This episode is the show’s “Pine Barrens” moment, where it breaks away from the story at hand to tell an irrelevant standalone tale. Too bad the results aren’t nearly as successful as “Pine Barrens.”
In this one, Walt (Bryan Cranston) discovers a fly in the superlab, and borderline-psychotically tracks it down, forcing Jesse (Aaron Paul) to do the same before allowing the cook to continue. It’s mildly amusing (you could say “Hal-like”) seeing Walt and Jesse on the receiving end of almost slapstick pain as their efforts to kill their buzzing foe get more and more dangerous. But for a full episode? Too much.
The whole ordeal reveals a little about Walt’s mental state. Why make a big deal out of a measly insect? Because he’s a control freak. After a lifetime of having to settle, he finally has something big and special, and he’s not going to let anything ruin it even a small bit.
When Jesse tries to subdue Walt with coffee spiked with sleeping pills, some more truth comes out, namely regret. Regret about letting Jane die, and about getting stuck in the drug world. We also get the sense that he harbors some care for Jesse deep down. But you can just write all this off as drug-induced gibberish rather than anything truly revealing.
I’m kind of grasping for things to talk about. The truth is this episode just seems like pure filler, like they realized late in production they only had enough content for 12 episodes and threw this one together so they could fill the order for 13. Fortunately, it at least comes at a point in the season where it doesn’t kill any momentum in the overall plotline.
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