Breaking Bad: Buried (5×10)
Synopsis: Hank and Marie try to convince Skyler to help them with bringing down Heisenberg. Walt hides a large sum of money in the desert and Lydia sees a change of management in the current meth-making scheme.
Rating: ★★★★☆
An old man gets up early and finds one of the bundles of cash that Jesse had thrown from his vehicle. Following a trail of thrown money, he eventually finds Jesse and his crashed car at a playground. The opening credits play and then we’re thrown right back into the tense conversation between Walt and Hank, with Walt leaving the house. After a moment, he stops and tries to dial Skyler to warn her about what just happened, but she’s unavailable and he realizes that Hank has gotten to her first. He speeds off to the carwash to catch her in person, but is too late, she’s already left.
Skyler shows up to an awkward meeting with Hank at a diner, where he is still painfully oblivious when it comes to his own family. He immediately assumes that Skyler is another victim in Walt’s grand scheme – and to an extent she is – and urges her to give a taped statement about the whole ordeal. He also reveals to her that Walt’s cancer is back, something she wasn’t aware of before. Overwhelmed by the whole situation, Skyler thinks it may be better to have a lawyer present, but Hank pushes her to give him something substantial that he can present as evidence against Walt. She gets up to leave and Hank holds onto her arm in a last ditch effort to persuade her. Skyler doesn’t react well to being detained and repeatedly and loudly begins asking if she is under arrest, forcing Hank to let her go in the wake of the scene she’s making.
Saul and Walt are meeting about the latest turn of events and Saul suggests that Walt think about sending Hank “on a trip to Belize,” in the same way that Mike went on a trip to Belize. Walt gets offended by the suggestion, claiming that Hank is family, and offhandedly remarks that Saul should be sent on a trip to Belize – which is, by the way, an awesome euphemism that needs to make its way into the lexicon. At the same time, Kuby and Huell are lying on top of Walt’s giant storage locker full of money because when are they going to get the opportunity to do that again?
Eventually, they collect it and put the money into drums inside of a van, delivering it to Walt. He pays them for the collection and proceeds to bury the drums in the desert, hiding the location of the money on a lottery ticket that he sticks on the fridge. While he is out doing this, Marie visits Skyler in another attempt by Hank and Marie to talk some sense into her. Slowly, Marie realizes that Skyler has known about Walt’s alter-ego long ago – since before the gambling story and Hank’s shooting. When Skyler tries to apologize, Marie smacks her and tells her that it is obvious she wants Walt to get away with what he’s done because she won’t help them. While Skyler sits there in shock, Marie attempts to take Holly home with her.
They have a tense standoff as Holly cries and when Hank enters the house, he tells Marie to give Holly back to her mother before they leave. Once in the car, Marie tells Hank he has to get Walt and they drive off. Walt gets home sometime after this and collapses on the bathroom floor while Skyler tries to explain that she hasn’t told anything to Hank. When he awakens, he says that he will give himself up as long as Skyler makes sure the money is never found and that it goes to their children. She doesn’t believe that they will get to keep the money if Walt gives himself up, so she proclaims that perhaps their best course of action would be to keep quiet for now.
Elsewhere, Lydia is visiting the meth lab of her new partners to address the shortfall of money and the lack of quality control they are employing – which is a big problem with her Eastern European partners in the Czech Republic. Declan doesn’t care about the standards, because he is still able to move the product, and he’s been unable to keep Heisenberg there to help them. He also denies the help of her chosen replacement, Todd, because he doesn’t trust him. Declan and his men are then called above to address a problem.
Lydia is seen crouching on the ground in the underground meth lab as gunshots are heard. And when the doors open, it’s Todd who has come to collect her! She set up to have Todd and his Uncle Jack come in and massacre Declan and his guys, but she is unwilling to witness her destruction. Todd has to help her navigate all of the dead bodies while she covers her eyes.
Hank is seen talking with Marie about the one thing I have been thinking about since the very first season – his career after Heisenberg’s identity is revealed. Proving once again to be an intelligent agent, he doesn’t sugarcoat the fact that this will be a killing blow to his career. He doesn’t want to go back to work until he has undeniable proof so that at least he can be the man who brought down Heisenberg as his last act. Marie is concerned about how the DEA will react if someone else discovers it first, which motivates Hank to go back into the office.
In the last bit of the episode, it is revealed that Jesse is being interrogated by two detectives in the office. Hank is allowed to go in and question him after he talks with the two detectives and the show closes as the two meet once again. Is Jesse going to give up Walt? He definitely seems beyond caring about what happens to him at this point, but with Walt being his only influential figure left…
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