Breaking Bad: Season two, episode 12
Sunday’s Breaking Bad was the last one before the season finale, and while it was quite satisfying—BB remains the best thing on TV, period—it did raise the question of how producer Vince Gilligan is going to keep things up for a third season. So far, he’s built himself a high-performance race car of a show, but after so many laps, you have wonder when the wheels will start to fall off. Maybe they won’t.
They certainly didn’t at the start of the episode, with Walt screeching into the parking lot of an abandoned motel to drop off the dope he’d been given two hours to deliver by his mysterious new distributor. (And has there ever been a better symmetry between a character and a car than the one between Walt and his 2001 Pontiac Aztek, once voted the worst automobile of all time?) Sure, he missed the birth of his daughter, but c’mon: All that talk about there being more important things than money? Don’t tell that to someone with Stage 4 cancer.
Meanwhile, Jesse, blissfully unaware of these developments thanks to a night of shooting up with girlfriend Jane, wakes up to find that his house has been broken into—and the meth gone. Desperately, he calls Walt, who hangs up on him. Eventually, Jesse figures out that Walt himself took the stash; angrily, Jesse confronts him and demands his share of the money—$480,000. Walt tells Jesse he’s not getting anything unless he gets clean.
Actually, you couldn’t blame Walt if he’d decided to keep all the money and told Jesse to fuck off. But he meant what he said to Jesse about getting off drugs. Once upon a time, Walt was a chemistry teacher, and a good one; he cared about his students, including Jesse, and he still does. Of course, ever since she was introduced on the show, Jane has been practically wearing a sign that reads “I will get between Walt and Jesse.” She doesn’t disappoint: After learning about the money—Jesse tells her just as he slips into a stupor from shooting up again—Jane extorts Walt, threatening to spill the beans on everything if Walt doesn’t give Jesse his cut. Walt agrees and delivers the cash. “You’ll never see either of us again,” Jesse promises, but that’s not what Walt wants. He returns to try to talk to Jesse, even breaking into the house again, where he finds both Jesse and Jane passed out on the bed. Suddenly, an unconscious Jane starts choking on her own vomit, and Walt watches, doing nothing to save her.
Problem solved. But since this is Breaking Bad we’re talking about here, there will always be another one.
