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

Mike and Jesse’s plan is this: they will split the 1,000 gallons of methylamine into thirds. Mike and Jesse will sell their thirds to an old contact of Mike’s for about $5 mil apiece. Mike will use his share to pay the rest of the hush money to his associates, so Walt will be free of that.

Walt is flabbergasted. The methylamine, if converted into meth, would fetch them about $300 million. (Side note: holy fuck). Mike and Jesse would be giving it away for pennies on the dollar. On top of that, remember, methylamine is responsible for the signature blue tint to Walt’s meth. If Mike and Jesse sell their methylamine, they’d basically be giving it away to one of Walt’s competitors.

Chapter 7: The Dish on the Competish

Walt wants to know each guy’s reasons for their treachery. Mike tells Walt it’s because of the heat from the DEA. It’s too risky to continue the business under so much scrutiny. (I’d guess this isn’t Mike’s real reason for getting out, but this is what he tells Walt at least). Jesse doesn’t really have an explanation, but you can bet it’s at least partly influenced by the dead kid.

Jesse then goes Walt one further, by pointing out what we’ve come to recognize as one of Walt’s biggest flaws…for Walt, it’s not about making meth any more, it’s about making money. What Jesse means is, Walt originally got into meth to provide for his family. He’s gone way beyond that by now.

Walt doesn’t have an answer, but we got two more acts to go. Hang tight.

ACT THREE

THE DESERT

So now Mike and Jesse are meeting with the methylamine buyer. Jesse is nervous but Mike is as cool as ever.

A car pulls up, and out comes a man named Declan. Declan is a meth distributor. Mike and Jesse have a one gallon jug of the methylamine on the hood of their car as a bona fide…they want to sell Declan the rest of their share at $15,000 per gallon. Like we heard earlier, that works out to about $10 million total. If Declan can put together that kind of cash, you know he’s not fucking around. He’s the real big-time, probably big enough to rival Gus.

But Declan isn’t quite satisfied. He doesn’t really want to buy methylamine to start making his own blue meth, he wants to buy it so Heisenberg can’t cook any more. And since Mike and Jesse are offering him 666 gallons, he assumes they have a third partner who’s got the remaining third. That means Heisenberg’s blue meth would still be on the market.

What Declan is driving at is this: he wants Heisenberg out of the picture. One way to achieve that is by purchasing all 1,000 gallons. Another way would be to…well…kill Heisenberg.

WALT AND SKYLER’S HOUSE

Walt is in bed staring at his Heisenberg hat. His phone rings and he picks up. It’s Jesse. Walt invites him over.

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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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