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

THE DEA

Mike’s errand? He’s having a meeting with the Hank and Gomez at the DEA. With his lawyer. Who else but Saul?

Saul is here to try to get the DEA to stop tailing Mike. Basically it boils down to this: Saul accuses the DEA of harassing Mike without a warrant, which amounts to stalking. (Saul also implies, hilariously, that the DEA’s interest in Mike has some sexual undertones). Saul’s filed a restraining order against the DEA and he’s got a judge in his pocket, so the DEA is SOL.

SAUL’S CAR

Outside, Mike and Saul listen in on the DEA’s conversation via their bug. Hank and Gomez grouse about the restraining order but they figure it’ll get tossed. Saul agrees. He warns Mike that it won’t stand in court even with the favorable judge, and that this meeting has only whetted Hank’s appetite to bag Mike.

But Mike’s OK with that. All he needs is a little time to execute his end game. Now to just get the methylamine to Declan…

VAMONOS PESTS

Yup. Methylamine’s gone. Mike takes out his gun.

Oddly, Walt and Jesse are still in the office. No matter. Mike points the gun at Walt’s head and demands to know where the methylamine is, but Jesse begs for him to hear them out. Walt has come up with a plan, to get Mike his $5 million, AND for them to keep the methylamine and continue the cook.

“Everybody wins,” Walt says.

THE END

I’m gonna keep my post-episode thoughts short this week…

-First, what do you think Walt’s big plan will be vis-a-vis Declan? I have no friggin’ clue. Supposedly this plan will let them keep ALL 1,000 gallons of methylamine, AND get Mike his $5 million. Presumably it will also get Declan off their backs. Declan wants Heisenberg out of the picture so to me the only way Declan backs off is if they whack him. And it doesn’t seem like they have the manpower to pull that off. Maybe Jesse will ask Badger and Skinny Pete to shoot Declan.

-Originally when I was watching the episode first time through, and it got to the scene where Walt tells Jesse about Gray Matter, I thought, “Awesome! Now we’ll finally know what happened with that!” But now that I think it over, I really don’t think we got much new information about the incident. We already knew Gray Matter was wildly successful–we’ve seen Elliott and Gretchen’s luxurious lifestyle, for one thing. Maybe we didn’t explicitly know that Walt sold his stake in it before it blew up, but we could pretty much guess he got out of Gray Matter way too early.

We still don’t know what happened between Walt, Gretchen, and Elliott to cause Walt to go his separate way, but can’t we piece that together, too? We know Gretchen and Walt used to be together, and we know Gretchen and Elliott are together now. And now that Walt says he left for “personal reasons” we can pretty much guess what went down: Gretchen and Elliott hooked up and Walt couldn’t take the betrayal, so he left. Is there any other theory out there?

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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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