That dude wasn’t cheap, or at least he does charge a lot for his services. He did seem to dislike Walt personally though, probably because he broke his normal MO and makes him drive all the way across the country once a month to do a simple delivery. You would think he could toss a mattress or something in the back of that uninsulated tank for the 33+ hour journey.
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Walt is the stereotypical difficult customer for our vacuum guy. He can’t pass on the money, but he is not usually treated as a co-conspirator, one imagines. His usual job is complacent to the point of pissing themselves and here is a guy who can speak to him on his own terms and knows what’s what.
He can take it, but he is not going to enjoy it.
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I think it was more the risk level. This guy does what it takes to keep his clients safe, but that’s usually on the order of “move them somewhere else, make some fake ids, cash the check”. He can’t do that for a guy who’s face is in every post office and has been on the evening news.
Was anybody else disappointed when he attacked that Ensure box and then only used it to make a care package for his family. I was thinking at first that he knew about some crazy chemical in Ensure that would let you make a bomb or something.
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I don’t understand this. He witnessed her murder, and then was taken back to their compound. How will he be the one who discovers her body?
In fact, witnessing the murder WAS the psychological trauma.
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IMB was talking about Brock, her son.
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Except that in a “he said, she said” battle with Gray Matter, who would believe him? In order to blackmail them he would have to have some leverage, and as far as we know he doesn’t have any.
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“I wonder where the “sweet” part of the promised bittersweet ending is going to come in?”
That’s what the Stevia is for.
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He knows why he really left and just watched them break the deal on National TV.
He seems to have a new focus from hour to hour now. He only has his own self-respect to try to regain. Everything else is gone.
They took that away when they thought he was in no position to retaliate. He means to finally show them who is responsible for all their fates. Yikes.
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He has a teenager’s black-and-white (hah!) sense of right vs wrong. But we need that in this story…someone to remind us what the ideal standard is. Because how many of us actually cringed for a moment and thought “shut up kid and listen to your dad for a second”? How easy is it for any of us to slip down the path of “in this situation, compromise might be necessary” instead of recognizing that, hell yeah, this is wrong and needs to be shouted from the rooftops?
On a side note, I think the reason Walt never denies killing Hank is because he recognizes that he is the reason Hank is dead, so in an ultimate sense it is true. Experiencing his son’s righteous horror and disgust is a worse punishment than prison or death, because he knows his son is right. Doesn’t matter that he didn’t pull the trigger.
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I know no line of dialogue will be superfluous at this point, meaning the whole “Oh, all Walt did was supply the name of the company” Gray Matter thing probably will be referenced somewhere. But didn’t the interviewer also make it clear that the blue meth was back? I mean, no way is Walt going to simply go after Gray Matter in the grand finale, when he could also find out that:
- the bikers didn’t kill Jesse (in breach of their agreement) because the blue meth is still out there (even though dead Hank is reason enough to want to go after them), and
- Lydia is a threat to his family (bitter Rycin probably nicely mixes with her sweet Stevia).
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Too much symbolism for NH that can’t be replicated by using CO instead. For example: his son screaming “why don’t you just die?” while Walt is on the other end of the phone, stuck in the “Live Free or Die” state.
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Ahhhhh…never mind! /Emily Latella
Thanks.
It would be a PR issue, his name is already linked to the company and they apparently feel the need to distance themselves. Dragging a publicly traded pharmaceutical company further into the mud of an international methamphetamine manufacture and sales investigation could be very deleterious to their stock price. Giving Skylar a good job with adequate benefits would be a small price to pay to avoid such a thing. Just a thought.
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I’m glad I’m not the only one hoping for a happy ending with Todd and Lydia. It just seems right, somehow.
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Given that he’s a kid-killing psychopath and she’s a paranoiac who wants everyone with the slightest bit of dirt on her dead, those two really deserve each other. I’d watch a spin-off about the Alquist/Rodarte-Quayle household just to see who outlasts the other. Maybe they can work Saul in as the divorce lawyer.
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I also think what spurred him into action was the mention of the blue meth and the speculation that Heisenberg was still at it. What’s his son going to think about that, especially after Walt’s offer to send them money? If Junior also heard the same news by now, he must assume that not only did his father kill his uncle and abandoned them after hurling abuse at his mom, but then simply carried on with his meth empire as if nothing happened. That’s motivation enough to go down fighting the Nazi gang, not in order to save Jesse or recover the money, but only to show that he wasn’t part of it anymore and to destroy the monster he created.
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Lydia’s paranoia over Skyler seemed a bit much to me. Skyler doesn’t even know her name, all she knows is that some strange lady wearing huge glasses came by and bought a car wash for a rental car, probably drug related but Walt blew her off.
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I’m kind of surprised that Skylar’s response to Todd wasn’t something more like “I have no idea who she even is” — guess it ultimately doesn’t matter anyway
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Maybe that was included to give Walt another reason to come out of hiding and attempt to take down the Nazi gang. The news report mentioned the blue meth showing up in Europe as well, so he knows Lydia’s still involved in this, and he’ll also remember how easily she orders hits on anyone expendable who knows about her. It wouldn’t be implausible for Walt to deduce that Skyler is in danger, but you’d have to make it explicit for the audience.
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A couple more extra crystals:
- The closeup on the chess game revealed what may have been “castling,” a last-chance desperate move to protect the King, foreshadowing for what is to come.
- I loved the moment that Todd carefully plucked something from between Lydia’s shoulderblades without her noticing, at the end of their scene.
- This episode was scheduled against the Emmys, for which the series was nominated in multiple categories. Of course it was a slow episode.
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