Breaking Bad - S5E11 - Confessions
Previously, on Breaking Bad: “Buried”
Last week’s episode ended abruptly as Hank walked through the door of an interrogation room which held Jesse Pinkman, who didn’t speak a single line in “Buried”; that’s not likely to continue this week.
This week’s episode begins with Todd standing outside a diner and awkwardly calling Walt to leave him a message about the “change in management” that recently took place in the new meth business-you know, where Declan, his guys, and the new cook were all killed. Inside the diner, Todd is talking with his uncle and another guy who was in on the “change in management”; he proudly recounts to them the entire story of the train heist he helped Walt and Jesse pull off in the episode “Dead Freight”. Looks like that’s the episode’s first iteration of “confessions”. The three of them exit the diner and drive back into New Mexico.
Opening credits.
When we return, we’re back in that interrogation room with Jesse; he’s still staring off into the distance. Hank comes right out of the gate with “I want to talk about Heisenberg; I know he’s my brother-in-law.” That snaps Jesse back to reality… almost. Hank tries to “good cop” Jesse into confessing by sympathizing with him, but that doesn’t work. What it does do, however, is coax Jesse’s first words out of his mouth, “Eat me.” Okay, that didn’t work, so now Hank tries empathy. Hank relates to Jesse how betrayed he feels by Walt and how he knows Jesse feels betrayed, too. We don’t really get a chance to see if Hank is as good at manipulating Jesse as his brother-in-law is because Saul Goodman comes busting into the interrogation room and lawyers shit all up. Hank leaves, the other detectives leave again, and Saul is left alone with Jesse to ask “What the hell is wrong with you” Jesse is all, “Chill out”, and Saul’s like, “I’m not chilling out!” Aaron Paul says, maybe, 4 words in this whole scene, but he’s fantastic; you can see how broken and dejected he is just from the downturn of his mouth and the heaviness of his eyes.
Meanwhile, Walt is at home speaking with Saul on the phone, now; he tells him to handle shit, and that’s when we see Junior for the first time in what feels like forever. Well, first, we only hear him off-screen, and he nearly leaves without us seeing him, but he says he’s going to Hank and Marie’s. Walt can’t have that, so he quickly decides to tell Junior about the return of his cancer. Walt is such a master manipulator that he uses his cancer to make Junior choose to stay and not go to Hank and Marie’s. That’s cold-blooded, but it is not even close to the most cold-blooded thing Walt does in this episode.
As Hank returns home, Marie is instantly up his ass about whether or not he told the rest of the DEA about Walt. Hank says he didn’t because it’s not time; he still has leads to track down. He doesn’t tell her it’s because he doesn’t have jack shit in the way of actual evidence. Marie won’t drop it until Hank finally just bites her head off about it; Hank is so clearly not anywhere close to Walt’s level of manipulation. His go-to tactic is just “HULK ANGRY! LEAVE HULK ALONE!”
Back at the White residence, Walt sits down in front of a camera, with Skyler asking him if he’s sure about “this”. He is sure, but what is this? He begins to speak, “This is my confession…” and we cut away to a commercial break. Is he going to confess? Hmm…
After the break, we join Walt and Skyler sitting down at a restaurant; they’re soon joined by Hank and Marie. Hank asks if Walt is going to confess; as we know, he’s not one to beat around the bush. Walt says there is nothing to confess. They’ve asked Hank and Marie to sit down with them to just talk. Before they can get started, they’re comically interrupted by a perky waiter who wants to take their order. Walt tells him they need a minute. Of course it’s Walt who handles it; Hank can’t stop staring a hole through Walt, while Skyler and Marie sit in uncomfortable silence. This scene is basically a microcosm of the whole series. Walt and Skyler try to convince Hank and Marie to drop it, for the sake of the children, of course. Won’t someone think of the children?! Of course, Hank (and now Marie) is too doggedly committed to bring Walt in to let it go. Walt and Skyler are like, “Alright, we tried.” If they seem oddly okay with Hank’s refusal. Well, that’s because they have a disc of the video Walt recorder earlier. What’s on it, though?
Cut to Hank and Marie watching the DVD at home. The entire thing plays right through, without anything more than Bryan Cranston’s voice; he weaves a hell of a tell, but what is it he’s confessing? Well, he “confesses” that Hank is the one who built a meth empire. That’s right, Walt goes through several of the series’ biggest moments (such as the murder of Gus Fring), and he frames every single one of them in such a way as to implicate Hank instead of himself. Hell, I’ve seen every episode, and I almost believed him. Somewhere in there, Walt mentions Hank’s medical bills and the fact that he paid them. After the video is finished, Marie is-of course-the first to speak. She says Hank should take the video to the DEA and “get ahead of this”. Hank doesn’t even seem to hear her ridiculous suggestion because all he can think about is the fact that he’s just now hearing about Walt paying his medical bills. He asks Marie if it’s true, and we know it is; she admits it is. She’s all, “They said it was gambling money”, and Hank goes, “What the fuck? Gambling money? How fucking stupid are you?” Okay, he obviously didn’t do that, but he thought it. He tells her that is the final nail in his coffin. He’s finished. Is he really, though? Hmm.
Meanwhile, out in the desert, Jesse and Saul are waiting for Walt, Saul tells Jesse he should be nervous because he thinks Walt is going to be as upset about Jesse’s “philanthropic act” of throwing his money all over the place. When Walt gets there, he’s not nearly as upset as Saul presumed he would be. After telling Saul to “take a walk”, After asking Jesse what he said to Hank (Jesse tells him he didn’t say anything, and that he doesn’t think Hank has even told the other DEA guys), Walt starts in on Jesse; he gently tells him he should start over somewhere new. He’s still young and has a whole life ahead of him. Finally, though, Jesse sees through the manipulation. Jesse knows Walt only wants him to leave because it’s what is best for Walt. All Jesse wants is for Walt to be honest and just ask him for the real reason. Does Walt do that? Of course not, because that wouldn’t work. What Walt does is say nothing; he just walks up to Jesse and slowly hugs him. Jesse breaks down in tears.
Walt and Skyler are back to work at the car wash; Walt is carrying on like everything is perfectly fine, because that’s what Walt does, but Skyler is nervous… because that’s what Skyler does. Walt assures her that their plan worked, but did it?
Hank heads back into his office, and he’s followed by Gomez who says he knows Hank put some guys on Jesse Pinkman, and he wants to know why. If Hank can’t explain why, then he will have to take the guys off of Jesse’s tail. Hank tells him to take the guys off. I guess we have our answer; Hank is letting it go… at least for now. Then Hank cancels a meeting he had scheduled for late in the day, and goes for a walk. This is another example of how Hank and Walt differ; Hank can’t go on with his life like it’s business as usual.
Jesse sits in Saul’s office, when Saul walks in with a card in his hand. It’s the card with the number on it of the guy who can give Jesse a new identity. Looks like he’s going to listen to Walt, again. He’s leaving and never coming back; this is how Jesse exits the show. While in Saul’s office, Jesse lights a “doob”, as Saul calls it, and Saul quickly tells him to put it out; the guy won’t take Jesse if he’s high or if he even has drugs on him, so Saul also wants Jesse to give him the weed. Of course, Jesse’s face tells Saul to go fuck himself, and Jesse pockets the weed. Saul can’t grasp how few fucks Jesse has left to give. Saul throws some money in a bag for Jesse to use to “start over”, and Jesse leaves the room, walking past Huell. As he walks by, Jesse bumps into Huell, and Huell is all, “Excuse you!” Really, it’s kind of hard to walk through a doorway with Huell and not bump into him, but that’s neither here nor there.
Jesse is out on the side of the road waiting to be picked up and taken out of Albuquerque forever; he plans to go to Alaska for seemingly no reason other than it’s not Albuquerque. While standing there, he decides to light up yet another “doob” (I can’t get over Saul’s corny verbiage), but wait a minute! The weed is gone! What happened to it? Jesse realizes that all he has in his pockets are cigarettes. That’s when it hits him. Huell picked the weed out of his pocket when they bumped into each other. What else does this mean Jesse realizes? That’s right; he now knows Huell picked the ricin cigarette out of his pocket, and he knows it was Walt who poisoned Brock. He’s not going anywhere… well, not anywhere outside of Albuquerque. He leaves the side of the road, walking away from the van that had pulled up to take him away, and he presumably walks his ass all the way back to Saul’s office. He rushes past Huell, locks the door, and throws his fist right across Saul’s face. Saul, understandably, doesn’t know what the fuck is going on. Jesse tells him he knows Huell picked his pocket, and Saul is like, “Wow, this guy really digs his doobs!” Jesse clarifies that he’s talking about the ricin cigarette, and Saul is completely caught up now. Saul explains that Walt made him do it, and he wouldn’t have done it if he knew what was going to happen. Jesse believes him and decides to not shoot Saul in the face. I was thinking he was going to shoot Saul, and we were going to learn the rumors of a “Better Call Saul” spin-off were just a clever ruse. That didn’t happen, though (not yet, anyway), and Jesse just steals Saul’s keys. After Jesse runs out, Saul gets on the phone with Walt.
At the car wash, we see Skyler is still working the cash register, as Walt had earlier asked her to do while he went for his chemo. Through the door, we see Walt speeds up, parks, and jumps out of the car. He runs up to the door, and then calmly opens it. He makes some little small talk with Skyler, and then throw out a fake “I need to check the latch on the vending machine… because it’s not… uh… latching”. She’s all, “Whatever, weirdo.” So he walks back to the vending machine, opens it, and pulls out a gun from way in the back. It’s pretty frozen, but I assume it’ll still shoot things well enough. Walt goes back over to Skyler and shoots… no, wrong choose of words there; he fires off some more lies about needing to get a prescription filled, so he’s leaving. She, again, is all, “Sure thing, dude; you don’t have to narrate your life for me.” He takes off.
We jump to Jesse swerving up into Walt’s front yard in Saul’s car. He jumps out carrying a can of gas. I wonder what he’s going to do with that. Well, he goes to town maniacally pouring gas all over Walt’s house. Credits.
Walt was almost out; he got Hank off his ass, and now Jesse is on it. Looks like we’re going to get that showdown between Walt and Jesse that we’ve been wanting, and it’s going to be great.
