Okay, back for some "Breaking Bad" and Sangria!
Open to an alternate POV flashback and our boy Gus is totally running smack at a helpless Teo. Who looks like he is about to stroke out. Pretty cool. One just wonders why the Mexi Cartel hasn't brought Teo back home. Are nursing facilities THAT much better in the US than Mexico? Now once upon a time a person would never ask that but today.....
Walt going way outside the normal envelope of human interaction with that drip at the cancer test place. Deservedly so, as the jizz-stain goes to the "god" card. Yeah, some micromanager in the sky decided to give you cancer, dimwit. Good job Walt on calling that bullshit for what it is. "Who is in charge? Me. That's how I live my life."
Gus, even, has to answer the phone "Pollos Hermanos, where something delicious is always cooking." Reminds the Monkey of the shitty job he once had at which it was dictated that we say "thank you for calling Ticketmaster, where American Express is the preferred method of payment." Not to mention names or anything. One also wonders what kind of corporate drip-ass fuckwad actually thought that up and that it was a good idea.
Whoa! Called in for a sitdown with the APD and DEA. Gus naturally owns their bitch asses, except for a dubious Hank. Pretty fucking bad ass that Gus was bankrolling chemistry students for more than a decade as potential meth trainees. They tease a mysterious past for Gus, fitting in with a hypothesis we read once as to Gus having been one of Pinochet's guys.
DEA bitches more or less buy Gus' story in toto. But why, we wonder, does nobody mention the issue Hank brought up last week as to:
1) pimping $300K meth cooking machine
2) made by company with ties to Pollos Hermanos
3) signed for by goofy Gale, apparently unpaid for and about which there is no current trace.
Lapse by the writers, as these guys do not ask about or even discuss this. Which would seem to be the biggest clue of all pointing at Gus. How does some organic tofu dweeb get that machine and then cause it to disappear?
Saul seems to have more hair and some plastic surgery in place since the prior season. But unlike Beastler, who will not go along with even having a nice bottle of wine, this shit actually makes sense for the character.
Oh fuck! And there is Beastler. Hiding money in dry-cleaning bage with clothing. The weight of which causes the closet bar to snap. Kind of like what probably happens with the floor when she walks around on it.
Holy crap! As Hank and Walt roll up on LPH and Hank expresses suspicion about Gus the tension for Walt practically shatters the screen. Cranston just KILLING it here. He needs the Emmy AGAIN if for this scene alone.
Awesome! Mike pulls up and Walt looks like he is going to spontaneously fly into about 8,000 pieces. God damn - without utterly bizarre fourth-wall shit like Beastler somehow gaining 50 pounds and having plastic surgery over the course of 1 week of "show" time, Breaking Bad would so be pushing The Wire for the spot at the top of the Pantheon.
Walt freaking out in the lab and ranting at the camera. This episode being Cranston's best work in the series to date.
Speaking of acting chops, Aaron Paul killing it too in the next scene."A plus douchebag to a minus douchebag equals zero douchebags." We are so adding that expression to our lexicon. Also, "breaking out a box cutter on his sorry gimp ass."
Used in a sentence: "Obitchba had a decent speech tonight, but wait till the negotiations start when Boner starts breaking out a box cutter on his sorry gimp ass."
Gus having the meth lab camera broadcasting to his laptop on the desk in his office - LOVE THAT. Hey, and speaking of The Wire we hope Gus and Mike are regularly swapping out burners and are not using their actual cellies for all this talk about what the DEA knows and whatnot. One would think so. And one would also think the task of obtaining burners would be outsourced to a higher caliber of flunky than Squeak and Bernard from Wire Season 3.
Long flashback to back in the day, with the Mexi Cartel guys breaking out Miami Vice gear. (One imagines this probably was how these dudes dressed in '86.) We meet Don Eladio, who kind of has a Bash Brothers era Jose Canseco vibe going about him.
Giancarlo rocking the shit on the acting tip here. Not only do they make him look 25 years younger, he conveys much less of the icy badass kingpin and much more of the young guy trying to make it in the world. Almost all of it nonverbally. Can you find any show or any season with actors like Cranston, Paul, Dean Norris, and Giancarlo Esposito working it like this? Certainly, Season 2 of the Wire stands transcendent in TV history in the Monkey's opinion from a thematic standpoint. But the ACTING right here, right now, in Breaking Bad is actually a step beyond.
Oooh, Jose Canseco starts working our guys here. Kills Gus' buddy, for whom the meth scholarship will one day be named. Then tells Gus that he knows who Gus really is. Which would appear to be some sort of diaspora from the Pinochet secret police apparat.
Leading the Monkey to wonder. Will John Yoo or David Addington someday change their names and open a chicken place in Australia or some shit?
Very good stuff this week. Acting-wise, probably the best BB episode yet. And too fucking bad that there are only four eps left this season. Here's hoping that Beastler gets a relative minimum of screen time over the next month.
