Sunday night marked the beginning of the last eight episodes of Breaking Bad. The last episode we saw ended with a cliffhanger that will drive the final eight episodes of one of the greatest shows ever on television. Your Major Spoilers’ review of last nights episode Blood Money has moments of spoilers and is right after the jump!

SUMMARY

Pros
Skyler laying down the law on Lydia
NEW BREAKING BAD!!

Cons
Everyone still hating on Jesse
Episode ended.

Overall Rating:

READER RATING!

[ratings]

Previously on Breaking Bad: Walt enters the empire business by successfully taking out Gus Fring and starting fresh with Mike and Jesse. Bodies begin to fall as loose ends need to be tied up for Gus’s production not come back and ruin what Walt is starting. Mike and Jesse looked for ways out to escape the path of destruction in front and behind them all and Walt gives both ways out personally. In the final moment of the first half of season five, Hank takes a fateful sit on Walt’s toilet and finds a clue connecting his brother-in-law and master meth cook Heisenberg as one and the same.

HAVE AN A1 DAY 

Blood Money opens in the same fashion as the beginning of Season 5 did with a look into the future as a grizzled, dirty Walt drives up to his Albuquerque home which is rundown and fenced off. Reasons for why the house has been blocked off from the public start to surface when Walt enters his home and we see  “Heisenberg” graffitied onto the wall. Of course, we leave the opening of the episode with more questions than answers as we see the sole reason Walt came back to his home was to retrieve the ricin which he hid behind an electrical socket.

Back into the present we pick right up outside the bathroom in which Hank took that fateful number two leading him to an epiphany about who W.W. is. Realizing that Walt could be the Heisenberg he has been hunting for over a year sets him off an a hunt through all the evidence ever tied to the creator of blue meth. Hank searches through boxes of evidence in his garage giving us glimpses of what really is the long list of individuals, at least those known, to have died in connection to the Albuquerque.

Jesse makes his episode appearance in his home as his long-time friends Skinny Pete and Badger discuss Star Trek. In the most light-hearted point of the episode Badger tells Pete the Stark Trek episode that he has written which is essentially a giant pie eating contest amongst the crew members of Enterprise. Including this scene was necessary to bring back the comedy that has always ran through Breaking Bad, but also to show just how distraught Jesse is over what has happened in the preceding months. As Jesse tries to take the highroad and care for those who have been indirectly affected by Walt’s meth empire, he is told by both Saul and Walt that he is acting irrational, showing just how dark most have become.

As I made my predictions for how these final episodes would be structured I guessed that the Hank/Walt confrontation that has been destined for over a season would finally happen in third episode of this set. Oh how wrong I was. The final sequence Sunday night featured Walt confronting Hank about a bug he planted on his car leading to a fist to the face, Hank laying out what he believes about his brother-in-law, and Walt saying none of that even matters because in six months he will be dead due to his cancer returning. You read that right, Walt’s cancer is back. Hank is the only person to know, which makes sense because why would Walt tell the woman who recently told him she looks forward to the day his cancer returns.

YOU HAVE TO TRUST ME

Playing the Walt/Hank meeting this early was certainly a surprise, but was made possible by Hank doing this all off record from his job at the DEA. Conducting his research from his garage tells us a couple things. One: Hank is truly a horrible employee that should have been fired multiple times by now. Two: It continues to show that Hank’s finding of Heisenberg is more of a personal vendetta, one which he seems willing to handle outside the law. And three: Hank wants to protect Walt’s family and his own by not involving the DEA, at least for now.

Symmetry has always been prevalent in Breaking Bad, most noticeably seen in the shot composition throughout the entire run of the show. But now we are seeing symmetry in the grand story of Walt as he was diagnosed with caner in season one and now it has returned for the ending. Walt’s hiding of this cancer is also reminiscent of the first season, but now he is hiding his condition for different reasons.

Relationships will certainly be tested more than ever as Walt tries to protect himself, Skyler, his children, and, of course, Jesse. The Walt/Jesse relationship is the resolve I’m most interested seeing, especially after Walt pleads with Jesse about needing to trust him in regard to Mike being safe. You have to ask yourself, ‘Why does Walt need Jesse to believe him so much?” Is it because if Jesse learns that Walt murdered Mike that Walt will need to murder him as well?

THE BOTTOM LINE: TREAD LIGHTLY

Blood Money wastes no time in getting right to the punches and with only seven more episodes that is exactly what I wanted to see. Many questions still have to be resolved; Will Lydia successfully pull Walt back into the meth business to better the 67% purity that is currently being cooked in his absence? Who is Walt going to use the ricin on? How will Jesse charity the rest of his 5 million dollars? You can bet more will be revealed next week and that Major Spoilers will be here to give you a run down and review of Buried next Monday!

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