Breaking Bad- Gliding Over All

What Happened: The show really sped things up in the midseason finale. First, Walt has Todd help him get rid of Mike’s body. Mike’s nine guys (and the lawyer) get set to testify and feed Hank information, so Walt uses Todd’s prison connections to have them all killed. First, Walt has to get the names from Lydia, and she offers him an opportunity to export his meth to the Czech Republic. It was a deal she made with Gus Fring before he died, and now Walt is perfectly poised to take advantage of it himself. In a montage, Walt makes tons of meth with Todd and picks up tons of money from Lydia. Skyler misses her kids, and Marie starts to worry that she is enabling the Whites to postpone fixing their marriage. After some nudging from her sister, Skyler talks to Walt.

She takes him to a storage locker and shows him all his money. It’s so much that she lost count of it. It looks like millions. Skyler asks him when it will be enough, and she tells Walt that she wants her life and family back. Walt goes to Jesse’s house and gives him the $5 million, then he goes home and tells Skyler he’s done. The kids come home, and the Schraders come over for lunch in the backyard. Hank goes to the bathroom and picks up a book by the toilet. It was a gift from Gale to “W.W.” Hank remembers going through Gale’s stuff with Walt in season four and joking that W.W. might be Walt. Then we see Hank’s face as he realizes he’s been looking for his brother-in-law all along. DUN DUN DUNNNNNN. And oh yeah, Walt's cancer is probably back.

What We Thought: This episode was speedy and entertaining the whole way through. The killing montage was one of the bloodiest, most gangster things ever seen on this show. Lots of people thought Walt went to Jesse’s house to kill him, but come on. Walt still has some paternal feelings for Jesse. We didn’t think that for a second, and we don’t think Jesse thought that either. He just thought Walt was trouble as a rule. At the beginning of this episode, we thought Jesse was going to somehow die though. He’d had his redemption. What else was there? Maybe the show still has something interesting for Jesse to do.

We noticed a bong when Walt visited Jesse. Walt looked down at it and smiled as Jesse moved it. Dick. Hopefully Jesse is just doing weed and isn’t back on the hard stuff. When the Whites and the Shraders were eating together at the end, we knew the other shoe was going to drop, somehow. We thought Jesse would find out about Brock, Jane, or Mike, but that scene was over. It had to be Hank finding out about Walt. And there it was. We could have died. This is so exciting. Walt deserves it, and that should make the last eight episodes insanely awesome. How are we supposed to wait until next year?

Episode grade: A