Skyler is quickly becoming our second-favorite character. If she keeps being such an asset, this show is going to go from “cautionary tale” to “good ideas, as long as you have a great wife/assistant to consider every detail of your cover story”. She made Walt learn how to count cards and join a 12-step program to help with his gambling addiction. She wrote out two scripts to perfectly lay out their car wash cover story to Hank.

Hank bought the story and he and Walt bonded over the Gale evidence. We got to see a truly sad karaoke video made by Gale in the process too. Even though Hank thinks that Gale was Heisenberg, Walt still freaked out to Saul Goodman about the general direction of his life. Saul told him that he knew a “disappearer” who could hook Walt and his family up with new identities and hide them if things got too bad.

Walt went to find Jesse to ask him about what happened at Gale’s house, step by step, so that Walt could ascertain whether Jesse left incriminating evidence before or after he shot Gale. Of course, this triggered irritation and sad PTSD in Jesse, and Jesse paid some of his homeless druggies to throw Walt out. Yes, homeless druggies.

Then Jesse got a visit from Mike, who recently had the top of one ear shot off, because Gus has been dealing with cartel retaliation. Mike tied up one of the druggies who had been living in Jesse’s house and stealing money from Jesse. Mike implied that he was going to kill the druggie. He got no reaction out of Jesse, and this worried him. Also, Jesse has cut his hair very short, which is hardly ever a good sign. Mike went to Gus and reiterated that Jesse is a liability.

The episode ended with Walt going to look for Jesse and realizing that Jesse is gone. At this point, in her chat with Leeard, Ern started typing, “No no no nononononono nooooooo.” But thank God, Jesse is still alive. Except he is in a car with Mike, headed for the desert. And Mike is driving. And it’s Mike. And it doesn’t look like Jesse cares if he lives or dies at all.

We will say it again: Do not kill off the only truly sympathetic character left on the show. Sure, Marie can elicit sympathy sometimes, but we don’t care about her nearly as much as we do about Jesse. And Aaron Paul is too good of an actor to die! We are actually worried at this point. There is a huge part of us that thinks that Jesse can’t die, but there’s another part of us that thinks the show will go there if it wants to.

Episode grade: A-