Breaking Bad - Season 5 Episode 2 - Video Recap and Review - Madrigal

In the follow-up to last week's season premiere, Breaking Bad ups the ante with "Madrigal." The DEA is getting closer to the truth, Walt is getting further from redemption, and Mike is resting somewhere in the middle.

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The cold open sets the scene of what's to come: Herr Schuler, a high-level executive for Madrigal Electromotive GmbH, the company which owns Fring's cover operation Los Pollos Hermanos, commits suicide-by-defibrillator in the bathroom when the cops come a-knockin'. They're investigating his connection with Fring and his drug operation (the two men are seen in a photo together in the office in which the police are waiting). Thus we have our setup for the episode: The cops are getting closer. Perhaps too close for comfort. And the bigwigs would rather die than face the consequences of what they've done.

Speaking of which...

Jesse calls Walt, freaking out about his inability to find the ricin cigarette (which we learned last week was lifted off of Jesse at the end of season four when Saul Goodman's bodyguard Huell patted him down). Over this panicked phone call, we see Walt manufacturing a new ricin cigarette to plant in his apartment when he goes over to help Jesse search. Walt takes advantage of Jesse's established reliance on his Roomba to do all his cleaning for him, and suggests that perhaps the Roomba picked up the cigarette. The entire ricin segment, from Walt creating a new cigarette to helping Jesse search his apartment, is classic Breaking Bad, if only for the stylized nature of a montage showing two people doing something as mundane as going through trash and tearing pillows apart. The montage also strikes to the heart of Jesse's desperation to find the cigarette and put his fears about his culpability in Brock's poisoning to rest. Though it might seem as though Walt is simply manipulating Jesse further, showing the furtherance of his moral bankruptcy, the simple fact is that Jesse isn't much use to Walt if he can't get over Brock's near-death. Walt wanting to allay his partner's fears was strangely touching, yet absolutely chilling given what we know of Walt's own culpability.

Jesse breaks down and apologizes to Walt upon finding the cigarette in the Roomba, and it's a devastatingly emotional scene for Aaron Paul (and Bryan Cranston, for that matter). Jesse begs Walt's forgiveness for nearly shooting him on his (unknowingly correct) suspicions that Walt poisoned Brock, while Walt plays the father figure, insisting that Jesse not blame himself, and reasserting just how much his partnership with Jesse means to him. It'd be beautiful if it weren't built on treachery, even though that latter part of Walt's speech to Jesse is likely true. Either way, it's a tremendous scene, and further reinforces why both Cranston and Paul received well-deserved Emmy nominations this past Thursday.

Of course, the business with the cigarette is simply a segue for Walt to propose to Jesse that they get cooking again. They try to get Mike (Jonathan Banks) in on the partnership, as he has a number of valuable contacts at his disposal, to say nothing of his own skills as a fixer and enforcer, but the former beat cop turns down Walt's offer, declaring Walt a “ticking time bomb.” This observation goes to the heart of what Walter White has become through his progressing ambition and unbridled hubris (we'll get to that in a bit). That said, Mike probably isn't in the best position to help Walt at this point, even if he wanted to, as he has his own problems to worry about. The DEA has discovered Fring's Cayman Islands bank account (thanks to the broken photo in the evidence room last week), and has learned that there's two millions dollars in the name of Mike's granddaughter. Mike stays cool and gives up nothing, but it's clear that the potential involvement of his granddaughter in the investigation has unsettled him. And it's only the beginning of Mike's troubles.

Lydia (Laura Fraser), a frightened former associate of Fring's and employee of Madrigal Electromotives, is worried that the DEA is getting too close, and meets with Mike at Denny's to discuss their options. Lydia, having seen one too many gangster flicks, insists that they kill every person on her list of the eleven people that could bring them down. Mike immediately shoots down this idea and asserts that every last one of the eleven names on Lydia's list are his guys, each one solid to a fault. That doesn't stop her from going through with the plan anyway, sending a man to go kill Mr. Chow, the owner of the industrial chemical manufacturing plant that supplied the chemicals for Gus Fring's operation.

After being forced, at gunpoint, to lure Mike to his home with a panicked phone call, Chow is murdered by the hitman, who then waits by the door for Mike. However, Mike is already way ahead of the assailant and, using one of his granddaughter's toys to make a racket at the front door while he sneaks in through the back, gets the drop on the would-be killer. Mike learns that not only had Lydia put out hits on all eleven men on the list, but she's also placed a hit on Mike as well. Mike understands how desperately the hitman, a former associate of Mike's, needed the money, and Jonathan Banks is tremendous for how he can sell sympathy, even empathy, with people he's about to kill. But that never changes the fact that he must kill them. Mike is scarily efficient in this episode, and it hardly stops at the hitman, as he tracks Lydia down and takes her unawares as she comes home to her five year-old daughter. It's incredibly tense, Mike holding Lydia at gunpoint with her daughter and the nanny just down the corridor, threatening to happen upon the scene at any moment. It gets even more nerve-wracking as Lydia pleads for Mike not to make her “disappear,” to allow her body to be discovered so that her little girl doesn't grow up thinking her mother abandoned her. Surprisingly, Mike decides to spare Lydia, though it's unclear whether he does so to spare her daughter the gruesome fate of discovering her mother's ruined corpse (or the alternative, a life of presumed abandonment), or for what she can offer him (the methylamine Walt needs to get his new Heisenberg operation off the ground). Either way, the outcome is the same: Mike calls Walt to let him know he's reconsidered the offer. He's in. And Mike is definitely someone you want on your team, and not with the other guys.

This brings us back to Walt's hubris. After basking in the realization that, with Mike on his side, he's finally back in business, he attempts to seduce a bed-ridden Skylar. As he rains kissing down on her neck, he essentially tells her how it's going to be: him and his men doing what is necessary, and doing it for the right reasons. For family. But it rings hollow coming from Walt. He might well mean what he says, but his are the actions of a man pressing his luck. As Walt goes deeper into Scarface territory, the more the Heisenberg myth seems a facade. Walter White isn't the hard-nosed man he thinks he is, and all hell is going to break lose when that realization comes. And it's only a matter of when.

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