Reprinted with permission from www.survivingcollege.com

Jesse’s Shady Santa Claus routine has attracted the attention of an entrepreneurial hobo. He begins collecting stacks of money from neighbors’ yards and finds Jesse’s abandoned car, which is filled with cash. The car’s owner is staring skyward in a nearby playground.

Walt emerges from Hank’s garage and has one last staring contest before driving off. He immediately calls Skyler, but she’s on another call. He sees with whom in the rear view mirror. Walt rushes to the carwash, but Skyler has already left to meet Hank at a diner. Hank is under the mistaken belief that Skyler has been coerced into keeping Walt’s secrets and offers her a way out. “You and the kids move back to our house where you’ll be safe.” He then turns on a tape recorder and wants Skyler to tell him everything. Now. In the diner. Skyler throws Hank a pitying look, sensing his desperation for information. He doesn’t have enough to bring to the DEA, and she knows it. Skyler quickly lawyers up because she’s far smarter than Hank could ever imagine. “Am I under arrest?” Skyler demands to know over and over again. When Hank can’t say yes, Skyler walks out.

Walt goes to Saul, who is trying to track down Jesse. “The money’s in the banana patch, get back to me.” Walt is pissed because Skyler went straight to Hank without talking to him first. Saul and Walt comfort each other with the notion that Skyler doesn’t really know about much of anything, other than the money. Saul then suggests sending Hank on a trip to Belize, where Mike went on an extended vacation. “It is an option that has worked very well for you in the recent past.” Walt refuses because Hank is family, but I wonder how long that loyalty will last.

Saul’s guys retrieve all of the money from a storage facility. Walt gives Saul a duffle bag filled with cash and says that he’s keeping the rest in case he needs Saul in the future, which is almost a guarantee. His final instructions are, “Just find Jesse.” Then, he drives a white van loaded down with money into the desert. He stops near an identifiable ridge and starts digging. It’s all very reminiscent of Season One, which makes Jesse’s absence palpable.

Meanwhile, Skyler is at home with her baby, desperately trying to get Saul or Walt on the phone. Marie is at the door, with Hank waiting a safe distance away. She lets Marie in but makes Hank wait outside. Marie realizes that Skyler has known about Walt for a long time, since before she walked into the pool. The car wash, the gambling story, since before Hank was shot…Marie gives Skyler a much-deserved slap across the face, scoops up the baby, and tries to leave the house. Naturally, Skyler flips the heck out. Hank barges in and urges Marie to put the baby down. She does, and they leave, and now that Marie sees her sister has chosen Walt over…well, over saving her family, she tells Hank, “We have to get him.”

Hank memorizes the coordinates of the buried treasure and then smashes his GPS device before returning to his house and collapsing on the bathroom floor in a giant heap of sunburn and undies. He comes to after about five hours to find Skyler patting his forehead with a damp cloth. Walt makes Sklyar promise that she’ll keep the money and never speak of anything. “Please. Please don’t let me have done all this for nothing.” She wants to know how Hank found out about it, and Walt admits that he screwed up. She tells Walt that he can’t give himself up without giving up the money, and suggests that Walt just stay quiet because Hank has “suspicions, not much else.”

A blindfolded Lydia is taken to a junkyard for a tête-à-tête with the guys running the operation. She wants to learn about their process so that she can help close up a $50 million shortfall. They are reluctant, but eventually walk her over to the secret hidey-hole in the ground that contains the meth lab. Lydia says the lab is filthy and nowhere near the standards of their predecessor. Her customers in the Czech Republic know their product and are complaining about the drop in quality. Suddenly, there’s a problem up above that Lydia looks like she anticipated. The men lock her in the lab where she ducks and covers until the shooting is over and her people come to get her. It looks like Lydia is the new Heisenberg, who was the new Gustavo.

The next morning, Hank starts working on his Plan B. Marie wants him to tell the DEA, but Hank insists that he doesn’t have enough pieces yet. “The day I go in with this, it’s the last day of my career.” There’s just no way to survive having chased a ghost for years, only to learn that it’s his your own brother-in-law. Marie worries that the agency will catch Walt without Hank, and they’ll know that Hank knew but said nothing. Which, yeah. Valid concern, Marie.

Hank arrives at the office and sits quietly at his desk. After a round of friendly ribbing from his coworkers, he sets up a conference call with the head of the department. He then learns that Jesse Pinkman has been picked up for tossing millions of dollars all over Albuquerque (which I was unaware was a crime). Hank cons the officers into letting him take over the interrogation for a bit, but we’ll have to wait until next week to find out how Hank handles Jesse, and vice versa.

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