The theme of this episode is loyalty vs. betrayal.
Ex-cop Mike understands that in the drug trade, loyalty is more than an abstract moral principle, it’s a matter of survival. As Bob Dylan put it, “To live outside the law, you must be honest.” There are no paper contracts or courts in the underground economy. With no outside recourse, it all comes down to whether you trust someone to make good on a promise, or carry out a threat.
The “Four Amigos,” Mike, Jesse, Walt, and Saul, are back in business but fate of the nascent meth operation hinges upon absolute trust between Mike and each of his guys from the Gus Fring era. If any one of the players in this prisoner’s dilemma defects, it’s all over.
The episode opens with Mike making the rounds to his guys in prison. Their hazard pay, the price of their silence, has been cut off since Gus died. We expect that Mike has come to make threats, but he’s come instead to offer assurances. When Mike promises each man that he will be made whole, they believe him.
Later on, when they divide up the spoils of their first cook, Walt sneers at Mike when explains that hazard pay is going to be an ongoing expense. Mike says simply, “It’s what you do.” As usual, Walt doesn’t get it.
Walt hits on a brilliant idea to start a meth lab fast: Cooking in houses tented for fumigation. Nobody wants to go inside a tented house and nobody worries about strange smells. They expect it to be full of poison. This is another step in Walt’s moral descent. In the first season, we learned that cooking meth in your house is an absolute no-no. Now Walt is cooking in other people’s kitchens and thinks nothing of it.
In this episode, we see how each member of the partnership brings unique expertise: Walt and Jesse know the chemistry, Saul has the connections, and Mike knows the business. Straying outside one’s area of expertise is dangerous. Walt thinks he can do it all, but he’s comically inept at everything but the chemistry.
Saul Goodman brokers a deal with some of his criminal defense clients, a crew of fumigators/burglary facilitators. They’re in the betrayal business: The bomb a house with poison, case the joint, and sell the trusting homeowner’s keys to burglars. In the grand scheme of things, a burglary is nothing compared to having your kitchen turned into a meth lab. An explosion could destroy the whole house and the chemicals are toxic.
When Walt was cooking for Gus, everything was gleaming and industrial. Now that Walt and Jesse are cooking on their own, everything is eerie. They hover over a vat like witches around a cauldron, cooking under the reproachful eyes of a family portrait. Exhaust drifts past children’s playground equipment.
When Walt sees Jesse’s stepson Brock, the look terror on the silent child’s face tells Walt that Brock remembers Walt trying to poison him. Walt sets out to drive a wedge between Jesse and Andrea before Brock rats him out.
Walt tells Jesse that if he’s serious about Andrea, he’ll decide how much to tell her about the business. Walt strongly implies that it’s better for Jesse to level with Andrea about his work, if they’re going to spend the rest of their lives together. He wants Jesse to push Andrea away, and revealing too much about the business is a quick, if risky, way to do that. Andrea is a recovering addict and her younger brother was killed by drug dealers, so she’s not going to be happy about Jesse’s occupation.
Meanwhile, Walt’s wife, Skyler, is literally having a nervous breakdown because she can’t deal with the emotional fallout of Walt’s secret life. Walt has barged back into the house, against Skyler’s better judgement. He betrays his wife by telling her sister, Marie, about Skyler’s affair with Ted Beneke as a way to explain her seemingly inexplicable emotional meltdown.
Having shattered Marie’s image of her older sister, Walt casually bites into an apple from a fruit bowl, oblivious to the fact that he’s poisoning other people’s homes, and his own.
I hope Skyler goes full-on Lady MacBeth this season.
In the final scene, Walt threatens Jesse as they stand at the threshold of the darkened garage, silhouetted against the daylight.
Jesse announces that he’s broken up with Andrea. Evidently, he followed Walt’s advice, creating yet another loose end in the process.
Walt ignores Jesse’s painful revelation and pointedly speculates that Gus’s henchman Victor got killed because he didn’t know his place. Earlier, Jesse effectively sided with his mentor Mike over Walt in the dispute over hazard pay. Walt lost face, and now he’s furious. Like an abusive ex, he wants revenge.
Maybe Victor “flew too close to the sun and got his throat cut,” Walt says. Jesse looks stunned as Walt walks away. Thus far, Jesse’s trust in Walt has been unshakeable. Their partnership has even survived Jesse’s fleeting suspicion that Walt poisoned his stepson. Walt managed to draw Jesse back into the partnership through skillful emotional manipulation. But now that Walt’s jealous of Mike, he’s not thinking clearly. He’s making mistakes.
Walt thinks he’s consolidating his power over his young apprentice, his family, and the new meth cartel. In fact, his manipulative tactics and arrogant attitude are eroding the bonds of trust upon which their collective survival depends.
The garage door shuts, plunging us into darkness.
SPECIAL DEAL: Subscribe to our award-winning print magazine, a publication Bernie Sanders calls "unapologetically on the side of social and economic justice," for just $1 an issue! That means you'll get 10 issues a year for $9.95.
