Breaking Bad: “Dead Freight”

 

After last week’s sidestep into domestic drama, it’s back to the caper-riffic side of Breaking Bad, as the gang figures out that with Fring’s warehouse rigged with GPS trackers, the best way to get their base chemicals is to… rob a train. It sounds almost absurd, even to Walt at first, but the scheme unfolds into one of the most exciting episodes so far.

Walt has basically jettisoned his humanity, but Jesse, still torn up over killing Gail, wants to pull off their schemes without bloodshed — either from Lydia, who’s turning out to be less and less of a harmless player in the Fring empire with each episode, or from any innocent bystanders. It strains believability a bit that the cold-blooded Mike (and Walt) would go along with Jesse’s humanitarian plan, but they do, and, well…

The heist itself is a filmmaking (TV-making?) tour de force, with heart-pumping suspense and D.W. Griffith-worthy cross-cutting. And unlike with your average action flick, you don’t know if they’ll pull it off, because it’s Breaking Bad. In the end they do, but with a typically nasty twist.

My wife, a devoted Friday Night Lights fan, noticed that seemingly minor BB character Todd (one of the exterminator/B&E crew from a few episodes back) was played by Friday Night Lights’ Jesse Plemons, and immediately pegged him as a key role in this season. On this episode he started off seemingly just as an extra pair of hands for the heist (with Walt helpfully jogging his, and our, memory with a “What’s your name again?”), but turned out in the final seconds to be quite important indeed, in a bad way. Leave it to Breaking Bad to end an upbeat episode on the darkest of notes.

 

Best lines:

–       Mike, as he feeds Lydia her lines to give to Hank over the phone: “I’m expecting precision here.”

–       Skyler, looking desperately fabulous with her cigarette, spits at Walt as he heads out the door: “Out burying bodies?” Walt, still trying to impress her in spite of himself: “Robbing a train.”

 

Random thoughts:

–       Was Walt’s breakdown in Hank’s office simply a trick, to make the emotion-averse Hank go out for a coffee so Walt could bug the place up? Or was it also a handy excuse for Walt to have a real emotional moment? Those were actual tears he was wiping up, and he was talking about some real stuff.

–       It’s a Breaking Bad standby, but I love the fact that Jesse still calls Walt “Mr. White.”

–       Only three episodes left?! Damn. ■