The best show on Television (right now) is back and all is right with the world. Some fans (and non-fans) may have seen the season 5 posters of TV’s most complicated lead character ever, Walter White, sitting in a lab with mountains of cash and meth around him, and the tagline “All hail the king.” Welp, my sentiments exactly, for once, advertising captures a true message.
The fifth season picks up—-after the cold open—-almost immediately where the 4th season left off. The 4th season, of course, ended in a dazzling series-best episode that found the ever-scheming “Mr. White” manipulating his protege Jesse into helping him finally take down his nemesis Gus Fring. A moment of silence for Fring, one of the best villains that’s ever been on TV, a man who’s the mirror image of Walter (a deceptively mild-mannered meth lord hiding in the suburbs capable of great violence and revenge). And here’s hoping Giancarlo Esposito finally takes home that Emmy for Gus’s final season, after Walter’s plot to kill him (literally) ripped off the mask of civility he wore to the world, exposing him in a way Walter hopes to avoid in the season 5 opener…
[Read no further if you haven’t watched the episode, and really, you should. This isn’t a show that should be recapped.]
…What Happens: Season 5 actually begins with a flash forward of Walter’s 52nd birthday, just as the very first season began with his 50th birthday. In this quick scene, Walter is completely alone (with hair) at a Denny’s with a fake name/I.D. and a bogus backstory about being in town from New Hampshire, the “Live Free or Die” state that gives the episode its title. By the end of the scene, he’s just purchased a very large assault rifle, obviously for ominous purposes.
Then we get a Walter relaxing at home for a well-deserved drink, before remembering, oh shit, that Gus’s lab had cameras that captured him on them…cameras that lead back to a laptop already in police custody. He then recruits Mike—-who is extremely not happy to see him—-to help him and Jesse get the laptop out of a police evidence locker. Then the majority of the episode revolves around a hilarious and oddly realistic plot to wipe the laptop clean from outside the storage locker with a giant magnet. [It’s in these scenes that this episode reminded me of season 1 and 2 Breaking Bad, when Walt and Jesse are regularly forced to come up with plots that don’t go exactly as planned.]
We also find out that Skylar’s plot line with thought-to-be-deceased Ted Beneke isn’t fully over, as Ted was just badly injured, not dead. She visits him in the hospital, and he’s obviously scared to death of her. Then the episode ends with a meeting between Walter and Saul, which reveals that Saul was in on the plot to manipulate Jesse in season 4’s finale but did not know that Walter would poison Brock. He suggests ending his partnership with Walter, when Walter tells him “We’re done, when I say we’re done” in the episode’s best line. The final scene is of Walter coming home to a slightly terrified Skylar, telling her that he knows she gave the money to Ted, and that he “forgives her.” Walter hugs her in a chilling moment as the screen cuts to the credits.
Another brilliant episode and just enough to get us excited about seeing Walter as the new boss of Southwestern meth this season. The previews for next week—-buried in the commercial break for AMC’s new reality show Small Town Security—-also reveal that we’ll be getting to know Madrigal Electromotive soon. They’re the very top of the drug pyramid, the “legit” looking part, and it should be very interesting to see how this show deals with the corporate side of the drug business.
Anyway, a strong start to the beginning of the end (the first eight episode of the final season play this year, and the final eight play next summer). You can never predict exactly where this show is going—-a primary reason to love it—-so I’ll just have to give a grade based on what we were shown tonight, with the understanding that it will only get better when Hank begins to follow that Madrigal Cayman Islands Account number he stumbled upon at the close of the episode and the Germans arrive on the scene. Grade: A