In this week’s recap, Amanda and Marc wonder what, if anything, will finally turn the audience against Walter White.
Our hosts argue that the little kid collecting specimens in the desert symbolizes the innocent, curious, science-loving kid Walter White used to be, in short, everything that was once good about our anti-hero. Amanda says the junior scientist trope tipped her off immediately that this kid was going to die. I figured the kid was done for when he put the spider in a glass jar and the glass jar in his pocket. One way or another, that thing was going to get broken.
Amanda and Marc think that the boy’s death represents Walt’s evil influence. Walt thinks of himself as a teacher and mentor, but he’s really a corrupter of youth. He turned Jesse into a murderer. Now, Todd has crossed the line and taken a life under Walt’s malign influence.
I’m not sure Walt will turn out to be the proximate cause of Todd’s moral collapse. Sure, Todd graduates from bug exterminator to child exterminator on Walt’s watch, and they never would have been out in the desert if Walt hadn’t insisted on boosting methylamine, but there’s no indication that Walt wanted Todd to shoot the kid. On the contrary, Walt tried to defuse the situation peacefully.
Ever since we met Todd, there have been hints that he’s not what he seems. He’s just a little too eager to ingratiate himself with Walter and Jesse. For a while, it seemed like Todd might be an undercover cop, but that seems unlikely in light of the whole child murder thing. An undercover cop would have no motive for shooting that kid. He’s not going to go to jail even if the hijackers get caught.
Todd might be a confidential informant (CI). Drug cops often enlist criminals as informants, often in exchange for leniency on other charges. The war on drugs is full of stories of CIs abusing their status to commit even worse crimes than the ones they’re supposedly trying to expose. Maybe Todd is working off an earlier burglary beef. But that doesn’t explain Todd’s bizarre decision to shoot the kid. Law enforcement lenience only goes so far, and even a scumbag CI wouldn’t expect to get away with killing an innocent child. The cops might be willing to overlook a little property crime or scumbag-on-scumbag violence, but not this.
I guess Todd could be working for a rival drug organization, either as an informant or an operative. But, according to the plot conventions of double agent yarns, Todd’s undercover status ought to explain his bizarre behavior in the desert. I can’t think why a rival drug group would want this shooting, even if they wanted to ensure the heist went off smoothly. If they just wanted information about Walt’s crew, Todd has no added incentive to shoot. It’s unsatisfying if Todd’s a double agent who just happens to be a weirdo.
I suspect that if Todd is working for anyone besides Vamanos Pest, he’s working for Lydia. Lydia is criminal dilettante who thinks she can kill her way out of trouble. We know Lydia put contracts on 10 guys in order to hide her ties to Gus’s operation. The train heist has only drawn her in deeper. If anything goes wrong, she’s the obvious suspect. As she says in this episode, she’s taking a huge risk.
Initially, Lydia urged Walt and company to kill the train crew to avoid leaving witnesses. When they expressed reluctance she sneered, “I thought you guys were professionals.”
I could see Lydia bribing Todd as “insurance” against the other guys getting cold feet during the heist. I can imagine her ordering Todd to shoot if anything, anything seemed amiss.
If Lydia has turned Todd that opens up some fascinating narrative possibilities. Lydia is still terrified of being killed by Mike as revenge for putting hits on him and his guys. Todd has revealed himself to be a stone cold killer with a crazy streak a mile wide, maybe he’s crazy enough to take on Mike.
There’s a potential problem with the Lydia/Todd theory, though. How would Lydia (or her people) know about Todd? So far, there’s no indication that Lydia knows about the Vamanos Pest side of the operation. Then again, Walt and Jesse brazenly walk in and out of Vamanos Pest HQ in broad daylight. Anyone following them would find Todd pretty quickly. Lydia might also have been filled in about some of the details of the Vamanos Pest operation in preparation for the methylamine heist.
I can hardly wait to see what happens next.
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