Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Breaking Bad Season 4, Episode 9: Bug

As Gus is aware of the bug that Hank had Walt plant, he makes sure that the only locations it picks up are his house and the restaurant.  Apparently, Gus forgot that there are plenty of innocuous locations that a person could frequent; like, say, a bank, or a grocery store, or a gas station.  It might have been a better way to cover his tracks.

Even Hank, who remains suspicious about Gus, doesn't bring this up.  Instead, he chooses to focus on the fact that Gus runs more than one location and should be making stops there as well.

With that in mind, Hank recruits Walt to visiting one of their larger distribution centers in the hopes of digging something up.  Walt initially bows out, but jumps back in when Hank voices his intent to go with someone else.  Walt does manage to delay Hank by feigning stomach illness.  Well, technically, Walt just said he was indisposed, Hank jumped to the conclusion of the squirts and Walt just ran with it.  It worked, so there you go.

Proving once again that Walt is not one to be trusted by the likes of Gus, he immediately calls up Mike to let him know what Hank plans to do so that they can clear out; which they do.

If anything, Walt's association with Hank is a plus.  He's running interference and tips you off every time he's about to make a move so that you can evade his investigation.  This is an asset to the operation, but apparently, they still feel the need to send people to tail him.  It's bizarre.

On other fronts, the car wash seems to be doing well.  Admittedly, this is largely because Skyler rings up fake receipts, but she's convinced that they will be able to sustain themselves on it alone and brings up the idea of Walt quitting his "second job".  He doesn't seem too enthused.  Maybe if he saw how generous the fake customers were, he'd be more positive.  They all seem to go for the high end stuff.  I'm guessing she rang up some smaller scale purchases as well just for variety, but all we see are the $50.00 and up transactions.  Then again, she did say that the money was all in $50 bills, so maybe that's her line of thinking.

In an odd mirroring, her book cooking at her old job comes back to bite her as Ted reveals that he's being audited.  This is especially bad as her signature is on all the paperwork and they might start digging around her accounts.

She manages to put her talents as a creator of fiction to use (as well as display an affinity for acting) by playing dumb to make it look like the bookkeeping was an act of ineptitude as opposed to an actual con.  I'm not sure what the problem with using Quicken is.  I used to use it and they do have software more oriented towards businesses, but whatever.

It doesn't get Ted off the hook, but they do show some leniency and only ask that he pay back taxes and a few penalties.  He doesn't have the money to cover it, but the implication is that Skyler will bail him out.  It makes sense as she has more money than she knows what to do with, but wouldn't the question of where Ted got the money pop up?  We'll see.

Things don't seem to go too well for Jesse here.  While working with Mike and a few others, they are attacked by a cartel sniper.  One of Gus' mooks is killed via headshot, throwing Jesse into a small state of shock.  Were it not for Mike's intervention, he too would have died.  Gus, on the other hand, storms out like a badass and just walks into the line of fire.  It appears that the cartel needs Gus alive (as evidenced by the fact that it becomes obvious that the shooter is missing on purpose) so his arrival causes said attacker to retreat.

This raises a lot of questions for Jesse.  To his credit, Gus is more than happy to sit down with him over dinner to discuss the matter.  It hearkens back to Gus' original "reasonable businessman" persona, but it also gives Jesse a chance to implement Walt's plan to poison him.

I assumed the plan was to offer Gus the poisoned cigarette and have him smoke it, but that doesn't appear to be the case as Jesse notes later that he was never given a chance to poison Gus' dinner when Walt confronts him about it later.  On the other hand, it's clear that Jesse's not as committed to the plan as he was before and that may have just been an excuse.

The conversation between Walt and Jesse is the clear highlight of the episode.  Things get especially tense when Walt reveals that he was tracking Jesse's car using the same device that they used with Gus.  Said device is how Walt knew that Jesse saw Gus for a lengthy period of time and still failed to go through with it.

It all culminates in an all out brawl between the two.  This is one of Walt's stronger outings as far as physical altercations go.  I was kind of surprised that he was getting the upper hand against Jesse, but things start to balance out later.  Still, it was a great fight and a great way to cap off the episode.

Jesse even gets to end the episode with a great line as he tells Walt to GTFO and never come back after establishing that Walt can walk.  While a part of me is sad to see the partnership end on such bad terms, it had been starting to show cracks for some time.









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