Breaking Bad Season 5 Episode 1

Live Free or Die 

As a new comer to the Breaking Bad world, I just finished marathoning the entire show in preparation for new episodes, and the season 5 premiere did not disappoint from where the explosive season 4 finale left off. The biggest twist of season 5 has to be the cold open future Walt that we see, and things don't seem to be going well for him (but his has his hair back). Back to this present, the repercussions of killing Gus are felt in this episode, which leads to some great physical comedy in trying to retrieve evidence that could nail Walt, Jesse and Mike. And on that note, it is so good to see Mike back on the show.  For the most part, he is the mouth piece for the audience, which is greatly needed in this show since so many characters have hidden or alter agendas. Mike is mostly straight forward, yet complex at the same time.  

The last half of the episode played like a heist movie, but of course things have to go wrong (Walt and Jesse never have a long success rate, but that is what makes Breaking Bad so different). Gus’s laptop, which has the video evidence from the numerous cameras is taken as evidence by the local police and placed in the evidence locker. Mike and Walt bicker over which method would get them into the evidence room, or get rid of the evidence, but shockingly it is Jesse who comes up with the idea for magnets (followed by a nice hand visual of what the magnets would do) to get rid of the files on the hard drive.  

Old Joe (or the junk yard guy) reappears in helping build a large enough magnet that can zap the hard drive from 35 feet or so. A very powerful one at that. Then the heist is on, with Mike being the third man and executing his part(s) perfectly. Walt and Jesse teeter on the brink of genius until things go wrong. Jesse parts the van as close as he is able to the evidence room (in the garage) and Walt mans the dial for the magnet.  The evidence room’s content starts to sway back and forth, the all metallic objects are pulled to the wall. It is only in a panicked state that Walt cranks the dial up all the way, which causes the van to slam against the wall. All seems lost but Mike saves the day once more. But this entire risk may be in vain since a picture from Gus’s desk was broken in the evidence room and behind the innocent looking photo seems to be a list of bank accounts. Walt and Jesse strike again.

Hank is seen as the hero knowing about Gus all along while Skylar visits Ted in the hospital, who did not die when he tripped over the carpet, but just broke his neck. Kind of wished he died, but we get to see a transformation happen in Skylar. She becomes more like Walt in that she uses Ted’s fear to her advantage.  Walt also gets a nice, and by that I mean terrifying, conversation with Saul about the whole loss of $600,000 thing. Saul wants to be done with Walt, but Walt isn’t having any of that. After poising a child in the season 4 finale, Walt has crossed over in the darkside and hopefully this season we will see how far he goes.

As for next week, the promo shows the mysterious German company that owns Pollos Hermanos  having a meeting with the DEA / local cops. I’m really excited to see the people that held Gus’s leash all the years. If they are willing to put up with Gus, who knows what they are capable of doing.

Random note, no Marie in this episode and that’s a good thing. I was hoping they would kill her off in the season 4 finale, but alas they spared her life. She is such a one dimensional character on a show filled with complex and intricate people. Hopefully she will see her way out of the show somewhere in the next 15 episodes. 

Update: If the show is moving towards Walt being in that Denny's (are they a sponsor of the show?) and if they have more flashfowards, how will the show a dress the time jumps that the audience has already seen? Breaking Bad assumes that its audience is intelligent and keeps up with some if not most of the story / mythology, so there a number of options Breaking Bad could take when the show catches up with itself. One interesting way to do it would be to skip all the future Walt scenes that we have already seen, but this would risk alienating the audience.

Original Air Date: 7/15/2012
On AMC 10/9c time