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

-Two, kill Todd. Self-explanatory.

-Or three, keep Todd on payroll, but relegate him to tenting houses for fumigation. Todd is off meth duty entirely.

Walt puts it up to a vote. Walt likes option three, and so does Mike. (It does seem like the most pragmatic, I gotta admit).

Jesse would probably choose Option #1, but he sees he’s outvoted so he doesn’t even bother. It’s done.

VAMONOS, LOCKER ROOM

Todd is waiting for the verdict. Mike comes out and tells him he’s still a member of the operation. Todd is relieved, but Mike throws him up against the lockers. Mike’s got a warning for Todd…will Mike straighten out Todd’s maverick ways?

Sort of. Mike’s gripe with Todd isn’t that Todd shot a kid, it’s that Todd brought a gun on a job without permission. Whoa. We’ll discuss at the end of the recap.

VAMONOS, OUTSIDE

Alone, Todd goes to his car to head home for the evening after probably the worst day on the job anyone’s ever had. But in his car, he pauses for a second. He fishes out the mason jar with the tarantula inside it.

What the hell are we to make of this?

“Sure, maybe I had to kill a kid, but at least I got a free tarantula out of it. I came out ahead.”

PLAYGROUND

A DEA agent is sitting in a car with binoculars, observing someone unseen off camera. I’m assuming this is one of the DEA agents assigned to tail Mike, because Mike likes to take his granddaughter to the playground.

Gomez pops in to check up on the agent. Yep, the agent is surveilling Mike. Right now Mike’s on a bench while his granddaughter climbs a tree. Is it me or does Mike look upset? He’s blinking a lot. Tears?

Anyway, Mike takes out a notepad, writes a message, and leaves it under the trash can. Gomez knows what’s up: this is a classic dead drop. They watch Mike leave with his granddaughter, and Gomez decides to check the message out and see what it says.

Gomez walks over to the trash can and retrieves the note. It says “Fuck you”.

Yup. Did YOU really think the DEA could tail Mike without tipping him off? I didn’t.

ACT TWO

MIKE’S HOUSE

Mike is alone in his kitchen at night, on a laptop and listening to some recordings taken from Hank’s office. He’s seeing what the DEA has on him so far, and it doesn’t sound like much. Gomez reports to Hank that Mike’s slipped all their tails, and all Hank can offer is a platitude that Mike will slip up eventually.

Side note: the bugs Walt put in Hank’s office have also recorded Hank’s day-to-day activities as the new ASAC of the Albuquerque office and it sounds like Hank’s a taskmaster. Getting on people for shoddy paperwork and all that.

Maybe Hank will write also write a management book. Shootin’ Straight: Business Secrets from the DEA (foreword by Larry the Cable Guy)

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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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