It’s all about bonds: “A strong force of attraction,†Walt explains to an underachieving student. The episode explores the bonds between characters, both good and shady, and we even get a little romance! (As well as an exploding severed head atop a turtle … but more on that later!) To begin, we’re thrown into a strange music video. It’s a mariachi band singing about the New Mexican drug trade, and about Walt in particular. There’s some foreshadowing in the song about Walt’s drugs crossing the border to Mexico, and it ends on a gloomy note: “But that homey’s dead, he just doesn’t know it yet.†Uh-oh.
Walt and His Family
We see a very pregnant Skylar applying for a data-entry job at the firm where she used to work. After the receptionist smugly looks at her belly and dismisses her, Skylar insists on seeing the boss, Ted, whom she says will remember her. Why didn’t she just ask for him in the first place? Ted does, indeed, remember her, and there’s an awkward, tentative vibe between them. He offers Skylar her old job back, which she gladly takes. When she reports this to Marie, we find out she used to call Ted “Mr. Grabby Hands.†Then Walt finds out, and inquires about the toxic fumes at that office — it was why she quit four years ago, he thought. We realize that Skylar had lied to him about why she quit, since it obviously had to do with “Mr. Grabby Hands,†not mystery fumes. Look who has a secret of her own! When Skylar gets to work, Ted comes in to greet her (he has a wine stain on his shirt in the morning … hmmm). He tells her he left his wife and he’s happier now, and Skylar frowns at a picture on her desk of Walt.
Walt and the Drugs
There’s a rumor going around town that Jesse was the one who crushed Spooge’s head with an ATM (it was, remember, really his wife’s doing). Walt uses this to their advantage, and lets the drug community think that Jesse is a killer. Jesse, meanwhile, is holed up in his apartment, depressed from last week’s bloody escapade. We would be too, man. Walt decides to expand their trade based on Jesse’s new reputation. “You are a blowfish. You intimidate, but it’s all an illusion,†he tells him. Jesse relays the message to his minions about expansion, and they (and we) are excited about the development. In other news, Hank is stationed in his new DEA office in El Paso and is getting hassled because he’s the new guy who doesn’t speak Spanish. His unit is using a snitch (who calls himself the Turtle) to bust a drug deal, but when they get on-site, all they see is the snitch’s severed head atop a large desert tortoise. Yep. When they go closer to inspect it, Hank gets panicky and heads away just in time for the tortoise to explode and maim most of his collegues. Yep. Bizarre.
What’s Next?
Jesse and Jane, his landlord and love interest, have a very cute moment together. She’d shown him her tattoo sketches earlier (I’m also a “drawer†says Jesse … aw), and he invites her in to watch TV on his new flat-screen. The signal isn’t working, though, and while they sit together watching nothing, she takes hold of his hand. Aw, again. Jesse just keeps getting sweeter and sweeter. Walt, for his part, just keeps getting sicker and sicker. At one point, he has to run the shower to keep his family from hearing his hacking. Did the treatment not work? And will Skylar indulge in a work affair? We shall see.