Walt Broke Bad And Hank Knows. What Do? - "Breaking Bad" Recap

In last night’s episode of Breaking Bad, boasting the slightly soap opera-ish title Confessions, Walt continued to openly and shamelessly manipulated his family, while Jesse continued his confused – not so much in this episode - search for identity. Now might be a good time to make that spoiler warning – anything you read ahead will probably contain a massive spoiler for the eleventh episode of season 5, so if you haven’t watched it, you might want to switch over to the Jesse Pinkman Guide For Identifying B*****s or something.

The episode saw Hank still looking for a way to expose his brother-in-law as Heisenberg, which drove Walt to all but abandon any pretense that he wasn’t, in fact, a drug kingpin. During a particularly tense dinner with with Hank, Skyler and Marie, he shows Hank exactly why it wasn’t a good idea to mess with the real Heisenberg – in his most cold-blooded display to date, Walter plays an audio confession, exposing himself as the lowly chemist behind Heisenberg’s massive operation, while the real mastermind is exposed as agent Hank Shrader. The story makes perfect use of Hank’s notable temper outbursts, as well as his connection to Gus Fring.

While Walt protects his empire, the revelation that it was Walt who poisoned Brock many episodes ago resolves Jesse’s internal dilemma and sets him on the warpath. While the cliffhanger we’re left on – Mr Pinkman setting up to burn down the home his former mentor, boss, benefactor and father figure – isn’t exactly the most mysterious (the Whites’ house survives in many a flash forward) it works perfectly, if only for the catharsis in Jesse’s story. Still, let’s not make any hasty conclusions. The house clearly survived and there is plenty of time until the show’s end about a month from now for Jesse to cross over to the dark side and back again several times.