Breaking Bad: 1.3 ‘…and the Bag’s in the River’ Recap
Original Air Date: February 10, 2008
NOTE: This series and recap contain very mature themes and language.
After WALTER and JESSE clean up the acid-infused gunk that used to be drug dealer Emilio, Walter’s wife SKYLER shows just how uptight she is when WALTER JR. answers his cellphone with the greeting “Yo.” The two are in the baby’s nursery painting the walls, while Skyler’s sister MARIE sits nearby, complaining about the geriatric shoes she’s wearing.
Walter Jr. goes to another room to take his call after his mother tells him not to use “Yo” because he knows how much she hates it. If only she knew that at that very moment her husband was cooking and dealing meth, not to mention cleaning melted bodies off of a former flunkie student’s hallway floor…
Still hung up on Walter’s lie that Jesse has been selling him pot, Skyler asks Marie, who apparently has plenty of experience with illegal drugs, what effect marijuana had on her when she used to smoke it. Skyler pretends she needs the information for a character in a short story. Marie jumps to the wrong conclusion, however, and becomes convinced that Walter Jr. is on pot.
At the Pinkman household, Walter and Jesse finish cleaning up Emilio’s remains. Jesse retreats to the bathroom to smoke a little of Walter’s trailer-cooked product, while the teacher goes to the basement to dump KRAZY 8’s waste container. Krazy 8, who noticed his cousin’s acidic remains dripping through the basement ceiling earlier, begins doing a number on Walter. Calling him by his first name, Krazy 8 notes that the teacher only has two choices: to either kill him by committing cold-blooded murder or to let him go.
Walter’s stunned that the drug dealer knows his first name. When he asks how he knows, Krazy 8 reveals that Jesse, a notorious big mouth, voluntarily told him and his cousin lots of things about the teacher: his name, what he used to teach in class, and even that he has a disabled son. Walter’s real problem, Krazy 8 continues, isn’t him or his cousin, but rather Jesse and his loose lips.
Thoroughly pissed, Walter goes to confront Jesse. He kicks down the bathroom door to find the younger guy smoking the meth they made instead of saving it to sell. Walter tries to flush the drugs down the toilet, but Jesse grabs the bag after a tussle and throws it out the window. The two men race down the stairs then. Yet, younger Jesse gets the upper hand and drives away after reminding Walter that he still hasn’t taking care of his half of the problem, namely getting rid of Krazy 8.
On the seemingly non-criminal side of the family, busybody Marie calls her husband, DEA agent HANK, just before she walks out of a shoe store without paying for the shoes she tried on and is still wearing. Marie’s certain Skyler was talking about Walter Jr. earlier; thus, she asks Hank to have a talk with the teenager to scare him straight about smoking pot. Hank obliges and takes his nephew to a motel frequented by meth addicts called the Crystal Palace.
Walter Jr., understandably confused since he’s not doing drugs, thinks the place is “cool,” especially when his uncle calls over a druggie prostitute named WENDY who has a mouthful of rotting teeth from smoking meth. When Wendy leaves Hank’s car, she goes upstairs to her room, where Jesse is waiting, staring out the window and paranoid that someone’s looking for him.
Back at the Pinkman house, Walter puts together a list of reasons why he should and shouldn’t kill Krazy 8. The reasons against are numerous, such as it would be immoral and he wouldn’t be able to live with it. In comparison, there’s only one reason in the “Kill” column, and it’s pretty compelling: If Walter lets Krazy 8 live, the dealer will kill the teacher and his entire family.
Soon, Walter calls his wife and lies to her that he’s held up at work. Unfortunately for him, Skyler already called his boss when he didn’t come home, so she knows he quit two weeks ago. Angry, she tells her husband to just stay wherever he is that night when he indicates he wants to come home to explain himself.
Krazy 8 then catches Walter’s attention when he yells that he’s hungry. Walter makes the drug dealer a sandwich, complete with the sides cut off since he remembers the dealer doesn’t like the crusts. But, when he goes downstairs to serve the food, Walter has a coughing fit and passes out on the floor right in front of Krazy 8.
He regains consciousness about ten or fifteen minutes later, according to Krazy 8, and returns upstairs to fix the dealer another sandwich. Walter finds a six-pack of beer in the refrigerator, as well, and he takes it and the food downstairs, where he attempts to persuade Krazy 8 to reveal something about himself that will convince Walter not to kill him.
Both men end up sharing: Walter reveals he has lung cancer and only Krazy 8 knows, and Krazy 8 reveals his real name is Domingo and that his father owns the semi-famous Tampico furniture store. After a bit of reminiscing — Walter remembers the furniture store’s late-night commercials and catchy theme song, and that he and Skyler bought Walter Jr.’s crib there — it seems the dealer has managed to persuade Walter to let him live.
Yet, the tables turn when Walter, back in the kitchen to get the key to release Krazy 8, realizes that the plate he dropped and broke when he lost consciousness is missing a piece big enough to harm a person with. He returns to the basement and strangles Krazy 8 with the bike lock around his neck as the dealer swings the plate shard wildly, eventually stabbing Walter in the leg.
Jesse returns the next day to find the RV in the driveway completely cleaned, the house and basement empty of people, and the bike lock on a ledge in the basement. Walter doesn’t go to work at the high school, either. He calls in sick and then goes home to talk to Skyler, presumably to finally inform her about his cancer.
In the desert, Hank, his partner GOMEZ, and several other law enforcement officers explore the site where Walter and Jesse parked the RV to cook meth before Krazy 8 and Emilio showed up to ruin everything. The agents quickly determine that someone in a large vehicle was out there cooking drugs and then left after an accidental fire started.
They also determine the fire wasn’t set to destroy evidence. And because Krazy 8’s car is still right there, Hank also figures out somebody must have killed him when he finds the dealer’s meth hidden in the dashboard. To top it all off, the mother of the little girl who found the gas mask Walter and Jesse left behind turns it over to the officers.
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