Breaking Bad Recap: I Know Why the Caged Walt Sings

Recaps

By Saint Clare of Assisi | Tuesday, August 21, 2012 | 3:08 pm | 5 Comments
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Posted in: Breaking Bad, Featured, Recaps

Hello, Breaking Bad-ders. Welcome to the recap for Season 5 Episode 6, “Buyout”. As you might remember, earlier in the season I was complaining about the show using heist-y stories while sacrificing character moments. This week pretty much makes up for all of that.

The episode boils down to this: Walt has a chance to cash out of the new Walter White and Associates meth business started after Gus’s death. He could make a tidy sum and retire for good. But, of course, he doesn’t. It’s never really been about the money for Walt, but this week we finally start to learn, if not money, then what?

PREVIOUSLY ON

Let’s see what the show wants us to keep in mind for this episode…

-The four amigos robbed a train. (That’s Walt, Jesse, Mike, and Todd). This is the least necessary reminder from the showrunners they’ve ever done. If you watched last week and forgot they robbed a train, you’ve had a death in the family and were thus preoccupied. If you’re just joining us now, you need to learn how to watch TV shows better.

-Walt and Skyler continue to war over their kids. When we last left off, Skyler had managed to get Hank and Marie to take the kids off their hands while she wand Walt “sort out their marital problems”, which unbeknownst to Hank and Marie includes Walt makin’ meth.

-Walt and Mike continue to war over Mike having to pay hush money to Gus’s old associates. This hush money partly comes out of Walt’s share of the take, which is really chapping Walt’s ass.

-And Todd shot a kid. In case you forgot, which you didn’t. See #1.

-Also, this last one was not included in the pre-show reminders, but I’ve been worrying about it myself. The kid Todd shot had just collected a tarantula and put it in a jar. What happened to the tarantula? Is it OK? I hope so! 

On to the recap…

COLD OPEN

VAMONOS PESTS

Picking up where we left off last week, the question of the cold open is, how are the guys going to get rid of the kid’s body?

Walt and Todd (but not Jesse) bring a dump truck back to the pest control building late at night, while Mike supervises. Inside the bed of the truck is all the various equipment from the train heist, plus a large pile of dirt.

Grade A body-concealin’ dirt, that is

Todd climbs into the truck and starts pawing away at the pile of dirt. And yes, the kid’s dirt bike has been hidden inside the pile of dirt. We can assume the kid’s body is under there too, but mercifully it’s not shown. There’s no dialogue or ambient sound over this part either, just eerie music.

The guys begin dismantling the bike and placing the bike parts into a plastic drum of the type they use to dissolve bodies in acid.

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Saint Clare of Assisi attended Boston University and has written for The Onion.  He took his name from the patron saint of television, who was a virgin and saved a boy from a wolf one time.

5 Comments

  1. 1
    MrsMiaWallace MrsMiaWallace
    Posted August 21, 2012 at 4:20 pm

    Great recap, I love the book chapters!

    Ok, here is my thinking on the Grey Matter backstory. I may be dead wrong based on things they’ve already told us and I have forgotten, so feel free to slap me down.

    I think the whole other-guy-got-the-girl is too straightforward. Plausible, but not interesting enough. I want it to be something like Walt cheated with Skylar or split off to be with her. That and/or there were issues with Walt getting a temper, acting like a dictator, maybe doing something illegal/immoral. All things that he is displaying now and the friends asked him to leave. Finding out he has tendencies for this behavior would be interesting. I also wonder if he totally cashed out or if he expected to go it alone and use the $5k to build his own company and failed?

    As for his idea… not sure. At first I just assumed he wanted them to give him the chemicals and he would pay them back, but from the prequels it doesn’t look that way. Maybe since Walt has a disti problem and Dradel or whoever wants to expand he starts supplying to him? But that would only be palatable for Walt if he is still the boss and not just working for another version of Fring.

    My question is that Mike said he’d pay back all the guys out of his share… but with 9 guys cutting into $5M that cannot be enough. Didn’t Mike alone have $2M seized by the DEA? Maybe he got paid way more than the others?

    Love your recaps!

  2. 2
    mjhhawk
    Posted August 22, 2012 at 7:10 am

    Great recap.

    I think Todd is going to turn out to be a psycho. The tarantula is his trophy from the kill, kind of like Dexter with the blood slides.

    I do agree that Grey Matter is going to be something revolving around a love triangle. They’ve tried to basically spell that out, but is anything ever that straightforward in BB land?

    Mrs.Mia – Hank definitely said something along the lines to Mike during their initial meeting that his granddaughter had a much larger amount in her bank account than everyone else (I thought he said over double). But I would agree that $5M doesn’t seem enough to make everyone whole again.

    Do we think they are treating this half-season like a full season with a uge cliff hanger in two episodes?

  3. 3
    timgunnssister timgunnssister
    Posted August 22, 2012 at 8:48 am

    Stellar recap, as always.

    Based on the first season’s episode where Walt speaks to Gretchen, I got the distinct impression that Walt and Gretchen had an affair – that Gretchen was already married to Elliot and that’s what broke up their group. And that she and Elliot feel awful about the chintzy buyout Walt got. That’s why they offered to pay Walt’s medical bills. Remeber how Walt initially told Skyler THAT’s where the money was coming from? Of course, when she thanked them, it got a little weird because Walt had actually refused the money.

    I also thought Tod keeping the jar was weird. Was that just the little kid in him being as fascinated with the tarantula as the boy he shot? Are the kids fingerprints on the jar? Does Tod get caught or does he use this as leverage over our boys? No one can prove who actualy took the shot but, Tod now has a piece of evidence that one of them did the deed. And any one of the other three are a more likely candidate than Tod. Wonder if Tod now needs to die?

    As to Walt’s wonderful solution? I have no idea. I doubt he would be willing to work for Declan – remember, he wants to build an empire, not work for Guslight. And what about Jesse? He really is no longer interested in the money as we’ve seen from previous episodes – I think he just wants his life back. Or at least the promise of a relatively normal life since he doesn’t seem to have really had one. Ever.

    And Skyler always looks like she’s about to explode with the news of Walt’s ‘hobby’. She may be the weakest link in the chain.

  4. 4
    Kammie
    Posted August 23, 2012 at 5:59 pm

    There was a shot towards the beginning when they were disposing of the crime that gave me chills. Walt was standing on a chair and it was shot from below him looking up. He had his mask on the top of his head which looked like horns and gave him a devilish appearance – did anyone else notice that?!

  5. 5
    Corey
    Posted September 19, 2012 at 5:42 am

    I loved these two episodes but can someone explain why they only stole 1,000 gallons, when they were using multiple 55 gallon drums already (based on 1 drum stolen in the earlier seasons yielding 40lbs). That 1,000 gallons is about 18 drums worth of methlyamine. Sure, the drums were being bugged, but they were still able to acquire them without the risk of robbing it from a train.

    I feel like this is a little fact checker moment. If they had stolen 2,000 gallons or more, I could see this being worthwhile, but only 1,000…

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