put in the second tape.) Desperate, he goes to South America to see his supplier, Alejandro Sosa, a major player in the continental drug trade. When Tony first met Sosa, Sosa delivered Tony a warning: "Don't you ever try to fuck me." This time, Sosa offered Tony a way out: kill a man who was scheduled to deliver a major speech at the UN naming Sosa as the man behind the flow of drugs into America. If Tony would do it, Sosa would make Tony's legal problems go away. Tony agreed, and Sosa sent an assassin for Tony to work with. The assassin is also someone known to Breaking Bad fans: Emmy nominee Mark Margolis, who played Tio Salamanca. They put a bomb on the man's car and were all ready to blow him to bits, until he picked up his wife and kids. Tony refused to do it, killing the assassin. The man delivered the speech to the UN and Sosa sent his goons to Miami to take Tony out. This is the shoot-out Walt and Junior are watching in this episode.
The parallels to Breaking Bad are there if you look. Walt became the king by taking out his boss, Gus. (In a great line of dialogue from this episode, however, Mike told Walt "...just because you shot Jesse James, it doesn't make you Jesse James.) Now he's on top, but the paranoia is starting to set in. A man in power is afraid of nothing more than losing his power, and we see this in Walt's argument with Mike over the hazard pay: Mike is a threat to Walt's bottom line, but also to his absolute power. The epic money laundering scene from Scarface is mirrored in the money counting scene in this episode, and it also signals the beginning of the end for Walt. We have the fact that Gus was somebody important in Pinochet's Chile, important enough that the cartel couldn't kill him. Whatever it was that Don Eladio was afraid of is now to be Walt's fate. Is Future Walt buying that M60 to fend off waves of armed Chilean thugs? My answer is yes. Walt's rise to power contains the seeds of his inevitable downfall.
That's about all I want to talk about on this episode. What about Skyler, you might say? She had a breakdown, and we see the Scarface scene through her eyes as she realizes just what kind of monster she's sharing a bed with, but nothing really changed for her this week. I am waiting for her to do something, whether it's suicide or trying to kill Walt or telling Hank or filing for divorce or just skipping town with the kids. This deer-in-the-headlights thing she's got going on is fascinating, but it feels much like the funk Jesse was in last season after he killed Gale. I'm just waiting for it to break.
That's all I have on Breaking Bad this week. A few other points:
- The final season of Weeds is rather disappointing so far, although I enjoyed Andy's meditation this week on the karmic origin of his being an "effortless receiver of tail."
- I saw The Dark Knight Rises this weekend, and it was awesome. Maybe not quite as tightly plotted as The Dark Knight, and of course you feel the absence of Heath Ledger's Joker, but Tom Hardy was terrifying as Bane, and Anne Hathaway's Catwoman was sexy and fierce and left you wanting more.
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