Walt's plan to keep the empire going is rather effective in its simplicity. Instead of selling the methylamine, Walt offers Mike's stake in the "company". It makes sense as Walt needs someone to distribute it. Even from DeClan's perspective it makes sense. They were losing to Walt anyway, and Walt does point out that they can make more money by working with him. While they are oddly reluctant, the deal does go through. Mike is still out and gets his $5 million. Jesse insists that he's out too, but Walt is oddly dismissive of the claims.
The scene where Jesse finally emphasizes the point is one of the highlights of the episode. It was rather odd how Walt's arguments jumped all over the place. One minute he'd talk about how great Jesse was, then he'd follow that up by talking about how he sucks at life and this is his only real purpose, then he talked about how no one else was going to die, and followed that by saying that they were already going to hell anyway, so whatever. It's jarring in hindsight, but it actually flowed surprisingly well. At the end of the day, though, Jesse walks, even forgoing his $5 million cut.
As such, Todd is brought in as Jesse's replacement. It's true, Todd doesn't know the chemistry, but Walt says he'll teach him, thus bringing the character full circle as he is doing what he was way back in the pilot. Credit where it's due, Todd seems to do fine. He seems to be off to a better start than Jesse was back in the day, so there's no reason he can't pick up on how all this stuff works. Both Todd and Walt do note that it'll take a few cooks for him to get it down, though.
On other fronts, Mike's exit isn't as smooth as he would probably like it. He's able to avoid the DEA as he knows they're tailing him, but the hazard pay ends up being his undoing as they are able to track the lawyer who delivered the funds to Fring's various underlings. Continuing the payments made sense as it kept them from flipping, so it was something of a Catch-22. The only thing that probably could have avoided it was if they hired more than one lawyer. Saul himself takes umbrage that they didn't involve him and doesn't speak highly of the lawyer that was used. I'm not sure that was a factor, but at the very least, using more than one lawyer would have covered their tracks a little better.
Speaking of covering tracks, Walt decides to store the methylamine in the car wash. Don't you generally want to keep the illicit activities away from your legitimate business front? That's the whole point of the thing. Walt says it's temporary, and it did have to go somewhere, but it was an odd tactic.
Another odd tactic was using the same distraught act that allowed Walt to plant the bug to remove it from Hank's office. It's probably tough to come up with reasons to just pop in to the DEA, but it was a bit of a stretch. Even Hank doesn't seem to be as sincere in his concern as he was the first time.
I felt bad for Mike's granddaughter. Sure, she has no idea that the money existed in the first place, so she's none the wiser, but she had nothing to do with it and you could only imagine the elation she'd feel waking up to find that she has a small fortune in her name. There's a sort of wish fulfillment there. Speaking of fortunes, it is still jaw dropping to see the amount of cash that is involved. Your mouth starts to water, it's nuts.
Oddly, Mike blames Walt for what's happening. He does give a good speech that calls Walt out on his pride and ego when Walt asks for the names of Fring's men. I do question how accurate his "you should have just kept cooking" claim is. It seemed like Gus was pressing things too. Walt was more than happy to keep cooking until he was backed into a corner.
In any event, Walt shoots Mike in revenge. Considering Mike's brutal beatdown of Walt a while back, I figured that Walt would milk this a bit more, but it's surprisingly abrupt. Heck, Walt even apologizes as he realizes that he could have gotten the information he needed from Lydia. He seems to show more remorse for Mike than the death of Drew, which lends credence to Jesse's earlier claim that Walt wasn't really all that torn up about it.
Thus we come to the mid-season finale. It looks like Walt's empire is starting to crumble before it even forms, but it's safe to say that Heisenburg won't go down without a fight. It should make for some good watching in the days to come.
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