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Breaking Bad: Grilled

By fred | March 16, 2009

(S02E02) Last week we left our two drug dealer in a very bad position: inside Jesse’s car, with an armed, pissed off Tuco in the back, who might have been coming to get them as part of his plan to kill everyone. The question on our minds, knowing this, was of course what the Hell does Tuco want? what he is going to do? what will happen to Walter & Jesse? how will they get out of this alive?

Skyler doesn’t know all that we do, but she knows Walter has been acting strange lately, she knows he’s been tense and troubled, worried even, though he never said why. She knows in was in the house one second, and gone the next. And while it’s not the first time he disappears, or spends the entire day God knows where doing God knows what, this time it was different.

Not just because he looked depressed and worried about something, but because he just vanished, like that, without saying a word, without taking his car, he just disappeared without a word, nobody knows where he is, and no one can get him on the phone. I thought that to be handing out “missing person” posters all over town the very next day might be a little over-reacting, but I guess she needed to be doing something.

Evidently both her and Walter’s lives are going downhill lately, but Walter chose his path, he could have looked for another job, he could have accepted the money from his old friend, but he decided to cook meth instead, and associated with people as crazy as Tuco, so even if he probably never envisioned to end up in the truck of a car not sure whether or not he’ll get out of there alive, Skyler is in a much worse position.

She never asked for any of this, and she doesn’t know anything about what’s going on, what’s happening to Walter and why he could be missing. We were all dying to find out what happened to him & Jesse, but instead the episode focused first on his family, on Skyler desperately trying to understand what was going on, and Hank of course, DEA agent Hank both closing in on Tuco at work, while looking for Walter on the side.

Every day Hank is getting closer and closer to Walter, and he might soon become the biggest threat in Walter’s new life, before any crazy drug dealer. When we finally got back to Walter & Jesse, we got to see nothing changed for them. They’re still in deep trouble, and while trying to get out of it we still have humor along the way, which probably helped getting through those scenes where tension was always to the max, and kept increasing as Tuco was snorting meth and his uncle kept planting doubts in his head regarding his guests.

Jesse first tried to get Tuco to get the poison the cooked last time, but it failed with a nice callback to previous episodes, and so did Walter’s attempt later on. I have to say, though, I’m not sure how this would have helped them anyways. Unless I’m wrong, I though this was meant to eventually kill Tuco, like in a couple days after he took it, and looking very much like a heart attack or something. So, yes, the guy would be dead, but Walter & Jesse would have been somewhere in Mexico by the time he finally did drop dead!

It was fun to see them try to come up with a plan though, and then fight the old man not as out of it as he first appeared to be. I also loved how Jesse basically said Walter could go on and risk his life, since he was dead already anyways it wasn’t a big deal. Nice thing to say, especially after the guy saved your life, as Walter stood out to Tuco claiming he absolutely needed Jesse to stay alive, that they were a team, and came together or not at all.

In the end though Jesse proved to be strong as well, and managed not only to engage in a fight with Tuco at the right time, but also had the lucidity to grab his gun and shoot the guy before he got beat up to death! Impressive. But then, they both did the stupidest thing they ever could have done, deciding not to kill Tuco but to “let him bleed” as Walter said.

It might have turned out in the end to work out okay for them, but that was certainly the bad decision, and I can’t even believe Walter made it. Sure, we’re talking about killing a guy here, but it’s not like this would have been the first time they went down that road, and more importantly we were talking about letting him live, letting him live while we know his cousins are coming, will be there within hours, and they’ll be pissed. Tuco might have been alive by then, and he knew Walter’s real name, he knew where he lives and that he has a wife and son!

Tuco was never as much of a real, definitive target to Walter’s family as he was then, now that he knew all about Walter and had just been shot and left to die. There is simply no way they should have let the guy alive, they should have made sure he was really dead before leaving. But they did not, and luckily for them it wasn’t the cousins but Hank who showed up.

Now, Walter and Jesse managed to run away alive from this mess, but they’ll have a lot of explaining to do, and I have no idea how they’ll get out of this. Walter needs to explain why he suddenly left and where he was all this time, and Jesse needs to explain why his car was at Tuco’s with guns inside. Hank will also probably be curious as to who might have shot Tuco before he got there, and let’s not forget the old man inside the house, who knows and could identify both of them. If Hank has no reason to show him a picture of Walter, I don’t see how he could not show him one of Jesse!

At this point, the biggest threat is without a doubt Hank, and I’m not sure there’s anything they could do to get out of this mess. One thing for sure, this was another fantastic episode, and once again I can’t wait to find out what will happen next!

What did everybody else think?

Posted in Reviews
Shows: Breaking Bad