LIVE: Breaking Bad, Episode Twelve
Two more episodes left until the season finale! And last week's episode set the stages for a massive, Jenga-like topple in last two installments.
The episode kicked off in Flashbacksville with the late Jane bringing Jesse to a Georgia O'Keefe retrospective, reminding us of Jane's importance to Jesse: she might've injected him with junk, but she also injected him with culture (and vaginas)!
Meanwhile, Walt finds his own Bonnie in Skyler — turns out she never signed the divorce papers, because spouses can't be made to testify against one another. True romance! Getting all Kingpin Eleanor Roosevelt, she goes so far as to overrule Saul's choice in money laundering destination (laser tag) to somewhere more believable: Walt's old part-time job at the car, where the investments are sound and the eyebrows are bushy.
While Hank struggled through humiliating, crotch-clenching physical therapy, Walt made his rounds at the dinner table, dining with still-his-wife Skyler and Walt Junior and later, Gus. The two cook a not-so-chemical meal together — Gus' handsome abode makes drug-slinging look positively bourgeois. Something Walt can get used to?
In Jesse's World, the little Jane bookmark at the beginning served as a parallel to the new love/sex interest introduced: Andrea, a Narcotics Anonymous member, a mother, and Jesse's new make-out partner slash client. But don't be fooled: it's not a relationship based on the mushy-gushy so much as business. Badger & Skinny Pete had a stroke of conscience and struggled to sell to the NA crowd, so Jesse decided to show them how to hustle.
Unfortunately, Jesse's Jiminy Cricket starts chirping once he meets her six-year-old kid — fortunately, that's followed quickly by a twist that would make M. Night Shyamalan bite his lip in envy. Andrea's little brother? The same kid who murdered Combo when Jesse tried to expand his drug-slinging territory last season. Environmentalists, take a page from Breaking Bad's writers — reduce, reuse, recycle!
The episode ends with Jesse buying meth off the same corner Combo saw his premature end — which leaves us viewers wondering if Jesse's cooking up something more potent than blue meth or huevos rancheros. Also, Skyler's increasing involvement in Walt's line of work make her and the family increasingly vulnerable to cartel attacks.
Did Gus really finish off all of the competition across the border? Are we finally about to see a definitive intersection between Walt's regular life and his life of crime? And will Jesse get more screwed by his skimming or his desire to avenge Combo? Let's hope the writers can braid together all of these frayed threads in the last two episodes.