After their confrontation in the garage, both Walt and Hank have the exact same response: try to contact Skyler. It's for very different reasons, obviously. In the end, though Hank wins. It turns out that he's rather sympathetic towards her and asks her to help him put Walt away before the clock runs out. He even offers to house both her and the kids so that they can be safe from what he perceives to be a monster.
This leads to a lot of role swapping. Not only does Skyler utterly refuse to let Hank and Marie take the kids (a 180 from her earlier desire to keep the kids there as long as possible), but she is now in the position that Walt was in with Gus, desperately trying to prove that she didn't flip. Unlike Walt, she doesn't have the benefit of being able to tip Walt off and hinder Hank's investigation. She repeatedly attempts to call Walt, but the latter is convinced by Saul not to answer as the call could be bugged.
Saul has a...unique solution to the problem. He suggests "sending Hank to Belize"...much like they did with Mike. Even in full Heisenberg mode, Walt utterly refuses to consider the idea and chides Saul for suggesting doing such a thing to family. It's heartwarming in it's own peculiar way.
While Hank has a lot of the pieces, he doesn't really have enough evidence to build a full case (one of the reasons why he wanted Skyler to help). The only real concrete evidence is the huge stack of money that is sitting in Skyler's storage locker.
Seeing that stack again, it's still glorious. Even Saul's henchmen are taken aback by the size of it. They do what anyone would do and lie down on it for a while. I wonder if Skyler ever did that. "Making it rain" would be another option, but that would be a bit counterproductive as they do have to move the money and that would just make it harder to collect.
Strangely, Walt decides to bury the money by himself in the desert. This results in him passing out as soon as he gets home. I get the feeling that this was supposed to be a sign of his cancer returning, but couldn't it just be exhaustion? He was doing hard work out in the desert for a lengthy period of time. He didn't appear to have any water with him, so dehydration could have been a factor too. Maybe it was a combination of everything. Despite Walt hitting his head on the tile floor, it never occurs to Skyler to take him to the hospital. He wakes up eventually, but no one considers the idea that he has a concussion.
Walt does tell Skyler that he'll turn himself in as long as they don't reveal the location of the money. He wants to make sure that everything he did wasn't for nothing. Skyler does him one better and says that he shouldn't turn himself in at all.
Sadly, Jesse doesn't appear much in the episode. We see him in the episode's open, just after his giveaway. He's not doing so well, just sitting in a park staring at the sky. He's found by a nearby resident who collects not only the stack in his lawn, but the wads in adjacent lawns. On the one hand, one can't blame the guy, but at the same time, he had his cut already. Those other wads were clearly meant for other people.
Jesse shows up again at the end, after he's been brought in by authorities who want to know more about his money. It makes for an interesting bookend to the episode.
The episode hinges on both Hank and Skyler and both Norris and Gunn do a good job of carrying the weight. Hank's shock and anger is still apparent. It gets elaborated on a bit as Hank notes that bringing in Heisenburg will mark the end of his career. Both he and Marie are still determined though.
Yes, Marie knows now too. Just as Hank confronted Walt last episode, the two sisters have a not so friendly chat. Where Hank gives Skyler the benefit of the doubt, Marie becomes furious when she realizes just how long Skyler has been in on Walt's secret. Marie even goes so far as to try and take Skyler's daughter, though even Hank steps in to convince her not to go through with it.
While the episode title fits, one could argue that it should have been called "Cat's out of the Bag". It makes more sense as the fallout from Hank's discovery is the more prominently featured plot point, but it would also act as a nice mirror to the first season episode "Cat's in the Bag".
I was surprised to read that there was quite a bit of speculation about the significance of the numbers on Walt's lottery ticket. It seemed obvious that they were just the coordinates of where he hid the money. The ticket was just a way of having those on hand without drawing suspicion. For those curious, the actual real world coordinates lead to the studio where the show is filmed. It's a nice Easter egg, but nothing Earth shattering. Frankly, I'd find it odd if the numbers did have any more significance. Introducing something like that this late in the game is rather pointless. Maybe if they were numbers that had popped up in the show before, you could see it s some sort of symbolism, but that isn't the case.
This wasn't a powerhouse episode, but it was engaging enough. It was largely character driven, which worked rather well. It did manage to advance things and set them up for future development as we move closer to the show's end.
On the one hand, my brain wants to say that there's only six episodes left. On the other hand, that's half a season, so who knows where the show is going to go from here? Well, besides the people who have already watched it, I mean...or the people who made it.
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