This week’s episode opens with a silent montage of the crew dismantling the dead boy’s bike and disposing of his body. We still don’t know who, if anyone, Todd is working for. Regardless, he’s proven himself to be a glib and remorseless killer.
When asked to justify his actions to the Three Amigos, Todd tries to cast himself as loyal henchman who made a split-second decision for the sake of the team. Jesse is having none of it. Walt lays out three options: Fire Todd and pay him to keep quiet; kill him; or send him back to tenting houses.
Walt votes for option #3. Surprisingly, Mike sides with Walt. I expected Mike to vote for Todd’s summary liquidation. On top of everything else, Todd brought the gun to the robbery without Mike’s permission. You’d think that alone would be enough to merit termination with extreme prejudice.
Turns out, Mike already had his eye on the door. The DEA is racheting up their surveillance on him and he wants to quit. After dodging several DEA tails in one day, Mike announces that he’s done. Like the super-henchman that he is, he has golden parachutes at the ready. Clearly, the murder was the last straw for Jesse, who announces that he too is retiring. Maybe the real last straw was catching Walt whistling cheerfully in the lab after he professed to be devastated about the boy’s death, shattering one of Jesse’s last residual illusions about the character of Walter White.
Mike tells Walt that he and Jesse want to sell their share of the methylamine to Declan, a meth magnet from Phoenix whom Mike knows from the Gus Fring era. Declan is prepared to offer them $5 million each for the precursor. Walt says he wants to keep his share and keep cooking.
Like the amiable peacemaker that he is, Jesse tries to get Walt to listen to reason and take the $5 million windfall. Whereupon, Walt gives a big speech about his reasons for staying in the game, but it feels anticlimactic. He says he’s never selling out because Grey Matter and blah, blah, blah. We already knew Walt was nursing a grudge over his departure from Gray Matter, the company he co-founded in grad school with his friends Gretchen and Elliott, who went on to become billionaires. I guess for plot purposes it was necessary for Walt to admit to another human being what we’ve known for many episodes: That he’s in this for ego and nothing else.
Mike and Jesse go to the desert for a tete-a-tete with Declan. Declan wants Fring’s blue meth off the market once and for all. When he learns that Walt intends to keep cooking, he threatens to call off the whole deal. Walt tries to steal the methylamine, but Mike catches him and intends to hold him captive until the chemical can be safely sold off. At the last minute, Mike leaves Walt flex cuffed to a radiator while he goes off to meet with Saul Goodman and the DEA. It’s out of character for Mike to be so careless. Walt manages to steal the methylamine and come up with a new plan where Jesse and Mike get their $5 million payouts and Walt gets to keep cooking. Walt hasn’t explained what the plan entails, but I bet Declan won’t like it.
Prediction: The showdown previewed at the beginning of the season will be between Walt and Declan’s crew. It seems unlikely that Walt would buy a machine gun to fight the DEA. Finally, we have a strong criminal element that is a credible antagonist to Walt.
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