Breaking Bad

[corporatejay]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

The only issue I had was Jesse figuring out the cigarette thing so quickly. It just doesn't seem that likely to me that he would put it together right away, if at all. He thought they found the ricin cigarette in the Roomba.

The thing Jesse doesn't understand and has no perspective on, is that if he stayed in servitude to Fring, it would have been only a matter of time until he was made expendable. Walt's ruse probably saved Jesse in the long run.

1. He always suspected Walt, even after the fact, he was just looking for proof.

2. Mike was like his real second "father" and probably would have protected him.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

1. He always suspected Walt, even after the fact, he was just looking for proof.

He suspected Walt at first, but after they found the planted ricin decoy in the Roomba, Jesse started crying because he felt bad that he almost killed Walt over it. That suggested pretty strongly that they suspicion subsided and he believed it wasn't Walt. He always suspected him for killing Mike, but that is a different issue.

2. Mike was like his real second "father" and probably would have protected him.

Mike was a servant to Gus and there is no way he would have protected Jesse if push came to shove. He couldn't even protect him from Walt. He gave him advice to look after himself, but he didn't do too much to force the issue. Mike killed people for Fring... that was his job. If Fring tired of Jesse's attitude and drug use, I doubt that the Mike character would break loyalty with Fring.

Jesse couldn't stay clean for more than a few weeks at a time, and if he struggled with the bad things that happened with his partnership with Walt, he would have totally collapsed mentally having to work for a total psychopath like Fring.

Getting Jesse back on side with Walt was the only way to ensure that they would both survive at the time for at least a little longer. It's too bad that Brock had to get sick for a couple of days, but big picture-wise, it was a necessary evil that Jesse is unable to see. Walt is a chemist and would have known the right amount of poison to administer without seriously harming the kid.

Just to add, Brock was poisoned with Lily of the Valley, so I still don't see how Jesse would have pieced it together so quickly that the cigarette switching implicates Walt for poisoning Brock with Lily of the Valley. It seems like the writers wanted Jesse to find out and kind of forced it a little too much.

[MoneyGuy]

I haven't watched this series but reading all of the great comments and now I hope they rebroadcast the entire series as a marathon.

[calumniate]

Great episode. My only nitpick was to do with Walt's totally unbelievable 'threat'. I mean, if Hank was the head of this drug empire, why would he need to borrow $175k from Walt? Yeah.. right.

Of course Hank got himself into more trouble with procedure in dealing with Jesse, so it's kind of a moot point now. I just don't think you could calumniate Hank as a drug lord when he'd been showing up to work everyday and working on the very cases he was supposedly involved with.

[speede5]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

Just to add, Brock was poisoned with Lily of the Valley, so I still don't see how Jesse would have pieced it together so quickly that the cigarette switching implicates Walt for poisoning Brock with Lily of the Valley. It seems like the writers wanted Jesse to find out and kind of forced it a little too much.

This bugged me too.

Loved the confession, that was well played.

Hank is screwed, he knows that even if the truth comes out he is finished, the court may presume innocence but people presume guilt.

[Tinordi]

Yeah it was a stretch in that episode to write in J esse figuring out the cigarette thing.

It's never really explained how he pieces it together.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

The only issue I had was Jesse figuring out the cigarette thing so quickly. It just doesn't seem that likely to me that he would put it together right away, if at all. He thought they found the ricin cigarette in the Roomba.

To be fair Jesse had already figured it out before. When he confronted Walt in Season 4 about the poisoning of Brock, Walt had asked him how he would have got the ricin if they didn't see each other that day. Jesse says that he was called into Saul's and the switch was made when he was patted down. Walt convinces him that's crazy.

Now that Huell had swiped his weed he realizes that Huell is a pickpocketer and draws the connection. There's a stretch but he's obviously been affected by his past and probably spent a lot of time brooding on Brock and the young boy Todd killed.

For the record, I zoomed through the episode (season 4, episode 12) and Huell very aggressively pats down Jesse when he enters the building and afterwards Huell puts his hand into his own pocket as though he had lifted something.

[MrMastodonFarm]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Yeah it was a stretch in that episode to write in J esse figuring out the cigarette thing.

It's never really explained how he pieces it together.

This is just another one of those things that shouldn't need to be explained out slowly, all the hints are there.

Jesse previously suspected one of Saul's guys from lifting the ricin cigarette from his pocket, he was talked out of this by Walt as he manipulated him into thinking it was Gus who poisoned Brock. As Jesse was leaving Saul's office in last nights episode Huell blocked Jesse slightly from exiting the office, saying "excuse me!" and lifting the baggie of joints from Jesse's pocket.

As Jesse was waiting for the vacuum salesmen, he opened his pack of cigarettes, noticed his joints were also missing and quickly pieced together that he was correct all along about Saul lifting the ricin.

It wasn't explained out but it was pretty obvious that's how he pieced it all together.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Yeah it was a stretch in that episode to write in J esse figuring out the cigarette thing.

It's never really explained how he pieces it together.

Jesse was close to killing Walt because he was convinced that he had taken the ricin from him and poisoned Brock. He had to have come up with some way for Walt to grab the ricin from him that day, yet they never met each other. So he (correctly) figured it was Huell while being patted down while at Saul's. This is all discussed in the confrontation halfway through the season 4 episode 12.

Jesse had his hand on the trigger and was going to shoot someone close to him. That moment and his thoughts at the time have probably stuck with him. So as he's become depressed and is thinking through his past he had to have remembered the time he nearly killed Mr. White because he thought Huell had pickpocketted him. Now all of a sudden he realizes Huell is an accomplished pickpocketer and the dots start to connect, like Mr. White finding the ricin in the roomba.

[MrMastodonFarm]

Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen

Jesse was close to killing Walt because he was convinced that he had taken the ricin from him and poisoned Brock. He had to have come up with some way for Walt to grab the ricin from him that day, yet they never met each other. So he (correctly) figured it was Huell while being patted down while at Saul's. This is all discussed in the confrontation halfway through the season 4 episode 12.

Jesse had his hand on the trigger and was going to shoot someone close to him. That moment and his thoughts at the time have probably stuck with him. So as he's become depressed and is thinking through his past he had to have remembered the time he nearly killed Mr. White because he thought Huell had pickpocketted him. Now all of a sudden he realizes Huell is an accomplished pickpocketer and the dots start to connect, like Mr. White finding the ricin in the roomba.

Exactly.

Also we have to remember that the entire series has taken place in roughly a years time (minus flash forward). These accusations Jesse had about Walt in regards to Brock are still very fresh in his mind. It wouldn't take much for it to trigger again. It's been a month or two tops, not several years since Jesse had a gun pointed at Mr. White's head.

[MrMastodonFarm]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

I haven't watched this series but reading all of the great comments and now I hope they rebroadcast the entire series as a marathon.

Really?

Netflix.com

[FlamesAddiction]

But Brock wasn't poisoned with the ricin, so whether or not Walt was responsible for stealing the ricin from Jesse, had nothing to do with Brock being poisoned.

It seems far fetched that Jesse finds his cigarettes switched and then goes from that, to having the ricin stolen, to having... Brock poisoned by Walt with Lily of the Valley? All within about 10 seconds of realizing his dope was missing.

There is a big gap in there. I understand that the show only has a few episodes left to close everything out so they need to make a few leaps, but this one seem a bit much for me.

[Fire]

Originally Posted by fredr123

Who watches Walt Jr. and Holly during the day? Kind of bugs me they only show up once in a while. Seems like Walter and Skyler spend a lot of time at the car wash. Walt doesn't want either of them going over to the Hank and Marie's so where are they when Jesse busts into the house dousing the place with gasoline?

I was wondering the same thing. Won't anyone think of the children!

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by calumniate

Great episode. My only nitpick was to do with Walt's totally unbelievable 'threat'. I mean, if Hank was the head of this drug empire, why would he need to borrow $175k from Walt? Yeah.. right.

If Hank was a head of a drug empire it's the exact type of thing he would do. You can't just come up with $200,000.00 unaccounted for in case the law starts looking at your finance.

And then what is he supposed to say when asked if he knew his medical bills were being paid through Walt's drug money? "No, I didn't even know Walter was paying for it"? That's not going to do him any favours in that battle. Like he said, it was the final nail in the coffin.

[Tinordi]

Here's a good explanation of Jesse's epiphany:

Actually, at first, I didn't believe it. Those closing few minutes, terrifying and kinetic as they were, for me came with a nagging sense of, Oh, come on. Jesse making the sudden connection between the pot pickpocketing and the ricin cigarette scanned as a TV-show implausibility of the worst kind: not merely a cosmic coincidence--that would have been fine, Breaking Bad thrives on cosmic coincidence--but the short-circuiting of a character's internal workings for plot convenience.


But thinking about it more... I was wrong. It makes sense. First of all, realizing that you've been conned--no matter how small the swindle--disorients profoundly. Reaching into your pocket expecting something, only to find it was lifted without your detection, is exactly the sort of thing that gets you thinking about all the times in your past when items have disappeared from your person. Aaron Paul played the slow-dawning epiphany well; you could see him silently making a series of mental connections, each one more horrifying than the last.


More importantly, though, the writers have earned this twist. Basically, Jesse has spent the entirety of this half season stewing with the knowledge that his involvement with Walter White has wrecked his life. Tonight's episode opened with Hank probing Jesse's victimhood at the hands of Heisenberg; that exquisitely suspenseful scene in the desert showed just how much Jesse feels--rightly--he's Walt's pawn. So it's not only that Jesse's agitated. It's that he's never been more alive to Walt's monstrousness and manipulation.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertain...evable/279017/

As this was a good section:

The reckoning seems near, though. At this point, we can see Breaking Bad encircling Walter with three agents of retribution for three kinds of transgression. The first agent is the Schraders, with Hank almost neglecting his role as enforcer of law to instead be a warrior for family. When Walt mentions the word "right" at the dinner table, Hank's outrage is at the personal-level irony: "Lying to your son and to all of us, is that right?" He and Marie are motivated not by the specific awfulness of Walt's actions but by the broader awfulness of how deeply, recklessly, and callously Walt deceived and endangered the people closest to him--a willingness to betray never made more explicit than by that chilling/genius confession tape.

The second avenger, we now know, is Jesse Pinkman, acting on behalf of the innocents Walt has harmed. Tonight it became clear Jesse knew Mike's fate, but the killing of a killer--as lovely and hilarious a killer as Mike was--isn't enough to turn him against Walt. A child's poisoning, though, is too much. As with Hank, personal wounds are in the combustible mix here, but then again Jesse has long been disproportionately wounded whenever Heisenberg's actions tramples an innocent: Jane, Drew Sharp, etc. It's fitting, then, that Jesse's retribution would be against Walt's home, a symbol of all Walt has sought to protect.


With that final (sensational) gas-can scene, the show wants us to suspect that we've witnessed the event that leads to the devastation that had befallen the White residence in the "Blood Money" flash-forward. And perhaps we did--the next installment may well open with Jesse lighting a match and spray-painting "HEISENBERG" in the living room. If I may indulge in some fruitless, likely-to-be-embarrassing speculation, though: Remember that scene tonight when Hank responds to Gomez by calling DEA agents off Jesse's tail? It ends with Hank canceling an appointment and leaving the office. Might he have gone to stake out Saul's himself, and then follow Jesse? Might we be in for a last-minute intervention from Hank, who suddenly finds a more-willing ally in Heisenberg's apoplectic ex-partner?


Here's a safer prediction: Todd, his neo-Nazi friends, and Lydia will somehow constitute the third horseman of Walter White's apocalypse. (Actually, now that I'm using the cliché, let's throw cancer in and say that there are four horsemen.) They, after all, embody the satanic bargain Walt long ago struck. When he allied with the life-destroying force that is the drug trade, he allied with evil. As this episode's Tarantino-esque cold open reminded for the zillionth time in Breaking Bad's run, evil can look pretty banal--smiling at diner waitresses, grooming itself in bathroom mirrors, trading back slaps in parking lots. But it also reminded that, despite Skyler's earnest assurances to Hank and Marie tonight, the evil that Walter invited into his life is not safely in the past.

[MrMastodonFarm]

Anyone else notice Todd is wearing the same jacket Walt has in the flash forwards?

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

But Brock wasn't poisoned with the ricin, so whether or not Walt was responsible for stealing the ricin from Jesse, had nothing to do with Brock being poisoned.

The ricin went missing the same day Brock became ill despite Jesse being diligent in keeping it safe and with him. Brock's poisoning led to Jesse nearly killing Walter and Jesse killing Gus because Walt convinced him it was Gus who was trying to frame Walt. Then Jesse finds out Brock was poisoned 'accidentally' by Lilly of the Valley. That's a pretty big coincidence. Either Jesse brought down a drug kinglord who Jesse didn't particularly hate because some kid ate something he shouldn't have or there was some manipulation going on. It would have weighed on Jesse and he would have had time to think it through.

Jesse knows Heisenberg better than anyone, he knows how intelligent he is, how manipulative he is, and how ruthless he is. He knew he killed Mike. It's not a stretch to think he's been thinking back to that day often and couldn't piece everything together. How did the ricin disappear? How did it end up in roomba after he checked it? How did Brock get poisoned? These aren't questions someone just sweeps under the rug and forgets about. Yeah, maybe 10 seconds was quick but I think he had the pieces together and just needed Huell stealing his weed to give him the final clue.

[bax]

Originally Posted by fredr123

Who watches Walt Jr. and Holly during the day? Kind of bugs me they only show up once in a while. Seems like Walter and Skyler spend a lot of time at the car wash. Walt doesn't want either of them going over to the Hank and Marie's so where are they when Jesse busts into the house dousing the place with gasoline?

I think this is pretty self explanatory, no? Holly is probably at a day care all day while Walter and skyler are working at the car wash. And why does Walt jr need anyone to look after him? He has his own vehicle, he goes to school, and hangs out with his friends. Seems pretty simple to me.

[corporatejay]

Sepinwall (best TV critic around) lays it out pretty plainly here.

http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-wat...ter-thespian/2

UPDATE: I've gotten so many emails, tweets and comments below expressing confusion about how Jesse figured out about the cigarette swap that I decided to simply lay out the chronology as follows:

1)In "End Times," to get Jesse back on his side in the war against Gus, Walt arranges for Huell to steal the cigarette pack with the ricin cigarette out of Jesse's pocket and replace it with a different pack. Saul calls Jesse to his office on shaky reasons, and Huell pats him down in a way that gets Jesse's attention. Walt doesn't use the ricin to poison Brock, but rather a lily of the valley plant that will have a similar but less dangerous effect on the boy.

2)When Jesse hears that Brock has been poisoned, he realizes that the ricin cigarette is missing, then (correctly) puts two and two together that Huell stole it, on Walt's orders. He storms into Walt's house and threatens to kill him for poisoning Brock; Walt convinces Jesse that it was Gus, not him, who wanted to hurt the boy — specifically so Jesse would come to this conclusion and murder Walt for him — and that Tyrus must have lifted the cigarettes from Jesse's locker at the Super Lab. Jesse accepts that Mr. White would never hurt a child, whereas Gus has a history of hurting children, and lets go of the theory about Huell.

3)Doctors later figure out that Brock was poisoned by a lily of the valley, not ricin, making Jesse doubt Walt's theory about Gus manipulating Jesse into shooting Walt, and leaving him to wonder what really happened to the ricin cigarette. Walt stages a phony search of Jesse's house and plants a fake cigarette (containing salt, not ricin) inside Jesse's Roomba. None of this sits well with Jesse, but he once again believes Mr. White.

4)Over the course of season 5, starting around the murder of Drew Sharp, Jesse has begun to realize that he shouldn't believe anything Walt says. Walt claims to be broken up over Drew's death, then whistles while he works. Walt claims that Mike left town alive, when Jesse knows that Walt would've never taken out Mike's guys unless Mike was dead. Walt gives Jesse a whole song and dance about how leaving town will be good for Jesse, when Jesse knows that it will be even better for Walt.

5)Having been primed to disbelieve any word out of Walt's mouth, Jesse goes to Saul's office, lights up a joint and gets scolded by Saul, who knows his relocation expert won't pick up anyone who's high. Saul orders Huell to again pick Jesse's pocket to get rid of the marijuana.

6)At the pick-up spot, a nervous Jesse reaches for his pot, and can't find it. He frantically checks all his pockets, but all he finds is a cigarette pack. Staring at the cigarette pack, and realizing Huell dipped into his pocket without him noticing, Jesse realizes that his first suspicions about the ricin cigarette were correct, and that Mr. White was manipulating him into turning against Gus, endangering Brock's life in the process.

That the ricin wasn't actually used on Brock is beside the point. Jesse knew from the beginning that Huell had picked his pocket, and that he must have done it on Mr. White's orders. He has been thinking about this often in the months since it happened — far more often and more intensely than those of us watching the show have, and in a more compressed time period. When he realizes Huell picked his pocket, and stares at another crumpled cigarette pack, everything clicks into place about the events of "End Times" — including how convenient it was that this terrible thing happened to Brock, which turned Jesse back into Walt's ally, at the exact moment Walt needed an ally against Gus — and he goes on the warpath against Saul, Huell and that ####### Mr. White.

[bax]

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

Anyone else notice Todd is wearing the same jacket Walt has in the flash forwards?

Walt has been known to take "something" from the people he kills or has a hand in killing. Sometimes a tendency (cutting crusts off of his sandwich) or an actual object ( gales book)