This recap of Breaking Bad Season 5 Episode 4, “Fifty-One”, is sponsored in part by Dan Flaherty.com, the official website of the artist Dan Flaherty. Visit Dan Flaherty.com for the latest DanFla news, gossip, and conceptual arrangements of severed mannequin legs.
Nothing depreciates a Pontiak Aztek like using its vile angularity to murder drug dealers. As an astute Aztek owner in possession of perfect business acumen, Walter White understands this, cons his insurance company into footing the repair bill before selling his Aztek for $50 (Coincidentally, $50 is precisely the price I would pay for a Pontiak Aztek.). Whatever humanity Walt has lost, at least his decent human revulsion for insurance companies endures. He and Walter Junior buy new whips and it’s more or less Too Fast, Too Albuquerque and then it’s title cards. BOOIIIYYOOOIINNGG CHEECHAA RATTLE.
Breakfast at Castle Meth. Skyler is sitcom-wife upset at Walt about his mid-life crisis car purchase. “But at least our son never has to drive a PT Cruiser again,” says Walt. Everyone nods in total agreement, returns to their egg whites. Later that night, Walt and Skyler are domestic blissing in the bathroom. Walt’s rationalizing his psychopathy, Skyler’s contorting her face into a collapsed jungle gym of ennui. It’s what I envision my marriage will resemble circa 2020. They lay in bed, snuggle up under the duvet, and Walt presents Skyler with the yes, moleste.
Frazzled female caricature has an epileptic seizure as someone else is arrested, and I wonder, “Who deemed her fit for inclusion in a book club, much less a drug ring inner circle?” No one answers. Convinced Skyler is throwing him a Ciroc rooftop party, Walt stiffs Jesse with the meth cook cleanup (worst part of a meth cook, believe me), hurries home to find the same miraculous son and suicidal wife he finds everyday. Marie blabs to Hank about Skyler humping Paneke. Hank’s jaw hits the recyclable floor of the Prius. The good surprise is wasted on no one. Walt’s fifty-first birthday dinner goes off without a hitch, unless you consider his wife’s attempted suicide a hitch, in which case, dinner goes off with a hitch. Skyler forgot her swimmies.
Off-screen, Pinkman catches the red eye to Spazsylvania and is conned by Countess Spazula into thinking that the DEA have planted trackers on the methylamine barrels. Sound logic on her part, considering that the brother-in-law of the oblivious DEA agent running the investigation is a drug lord. Soaked Skyler, Worried Walt, Hapless Hank, and Muff-Cabbage Marie decide that Walt Junior & Meth Baby should stay with Hank & Marie for the time being. Sound logic on their part, if you discount the existence of Walt’s megalomaniacal tailspin toward self-demolition. Walt and Skyler retire to their bedchambers, nearly monologue each other’s faces off, and I am stretchered off in a body bag, dead from an overdose of anxiety brought on by fictive characters yelling. May the cancer never come back.
Hank and Tubbs construct a ridiculous crime ring bulletin board web out of AC Moore string and Facebook defaults. The truth remains out there. Hank is reassigned to somewhere he will never go. Pinkman informs Mike about Spaz, Mike announces she’s dead meat. Pinkman argues for Spaz’s continuance and Mike grouses acquiescence and Walt monologues a Nike commercial in his Asperger’s monotone and leaves.
Then Pinkman gives Walt a Fossil watch for his birthday and I cry.
Speculative Next Week on Breaking Bad: Walt synchronizes his Fossil watch to the Doomsday Clock, Pinkman argues with an airline attendant over wrongful assignation of frequent flier miles, Skyler kills herself, a distraught Walter Junior calls me to play Gamecube and I heartily accept, Mike cries, and Mitt Romney sets fire to what little remains of the middle class with tax increases and his Olympiad dressage horse, Rafalca, dances triumphantly on the ashes.
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