This recap of Breaking Bad Season 5 Episode 5, “Dead Freight”, is made possible by The Bugseum of New Jersey, Insectropolis. Conveniently located on Route 9 in Toms River, Insectropolis has been described by a third grader named Andrew as, “Thank you for the moths. I really like them. I am going to buy a cage for them when they hatch. Thank you also for letting me hold your bugs.”
An unaccompanied minor rides a dirt bike across a desert, through a melange of badlands tints: burnt orange, umber, rust. He abruptly stops. With calm assurance he dismounts the dirt bike, crouches, and lifts a tarantula from the sand. The unaccompanied minor places the tarantula in a jar, confirming my natural suspicion that he is an aspiring entomologist. I reflect on my youth’s deserted days split betwixt arachnoid collection and motocross, how my shyness curtailed all attempts at human kinship or connection, and my life’s lone whisper of belonging was the growl of my dirt bike, the barely audible patter of spider legs on a mason jar’s thick glass…
Kidding! This unaccompanied minor is a total dweebo, unlike me a grown adult blog-haver. Walt White has nothing on this kid’s Pops in Bad Father Being. Drop the mike. Cue the credits. Bwwwoooiiinnnngggggg *hush hush* Breaking Bad.
Walt pays Hank a visit. Past experience dictates that Walt’s visit is free of ulterior motives and demonstrations of Hank’s piteous ineptitude as a deductive reasoner. “I’m a drug lord mass murderer,” says Walt. “Let me get you a coffee for ten minutes,” says Hank. Walt “bugs” (leitmotif this week=bugs) Hank’s office. Teleport to Mike’s torture porn dungeon, where Walt, Pink, and Mike are threatening to shoot Tattler Broad in the face with gun bullets. “Please do that,” says I. “Please shoot her in the face with gun bullets.”
Instead the deus ex machina saves Tattler Broad and she explicates an impossibly involved plan to hijack methylamine from a methylamine train. For a stuttering, preverbal tweaker, she seems to possess perfect information about this extemporaneously planned train heist. “How wide are the sprocket nodules on the anterior hatch node?” asks White. “Nineteen millimeters by This Is Ridiculous,” replies Lydia.
Walter Junior has been grounded from his platinum Gamecube for being emo. In acknowledgement of his rebellion, Marie has reverted to calling him “Flynn,” the hilarious nickname I forgot about until then and will laugh about now. Ha, ha! Back at The Pink House, Pinkman sells Walt & Mike on the textbook meth train bait & switch. Walt & Jesse drag Landry out into the desert (Could it be the same desert from the beginning?) to case the train tracks. “Guess I’m a character now,” says Landry. “Just you wait,” says Vince Gilligan.
Walt Junior locks himself in his room at the White House until Walt thou art banisheds him back to his Chrystler. A smoking, suicidal Skyler reiterates that Walt has put their entire family in danger, and I reiterate here: can she drown herself already? Their marriage has devolved into the Everybody Loves Raymond ouroboros of Walt wanting to play golf (read: cook meth) and Skyler allowing his golfing (read: mething) contingent upon her arbitrary appeasement (Her kids live in a house as Yellowbookable as her own). “I’m going to rob a train,” says Walt, as he goes to do that.
Bill Burr parks a dump truck on the train tracks and the heist goes over without a hitch and everyone gets away, scott free.
Kidding again! A deus ex machina Native American aparates into the heist’s gears in a Chevy and like a rocks Bill Burr’s dump truck out of there. Everyone gets frazzled, Lydia-style, except Walt, who is dead inside. Somehow, they pull it off, and celebration dance.
Then Landry kills the unaccompanied minor from the cold open. Stop celebration dance.
Speculative Next Week on Breaking Bad: Walt uses science, Pinkman screams no at someone who doesn’t listen, Skyler kills herself, Walter Junior and I start a post-hardcore band named “Flynn”, Mike produces gravel sounds with his throat, Lydia twitches, Landry kicks the game-winning field goal for Meth High, and Obama quits even airing attack ads during Breaking Bad because Mitt Romney is a walking dead Mitt Romney attack ad.
baby pictures of famous dictators 