Digital Refrain

Movie: The Dark Knight Rises

Rating: 4 out of 5 quinoa salads

The Dark Knight Rises is a good movie that at times is a damn good movie. In a vacuum. On its own merits. But dammit, we don’t live in vacuums or meritocracies. We live in Internets and dreams and apartments. As I left the theater following a Thursday at midnight debut of Rises, I looked at a pair of fellow moviegoers who were in costume as overweight Bane and underweight Robin (there were no Batmans, too mainstream for Portland) and muttered “Expectations are a bitch.”

The setup feels forced at times. Characters explain and understand and do key things quickly and conveniently, as if Nolan saw the shot clock winding down and started rushing. Early on it is clear that this Batman will not rise (HAHAHA) above the bar set by its predecessors. It does get better, but throughout the duration it feels like the audience is asked to overlook more than in the first two films. Begins and Dark Knight had a strong sense of reality that added gravity. Rises takes step towards the fantastical, whether it be Catwoman flipping around with bladed high heels or gigantic mushroom clouds. It feels less like peering in on some different reality and more like watching a movie.

I’m not sure all of that is entirely fair. There are other factors to consider. Rises faced challenges inherent to a third edition. We’ve seen a lot of Nolan’s Batvision by now, we’ve seen Batman kick a lot of ass, and this being the final act the stakes must be raised and some real conclusion is in order. Quality third installments do not come easily and can tarnish a series. (I’m still angry at Spider-Man 3.)  By that standard, Rises is fantastic.

Now the good stuff. After reading and rereading fan speculation on the plot of Rises I was thrilled to discover that everything I had read was wrong. This Bruce Wayne is not just emotionally damaged, after years of crime fighting his body has broken down as well. For the first time we pity the Batman. This is brought to the forefront in one long and violent fight scene which has claimed more hold on my memory than any other. From that point on Batman’s eventual victory has added meaning.

Bane was a bold choice as villain, which I point out because he works so well here that this could be easily forgotten. The character didn’t exist in comics until 1993, and the last time we saw Bane in live action he looked like this:

The worst.

Nolan took a cartoonish tertiary villain character, stripped away the bullshit, and rebuilt him as something that feels menacing and real. I wonder if such a prominent mask held Tom Hardy back from making Bane even better, but it’s hard to ask for more. I realized just how much I enjoyed the character when I felt disappointment at a twist took some of his significance away.

I will cringe when Internet assholes complain about Rises being the worst of Nolan’s Batman movies; when they say it felt a bit forced, or that Hardy’s Bane doesn’t measure up to Ledger’s Joker, or whatever else. I’ll cringe because I agree but feel that it ignores that Rise offers a lot to appreciate. This movie faced tremendous expectations and all of the challenges inherent to third installments. Overall Nolan delivered an engaging final act with a satisfying conclusion. I just wish I didn’t have to use any qualifiers. Expectations are a bitch.

Season 5, Episode 1- Live Free or Die

“I forgive you.”- Walter White

Season five of Breaking Bad begins much like all the others: with a strange, mysterious cold open. In Season 1, it was a pair of pants falling from the sky and a man making a confession to his family. In Season 2, it was a charred teddy bear in a swimming pool. In Season 3, it was a strange Mexican ritual with a shocking target. In Season 4, it was the seeming return of a recently departed friend. Season 5 lives up to this reputation, beginning in a Denny’s, where a man from New Hampshire is celebrating his birthday. His 52nd birthday, to be exact (in a nice callback to the pilot episode). This man is Walter White, and he’s returned to Albuquerque, after being forced out under circumstances we’ve yet to see. There’s a lot of interesting tidbits in this cold open, such as Walt’s beard, his hair, and his mysterious medication (is he terminal?), but the main concern, at least as far as the rest of the season goes, is simple: who exactly is he here to kill?

Just as the show poses this question, we’re snapped back to the relative present, just after Walt’s “victory” over Gus. After returning home to dispose of his bomb making tools and the now incriminating Lily of the Valley, he gets a surprise visit from Skyler and Junior, who have returned from Hank and Marie’s (after Skyler correctly assumed that they were no longer in danger). Sensing some hesitation from Skyler, he asks her what’s wrong, and why she isn’t relieved. She replies that she is relieved, and also scared. Of Walt. Something like this is sure to set his ego aflame even more than it already is, and after he realizes that Gus’ security cameras had to be feeding into somewhere, and that that somewhere had to be somewhere the police were surely looking.

As he and Jesse fly off to what I presume is the LPH distribution plant, they almost literally run into the returning Mike, who’s flying like a bat out of hell in an attempt to get his hands on Walter. Jesse, of course, throws himself in the line of fire, stopping Mike from taking a shot and forcing him to listen to Walt’s pitch: they’ve got to find Gus’ laptop before the police see what’s on it. After a stupendously humorous scenes, where Walt shouts out crazy chemistry ideas and Mike shouts down his crazy chemistry ideas, Jesse comes up with the relatively bright idea of using a magnet. So it’s off to Old Joe’s salvage yard, where he combines wits with Walt to form a super magnet, powered by 41 batteries and capable of frying any laptop within a 40 foot radius. This is just crazy enough to work, destroying half the APD’s evidence room and frying Gus’ laptop. With Mike’s help, Walt and Jesse escape into the night before the police can catch them. The episode is mainly focused on this, and while there’s more to it than what I outlined here, it’s mainly a cool-down episode. It’s nice to see Walt and Jesse scrambling to fix a (relatively) harmless problem again, which is an obvious callback to seasons 1 and 2. There are, of course, two added factors. One is Mike, who’s on sardonic overdrive in this episode, making everything just a little bit funnier. The second is Walter himself. Where before he was flying along on the seat of his science pants, finding exhilaration in the most basic survival instincts, now he’s cool, collected, and utterly sure of himself. He’s on top of the world, and nothing that comes his way will be too much for him, he thinks. As he makes clear in two separate but chilling scenes with Skyler and Saul, he is in charge. We’ll see for how long.

Season 5, Episode 2- Madrigal

“When we do the things we do for good reasons, we’ve got nothing to worry about. And there’s no better reason than family.”- Walter White

Another fifth season episode, another surreal cold open in an unusual place. This one features a Mr. Schuler, a man who holds a powerful position of some sort in Madrigal Electromotive, the German multinational corporation that seems to have been backing Gus’s criminal operations. After soullessly sitting through a tasting session (it is revealed that Schuler is in charge of Madrigal’s food division), he goes to meet the local police, who have come to question him. After watching a Los Pollos Hermanos outlet being closed down, he goes to the washroom and methodically commits suicide with a defibrillator. Gus’ criminal empire is closing in on itself, covering it’s tracks.

After the cold open, we see Walt making a fake ricin capsule filled with table salt to a backing track of he and Jesse going trying to retrace his steps and find the missing cigarette. What follows is a montage scene which features Walt and Jesse searching every inch of his house in an effort to find it (but not before Walt hides the real capsule behind an outlet in his bedroom). After their fruitless search, Walt suggests Jesse check his Roomba again, which he does, of course finding Walt’s fake cigarette. Walt moves quickly to dispose it, leaving Jesse shaken and crying, realizing that he almost killed Walter for no apparent reason. We, of course, know that he has every reason to kill Walt, and while Walt assures Jesse that everything turned out for the best, and they their healed partnership will serve them well as they “move forward.” When Jesse questions what he means, we cut to a meeting at Mike’s place, where Walt makes his pitch to include Mike on the ground floor of their soon to be refurbished meth empire. Mike refuses, saying that Walt is a “time bomb,” and that he has “no intention of being around for the boom.”

For most of the rest of the episode, Walt and Jesse disappear, leaving the episode’s focus on Mike and Hank. First up is Hank, who first attends a meeting with various Madrigal big wigs, who pledge that Schuler was a “lone anomaly,” and that the company is offering full transparency. Just after that, he and Gomez have a drink with Merkert, who is apparently going to take the fall for the DEA ignoring Hank all of last season. They talk about the recent developments in the Fring case, which leads to Merkert to reminisce about a time he had Gus over to his house for a 4th of July cookout, where he laments that the entire time, Fring was “somebody else completely. Right in front of me. Right under my nose.” On the surface, this should help put to bed the old “Merkert is Gus’ mole” rumors (unless Merkert himself is someone else, right under Hank’s nose.” More importantly, however, the look on Hank’s face tells us that he, at least is considering what would happen if someone he knew, someone under his nose, turned out to be another person, just like Gus. The wheels are spinning again, and some day, they’re going to spin right onto Walter.

Most of the rest of the episode belongs to Mike, and it starts with a not-so secret meeting with Lydia, one of the Madrigal big wigs, who gives him a list of eleven men who will assuredly be picked up by the police. She wants him to kill these men (she doesn’t say as much, of course, telling him to do what he thinks is best). Mike, of course, declines, telling this paranoid woman that these eleven men are his guys, they’re trustworthy, and they’ve been well compensated to be quiet in just such a scenario. Later, at the DEA, Mike runs into poor Chao (from the chemical plant from Seasons 1 and 3), who is positively terrified by the sight of him. Mike heads upstairs, where Hank and Gomez grill him from every angle imaginable. They express doubt that Fring would have hired someone with Mike’s qualifications (we get some confirmation about Mike’s past as a cop, mainly that it took place in Philly). After he denies any knowledge of Gus Fring’s supposed criminal empire, Hank mentions the $2 million dollars in one of Fring’s Cayman accounts, put forth in Mike’s granddaughter’s name, and how, if he cooperates, they might be able to slip some of that money back to Kaylee. Mike stays stone faced and reiterates that he doesn’t know anything about whatever Gus was doing, but once he leaves, his face devolves into a sneer of pure hatred.

Walt and Jesse make a short reappearance at Saul’s office, where the three discuss how, exactly, they’re going to go about getting their business back up and running. Aside from finding somewhere to cook, their biggest hurdle is, like it was in the past, finding a suitable quantity in methylamine. Saul puts forth that maybe the two should quit while they’re ahead. Which, of course, Walt laughs at. He’s on top of the world, and he’s not going to let something like common sense get in his way.

We catch up with Mike again spending time with his beloved Kaylee, when he gets a call from Chao, who tells him that they need to meet. Once Chao hangs up the phone, we see that he’s being held hostage by a scary looking thug with a silenced pistol. Mike, of course, knows this, and when he arrives, he tricks the thug (who we find out is one of the eleven names on that list, Chris), and gets the jump on him. He asks how much money Lydia is paying him to do her dirty work, and how many of the names he’s already killed. Chris says that Chao (who is already dead) was the first. He apologizes to Mike for trying to kill him, saying that he needed the money. Mike shoots him to death before he can start begging for his life. Immediately afterwards, we find ourselves at Lydia’s house, where she arrives to relieve her nanny and help put her daughter to sleep. Before she can, Mike appears out of the shadows and holds her at gunpoint, forcing her to tell the nanny to leave and for her daughter to go to bed. She begs him not to hurt her daughter, which he agrees to as long as she doesn’t scream. She asks him not to shoot her in the face, so that her daughter recognizes her when she finds her. Mike responds that no one will find her body, and when she starts freaking out, he realizes that she doesn’t want her daughter to think she has been abandoned. This shakes Mike, and after he ponders whether or not to kill her, he asks her if she can get her hands on methylamine. Mike, back in his car, calls Walt and tells him that he’s in.” “Good,” Walt responds. Walt hangs up, and does the dishes.

He goes back to bed, where Skyler has been all day, terrified by his very presence. As he tries to console her, he chillingly states that when they do what they do for their family, all is forgiven (more or less). Skyler doesn’t respond, and the episode ends with the further realization of just how little of Walt’s soul is left. He has become what he thinks Gus was, without the knowledge that Gus did what he did  without deluding himself into thinking that it was for good reasons. Gus was motivated by greed, sure, but also revenge. Some of Walt’s most powerful character moments come when he achieves some form of lucidity and realizes just how terrible a person he has become. These often come when he’s on the verge of collapse. So far, Season 5 has been no such thing. All hail the king. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, Walter.

Illustration by Mary Grace Ewald

Season 4, Episode 11- Crawl Space

“I don’t want to talk about it, to you or to anyone else. I’m done explaining myself.”- Walter White

The teaser in this episode features Jesse frantically driving Mike and Gus to a pre-prepared first aid station in a warehouse in the desert. The doctors there immediately treat Gus, hooking him up to a dialysis machine in an attempt to filter the toxins out of him. After Jesse drags a bleeding Mike into the tent, screaming for them to help, the head doctor replies that since Gus pays his salary, Gus will be treated first.

After Gus recovers, he and Jesse begin the long trip, on foot, back to New Mexico. They leave Mike with the medical team to recover, but not before it’s revealed that not only was treating Gus planned for, but Mike and Jesse as well. The doctors there have full medical records of all three of them. It makes sense that Gus planned for poisoning himself, but to see that he had a contingency in case Mike or Jesse got hurt shows that he cares for them, if no more than as viable assets. As they begin their trek, Jesse tells Gus to let Walter go. To fire him. When they get back to Albuquerque, they pay a visit to Hector, and Gus gives him Don Eladio’s necklace, taken from his body. Gus then tells him how his grandson, Joaquim, the only family he had left, was shot dead by Jesse, who is understandably perplexed by the virulence of Gus’ hatred. “The Salamanca name dies with you,” Gus tells him, before imploring him to look him in the eyes. The inference is that whenever Hector is ready to look Gus in the eyes will be when he is ready for Gus to kill him.

Just before we start to think that the entire episode will be about Jesse and Gus, we’re pulled into Walter’s world, where, after being stonewalled by Tyrus, he takes Hank up to the distribution plant, and they have themselves a good old stakeout. Hank inquires about Walter’s face, telling his brother in law that “if he’s in over his head, I’m *the* guy to come to.” Walt declines. The next day, Walt picks him up again, but this time, they aren’t going to the distribution plant. They’re going to an interesting little laundromat Hank dug up, one owned by Madrigal Electromotive. One that Hank thinks is a perfect spot to hide a meth lab. Just as they prepare to turn into the laundry, Walt pretends not to notice, and then turns into oncoming traffic in an attempt to derail Hank’s chase. Later, Walt apologizes, and Hank reveals that instead of having other people drive him around, he “caved” and ordered a Tahoe with hand controls. His investigation’s going to continue, no matter what. All Walter has done is remove himself from the equation, which should only make it easier for Hank to find just what he’s looking for.

The other storyline in this episode begins when Ted calls Skyler and tells her that he’s not going to pay off the IRS. He can’t take her money. Undeterred, she enlist Saul and his A-Team, Huell and Kuby. The two goons strongarm him into writing a check to the IRS, and, as Kuby relays their plans to get the check to UPS and keep him company for a couple days until it clears, Ted makes a run for the door, slipping a rug in the entrance way and slamming into his kitchen divider. Oranges pour out of a dish on the divider, echoing the Godfather. Cue the Benny Hill theme.

When he returns to the superlab to begin cooking again, he notices that someone else has been cooking in his absence. A smirking Tyrus tells him that they can’t afford to stop, not even for him, and Walt realizes that he has become expendable. With his tail between his legs, he visits Jesse’s house (interrupting him in the middle of entertaining Brock and Andrea), asking him for help, to which Jesse responds by reminding him that when Jesse asked for help, Walt claimed that he hoped Jesse ended up dead in a barrel. Jesse slams the door in his face, and as Walt ponders what to do next, Tyrus appears behind him and tasers him. The next morning, Tyrus removes his hood to reveal that they’ve brought him deep into the desert, where Gus arrives in all his fearsome glory. “You are done. Fired,” Gus says, warning him not to show his face at the laundromat or contact Jesse again. “Or else you’ll do what?” Walt asks, realizing that the only reason he isn’t dead is because Jesse won’t sign off on it (just as he says this, the shadow of a cloud rolls over the landscape, obscuring everyone in darkness. If that was intentional, it was cinematographic magic). Gus tells Walt that eventually, Jesse will agree to it, but until then, he has Hank to worry about. He tells Walt that if he interferes, he will kill his entire family. After Gus and Tyrus leave, Walt heads over to Saul’s office in a frenzy, begging Saul to help put him in contact with the man who can help him and his family disappear forever. Saul obliges, and they say their farewells, but not before Walt has Saul agree to place an anonymous call to the DEA to tell that Hank is being targeted by the Cartel.

Walt runs into his house. His cough is coming back. He opens up the crawl space and starts gathering all the money he can. Something’s wrong. There’s not as much there as there should be. Skyler, terrified out of her mind, finds him, asking what the phone call he left her meant. Walt asks her where the rest of the money is, she tells him that she gave it to Ted, and something deep and primal inside Walt breaks. He starts to laugh at the absurdity of it all. At first, it’s a giggle, then almost a sob, but as Skyler leaves to answer the frantic message Marie is leaving on their answering machine, it’s an all-out cackle. As he passes out, lying in the dirt, the camera pulls upward, making the crawl space look more and more like a tomb. An finale like this could have been a satisfactory ending for the entire series, but we’ve still got two episodes left in this season and two seasons after that. One thing that is apparent is this: no matter what we see over the next two episodes, the Walter White that we met at the beginning of the series is now dead. That meek, pathetic also-ran of a man, with all his bland thoughts and regrets, is dead. What we see from now on is pure, unadulterated Heisenberg, pushed to his absolute limit by the primal need to survive. Gus Fring’s masterstroke has come and gone, and now he is on the verge of taking everything from Walter. He quite literally has nothing left to lose.

Season 4, Episode 12- End Times

“Then let me help.”- Walter White

End Times begins with a pair of black cars descending upon the White house. Is this Gus’ hit squad? Apparently not. It’s a DEA detail come to take Walt, Skyler and their children to Hank and Marie’s, where they have a full security detail set up. Walt refuses to go. He tells her that if he’s there, none of them will be safe, and that the consequences for his actions should fall on him alone. “No more prolonging the inevitable,” he says. He goes outside to see Skyler off, and hugs his daughter for what he thinks will be the final time. The credit sequence rolls. This episode, along with the finale, forms an effective two-part finale, so instead of recapping individual character storylines, I’m going to give a chronological summary of events.

Walt sits in his backyard, passing the time until armed men come to kill him. He spins his gun twice, and twice it ends up pointing back at his chest. He does it a third time, and it points to a plant sitting next to his table. He smirks bemusedly. While Marie and Junior complain about Walter’s absence, Hank convinces Gomez to check out the laundromat, convinced that the anonymous threat against his life is a smokescreen to get him to give up his pursuit of Gus Fring. Gomez manages to convince the manager of the Laundromat to let him look without a warrant, he brings the pictures back to Hank. After they leave, Jesse resumes the cook, and when he leaves, he gets an urgent summons from Saul. He heads over to Saul’s office, where Huell frisks him and Saul gives him his share of the money, telling him that he’s skipping town and Walter’s facing an imminent demise.

Since his scene next to the pool, no one has been able to contact Walt. As Jesse and Skyler wait to hear from him, Jesse gets a frantic call from Andrea, telling him that Brock is in the hospital. Jesse hurries over, and after Andrea tells him that the doctors don’t know what’s wrong with him, he heads outside to smoke. As he does, he realizes that his “lucky cigarette,” the one with the ricin capsule in it, is missing. Jesse sprints back inside and tells a confused Andrea that Brock may have been poisoned, and to tell the doctors that it’s Ricin. Then, Jesse heads over to Walt’s, where he finds his former partner barricaded and paranoid. Walt tells him what Gus has done, leaving his gun on an end table as he paces around the living room, telling Jesse that he doesn’t know how or when Gus is going to kill him, but he knows it will be soon. When he turns around, Jesse’s pointing the gun at him, asking him why he did it. Walt thinks he means the DEA, but that’s not what Jesse means. He thinks Walt poisoned Brock in an attempt to hurt Jesse one last time. Walt denies it, and Jesse knocks him down to the floor. Walt asks who, if anyone, would have anything to gain from poisoning a child, and that’s when he starts laughing again.

“I have been waiting all day, waiting for Gus to send one of his men to kill me. And it’s you,” Walt cackles, telling Jesse that not only has Gus gotten Jesse’s approval, but he’s gotten Jesse to be the one to pull the trigger. He reasons that Gus has “known everything, all along,” and has orchestrated this entire plot. As Jesse starts to believe it, Walt tells him to go ahead and kill him, if he thinks his old partner capable of poisoning a child. He grabs the gun and pressed the barrel to his forehead, demanding that Jesse shoot him. Jesse can’t do it, and as he leaves to go exact vengeance upon Gus, one way or another, Walt asks to help. White and Pinkman are reunited again.

Their plan begins when Jesse returns to the hospital, spending the night. When Tyrus wakes his up the next morning, he refuses to leave, telling Gus’ top enforcer that if their boss has a problem with it, he can come tell him himself. When Tyrus leaves to call Gus, Jesse sneakily texts Walt, who is busy making something scienc-y in his kitchen: a bomb. When Gus pulls into the paring garage to talk Jesse down, Walt sneaks to his car and plants the bomb on it. Their plan goes flawlessly except for one thing: Jesse’s accusatory tone. It throws Gus off enough that when he returns to his car, his instincts tell him not to get in. As Walt watches from the roof of a building across the street, Gus turns around and walks away, electing to get a ride with one of his subordinates. The episode ends with Walt crushed, defeated, and thoroughly out of options. Much was made, after the episode’s initial airing last October, of Gus’ seemingly supernatural premonition not to get back into his car. In actuality, there’s nothing inhuman about it. Gus knows that Walter is actively moving against him. He knows that Jesse thinks someone poisoned Brock. He knows that his car had been left unattended. Something about it irks him, rubs him the wrong way. So he leaves. You don’t achieve the sort of success Gus has without having a finely-tuned sense of danger.

Season 4, Episode 13- Face Off

“I won.”- Walter White

The final episode of Season 4 begins almost immediately after the penultimate one ended. Walt races to Gus’ now abandoned car and successfully removes the homemade bomb he planted, bringing into the hospital in a diaper bag, eliciting quite the response from Jesse (“did you just bring a bomb into a hospital?”). As they discuss where, if anywhere, they can catch Gus off guard, two detectives from the APD approach Jesse and ask him to accompany them to the station. They want to discuss why, exactly, he was so adamant that Brock had been poisoned with Ricin, and while he does his best to feign ignorance (“I saw it on National Geographic”), he’s saved by the timely arrival of Saul. After they confer, Jesse is free to leave, since Brock’s tox screen came back negative for Ricin (which surprises Jesse). He barely makes it out of the police station before Gus’ men kidnap him and take him back to the superlab, where he remains for the majority of the episode.

Walt, meanwhile, heads over to Saul’s, having to first break his way in and then bribe Saul’s secretary into giving up her employer’s location. It’s the rare comedic scene in an episode like this, with Walt having to crawl his way out of the broken door after being shaken down by Saul’s secretary, who plays well off of the aloof Bryan Cranston. After this, he heads back to the White home, but not before his own danger sense kicks in. Worried that Gus’ men might be waiting to kill him should he step foot inside, he calls his next door neighbor, Becky Simmons (through a collect call, cleverly enough) and has her enter the house under the pretense of checking to see if Walt Jr left the oven on. The elderly Ms. Simmons (played by series creator Vince Gilligan’s mother), checks the house, and Walt sees two men leave through the back as she does. After having risked this woman’s life for something she has absolutely no stake in, Walt sneaks into the house and grabs all of the money he can from the crawl space, narrowly avoiding Gus’ goons as he makes his escape.

When he meets Saul at an abandoned building outside of town, Walt learns that Jesse thought of somewhere were Gus’ guard might be down: Casa Tranquila, the nursing home where Hector Salamanca lives. Walt is noncommittal until Saul mentions that Gus and Hector are enemies. Soon after, Walt pays a visit to Hector, who is mad with rage upon seeing one of the men he wants dead the most. Fortunately for Walt, he wants to see Gus dead even more, and they come to an agreement. It is then that they put their plan in motion. Hector signals a nurse, with whom he awkwardly tells her that he wants to talk to the DEA. He requests to see Hank personally, and, under a security detail, they meet at DEA headquarters. Hector, in one of the more painfully funny scenes in the show’s history, begins to tell Hank both “suck my” and “fuc” before ASAC Merkert ends the meeting. Hector is too much of an old gangster to ever tell the DEA anything, but Walt knows that Gus is watching his old nemesis, and when Tyrus sees him leaving the DEA, he immediately calls Gus. When Hector returns to his room at Casa Tranquila, Walt appears, having hidden in the bathroom, and asks if he’s ready to begin.

Soon after, Tyrus arrives and scoped out Hector’s room, not noticing Walt hiding just outside (despite the efforts of a very confused resident). Walt leaves afterwards Tyrus then returns to his car and informs Gus that everything is clear, also offering to kill Hector himself to avoid danger. Gus refuses, just like Walt knew he would, letting his desire for revenge cloud his judgment. Gus makes a final march into the nursing home, sitting in front of Hector and scolding him for talking to the DEA. While he prepares the syringe he is about to kill him with (either an untraceable poison or a lethal overdose of one of what is surely one of his many medicines), Gus offers his old nemesis one last chance to look him in the eye, which, surprisingly, Hector accepts. What is first a mocking sneer morphs into an expression of absolute hatred. Hector begins furiously ringing his trademark bell, which has been wired to the bomb Walt has strapped under his wheelchair. Just as Gus figures this out and screams in denial, the bomb explodes, wiping out all three men and blowing Hector’s door of its hinges. As an alarm goes off, a pair of nurses arrive and are shocked to see Gus stride out of the wreckage, seemingly unharmed. He begins to fix his tie. As the camera pans around, we see that in fact, half of his face has been blown off, and as the shock begins to wear off, Gus realizes it, too, and collapses. He is dead.

In an airport parking lot, Walter hears on his car radio that there has been a deadly explosion at a nursing home. He breathes a sigh of relief. After this, we catch up with Jesse, who is being forced, almost literally at gunpoint, to continue his cook. After someone buzzes in on the freight entrance, the man guarding him handcuffs Jesse to a pole. He answers the buzz, only to have Walt appear and shoot him in the face with his snub nose pistol. Walt strides across the superlab, dropping his gun in a manner not unlike how Gus dropped the bloody box cutter in the premiere. He releases Jesse and tells him that Gus is dead. The two of them torch the superlab using the chemicals there, and leave as the underground explosion rocks the Laundromat. We next see them on the roof of the hospital parking garage, where Jesse has just learned that Brock is going to be fine. Somehow, he ingested a flower called Lilly of the Valley, one that can be very deadly to anyone who does so. Walt is relieved, and reassures Jesse that even if Gus didn’t poison Brock, he still deserved to die. They shake hands. Just then, Skyler calls, having just seen the news that Gus Fring is dead. She wants to know if Walt had anything to do with it. “I won,” he replies, and as the Danger Mouse song begins to play, Walt glances over at Gus’ Los Pollos Hermanos chain, hanging from the rear view mirror of his Volvo. He smiles. The final shot of the season is a close up of the plant Walt’s gun landed on back in “End Times.” It is a Lilly of the Valley.

Whatever the ramifications of Walt having endangered a child to orchestrate this entire affair, one thing remains true: he is no longer a fundamentally good person. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing these recaps, almost as much as I’ve enjoyed rewatching what is perhaps the most morally challenged and intense show ever produced for American television. If this is your first time reading or your 14^th, thank you for doing so. Season 5 of Breaking Bad debuts Sunday, July 15th at 10/9 central on AMC.

Illustration by Mary Grace Ewald

Season 4, Episode 8- Hermanos

“Well, guess what? *Every* life comes with a death sentence.”- Walter White

While Walter is undoubtedly the main character, there are certain episodes of Breaking Bad that focus on other characters. Season 2′s “Peekaboo” is primarily a Jesse episode, while Season 3′s “One Minute” is mainly with Hank. “Hermanos” is another of those episodes, but this one is about Gus. It starts with a cold open that is taken directly from “I See You” in Season 3, where Gus visits the hospital and brings food to the DEA there, while also meeting Walt and giving Mike an opportunity to sneak in and poison Leonel before the surviving Cousin can inform Juan Bolsa of Gus’ treachery. This serves to establish the setting, as the second scene of the teaser takes place at a local nursing home, where Gus visits Tio (Hector) Salamanca, Tuco’s invalid uncle. While there, Gus taunts him over not only the death of his nephews (sons? this is never fully established), but the recent death of Juan Bolsa. As he tells him that “this is what comes from blood for blood,” we hear the rippling of water in a pool, and see blood seeping through water.

Early in the episode, Gus is called into the APD for a meeting with Tim, Gomez, Merkert and Hank (where he sees a wanted poster for Victor). In this meeting, they question him about his relationship with Gale. He tells them that Gale was a recipient of a scholarship he made to honor a dear friend (a Max Arciniega, whom we will meet later). He then says that after having not seen Gale for many years, he reappeared at Los Pollos Hermanos a few weeks before, and invited Gus to dinner, where he offered Gus an “investment opportunity.” After this, Hank asks him if Gustavo Fring is his real name, since there seems to be no record of him in his native home of Chile. Gus brushes it off, stating that the Pinochet regime was “notoriously unreliable at keeping records.” It’s interesting to note that Merkert, Tim and Gomez are all seated opposite Hank. Sort of a contrast in threat to Gus. And a threat it undoubtedly is. As he rides the elevator back down, there is a noticeable twitch in his fingers and an emptiness in his eyes. For someone like Gus Fring, this might as well be an explosion of rage. Hank is on to him.

Walt’s first scene is a meeting with a younger man at the cancer center, a man whose fears he quashes by telling him that until the day the cancer kills him, he is in control. He comes off as an asshole (which, really, he is), but it’s a pretty good character spot for him. It shows that Walt believes that no matter how much Gus threatens him, there’s nothing he can do to that is worse than what’s already happening. He doesn’t want to die, but I could argue that he’s no longer afraid to. That night, Hank asks him to drive him to a mineral show the next day. Only, it isn’t a mineral show. It’s a side trek to Los Pollos Hermanos, where Hank relays his theory about Gus and asks him to plant a bug on Gus’ car. As Hank’s explaining what he needs to do, Mike pulls up next to them and casually reads a newspaper (you can almost hear Walt’s soul screaming). Instead of planting the bug, Walt goes inside and surreptitiously shows it to Gus, who implores him to do it. He goes back out, plants the bug, and leaves. So begins the horrendously awkward buddy cop relationship between Hank and Walt, one of the most surprising and bleakly comical storylines the show has ever done. After Walt delivers a hasty explanation to the camera in the superlab, he heads over to Jesse’s to tell him that their timetable has been drastically advanced. After he explains to Jesse exactly how he should go about getting close to Gus, Jesse goes to the bathroom. His phone goes off, and Walt looks at it. It’s a text from Mike, telling him that their impending meeting with Gus is off. Walt puts the phone back and tells him he got a message, asking if it’s “anything important.” Jesse shakes his head no.

The episode’s focus heads back to Gus for its final act, beginning with a report from Mike that Hank is indeed acting on his own, and that if they watch their backs, he shouldn’t be a problem. The cartel, however, is a problem, and after Gus removes the tracking device and leaves it at LPH, he returns to Tio at the retirement home, and we find out why. He tells Hector that he has said no to the Cartel’s mysterious ultimatum, and that Hank is “looking into my past.” He asks Hector if today is the day, and we are suddenly flashed back to an indeterminate period in the 80s, in Mexico, where a young Gus and his friend Max (the same Max from the scholarship) are meeting with the leaders of the Juarez Cartel. Don Eladio, played with an effervescent menace by Steven Bauer (who I think is Tuco’s father. I don’t know why), Juan Bolsa, and a young(er) Hector, before whatever malady afflicts him now (most likely some form of “Locked-In Syndrome).

They begin discussing the quality of Max and Gus’ chicken restaurant, and the role Gus plays in the business. Quickly, however, they begin talking about how some of Don Eladio’s men have been getting methamphetamine samples from The Chicken Brothers, and it becomes clear that Max is not only a chicken chef. In many ways, Max is a prototype for someone like Gale, which explains why the scholarship in his name is a chemistry one. And why is there a scholarship in Max’s name? Well, because, after they attempt to pitch their new product to Don Eladio, he asks what use Gus is to this him. As Max frantically tries to bargain for Gus’ life (sounding not unlike Walt bargaining for Jesse’s life with Tuco) Hector shoots him in the head, and Don Eladio tells the restrained Gus that the only reason he isn’t dead as well is because they know who he is. As Don Eladio tells him that he’s “not in Chile anymore,” Gus watches Max’s blood trickle into the pool before we’re pulled back to the present, where the Gus of the present sits, taunting the man who killed his friend. There is the interpretation that Gus and Max were lovers, which, while interesting, doesn’t exactly change the stakes. Gus is out for blood either way. Sangre por sangre.

Season 4, Episode 9- Bug

“A guy this clean’s gotta be dirty.”- Hank Schrader

“Bug” is an episode that, in many ways, is the weakest of the second half of season 4. The teaser is exactly that, a teaser that portends something bad happening to Walt, who opens the episode proper by driving Hank over to Los Pollos Hermanos, where they retrieve the tracking device under the watchful eye of Tyrus. Back home, they discover that the tracker has only recorded Gus going two places: his work and his home. We know that this is because he removed it before going anywhere else, but Hank doesn’t (though he might have his suspicions). Walt seems particularly defeated by this entire scenario and, as he’s leaving Hank’s for the laundromat, he pulls up to Tyrus’ car and calls the police to report a “suspicious man.” As he arrives at work, he asks Jesse for a cigarette, and has a strangely detached conversation with him, about cigarettes and “Ice Road Truckers” (“Dudes drive on ice.”) When Jesse, confused, reiterates that he will kill Gus when he gets a chance, Walt responds that “they’re both dead men anyway.” This malaise continues for him until later, when Skyler calls him and tells him that the car wash might actually be able to turn a profit, and that he should start “thinking of an exit strategy.”

After Walt warns Mike that a certain DEA agent is going to be taking a ride to visit a certain distribution plant, Skyler gets a visit at the car wash from good old Ted Beneke, he of the cooked books and the broken heart. While at first it seems he’s trying to reignite whatever they had together, he reveals that he’s being audited by the IRS. As he blunders his way through trying to get her to fix the damage, she realizes that there’s no way the IRS will think that Ted acted alone, and that they’ll come after whoever else they can find in the records, which of course, is her. This kicks off her storyline for the rest of the season, where she tries to fix, or at least contain, the disaster that is Ted Beneke. She gets the heat off temporarily by showing up to Ted’s audit, playing the role of a ditzy, floozy sort of woman, playing off the idea that Ted only hired her to have sex with her. As she tells Ted afterwards, “ignorance of the law doesn’t equate to criminality, it equates to ignorance.” It’s a fun side plot, and it’s interesting to see her going through her own version of the sort of growing pains Walt went through in Season 1. Ted is her Krazy-8.

Jesse storyline picks up in the second half of the episode where, after a discussion with Mike about the logistics of killing Hank, he’s present at the chicken farm when Gaff begins killing Gus’ men from afar with a sniper rifle. Mike pulls him out of the line of fire and before they can even formulate an escape plan, Gus walks directly into the line of fire, daring Gaff to kill him. The shots stop. That night, Gus tells Gaff on the phone that his answer is yes. The Cartel is pushing, harder and harder, and Gus needs an exit strategy of his own.

Later in the episode, Jesse visits Gus’ home for dinner, in a scene that obviously parallels Walt’s earlier meeting in Season 3. But where Walt was content to deal in inference, Jesse speaks openly. Gus tells him that he will answer all of his questions, provided Jesse answer one of his own: can he cook Walter’s formula on his own? When Jesse refuses, saying that he won’t sign off on Walt’s murder, Gus tells him that he asks this because “circumstances with the Cartel are untenable,” and that he needs Jesse’s help. We aren’t privvy to exactly what Gus needs his help with, but when Jesse calls Walt the next night and tells him that he needs to talk to him, we learn that Gus needs him to go down to Mexico and cook Walter’s formula in his stead, since Gus has finally given into their demand for access to the blue meth. Jesse is nervous, and asks Walt for pointers in advance of the trip, but Walt ignores him, asking him why he didn’t kill Gus when he had the chance. When Jesse reiterates that he never saw the man, Walt reveals that he knows Jesse was at Gus’ house. When Walt mentions that he knows Jesse was there for “2 hours and 18 minutes,” Walt has another revelation: that he bugged Jesse’s car. They have words, words that culminate in Jesse throwing the tracking device in Walter’s face, breaking his glasses. Then they have a little more than words, and, even though Walt does surprisingly well for someone in his condition, Jesse ultimately beats him. “Can you walk?” he asks, as Walter stumbles around while bleeding profusely, now having achieved what we saw in the cold open. “Then get the fuck out of here, and never come back.” The White/Pinkman partnership has had its fair share of setbacks in the past, but this is the first time that they have come to blows like this. For all intents and purposes, it’s over. Jesse has chosen his side.

Season 4, Episode 10- Salud

“I promise you this: either we’re all going home, or none of us are.”- Mike Ehrmentraut

We start this episode with Jesse, Mike and Gus getting on a plane to Mexico, where they go to meet the Cartel and give them Jesse’s formula. But before that, we catch up on Walter, whose involvement this hour is limited to two big scenes. After Walter Jr. gets his birthday present (a P.T. Cruiser, which ups their terrible car collection to 2, after Walt’s Aztek), he heads over to his dad’s apartment to see why he hasn’t been returning anyone’s calls. There, he finds Walter, still recovering from his fight with Jesse. Walt tells him not to tell Skyler, because he was gambling. When Junior asks him how, he breaks down in tears and tells him that he made a mistake, and that he “had it coming.”

Later, after he calls his son “Jesse” while in a haze, they have a frank conversation, one in which Walter tells his son that the only memories he has of his father are of him withering away on a hospital bed from Parkinson’s. He doesn’t want that, or how he was before, to be the only thing his son remembers of him, but Junior disagrees, saying that to remember him like that would be better than how he has been since his diagnosis, since at least that would be “real.” Walter is afraid of appearing weak to his family. It’s why he tells this to Junior. It’s why he showed baby Holly the walls packed with money in Season 2. It’s his pride, rearing up again. These are easily the most important scenes Walter Jr has had in the entire show’s run (you may notice that he only uses one of his crutches while doing this, which is supposed to signify that he’s growing up. Good job, Vince Gilligan. Matthew Weiner would be proud.).

Meanwhile, Saul meets with Ted Beneke, where he informs him that the death of an obscure relative has left him with just enough money to pay of his debt to the IRS! Hooray Ted! Of course, Ted immediately uses this money to lease a Mercedes, prompting Skyler to pay him another visit, in which she implores him to pay his debts. After he brushes her off, she asks him who exactly he thinks he got that money from, setting up the major side plot of the next episode masterfully.

The bulk of the action this episode takes place in Mexico, however, and it begins with Jesse, Mike and Gus arriving at the Cartel’s giant warehouse lab in the Mexican wilderness (a place not unlike what poor Max was suggesting to Don Eladio before he was killed). The head cook, obviously a trained chemist, scoffs at the idea of someone like Jesse teaching him anything, but Jesse doesn’t back down, telling the chemist that since he is the man brought in by the Cartel to show them how it’s done, he’d better do as he says. It works, and the resultant product from the Jesse-directed cook comes to be over 96% purity, well above Cartel standards and right on par with Gale’s “hard-earned” number. Gaff congratulates him on the “first of many,” after which he reveals that due to their agreement with Gus, he belongs to the Cartel now.

Later, our three adventurers are at Don Eladio’s resort house, standing over the pool that Max’s blood spilled into so many years ago. While it’s just the three of them, Gus ingests a mysterious pill while Mike assures Jesse that they’re all going home together. Don Eladio arrives soon after, flanked by his capos. He is pleased to see Gus, and is happy that he “finally came to his senses.” After Don Eladio introduces himself to Jesse, his new employee, he notices the gift Gus brought with him, which is revealed to be a bottle of rare tequila. Don Eladio opens it and pours a glass for everyone in attendance, aside from Gaff, Mike and Jesse (whom Gus tells him to be a recovering addict). After seeing Gus take a drink, Don Eladio offers up a toast to their renewed friendship, and begins the party in earnest. Later, Don Eladio tells Gus that he isn’t angry, he just had to keep Gus in line, and that there’s no room for emotion in this. “Business is business,” he says, and Gus responds by asking if he can use the restroom. While in the restroom, Gus fastidiously, almost mechanically, removes his glasses, folds a towel to kneel on and forces himself to vomit.  He has poisoned the tequila. This entire trip has been a cover, one that has allowed him to get close enough to Don Eladio to kill him, both enacting his vengeance upon the Don and eliminating a massive swathe of the Cartel. As Gus walks back into the party, where most of the guests are dead and Mike is garroting Gaff, we realize that this is his masterstroke, and even though the poison has severely weakened him, the three of them make their escape, but not before Mike is shot by one of the lesser members, whom Jesse kills. The episode ends with Mike telling Jesse to “get us out of here, kid.”

Illustration by Mary Grace Ewald

Season 4, Episode 5: Shotgun

“Guess I have two jobs now.”- Jesse Pinkman

This cold open picks up full steam, right after the last episode ended. Walter is driving like a maniac, frantically calling both Saul and Skyler, the latter of whom doesn’t pick up. It ends with him flying into the parking lot of Los Pollos Hermanos, where, after the credits sequence, he marches through the front door and asks to see Gus. After getting stonewalled by the staff, he takes a seat and waits for his boss to show himself. As he waits, he begins to realize just how stupid a decision he has made. He’s holding an unregistered, concealed handgun in a public place surrounded by cameras and any number of potential hitmen. Then, his phone rings. It’s Mike, with Jesse, who is fine, and still in the car, heading to some indeterminate location to the north. Mike assures Walter that everything will be fine and that he should get on with the cook. Unconvinced, Walter makes a break for the back of the restaurant, only to find that Gus really wasn’t there. It appears he left his car there as a way of tricking Walter.

The focus then shifts to Jesse and Mike, and while Jesse’s been spending the last few episodes seemingly not caring if he lives or dies, he tells Mike to “shoot straight, old man.” However, when they arrive at their destination, Mike doesn’t kill anyone. He simply grabs a shovel from his trunk and digs up a bag of money, hidden under a trap door in the desert. He’s making collections for Gus, in a system not completely dissimilar to the one Jesse ran with Badger, Pete and Combo. Jesse gets back in the car, and for most of the rest of the episode, their scenes are a collection of pickup scenes in which the eternally exasperated Mike has to put up with Jesse’s antics, until, around dusk, they pull into an empty alleyway while Mike goes into a building to fetch their last dead drop. As Jesse waits, he notices a car pull up behind the car. As one of the men in the car approaches with a shotgun, Jesse takes control, ramming Mike’s car into theirs and escaping into the night. Later, as Mike walks the street by himself, Jesse pulls up to him, and tells him the story. Mike, realizing that Jesse just saved them a lot of money, lets him smoke, something he vehemently objected to earlier in the episode.

Although maybe he’s not the hero he thinks he is, because when Mike meets with Gus to discuss the incident, he remarks that “it all went like you (Gus) thought it would,” and that “the kid’s a hero.” Obviously, this suggests that Gus set up the robbery attempt, which is interesting at first because it suggests that, of course, Gus is attempting to drive a wedge in between Jesse and Walt. Later, it will become apparent that this is also the start of his final gambit against the Cartel, in which Jesse will play a pivotal role. This season is a long game between Gus and Walt, and even though Walt won the first round, Gus is moves ahead.

Hank and Walt’s storylines are inexorably connected in this episode. Hank’s first scene is with his cop friend Tim, whom he tells that finding Heisenberg, dead, feels like closure for him, and that he’s done as a cop. Walt, meanwhile, struggles through cooking without Jesse, at one point screaming at the camera that he needs someone to help him. That someone turns out to be Tyrus, who smirkingly assists Walter with some maintenance around the lab. Walter is nonplussed. Later, after he spends the night with Skyler, he has a nice conversation with his son, during which he notices Junior is drinking out of a “Beneke Fabricators” mug. The next day, he finds Jesse back in the lab, as if nothing has happened, and before he can get an explanation, Mike calls and Jesse leaves. The emasculation of Walter White continues, and it culminates that night at Hank and Maries. Walter, after drinking more than his fair share of wine, he suffers through listening to Hank blather on about the genius of Gale Boetticher. Eventually, his pride gets the better of him, and he explains to Hank that the notes he saw in Gale’s notebook suggest that he was merely a copycat, and that “the real mastermind might still be out there.” As the episode ends, Hank is going through Gale’s case notes again, and he remarks to Marie that of all the things found in that apartment, a napkin for Los Pollos Hermanos is the strangest. “Since when do vegans eat fried chicken?”

Season 4, Episode 6: Cornered

“Someone has to protect this family from the man who protects this family.”- Skyler White

This episode begins with a teaser (I’m getting tired of saying “cold open”) that directly mirrors the one in episode 4. Two armed men are  inside one of Gus’ trucks, obviously as a response to Mike’s ordeal with the cartel. This truck is also stopped, but before the two grunts can use their automatic rifles to defend their boss’ cargo, the cartel boys (lead by a man named Gaff), bar the door and pump the trucks’ exhaust into the cabin, suffocating the two men and taking the specially marked tub when the smoke clears. Simple. Efficient. The Cartel is learning.

The episode proper begins with one of the most telling scenes in the history of the show. After waking up from his wine bender the night before, Walter is accosted by his wife, who accusingly asks him if he knew Gale Boetticher, and if the same people who killed Gale might come after him. Walter brushes her off, telling her that his job and their relationship should be treated as “church and state,” that is to say, separate. Skyler continues pushing, however, and when she puts forth, again, that he should go to the police, he loses it completely (after symbolically removing his red to reveal the black one underneath, of course). “Who are you talking to right now? Who is it you think you see?” he scoffs. He tells Skyler that he is not the guy who answers his door and gets shot in the face. He is THE ONE WHO KNOCKS. He leaves, to take a shower, and Skyler is mortified. She leaves Albuquerque entirely, and nearly leaves New Mexico, before deciding to come back. As she tells Walt at the episode’s conclusion, she has to “protect this family from the man who protects this family.” Whatever damage this does to Walt’s ego is quickly repaired, first by his meeting at the car wash with Bogdan, where he does his best to humiliate his former boss, going as far as to insist that he keep Bogdan’s framed “first dollar,” which he uses to buy a soda from the vending machine.

His storyline in the episode ends with Skyler’s return, but before that, he has another egocentric conversation with Jesse, where he correctly assumes that Gus’ interest in Jesse is all about him, going as far as to assume that the robbery was a set-up (which is was). Of course, in typical Walter fashion, he  does this by being as much an asshole as he can. When Jesse gets a call from Mike and leaves, Walter goes upstairs and hires some poor cleaning ladies from the laundromat to clean for him (“Presidente Grant, very important man”). Later, he sees Tyrus escorting them off of the premises and on to a bus “back to Honduras.” When Walt sheepishly tries to tell him to tell Gus not to blame them but him, Tyrus responds by saying that “he does.”

Mike, and by extension, Jesse’s storyline begins while they are at a local diner, and Mike gets a call, presumably from Gus, informing him to deal with the actions taken against them by the Cartel. The next day, Jesse and Mike head to stakeout a meth house where two tweakers have apparently gotten a hold of their product without paying. Mike say that tweakers are unpredictable, and that he “doesn’t like unpredictable.” Jesse, of all people, “knows meth heads”, and he, against Mike’s judgment, confronts them. He tricks Tucker, the one who answers the door, to help him dig a hole in the yard, allowing Jesse free entry into the house. There, he confronts the other tweaker (brilliantly played by Justified‘s Damon Herriman), who is nervous, paranoid, and armed with a shotgun. After he points the gun in Jesse’s face, he’s distracted by Mike coming through the door, allowing Jesse to disarm him. There, they find the stolen batter with “ready to talk?” written in Spanish on the lid. Later, back at the diner, Gus arrives to talk to Mike, who suggests that they hire “10-15 more good operators” (a term that I believe derives from the US Special Forces, which is a reasonable-sounding origin story for Mike), and Gus refuses. At this point, it’s becoming increasingly clear that, while initially Gus “hired” Jesse just to keep an eye on him and perhaps turn him against Walter, Jesse might turn out to be a useful asset in the upcoming war against the Cartel

Season 4, Episode 7: Problem Dog

“What are Gustavo Fring’s fingerprints doing in Gale Boetticher’s apartment?”- Hank Schrader

After a very substandard teaser sequence (featuring a poorly represented product placement for a game that wasn’t even out yet), we join up with Walt and Skyler at the car wash. She wants him to return the car he bought for Junior, seeing as an unemployed former school teacher who is fighting cancer shouldn’t be able to afford something like this. So, of course, Walter takes the Challenger to an empty parking lot and does donuts with it, eventually crashing into into a ditch. Instead of calling for someone to come and get it out for him, he simply takes the car’s title, sticks it in the gas tank and light it on fire. Later, at Saul’s office, he tells his lawyer that there’s “nothing he can do but wait” for Gus to kill him. They bounce ideas off of one another of how, exactly to kill Gus, when Saul tells Walt that his partner has been in contact with him. He heads over to Jesse’s house (where he is symbolically painting over the graffiti left from his mega-party), and gives him a “sales pitch” on why he should kill Gus. Jesse agrees, and tells Walt that he’ll do it “the first chance he gets.” Soon after, Walt presents Jesse with the most elegant possible solution to their problem: their old friend, ricin. They put it in a little capsule that fits inside one of Jesse’s cigarettes. The plan is set, and unlike with Tuco, it actually is a plan.

The first chance Jesse gets to kill his boss comes the next day, when he and Mike head up to the chicken farm to act as lookouts for a meeting between Gus and Gaff (Jesse’s rocking an incredible Dave Grohl shirt during this, by the way). As he’s making coffee for everyone and pondering dropping the ricin in it, Mike hands him a gun and tells him not to use unless it’s an emergency. The meeting is quick and abrupt, as Gus offers a severence pay of $50 million, and Gaff refuses, telling Gus that they both know what it is the Cartel wants. He leaves, and as Mike is driving Jesse back to town, he tells him that he should probably teach the younger man how to shoot, since “things might be getting pretty hairy soon.” When Jesse confronts him and asks exactly what it is Gus “sees” in him, Mike responds that it’s loyalty, only “maybe you’ve got it for the wrong guy.”

The next scene is Jesse returning to his group sessions, where he admits to his grief over killing Gale, whom he refers to as a “problem dog,” a dog that had to be put down (by this I mean a literal dog). As the group leader comes to his defense as some of the other members attack him, Jesse refuses and says that maybe they’re right, maybe he deserves the judgment of others. “If you just do stuff and nothing happens, what’s it all mean? What’s the point?” he rails. Then, as the leader, this nice man who’s only ever tried to help him, tells him that self-acceptance is the key, Jesse attacks him, throwing the death of his daughter in his face and revealing to him that the only reason he came back to group was to sell meth to other members. Jesse’s at a crossroads, stuck between loyalty to his partner, who’s never done anything but destroy his life, and his new employer, who seems to accept him for what he is. He’s going to need something to jar him loose from this conundrum, and Walt, sooner or later, is going to find something to do it (*ominous lightning*).

Meanwhile, Hank and Walter Jr head over to Los Pollos Hermanos, where Gus serves them personally. Seizing upon his hospitality, Hank accepts a refill, and bags the cup Gus uses for later. The episode’s conclusion sees him visiting his old DEA office, where he’s meeting Gomez and ASAC Merkert to discuss with them his theory: that Gus Fring, owner of Los Pollos Hermanos and all-around saint of the Albuquerque community, is a major drug kingpin. As he walks the incredulous pair through the winding path that lead him from a serial number in Gale’s apartment, to a multinational corporation called Madrigal Electromotive, through one of their subsidiaries (Los Pollos Hermanos) we can see that the “clean living and vitamin pills” Hank’s attributes to his recovery are actually the thrill of the hunt returning him to life. After he ends his speech, Gomez and Merkert are dubious, to say the least, and he agrees with them, that it’s a pretty major reach. That is, until he reveals to them that some of the fingerprints found in Gale’s apartment are a match for the prints he pulled of the cup he got from LPH earlier in the episode. They are Gus’ fingerprints, and they represent the biggest danger Gus has ever faced. Hank is coming for him, and it’s only a matter of time before he unravels the entire plot.

“My Friend Dahmer” is a graphic novel project that was released earlier this year, written and illustrated by Derf Backderf. It chronicles the high school years of notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

Backderf is the appropriate commentator for this narrative, because he actually went to high school with Dahmer, and was part of the reclusive social group that he belonged to.

The book is not an in-depth psychological study on how Dahmer became the monster that he was, and you can say that even the circumstances he faced as a child — in a small town, neglected by parents who were too busy with themselves, with drugs, with their divorce — are any different than how most people struggle their way through their normal lives. But that’s the whole point of it. How normal this story feels, without the backdrop of knowing where Dahmer’s story ends, it’s just a high school tale a socially awkward kid with disturbing tendencies towards studying animals and human parts.

It’s how thin the line between his story and any other kid’s story that makes this such an interesting read. There are frightening moments, functioning as a foreshadow for what Dahmer would become. But there are the light hearted ones too, just a kid with a sense of humor who was not afraid to entertain his friends even if it embarrassed himself.

Backderf makes it clear at the end of the story that even though this graphic novel does in some ways humanize Dahmer and portrays him not necessarily in a better light, but one with a widen lens, that he in no way condones or forgives Dahmer for what he became.

In the epilogue, Backderf and his high school friends reunite and wonder what happened to Dahmer, who they had lost touch with after graduating. One of them commented, “He’s probably a serial killer now” and they break into laughter.

Once you get through the details in this book and get to that point, you’ll find that ending to be harrowing. It’ll stick with you for a bit.

Illustration by @maddisonbond on Twitter

The best part about following a television show every week: engaging yourself in an overload of information and analysis after the fact. The best shows reward audiences in that way. That hour spent in front of the TV is actually a non life threatening gateway drug to a whole other world, a whole other many hours.

It’s in this way that I’ve consumed most of my favorite shows. And Mad Men lends to this qualities, because of its meticulous character study, the often quieter moments lending to conversations about the larger themes, and from knowledge inducing standpoint: a great introduction or retrospect depending on your age on a period that seems so foreign today.

Something changed in the fifth season, a series of episodes that focused on decay. The fall of characters, some in one big swoop, some just tragically falling down a rabbit hole of no return. But nonetheless, they all fell.

But in trying to provide some perspective on this season — as a singular television entity aside from its previous fifty two episodes, and as a continuing narrative that’s forms the larger story — I struggled with locating the actual area of decay.

Was it the characters themselves that was driving this monotonous feel to what was once a vibrant show – and if so, than the show can be praised for its ability to transfer that emotional feel to the audience. Or possible that the show itself was in decay — moving from the less is more approach to an overbearing need to speak explicitly on its themes.

I draw the line at when you have to give your main character a toothache in the finale, and have his dead brother show up to tell him it’s not his tooth that’s decaying. This is after letting go the fact that Don had to stay inside because the pollution outside enveloped him in a toxic environment, and Glen the little kid exclaimed at the end of the episode that nothing ever goes the way we want it.

Another thought rising out of this internal dialogue is that perhaps the show perfectly juxtaposed the unwillingness of characters to make or embrace change, with the show’s own ability to do just that. But that seems a rationalizing of opposite thoughts and creating an explanation to answer two questions at once.

The more obvious conclusion is for me to accept that the show took a risk and in my opinion, fell short of the quality it once delivered. I may be in the minority here, but I always thought the strengths of the show was at the workplace, and specifically when they focused on the marketing ideas, and exploring the creative process behind that. But the pitches, the clients have become more an accessory to tell the character’s stories, and perhaps always has been. Similar to how you can’t call The Wire a cop show, you can’t call Mad Men an ad show.

Nevertheless, these are thoughts I’m tossing at the dartboard, and it brings me back to the original point about how consuming television is now more than just watching, consuming, waiting for the next episode. Everyone watches shows with a critic’s eye now, and that attitude means that we watch these shows with all this built up predisposed expectations.

I never used to know the difference between the A story and the C story on a script, now you recognize, and you may even find yourself lamenting how the central story is actually not so interesting in a particular episode. I’ve come to expect the second last episode of the season on most shows to be the pay off, where long winding story arcs meet they’re end. When it does happen, I’m usually disappointed because I expected more and because it fulfilled something I already expected. When it doesn’t, I’m equally upset because it’s another episode wasted on exposition and the build up.

It’s with these expectations that I viewed this season of Mad Men: expectations of how quality television is suppose to function layered on top of expectations of the show itself.

I’ve always thought that the first of everything was the best. The first seasons of all the great shows usually standalone better from the rest, because beginning is harder than ending, and it’s way easier to carry a show without the baggage of past episodes. It’s the same way with movies, even music.

The characters are decaying. The show itself? It’s still delivering at a high quality. It’s just I’m so immersed in the television experience that it’s starting to become difficult to enjoy anything without such thoughts.

Illustration by Mary Grace Ewald

A year or two ago, I saw the first trailer (out of what would eventually be about three million) for Sony’s now-released The Amazing Spider-Man. And along with the rest of America, I had three initial thoughts: a) Not really feeling that hyphen, b) already!? and c) I have no real burning desire to see this same movie I saw ten years ago, but I have no doubt I’ll end up seeing it anyway.

That’s the world we live in now, where entertainment for the sake of the water-cooler (as a child of the internet age, a black-and-white image of I Love Lucy devotees double-fisting Dasani comes to mind any time I hear that phrase) has been replaced by entertainment for the inevitability of Just Because.

Despite what you’ve been told, there aren’t necessarily less good movies today, just more bad ones. There’s more everything, really: so when something good — nay, discussed — manages to rise above the oversaturated stink (The Newsroom and 50 Shades of Grey come to mind as recent examples), it’s hard not be caught in the vortex. Especially when it’s 8 PM on July 4th, you’ve already had too much burger and maybe-not-enough beer, and an 845 showing of a probably-not-too-bad movie doesn’t sound all that bad.

So yeah, big surprise: I saw The Amazing Spider-Man. Over the course of its no holds-barred marketing campaign, I’d been bludgeoned into submission: trailers, late-night interviews, trailers inexplicably crossed with Coors Light ads, more trailers, trailers juxtaposing superhuman LeBron with superhero Spidey. (In the movie, Peter Parker mangles a backboard and a football goalpost. But then again, LeBron was also a multi-sport athlete; it remains to be seen who would win in a game of pickup. ) As I scrolled through movie listings, I feigned forestalling destiny, trying to talk myself into finally seeing Men in Black III or venturing into the Big Apple to catch the critically-lauded Beasts of the Southern Wild. But I knew it all along — I’d eventually end up with 3D glasses on, staring at Andrew Garfield’s mug, watching the same goddamned prequel sequel reboot remake I saw at David Faust’s birthday party in elementary school. And I did. On its second night in theaters. Prophecy, fulfilled; Marketing dollars, validated.

In all seriousness: if you were afraid that The Amazing Spider-Man is too-soon or too-similar to 2002’s excellent Spiderman, be very afraid. It’s about ten times worse than you imagine.

It’s still all too familiar, and the quick turnaround from the last set of movies is only part of the problem. Christopher Nolan’s criminally underrated Batman Begins came just eight years after the last movie in the previous canon. Yet that movie attempted something wholly original and new, a pitch-perfect shift in tone that hadn’t been seen before and hasn’t been duplicated since. It’s still probably my favorite superhero flick in the recent glut of them — maybe even more so than The Dark Knight, if only because everything felt so fresh. Risky, even.

The Amazing Spider-Man feels anything but. Swapping out actors and villains is not akin to creating something new, just as darkening the color palette isn’t akin to creating something dark. By and large, that’s pretty much all director Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer, which I haven’t seen) and screenwriter James Vanderbilt (Zodaic, which I have, and is one of my favorite movies of the last decade) have done here.

Yes, the new leads are quite good. Tobey Maguire’s bug eyes are gone, replaced by Andrew Garfield’s tear-filled ones, and it’s a welcome respite. Ditto for Emma Stone, a tenfold improvement over Kirsten Dunst. (May she rest in peace. Dunst has made only two major studio movies since the original trilogy wrapped: 2010’s All Good Things and 2008’s How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. Haven’t seen or heard of either? Check your local 7-11’s bargain bin.) And yes, this new version does the good ol’ origin story some justice, perhaps even more so than its decade-old counterpart.

But whatever this movie does well – and there’s plenty – it doesn’t do well enough, or different enough. Rhys Ifran is quite good as a high-ranking Oscorp official/father figure to Peter Parker who becomes consumed by a technological breakthrough and promptly proceeds to ravage New York City at the behest of the voice in his head. Then again, so was Willem Dafoe, starring in the exact same role a decade ago.

Then again, don’t we all. Maybe that’s why Hollywood gets away with passing off their recycled trash as treasure. Sony’s motivations here aren’t exactly the Sunset Strip’s best kept secret: reportedly, they rebooted the franchise in order to keep the film rights from reverting back to Marvel. We’re all wise to the game. But somehow, we all still manage to be played like saps, enjoying our willful ignorance while Spidey swings his way to the bank.

Jesse Golomb is the Editor-in-Chief of TheFanManifesto.com and a contributor to AthlonSports and Digital Refrain, among others. On twitter, he is @TheFanManifesto.

Illustration by Mary Grace Ewald

Season 4, Episode 1: Box Cutter

“Well? Get back to work.”- Gus Fring

Oh, Gale. This fourth and best season of Breaking Bad begins with a nice little flashback that serves as a final genesis for both the superlab and Gale’s role in it. He was Gus’ original choice, his star chemist, and only though a sense of professionalism did any of that change. He comments that the sample of blue meth Gus gave to him to test is the best he’s ever seen, and that whoever made it is capable of a higher level of chemical purity than he himself is, and that if Gus is paying for the best, then he should get the best. Of course, we know this mystery chemist to be our very own Heisenberg, which places this conversation somewhere during the events of Season 2′s “Mandala.” Unknowingly, he has just vouched for the man who will eventually order his execution.

Flash forward a few weeks and we get back to Gale’s apartment, just after Jesse has shot him in the face. He leaves, and we see Victor show up just as Gale’s neighbors are calling the police. He says nothing and does nothing, but leaves as soon as he sees Gale’s body. He goes outside to find Jesse still in his car and in shock, and forces him to drive back to the superlab. The vast majority of the episode takes place here (aside from Skyler and Sauls efforts to find Walter and a quick check in on Marie and Hank, who are going through difficulties in acclimating Hank to his new lifestyle). After Victor tells Mike that Gale is dead (and that the residents got a good look at him as he searched), Mike calls Gus, and the four of them spend most of the episode waiting for Gus to arrive, with Walt trying his best to convince the two goons to let he and Jesse cook. This prompts Victor to try his hand at the fabled Heisenberg method, surprising Walter with just how much of it he has picked up (“Bet he forgets the Aluminum. Guarantee. Guarantee he forgets.”).

This continues until, finally, Gus arrives, and what follows is one of the most chilling and terrifying scenes in recent TV history. He strides in, and stalks his way across to lab, oblivious to Walt’s frenzied rationalizing of what he’s done. He then, methodically, and with fastidious precision, changes into one of the lab’s orange jumpsuits, grabs a stray box cutter and strides, threateningly, over to where Walt and Jesse sit. As Walt starts to panic and grovel, Gus calmly and definitively grabs Victor and slits his throat, killing him both for his failure in being seen at Gale’s apartment and to send a message to Walt. Gus can’t afford to stop production, not for a single day, and if Walt’s the only chemist he’s got, then he’s going to have to make due. But that doesn’t mean he can’t make Walt’s working life as oppressive and terrifying as he possibly can. After he leaves Victor’s corpse at Walt’s feet, he strides back over to the locker station, removes his jumpsuit, washes his hands, puts his suit back on and leaves. He does all of this without saying a word until, just before he leaves, he tells Walter and Jesse to “get back to work.”

There’s a nice little callback as Walt and Jesse are cleaning up the mess where, as they load Victor’s body in a plastic barrel, Mike asks if the hydrofluoric acid they’re using will do the trick. “Trust us,” Jesse responds,  referring to their little adventure with Emilio’s remains in Season 1. Then, we see the barrel containing Victor’s liquidy remains marked as “corrosive” and loaded into the back of a truck. Such is the fate of those who fail Gus Fring. Strangely, the extraordinarily bloody message Gus sent seems to resonate with Jesse, who seems to snap out of the comatose state shooting Gale put him in. He sits up in his seat and locks eyes with Gus, staring him down. As he says later to Walt at the Dennys where they eat in matching Kenny Rodgers shirts (very stylish, very stylish), “we’re all on the same page.”  He understands that if Gus cannot afford to kill them, then he’s going to “make you wish you were dead.” Walt seems to feat this more than anything. He knows, intimately, what it’s like to wish you were dead, and he didn’t seem to care for it (refer, of course, to “Fly.”) And as he returns home to find that Skyler has moved his car to another street, he brushes off her questions and walks away to get his car, we see that he sees no conceivable way out of the mess he’s in.

We see differently, as among the evidence at Gale’s apartment, which is currently being combed over by the APD, is his notebook marked “Lab Notes,” which surely has a few things that a certain former DEA special agent might find interesting.

Season 4, Episode 2: Thirty-Eight Snub

“Thanks for the drink.”- Mike Ehrmentraut

This episode’s cold open deals with Walt buying a pistol (a .38 special, of course) from a local gunsmith, played with a Tarantino-esque flair by Jim Beaver, of Deadwood, Supernatural, Justified, and general awesomeness fame. Despite Walt’s clamoring that the gun is “for defense,” the salesman (whos name is Lawson) reiterates that he might best be served buying a weapon legally, since the defaced serial number on the gun he’s interested in could land him a felony charge if he is caught with it. Walt insists that this is how he wants to do it, ending the open with “I’ll take it.” He might not be actively trying to kill Gus, but if the events of the first episode have taught him anything, its to be prepared for it.

This is an episode split in two, not only in the parallel Walt/Jesse storylines, but in theme. One is plot, one is character development. Walt’s half deals with his attempts to find a way to kill Gus, while Jesse’s deals with how he’s dealing with Gale’s death. He spends it hanging out with Badger and Pete at first, gradually progressing into a full blown, episode-long party that he only leaves to go to work and to catch up with Andrea, who wants to know if anyone’s going to come looking for the stacks of money he’s been having given to her. When Badger, Pete and the rest of their guests (including the guy who looks uncommonly like Bryan Cranston in a wig) leave after more than a day of partying, and Jesse is finally alone with his thoughts, we see him crack and collapse inward. He’s so terrified of what he’s done, of what Walt has made him do, that even the idea of being alone is causing him to implode.

The rest of the White Clan gets their fair share of screentime, starting with a visit to Hank and Marie’s house, where Hank is beginning to make serious progress in his physical rehabilitation. Of course, he still can’t stand being alone with his wife, who, to her credit, has yet to give up on him. I will, without hesitation, tell you that Marie is my least favorite thing about this show, but her dedication to Hank is easily her most endearing character trait, and Betsy Brandt deserves all the credit in the world in making me feel sorry for Marie early in this season (at least until the third episode). Skyler, meanwhile, spends her screentime scouting out Bogdan’s car wash, keeping track of the comings and goings to give herself an idea of how much the place is worth. She then uses this information to give an offer to Bogdan, who places his price at $20 million. After Skyler scoffs and beings telling him her estimation of the car wash’s value ($879,000), he reiterates his price, telling her that if Walter White wants to buy his car wash, 20 million dollars is the price he will pay.

I skipped over Walt’s half of the episode a bit, because, upon first viewing, it seems to be the more pertinent and noteworthy. The first instance of his new plan occurs when he thinks he sees Gus coming down into the superlab, only for it to be a new, unknown man (Victor’s replacement, Tyrus). When Walt asks the arriving Mike where their boss is, Mike responds by saying that Walt’s “never gonna see him again.” That night, Walter drives over to the house Gus invited him to late in Season 3, where, after a moment spent gathering himself, he dons the Heisenberg hat and begins marching towards Gus’ house, stopping only when someone (later revealed to by Tyrus) calls his phone and tells him to go home. In the penultimate scene, Walt visits Mike at a local dive bar. He buys Mike a drunk and they start talking about their respective jobs, and when Mike asks Walter why he’s carrying a gun, Walt makes him an offer. If Mike can get him in a room with their boss, he can get rid of Gus before he kills one or both of them. Mike asks him if he’s done, and when he says yes, punches him in the face and kicks him around a bit before thanking Walt for the drink and leaving. Even if Mike is afraid of his boss (as his pulling his gun when Victor was murdered might suggest), he’s far too much of a professional to stage an insurrection just because this so-called genius can’t. He’s not going to risk his life by backing the losing side.

Season 4, Episode 3: Open House

“To clean cars…and clean money.”- Walter White

Quick little open in this one, where Walt, after coming in to work, notices a camera on the wall of the superlab. After testing its motion-tracking capabilities, he tells it (and the person or persons watching it) that he thinks they’re just the best. That they’re number one, even. After the intro, at Walt’s apartment, Skyler pressures him about the car wash and discovers the black eye he received from Mike the night before. After pestering him about whether or not he is danger, Skyler makes Walt deliver what is assuredly an empty promise that he will go to the police if he has to, as a last resort.

Walt’s main focus in this episode is hosting a pow-wow of sorts, where Saul and Skyler (and, tangentially, Saul’s bodyguard, Huell) bounce ideas off of one another as to how to get Bogdan to sell the car wash. Things stall until, when pressured about why exactly it has to be this car wash, Skyler slyly lets slip to Walt that Bogdan insulted him personally. This gets Walt’s attention, and gets him fully behind the idea of taking the fight to Bogdan personally. Later in the episode, Skyler formulates a plan of attack, and coordinates with Saul to place one of his men (played by the comedian Bill Burr, of Chappelle’s Show fame) at the car wash as an EPA agent who, while being coached by Skyler, finds enough contaminants to convince Bogdan that selling would be preferable to being fined or having to pay full retrofit of the filtration system. Later, when Bogdan calls, Skyler lowballs him on her original $879,000 offer. Eventually, he accepts, at $800,000, to Walt’s astonishment.

Jesse takes a backseat in this episode, though the scenes he does get do well in illustrating just how fucked up a state he’s in. After asking Walt if he wanted to do anything later in the lab, we see him at an indoor go-kart track, alone. When he returns to his house, we see that the somewhat good-natured party house from the second episode has devolved into an embryonic form of the same sort of meth hellhole that Walt rescued him from after Jane’s death. Later, as he regales his guests by making it rain on them with money and drugs, we see Tyrus watching his house from afar.

The major sideplot (to the point of almost being the main plot) of this episode concerns Marie and her visits to various open houses in the ABQ area, where she gives a different false name and background before surreptitiously stealing some sort of trinket from the homes. Eventually, she gets caught by suspicious realtor who had seen her before, and has to call Hank for assistance with the police. Despite proving once again that she’s the least essential and most aggravating character on the show, these scenes do well to show just how trapped she feels in her own home, and how escaping into these false lives is her only release. This is best seen when Hank’s detective friend Tim (who assisted when Walt was missing in Season 2) comes to take Marie home, only to have her fear in stepping foot in that house break her down. As I said before, things in the Schrader household are very, very bad right now, but they receive their first little ray of sunshine when Tim pays a visit to Hank, and asks him to review a notebook they found at a crime scene: Gale’s notebook. Hank is noncommittal at first, but as the episode ends, his interest gets the better of him, and he takes a peek. Things are going to be picking up very soon, plotwise.

Season 4, Episode 4: Bullet Points

“Oh, God. How did everything get so screwed up?” “Yeah, you do have a little ‘shit creek’ action happening.”- Walter White and Saul Goodman

One of the simmering plot points brought up near the end of Season 3 was Gus’ impending conflict with the Cartel. Until the cold open of this episode, this had yet to materialize in any meaningful way. Mike is providing protection for a Los Pollos Hermanos delivery truck that gets pulled over by a pair of Cartel thugs. When the driver begins speaking in English (to give Mike an idea of what’s going on), the thugs kill him and fire on the back of the truck, where Mike hides as best he can among the batter. He survives, though not without losing a chunk of his ear, and summarily eliminates the two gun-toting Cartel boys. Jonathan Banks is just the right amount of exasperated for all of this to play as more a shitty part of a shitty job than a high-stakes gunfight.

The first major scene in this episode is one of the longest (and most humorous) in the history of the show, as Skyler walks an unwilling Walt through the script she’s prepared for their long-awaited confession of Walt’s “gambling problem” to the rest of the family (sans, Marie, who of course already knows). It’s not a particularly complicated set of scenes, but they do well to illustrate just how goofy a criminal combination Walt and Skyler are (I also love how terrible Skyler’s writing is, which hammers home the old plot point that she’s something of a failed writer). It also serves, in a roundabout sort of way, as a form of meta self-commentary by the writers (you can imagine them having similar conversations about what Walter would and wouldn’t say), who must have gotten a kick out of writing it. Just before they actually “come clean,” Hank shows off a piece of evidence from a case he’s working on, which just happens to be a ridiculous video featuring the recently departed Gale singing a karaoke version of Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom” (which is interesting, because in many ways, Peter Schilling is to David Bowie what Gale was to Walt. I’m not being serious).

When it actually comes to revealing the tale, Walter seems to have a bit of trouble playing the contrite and sorrowful role Skyler has picked out for him. After excusing himself, he sneaks back to Hank’s room and starts going through the case notes. Later, he convinces Hank to show him the notes in a more open manor. While they’re poring through Gale’s notes, we’re treated to one of the most sneakily tense scenes in the show, where Hank tells Walter the grand tale of his hunt for the mysterious Heisenberg, which culminates with Hank  throwing out possible names that fit the “W.W.” found on the first page. “Woodrow Wilson? Willy Wonka? Walter White?,” and with that last one, he and Walt share a laugh. “You got me,” Walt jokes (and then immediately flips to Gale’s tribute to Walt Whitman’s “The Learned Astronomer”) but I’m not so sure Hank is entirely joking. He’s shown a bit of a blind spot where Walt is concerned, but the story of this hardened gambling mastermind he’s just been fed seems to have re-awakened him to just how brilliant his brother-in-law really is. I’m not saying it’s going to happen soon, but Hank’s too good of a cop to not put the pieces together some day. And what a day that will be.

Jesse spends the first half of this episode conspicuous in his absence. Once Hank mentions to Walt that a “person of interest” was seen in connection with Gale’s shooting, we cut to Walt pounding on Jesse’s door, who’s sporting a newly shaven head. Jesse scoffs at the idea that the police have any interest in him, or else they’d already have knocked down his door. Walt visits Saul after Jesse proves unwilling to help, and flies into a mini-rant after Saul tells him not to worry. He’s got everything to worry about, and as a last resort, Saul tells him about a guy who can make him and his family disappear. This seems like a red herring, but it plays a relatively important role in a future episode. Either way, Jesse has descended into an unstable maelstrom, and neither of them think he’s going to last very long.

Walt’s fears are pushed further when he notices the camera in the super lab has begun to focus almost entirely on Jesse, and sure enough, the next morning, Mike and Tyrus wake him up, having put an end to his permanent house party and caught the thief who stole his giant bag o’ money. Jesse is nonplussed, and surprises Mike when he not only sees through his attempt at intimidation by noting that they aren’t going to kill the thief, or else they wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of putting a blindfold on him. Mike goes to Gus with his concerns that Jesse is a liability and that “something has to be done,” and when Walter shows up at work the next day, Jesse is nowhere to be found. When he goes over to Jesse’s house, there’s no one to be found, and Jesse’s cell phone is still next to his bed. We cut to Mike driving Jesse to an undisclosed location in the desert and a major cliffhanger to end the first four episodes of the fourth season.

Image by @dacspan on Twitter

This post is meant to be read with the following instrumental playing gently in the background:

The long game for shoe companies pursuing the next big star that begins with AAU middle school tournaments turns up another notch on NBA draft night. This is the moment when companies find out if their gamble turns into the next Lebron, Kevin Durant, or Derrick Rose to carry their shoe line. So which players in the class of 2012 fit the aesthetic of which shoe company?

First, a brief recap of the 2012 basketball shoe climate:

- Jordan Brand needs a signature athlete to carry the brand into the next decade and beyond
- with a title under his belt and Kobe Bryant nearing the end of his career, Lebron’s shoe is Nike’s most important line
- Players have a plethora of options that aren’t Nike, Jordan, Adidas, Reebok including Under Armour, Spalding, and Chinese options including Li-Ning, Peak, and 361
- players who played for AAU teams/colleges sponsored by a certain shoe company are likely to stay with that company
- The Golden State Warriors already have a popular colorway. With an open lineup of Steph Curry/Klay Thompson/Harrison Barnes/David Lee/Andrew Bogut, Warriors can rival the Hornets for potential colorways.

I’ve organized all the first round picks into various categories of shoe potential. First, let’s start with:

Jordan Brand Shooting Guards With Potential To Carry a Line
The ability to jump over another human survived the social media era and shooting guard remains the glamor shoe position. The following shooting guards (and Harrison Barnes) have the game and demeanor that is required to wear the premier shoe in the industry.
Dion Waiters (4th pick, Cavs) – One hot John Hollinger sentence comparing Waiters to Dwyane Wade got him drafted at #4. Look for Hollinger to compare Waiters’ shoe to Jordan 3’s in the near future. Also be on the lookout for the Air Waiters Hollinger ESPN Insider colorway.
Harrison Barnes (7th pick, Warriors) – The brand conscious Barnes didn’t have articles in The Atlantic to sign with anything less than the best.
Terrence Ross (8th pick, Raptors) – Ross is my Jordan Brand Sleeper of the Draft with the smooth Jordan game.
Jeremy Lamb (12th pick, Rockets) – Lamb can jump over people so…

Jordan Brand Guards Who Will Wear Fly Wades/Melo’s
This category is for guards with nice game but not quite “carry a line” potential. They include:
Kendall Marshall (13th Pick, Suns) – The Greg Maddux of basketball doesn’t fit into the explosive two guard category. But similar to Barnes, guards don’t go to UNC to wear Adidas in the future. Marshall is known to have an extensive shoe collection so he could use the Gilbert Arenas blueprint and play with a different pair of J’s every night.
Moe Harkless (15th Pick, 76ers) – St. John’s is a Jordan Brand farm system so Harkless will wear Melo M8’s/M9’s.

Lebron Disciples aka Kentucky Basketball
The Lebron 9 hit another level this Spring and Summer with new colorways selling out every couple weeks at $250 a pair. And that was before Lebron won a title. The next variations of Lebron’s will set the tone in basketball sneakers, and they will be worn by the following Wildcats:
Michael Kidd Gilchrist (2nd Pick, Bobcats) – John Calipari does not risk his coaching reputation every recruiting season so his former players could wear anything less. Unless Adidas throws nine figures your way and makes you the face of the company.
Marquis Teague (29th Pick, Bulls) – Do not stand between a Kentucky player and his swag. Look for Teague to wear all colorways as well.

Nike Signature
This category of player has the potential for their own shoe line ala Kevin Durant.
Anthony Davis (1st Pick, Hornets) – I see Davis breaking the trend of post players not getting their own line at Nike for the following reasons. First, the Hornets have one of the best colorways in all of sports. Two, there is a lot of history/personality in New Orleans that could be incorporated into a shoe. Three, Nike designers will find a way to put his signature unibrow on a shoe. That adds up to myself camping out overnight.

The Kobe Bryant Category
This category is for players who modeled their game after Kobe aka the Austin Rivers. But the thing about growing up wanting to be Kobe is that you think you are better than Kobe and wouldn’t want to wear his shoe.
Austin Rivers (10th Pick, Hornets) – Rivers’ confidence is well documented. There are stories of Rivers holding himself like an NBA player way back in 2nd grade. I could see Rivers wearing Kobe VII’s/VIII’s with the Kobe logo taped over with “Rivers Systems” written over it.
Jared Cunningham (24th Pick, Mavs) – Cunningham is my Kobe Systems Sleeper of the Draft because, well…

Blake Griffin Technology (BGT) Wearers
This category is reserved mainly for post players who will wear the latest in Nike/Blake Griffin Technology, whether it be hyperhyperdunks/superflywire/lunarairs/jet pack technology.
Tyler Zeller (17th Pick, Cavs) – Something about Tyler Zeller tells me that he will wear BGT.
Andrew Nicholson (19th Pick, Magic) – St. Bonaventure is a Jordan Brand school but I can’t imagine Nicholson in a pair of Melo’s. BGT it is.
Evan Fournier (20th Pick, Nuggets) – I see a lot of French basketball players wearing Nike.
John Jenkins (23rd Pick, Hawks) – John Jenkins is the All American name BGT needs to fill its roster.
Miles Plumlee (26th Pick, Pacers) – He has a 40 inch vertical. I’ve never believed in fate until now.

Under Armour
These athletes have two choices – either be a cog in the machine at Nike wearing Hyperdunks in their team colors, or try to be the big man at Under Armour.
Bradley Beal (3rd Pick, Wizards) – Beal’s got a quiet/nice game that would complement Brandon Jennings. Beal could surpass Derrick Williams/Kemba Walker to become UA’s #2 basketball player and have a unique silhouette to complement his Ray Allen comped outside game.
Thomas Robinson (5th Pick, Kings) – Under Armor made their foray into bigs with Derrick Williams. Williams showed flashes last season but Robinson could develop into UA’s main post player.

Creative, Outside the Box Reebok
Reebok always comes with wild designs and silhouettes. This type of player has to have a certain flair and wildness to their game to justify the creativity of the shoe.
Terrence Jones (18th Pick, Rockets) – Jones will most likely wear hometown Nike shoes but his combination of versatility, explosiveness, and unpredictability are Reebok qualities.
Tony Wroten (25th Pick, Grizzlies) – The less fuck you give, the better your Reebok shoe is. Tony Wroten fits this category.Wroten can either turn the ball over or have the assist of the year every time he has the ball. In short, he has Reebok game.

Adidas Explosive Posts Who Aren’t Quite Dwight Howard – The Serge Ibaka Mold
As the title explains, Serge Ibaka created this archetype this latest playoffs by being an athletic post wearing the adiZero Shadow. Adidas is carving a niche as the home for athletic bigs who don’t get the attention of Blake Griffin.
Andre Drummond (9th Pick, Pistons) – A raw, athletic post who flashes dominant potential from time to time. This is the Adidas gambit.
Jared Sullinger (21st Pick, Celtics) – Sullinger doesn’t have the athleticism of Ibaka or Drummond required for the AdiZero. However, Adidas does have Tim Duncan and his “Big Fundamental” shoe in the archives for more technical posts.
Arnett Moultrie (27th Pick, 76ers) – Moultrie averaged 10 rebounds a game in college. If that doesn’t scream Adidas post, then what does?

Big Man on the Chinese Campus – The Baron Davis Outsider Archetype
This spot is reserved for guards who respond to the riches of China and have a different personality. This is very similar to the Reebok archetype in that a player has to be on the outside looking in, but in a less flashy manner.
Damian Lillard (6th Pick, Blazers) – Lillard is already an outsider coming from a small conference and will have that chip on his shoulder. Li Ning would be wise to pick him up and place him with their other outsider PGs on the roster (Baron Davis, Jose Calderon). Li-Ning made Calderon one of the best shoes of last season and if Lillard lives up to the hype of being one of the best pick and roll players in the league, his shoe could carve a niche amongst those who want something new. His logo should either be a picture of Lamarcus Aldridge setting a screen or be a silhouette of a pull up jumper
Perry Jones (28th Pick, Thunder) – Although OKC’s two best players are Nike, Jones has the type of potential for a Chinese company to throw a lot of $$$ to. I see a signature Perry Jones line from Peak in the future.

Other Posts
This spot is reserved for posts who are either 1. technically sound but not very athletic or 2. very athletic and not technically sound.
Meyers Leonard (11th Pick, Blazers) – Leonard is nice but raw. He will develop his game wearing Peak.
Festus Ezeli (30th Pick, Warriors) – Ezeli could be the face of a Diadora or Puma basketball shoe (if they decide to get into basketball shoes).

Spalding
John Henson (14th Pick, Bucks) – It’d be funny to see Henson averaging 3 blocks a game wearing Spalding.
Royce White (16th Pick, Rockets) – he’s an outside the box thinker and Spalding is an outside the box company.
Fab Melo (22nd Pick, Celtics) – I think he’s wearing Nike but Melo with Spalding is much more interesting. It will also be interesting the first time he gets yelled at by KG for blowing a defensive assignment. Also with Henson, White, and Melo in tow, Spalding is the Daryl Morey of shoe companies.

Others:
Draymond Green (35th Pick, Warriors) – He’s got the Reebok unique smooth game as perfected by Shawn Kemp and Shaq before him. Picture the 6-7, 230 pound Green bringing the ball up the court for the Warriors in Reebok Questions. His impact on the shoe game is limitless.
Scott Machado (Undrafted) – He’ll get a signature Li-Ning shoe once he breaks all assist records in summer league. Look for Jose Calderon to undercut him in a game.

Most likely to wear Galaxy Foams during a game (aka the Nick Young Award) – Tony Wroten, no question.
Most shoe potential in this draft – Barnes or Ross. One of them will lead Jordan.