"You act like you never saw a severed human head on a tortoise before..."
It's an unusual beginning, to have the Mariachi band perform a song that seems to have been inspired by the events of the series, but I love it. Breaking Bad is doing things differently,approprate for an episode that seems to signify a bit of a gear change. The status quo is shifting, and so is the dramatis personae. This feels like a phase shift.
Most obviously, Jesse (the "blowfish"- I love how Walt delivers this backhanded compliment) is now seen as a badass who crushes those who cross him with ATM machines (not a sentence I've ever written before), and suddenly the way lies open for Walt and Jesse to corner the market in all of Albuquerque. Jesse is stunned, his underlings more so as they are promoted to "princes or dukes". Yet Walt remains calm, self-assured, amoral and ambitious. By this point he's moved far beyond being a desperate man who just wants the money for his medical bills: he sees life as having dealt him a bad hand, and is going to get a better one no mtter what. He's utterly ruthless- and, oddly enough, whatshows this most of all is his ruthless refusal to fudge a student's grades at the start. The steel is affecting what he does as a chemistry teacher as much as his new existence as a drug lord. At this point, the future looks bright.
Also, Skyler lands herself a job with a bloke with whom she has obvious history- this can surely only go in one direction. And Hank finds himself very much out of his depth in El Paso, intellectually (he's the only one who speaks no Spanish) and in terms of the potential violence, which erupts shockingy at the end. This way lies PTSD.
On a sweeter note, could Jesse and his landlady Jane be attracted to each other? If so, I can't exactly predict happy ever after. The plates are shifting, but things feel precarious. This is, needless to say, excellent stuff. No wonder they managed to get Danny Trejo.
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