Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

Breaking Bad

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Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

By Joe R | Season 4 | Episode 9 | Aired on 09.11.2011

In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description!

Hank checks the tracker he put on Gus's car, which only shows a week's worth of trips from home to work and back again. But he's dogged, so he Google-fu's the location of the Pollos "main distribution center," a.k.a. the chicken farm. Walt tips Mike off about this, so Mike and Jesse get to scrubbing the warehouse clean. Afterwards, there's a shootout in front of the farm, killing one anonymous redshirt and giving Mike the opportunity to save Jesse's life. Gus also goes all "King Kong ain't got shit on me!" as he strides out towards the unseen sniper with his arms outstretched, daring him to kill him. The sniper declines.

After making Walter help dispose of the redshirt's corpse, Mike sets up a meeting between Gus and Jesse at Gus's house. Jesse considers dosing the stew with ricin but decides the communal pot of food they'll both be dining from isn't the best place for poison. Gus then asks Jesse if he can cook the blue stuff without Walter. Not so Gus can kill Walt, like Jesse's thinking (Jesse emphatically says that killing Walter means Gus will have to kill him too), but so Jesse can go to Mexico and train others to cook the blue stuff too, which appears to be a condition of the cartel's in order to stop the war.

Jesse calls Walt over to tell him about this, only in the meantime, Walt had placed a tracker of his own on Jesse's car, only to discover Jesse's meeting with Gus. So when Jesse lies and says Mike was the one who approached him about Mexico, Walt busts him. He berates Jesse for not having the guts to kill Gus, and Jesse figures out Walt bugged his car. The trust, she is gone. Walt tells Jesse to go ahead to Mexico and screw up "like I know you will" and wind up in a barrel somewhere. At this, Jesse throws the tracker at Walt and nails him in the eyebrow. FIGHT! The two men brawl, busting up Jesse's newly rehabilitated home (Jesse's house is the Aztek of this season). Jesse ultimately comes out on top, but it's their seasons-long, complicated, not always healthy relationship that's the true casualty. Jesse never wants to see Walt again.

In B-plot news, Skyler thinks the car wash is going well enough that she wants to go legit. Only she's soon visited by the Ghost of Indiscretions Past, "I Fucked" Ted Beneke. Goddamn Ted arrives with the awful news that he's being audited by the criminal division of the IRS. He's facing prison time, and worse, an investigation into his books will lead the Feds right to Skyler's doorstep. So Skyler's solution is to go all Erin Brockovich on the auditor, using her décolletage and a "Don't ask me, I'm just a girl!" routine to convince the IRS she was merely incompetent rather than criminal. That works for now, but Ted still needs to pay his back taxes and penalties to keep the IRS away. Only he's beyond broke. If only Skyler knew where she could find bags and bags of vacuum-sealed money...

Want more? The full recap starts right below!

Previously: Hank told Walt to put a tracking device on Gus's car, Walt was scared shitless, but Gus was like, "Go ahead, hombre. I've been dead inside ever since that guy from Scarface killed my part-time lover." Meanwhile, Walt cooked up some ricin so Jesse could dose Gus and off him for good, but Mike and Gus have been making him feel so good about his worth as a human being that he's slightly hesitant about killing them as a favor to the mean old chem teacher who always yells at him. Also, Skyler fucked Ted. ...Oh, we back on that again?

We're going artsy minimalist with the cold open this week, starting with a closeup of glasses -- one lens popped out of the frame -- lying on a hardwood floor. It's joined by a drop of blood, then another, then another. Then, as you should have expected, a POV shot from the floor. Blood on the lens! Breaking Bad, you do not let me down. The blood trickles onto a pair of moccasins next, followed by someone picking up the broken glasses. The cut to the title card makes sure we know this is all very important and will come into play very soon.

It doesn't take us more than half a second after the credits to see that those moccasins from a second ago belong to Walt. Ever the hip fella with the footwear, Walter. He's at the Schrader abode, picking up Hank to go to another "rock exhibit." Marie jokes that they're probably just sneaking off to a strip club. Which, whatever, out of the house is out of the house. An exterior shot of Hank and Marie's house is shockingly free of purple -- no wait! Umbrella at the patio table. Almost missed it all closed up like it is. And the plant potters at the front of the driveway. Okay, good. Marie's still got it! On the drive, the pretense of the rock show is dropped, and Hank is super antsy about retrieving the tracker and finding out where Gus has been all week. Walt is visibly tense and petrified, and checking the rearview mirror to see who's following them. Hank sees this and tells Walt to lighten up. Then he starts singing "Eye of the Tiger," all "BOMP BOMP BOMP!" and belting the wrong lyrics. They pull into Pollos Amantes, and we see that indeed, Tyrus has been following them. Walt retrieves the device and returns right back to the car, as Hank WTFs at him for not preserving his cover by going in and ordering a burger.

Back at Hank's house, he plugs the tracker into his computer. It synchs up, only to tell Hank the most dispiriting news possible. A week's worth of Gus Fring's trips to work, back home, over and over again. Hank calls Gus a "chicken-slinging son of a bitch," while Walt softly tries to push the idea that maybe Gus is not his guy. Hank's not buying. "A guy this clean has got to be dirty," he deduces. "What's my play here?" he wonders, mostly to himself. "How do I get this guy?" That question weighs heavily on Walt too. "Yeah," he says. "How?"

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