"Breaking Bad" Season Three Episode Five: "Mas"

Television Review

"Breaking Bad" Season Three Episode Five: "Mas"

By our guest blogger, Rob Stammitti

After last week's excellent "Green Light," this week was bound to underwhelm. So, I can't blame "Mas" for not being quite as great as it could have been, and it didn't have nearly as much great character work as last week, but it's certainly a solid episode. As tension between Walt and Skylar increases and Gus continues his plot to get Walt back in the business, Hank grows closer and closer to discovering the true identity of the elusive Heisenberg.

Spoilers herein.

In an interesting flashback to the events of season one, the episode's cold open shows us the actions of Jesse the night after Walt first approached him. After taking the money Walt gave him and wasting nearly all of it at a strip club with his friends, Jesse is shown to actually have stolen the RV we've come to know, making Hank's previous attempts to find the owner a lot more interesting and complicated. It's not one of the more exciting cold opens of the season, but it's entertaining and it pans out pretty brilliantly by the end of the episode. But we'll get to that later.

The episode generally revolves around Gus' attempts to bring Walt back into cooking. Using Jesse was just the beginning. Walt goes and confronts Gus with the paper bag of cash that just happened to get tossed into his car last week. Gus tells him to hop in his car and come see something.

What Gus has to show Walt is a massive, state-of-the-art cooking facility, hidden away in one of his warehouses and completely isolated. The deal is still on the table--$3 million for three months of cooking. Of course, Walt isn't aware that after those three months, he'll have two very angry Mexican twins to worry about. Walt is hesitant at first, but after Gus butters him up a bit with talk about his duty as a man to his family, Walt takes the offer. In this short sequence of scenes, Giancarlo Esposito continues to prove he has a lot to offer to the show as Gus. His moments may be brief, but they're always excellent.

This proves to be quite a dilemma for Jesse, however. Desperate to get the half of his pay Walt received, Jesse has Saul arrange a meeting with Walt. It doesn't end too well.  With Gus totally done with Jesse, Saul decides to cut Jesse out and go back to working with Walt, and Jesse is completely removed from the loop. After the awful things that happened because of the conflict between Jesse and Walt in the end of last season, one can only imagine the horrors to come with these two against each other yet again, this time over things far more serious than some spare cash. I don't know where this plot will go, but it's great to see Jesse finally having something to do this season.

Some interesting developments also came with Skylar, who reconsiders her anger toward Walt when she learns Hank's brush with death causing him to bury himself in work and isolate himself from everyone could very well be the same thing that happened with Walt. Her potential change of heart comes a bit too late, though, as she arrives home at the end of the episode to find the divorce papers signed. Walt's back to cooking, and his return to the life of crime evidently comes with his typical removal from everyone around him.

Hank's desperate search for Heisenberg also continues this week, and his struggle is clearly taking its toll on him. He won't talk to his wife, his partner is leaving to take the job Hank turned down in El Paso, and everybody thinks he's chasing someone that isn't there. What makes Hank's story all the more painful is that we know how close he's come--and how close he continues to come--to busting the whole case wide open, but whether it be luck or fate, Walt just keeps slipping through his fingers. But we get a pretty big development this week, as Hank's hunt takes him to the woman whose RV Jesse stole in the cold open, and through connections her son had to Jesse, Hank has himself a suspect. And if Hank gets to Jesse, it's only a matter of time before he gets to Walt. I can't express how great this season could become if Hank and Walt as "Heisenberg" come face-to-face.

The episode doesn't have all the great character work or excitement last week had, but as always the complex plot strands are coming together, and with Walt back to cooking we may return to some of the really exciting stuff this season has been missing.

Grade: B-