tv: After the freak out inducing end of last weeks episode of Breaking Bad, we all wanted to know what was going to become of Jesse's gasoline rampage. This weeks episode, Rabid Dog, did not disappoint. Starting right where we left off last week Walt pulled up to his house to see the car that Jesse left askew in his driveway. Gun in hand, Walt enters his gasoline soaked house. Silence. And as the droning music rises with a beat slower than the beat of the racing hearts watching the scene we get three words: "Jesse, show yourself!" But no one is revealed to Walt.
The episode then begins with Walt, with no success, trying to pay a cleaning crew to get the gas out of his carpets. The money isn't the problem, the gas just won't come out. And the scheme begins. We watch Walt's actions as he douses various belongings, his clothes and his car in gas. The trap has been set. Skylar returns from a shopping trip with her husband ready to begin his lies. But unlike last week when Walt produced his greatest lie on tape for his brother-in-law, no one was buying it. Flynn immediately attributes his gas pump malfunction story to his cancer and the fact that Walt, with all his pride, didn't want to admit that he passed out again (another lie). Skylar goes right along with Walt's story. They decide to relocate to a hotel because of the gas and for Walt, of course, because of the one who put it there.
Once at the hotel, under the ruse of going for ice, Walt holds a meeting with Saul. With Jesse still out there and his whereabouts unknown, Saul suggests that Jesse be dealt with like Old Yeller. And Walt reacts with by saying that that would never be an option, a reaction Old Yeller's owners surely had before facing their situation truthfully. But Walt doesn't yet see it that way. He is going to hold on to those lies he tells himself, as well as the ones he told everyone else, for as long as he can. And when he returns to his room he is forced to hold on them as tight as he can. His ice story doesn't fly. Skylar, drunk and in bed, stares down the husband that just last season terrorized her in this very scenario by screaming at her to tell him her plan to stop him, and tells him she knows all his lies.
It was amazing to see this seen play out. In seasons past Walter would have terrorized his wife. Or come up with a plan or simply stated something so bold and crazy that Skylar would have realized she doesn't need two hands to count people who knock on doors. But now, with Jesse missing, he simply shrinks under her accusations. And finally, just shrugs and lies to himself. He talks himself into believing that Jesse stopped because of their friendship. He talks about how Jesse is a good kid who is just emotional. And he is the only one buying what he is selling now.
And in one final act of defiance Skylar suggests that Walt kill Jesse. Because if he were being honest, why not? He's done it before for worse reasons than someone threatening to burn his house down. But Walt will just not hear this. Meanwhile, all anyone (both in the show and out of it) wants to know is where's Jesse?
Jesse kicks the door down and we get a replay of the end of last weeks episode. But we quickly get the answer as fast as all the others have been coming this season. Hank walks in and talks Jesse off the ledge. He answers to Jesse's plea that Mr. White has to pay for what he has done. And off they go to the one place in the world Jesse never thought he'd be crashing. Not the Enterprise where pie eating contests occur regularly, but Hank's home. Marie returns home to find her husband has packed a bag so that she doesn't have to deal with their new house guest. But after witnessing Marie's most recent therapy session, where we watch her talk out in code her feelings about Walt, we know she isn't going anywhere if the person in her guest room can help hurt Walt. It must be noted (I am probably going to gush over the cast every week. That's not what I'm noting) how amazing Betsy Brandt was in that scene. Watching jitter and sniffle on the edge of a knife balancing her anger and confusion and sadness and fear while discussing googling untraceable poisons was breathtaking. Possibly even the best therapy session since Tony Soprano stopped going to see Dr. Melfi.
There was a real fun to watching Jesse wake up from his nap at Hank's house. With the scene shot in very wide and long and deep sets and camera angles, there was an almost surreal sense to the mundanity Jesse had just awoke in the middle of that bordered on hilarious. But just as his coffee is being delivered to him (in a DEA mug! Cymbal crash!) the real world comes right back to him. He sees the camera being set up. And as the scene at Hank's house between he and Jesse and Gomez plays out, the truth pours out from Jesse. He explains that he has no evidence of Walt's crimes. And then he gives his own confession. And based on the discussion that follows, it stuck closer to the true events than Walt's did. And just to mirror the reactions of the two people Walt was stuck with all episode, we see Hank and Gomez agree that they believe Jesse. People are believing him. And before Jesse and his two new DEA agent friends decide to put there plan in motion to take down Walt, Jesse gives them the final truth: "Mr. White, he's the Devil."
Once the final scene begins we are thrust back into the intensity we hadn't felt since Walt stormed his own home gun in hand at the beginning of the episode. And as a wired Jesse approached his meeting with Walt, that swell and that bass returned. And so did all the racing hearts. And just like in the beginning, the conflict didn't happen. Only this time, Jesse walked away with a threat and a plan to "get Mr. White where it will hurt most," and not the sad sack of lies we saw Walt concoct earlier.
This was an episode all about doubles. The lies of Walt and the truths of Jesse. Those new people who believe Jesse and those who have been with Walt longest who see right through him now. The two confessions. The thrilling beginning and end that both end with a phone call and a plan. We see Walt's reaction to Jesse's threat of a plan. He gets on the phone to call Todd and have his white supremacist family kill Jesse. But even this felt like one last lie this time from Walt to us the viewer. Because it has to be Walt that kills Jesse, it can't be anybody else. Jesse never tells us his plan, but I believe he has one, and that its a good one. He certainly at this point doesn't seem like a rabid dog anymore, no longer just looking to lash out in irrational rage. He now looks like a dog looking to bite his abusive owner, and nobody else.
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