Breaking Bad returned last night in full force. Following up immediately where season 4 left off, the episode spent a large amount of time feeling the ramifications of what happened throughout all the characters. I’m not going into any spoilers until after the jump, so enough of this vague introduction. Let’s get into the what happened! Major spoilers below!!!!!!
Gus Fring is dead. How did it happen? A quick recap of the last episode: Walter White tricks Jessie Pinkman into teaming up with him to take down Gus Fring. They go find their old friend Tio Salamanca who is more than willing to give his life to kill Fring. So a trap is placed in an retirement home. One explosion later, Fring emerges from the rubble with half of his face blown off. Walter and Jessie clean up shop by burning down the old meth lab facility. So where does that leave us now?
Walter White tries to enjoy a moment of his victory with a drink. But he doesn’t have much time because he realizes a major issue with this recent event. After burning down the facility, they realized that the cameras in the meth facility may still have recordings of Walter and Jessie. They recruit Mike, who’s still bitter to them about killing his own boss, but with his own well-being at stake, he reluctantly joins them.
On the DEA side, Hank tries to enjoy his own victory by being correct about the meth facility at the laundry mat. He quickly deducts the possibility of a camera being used at the facility and immediately confiscates Gus Fring’s computer, which contains the files of them working at the meth lab. The team quickly devises a plan to break into a police evidence room. Jessie hilariously chooses brings up the idea of magnets scrambling the computer.
Meanwhile Skyler’s arc is also featured for a little bit. She recently loaned Ted Beneke a lot of money to cover up his IRS audit, but when she needed it back, he refused. So she instead sent some thugs to muscle him. Instead of actually harming him, Ted Beneke accidentally slips away and bangs his head against a table and injures his spine in the process. She spent her time in the episode visiting Beneke seeing that he’s bandaged and in a spinal brace. She assures he hasn’t told anyone and her mini story line is wrapped up.
Walter, Jessie, and Mike go to a junkyard to procure a junkyard magnet. They test it on a laptop and find that it will easily scramble and destroy it. They sneak their way into the police facility and seemingly successfully scramble the laptop though a narrow escape. One of the episode’s most powerful moments is on the way back, is when Mike is hesitant about the success of the plan. He asks how Walter can be so sure that this worked. In response, Walter replies, “Because I say so”. This scene shows how Mike is slowly becoming more submissive to what might be his new boss [one can only hope].
The episodes other powerful scene is when Walter goes to see his lawyer Saul. Saul is ready to call it quits dealing with Skyler and then poisoning Jessie’s friend’s kid. Walter calmly rises and goes face to face with Saul. He lets loose from his lips, ‘It’s over, when I say it is’. He slowly leaves and goes home and awkwardly embraces Skyler telling her that he forgives her. The look on her face clearly shows that she’s not comfortable and that she’s afraid of her own husband.
On one final note: does anyone want to explain what the opening scene was about? I thought that would be related to the episode…but…I dunno. Sketchy outfit, weird yet skeptical contact, a big-ass gun? This is like that weird teddy bear thing all over again.
Overview:
A strong return to set up an exciting season. Clearly, Hank’s going to continue investigating Gus’s death. Skyler will eventually deal with Ted Beneke and her husband. And most excitingly, Walter, Jessie, and Mike will reinvigorate their business. They’ve been small time and underlings for four seasons now. Now with Gus out of the picture, Walter looks like he’s going to fill in the shoes of the high drug lord. For nearly 4 seasons, we’ve been watching Walter White descend into complete darkness. Now with him going as far as poisoning a child, Walter is definitely a polar of evil. And I definitely think this season, we’ll see how evil it takes to run this business. Gus Fring was fairly bad, but can Walter top him? Why do we like such an evil person? That’s the magic of Breaking Bad. Like Dexter, we as an audience have fallen in love with an anti-hero. It will be an interesting season how they balance the bad he does with redeeming features.
Let me know what you guys think of the upcoming season!
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