[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg_1_WvDoy0]
Breaking Bad: Blood Money (5×09)
Synopsis: Hank is reeling from the information he found in Walt’s bathroom, so much so that he has a panic attack on his way home from Walt’s house. A desperate Jesse resorts to other ways of getting rid of the money. When Walt realizes the book from his bathroom is missing, he visits Hank.
Rating: ?????
We’re in the home stretch of Breaking Bad, with season five part two wasting no time putting us right back into the action. A flash-forward reveals 52 year old Walt arriving at his home, which has been abandoned and fenced off. He enters and finds what may be one of my favorite images from the entire series – “HEISENBERG” spray painted across his living room wall. It was one of those haunting images that will stick with me for a while. Continuing through the home, he lingers a bit in Holly’s room, which is seriously troubling since we haven’t seen Holly, Walt Jr., or Skylar yet in this flashforward.
There are kids skateboarding in his empty pool – less than a year since the Whites had lived there and their pool is empty already? So far, what happened to the family home is the most interesting question posed. Walt is only there for the ricin he’d previously taped to the inside of a light socket cover, retrieving it and quickly leaving the house. On his way back to his car, he sees his neighbor Carol, who is visibly shaken by seeing bearded and heavily guy-lined Walt at his old stomping grounds.
The opening credits roll and we make it back to the present to find that Hank did indeed make it off the shitter safely! Hiding Leaves of Grass amongst Marie’s things and excusing them both by pretending he wasn’t feeling well, Hank makes a hasty exit. On his drive home, he begins to suffer a panic attack with the newfound knowledge of his brother-in-law and causes an accident. Thankfully, neither he nor Marie is hurt. Using his panic attack as an excuse to call in sick from work, Hank painstakingly goes through the files on Heisenberg and Gus Fring in his garage. He matches the dedication in Walt’s book to the writing in Gale’s journal as an unofficial way to confirm the evidence.
Walt is slightly concerned for his brother-in-law’s strange behavior, but lets it go easily for the time being. Walt has since left the meth making business, after having trained and taught his replacements, and he and Skylar discuss how to launder their money faster, possibly by expanding their car washing business. Lydia shows up to have her car washed by Skylar and speaks with Walt, who is behind the register.
She begs him to come back to the business, as her overseas partners have standards that are expected and the new team left in charge is getting sloppy and lazy about purity. Walt dismisses her while Skylar asks Walt who gets their rental car washed and detailed. When Walt fesses up that Lydia is a former business partner, Skylar wastes no time putting Lydia on notice. She warns Lydia to never come around their business or her family again and Lydia leaves despondent.
Meanwhile, Jesse is still suffering the aftermath of the shooting of Drew Sharp. He brings two duffle bags full of money to Saul and asks him to give one to Mike’s granddaughter and the other to the family of Drew Sharp. He thinks someone needs to look out for them, but Saul tells him it would raise too much suspicion and refuses to pass the money along. Upset, Jesse leaves and leaves behind the money.
Saul informs Walt of what occurred in his office and Walt takes the money back to Jesse – telling him that he earned that money, he should keep it. Jesse is still upset and it is hinted at that he believes Mike to be dead because Walt could not have killed all of his men in prison and be so calm about it if Mike were still alive. Walt continues to insist that Mike is alive, but Jesse doesn’t seem to be convinced. Jesse eventually loads the duffle bags into his car and drives around with it. When a homeless man asks him for some change, Jesse instead gives him a $10,000 bundle of cash and proceeds to drive around, throwing more bundles out the window of his car.
Rushing to his bathroom, Walt sloppily mirrors what we saw Gus Fring do when he drank the poison with the cartel. After his first bout of throwing up, he fixes the crooked towel to pad his knees better – where Fring was collected enough to lay it down nicely the first time – and while he sits there, he discovers his copy of Leaves of Grass to be missing. He realizes, like the rest of us, that Hank was in here using the bathroom for a long time and seems to jump to that neatly bow-wrapped conclusion. On his way to check on his suspicions, Walt finds the same tracker that he and Hank had once decided to put on Fring’s car attached to his car.
When he gets to Hank’s, the conversation starts out pleasantly enough, but Walt’s suspicions are all but confirmed. Walt asks about the tracker, the garage door shuts, and Hank gets the good punch in that we all wanted to see happen. He accuses Walt of being Heisenberg – of causing the car crash to keep Hank from the lab, of being the one to give his number to someone to call him about Marie’s fake car accident – and claims he doesn’t even know who he’s talking to. Walt transforms into Heisenberg almost before his eyes, warning him that, if that’s true, perhaps he should tread lightly.
Hank immediately wants Walt’s kids out of danger and brought to him and Marie, while Walt admits that he might die before Hank ever gets to prosecute him. His cancer has returned and Hank, the badass that he is, says good, good, he hopes Walt rots.
And that kicks off the insane beginning of the end for Breaking Bad. How much do you love Hank? Because if it’s not “a whole hell of a lot,” we need to have a talk. What do you think is in store for Jesse at the end of all of this? What’s Saul going to do if he loses his biggest money-making clients?
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