Breaking Bad - Episode 4.01 - Box Cutter - Recap

Yesterday's season premiere of Breaking Bad was awesome. I am sure that my recap alone doesn't capture all of the tension and extreme awesome that it had to offer so I highly suggest you watch it if you have the chance.

The episode starts off with a flashback to Gus and Gale meeting up in the lab. Gale happily opens up all the new machinery in Gus’s super lab meth dungeon. The camera pans over and we watch Gale use a green box cutter. (This will be more important later) Gale continues to act like a child on Christmas and the camera pans over to Gale’s lab notes, from which he takes out a sample of Walt’s blue meth, which he has tested and taken notes on. Gale asks Gus if this sample he tested is their competition, because it is really good. Gale tells him that while he can only guarantee 96% purity per batch, this sample is 99% pure and that 3% difference makes a big difference. Gale wants to know who synthesized it, with the hopes that this person might join him as cook in super lab. Gus tells him that the sample comes from another chemist who is talented but not professional enough to join Gale in the lab. Even though he stays silent, we can see on Gus’s face that he is now considering adding Walt to the super lab. This is how it all began.

And this is how it all ends: we cut to seconds after last season ended with the shooting of Gale. As the camera moves along his apartment we can see his old lab book, a hookah, and a tea kettle with a bullet hole. We hear his next door neighbor calling the police to report hearing a single gunshot and we assume his death. We still haven’t seen any body yet so maybe Jesse didn’t do it after all? Nope. This is Breaking Bad and when people go to murder someone they usually do. In the midst of the 9-1-1 call Victor, Gus’s right hand man, shows up and checks to see if Gale has really be shot. Finally the camera looks down and we see Gale lying dead on the floor with a bullet hole through his head. Victor runs outside and sees Jesse sitting in his car, still thinking about what just happened. Victor holds him up and orders him to take him to super lab so that Gus can deal with him.

Back at super lab Walt and Mike the Private Eye are sitting in the lab waiting for Jesse and Victor to show up. Practically nothing is spoken but it is still incredibly tense. Victor is now real angry and Mike checks in with him, getting the news that Gale is in fact dead now. And that he had no time to sweep/clean up the crime scene. And he was seen by the people who were making the 911 call. This is not good. Mike calls Gus to tell him to come down. The camera moves over to Walt sitting by himself, looking proud but scared. I’d probably be proud too if I thought I had bested a terrifying drug lord. Little does he know…

Cut to Skyler being woken up by her sister Marie who has brought more bills that she needs Skyler to pay. It seems like Skyler has found a pretty good way to use that giant duffel bag of drug money Walt gave her last season. Just by sheer number it seems like Hank’s bills keep getting bigger and bigger but Skyler insists it is fine and she’ll take care of it. Before she leaves to run some errands Marie notices that Walt’s car is parked in the driveway and wonders if that means that they are back together. This confuses Skyler because he has no idea where Walt is, but she doesn’t respond and Marie just assumes Walt is catching up on sleep from last night. Wink! Marie runs off to complete her daily errands and Skyler creeps around the house to look for Walt and to see if Walt Jr. is awake yet. Luckily he is listening to music so she goes outside and takes the keys from a hidden spot under one of the tires and moves the car so that if anyone is looking for Walt they wont first check her house. She is thinking more and more like a criminal.

Back at the super lab Mike and Victor are silently watching Jesse and Walt as they wait for Gus. Victor tells Walt to shut up when he mentions that they need to start up a cook within the next ten minutes in order to keep up with Gus’s production schedule. Gus may be mad now about them killing Gale, but losing a whole batch would make him madder. Victor silently gets up and begins setting up different machines to start cooking. At first it looks like Victor is going to let them cook but then he actually starts cooking and lets Walt in on a secret. The issue was never that there weren’t other people who couldn’t cook. He has been watching them closely for weeks and knows every single step of the process. All he has to do is follow directions and in his mind he will be just like Walt. Walt is definitely scared for his life now.

At Saul’s legal office we see a junkie trying to get in, only to have Saul’s new large bodyguard tell him that they are closed. Saul’s mouth breathing receptionist picks up the phone and yells out that it is from Skyler. She gets no initial response which persuades her to go into his office, only to find him on the ground checking to see if he is being wire tapped somewhere in the room. The events of lat season seem to have made Saul very nervous, especially now that he knows where Mike’s real loyalties are. Saul gets up from the floor and picks up on Skyler who tells him that she has no idea where Walt is and is getting worried. Saul says not to be worried and that Walt is probably fine. We see that Saul has moved this conversation to a public pay phone and is holding it with a piece of cloth, in order to not leave finger prints. Saul is very paranoid. Unsatisfied, Skyler drives to Walt’s condominium and tries to buzz in only to find out nobody is home. We see that she has left her baby in the car, confirming that not only is she thinking more like a criminal she is also not a super great mother. Eventually she gets fed up and decides to calls up a locksmith to get him to open Walt’s apartment. Unfortunately it isn’t her apartment so she uses a fake story to get the locksmith to open the door, even though she doesn’t have any proof of ownership. (which why would she because it’s his apartment) He finally lets her in after she puts on an impressive show that includes lying about a robbery, faking a panic attack, and making the locksmith hold her baby while she tries to catch her breath. Once inside she checks around the apartment but Walt is nowhere to be found. The only thing that she can find is the single plastic teddy bear eye from last season. That eye is really creepy.

Next we see Marie pull up to her and Hanks house. Inside we see him bidding on minerals online, possibly trying to use them as some kind of new age healing or possibly as some kind of strange collection he as started up to keep his mind off of things. Marie asks Hank how physical training went because she heard from his therapist that he broke new ground today. Hank angrily lets her know that he walked 16 feet in 10 minutes, which is something he hardly considers breaking new ground, but she stays positive. She may be a kleptomaniac but she still wants to keep on a happy face for Hank, who is clearly in a lot of pain. He tells Marie that he has to go to the bathroom and she helps him put the bedpan underneath him as he lifts himself up. Hand looks very upset and belittled. It was pretty sad to watch.

Back at the lab Victor is finishing up the meth cooking while Walt is playing the part of Statler and Waldorf and commenting on how he is messing up and will probably forget to add the Aluminum. Unfortunately for Walt he adds it in at the last second and we can hear the increased desperation with every insult he lops at Victor. If Walt can’t prove why he and Jesse should stay alive Gus will most definitely kill them. Suddenly Gus arrives and everything becomes incredibly tense and silent. This entire scene Gus barely speaks a single word, yet still manages to be on of the creepiest and scariest people to have ever been on the show. Gus is not a man to be messed with. Victor looks up at Gus proudly, knowing that he just finished today’s batch and that his boss will now most likely kill these two rats. Instead Gus silently goes behind them and takes off his clothes, putting on a lab uniform and even changing out of his shoes. Is Gus going to join in on the cooking? Walt starts to talk to him about Gale and how he liked him and didn’t want him to die like he did, but that he made the mistake of pitting Gale against Jesse and Walt. Walt tells Gus that anyone he tries to pit against the two of them will fail. Without Jesse and Walt Gus has nobody to make their product. Walt then calls out Victor on not knowing what he’s doing and begins asking him scientific questions regarding the cook, which Victor clearly doesn’t know the answer to. Walt gets up to confront him more but Mike pushes him back down. Victor points out to Walt that he has been watching them for weeks and knows all of the steps, that anyone can follow the recipe because Walt is not more than a cook. Walt points out that he doesn’t know what he is doing and doesn’t fully know how the process works as Gus quietly walks over to the table as they argue and Walt tries to defend why he is useful. Gus gets Gale’s old box cutter from the opening scene and slides it open, making it seem like he is going to slit Walt and Jesse’s throats with it.

Walt tells him he is too smart to kill him and he can’t afford to do it. All Walt wants to do is go back to work with Jesse. Gus stays silent the entire time while standing next to a smirking Victor. All of the sudden Gus raises the box cutter and violently slits Victor’s throat as Walt, Jesse, and even P.I. Mike look on in horror. Adding to the horror is that he is totally silent while doing this and moves Victor’s neck a few times to make sure he bleeds out. Once he is certain Victor is dead he drops his dead body on the ground and the now bloody box cutter. Gus quietly washes himself off and takes off any clothes that may have blood on them, washes his glasses off, and puts back on his regular clothes. All of this in silence as the 3 sit back trying to digest what just happened. Blood slowly starts to move towards Walt’s shoe. Gus leaves and right before he exits, finally speaks, telling them to get back to work. He finally exits super lab and everyone, including myself are chilled to the bone.

Next we watch Walt and Jesse as they drag Victor’s body across the super lab’s floor to put him into a chemical barrel to destroy him with sulfuric acid, like they did in the first season to Krazy-8. They cant quite fit him in at first, but Mike comes over helps them get it up. Mike isn’t sure that it will work but Jesse tells him to trust them. They throw all of Victor’s supplies into the barrel including his gun and the box cutter and then spray it with Luminal spray after to make sure no blood shows. They then place it in a truck with other corrosive labeled materials and send it to parts unknown. Then we watch Walt mop up the blood and push it into the floor drains.
Later we find Walt and Jesse eating at a dinner. Both talk about what just happened and Jesse is much less disturbed then Walt appears to be. Walt asks him how he is doing after Gale and the events of today. He tells him killing Gale was all they could do or they would die and asks him what thoughts he has on what their next move should be. Gus is going to try to kill them as soon as he can. Jesse doesn’t think he will find another chemist because he knows they wont say anything especially since he just killed someone in front of him. At least now all three of them understand each other. You will wish you were dead if you don’t do exactly what I say. He has them now and knows they won’t talk.

Walt catches a cab back to his and Skyler’s house and sees that his car has been moved. Skyler comes outside and lets him know she moved it so Jr. wouldn’t see it when he woke up. Walt is wearing a super goofy Kenny Rodgers shirt while all of this is going on. He had to change clothes what with the murder in super lab and all. Skyler asks him if he has his keys and basically sends him off. They still have a lot of things to work out before he can live there like he used to.

Finally we cut back to crime scene of Gale’s shooting with detectives and crime scene investigators everywhere. The camera pans over and we see his lab notes from the 1st scene are on the table. Will the police find this? Will Walt and Gus may have the police on their trail soon? We will just have to wait and see…