(Read about the previous episode here.)

“You actin’ kinda shady
Ain’t callin’ me baby
Why the sudden change?
Say my name, say my name
If no one is around you
Say baby I love you
If you ain’t runnin’ game
Say my name, say my name…”

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(Read about the previous episode here.)

One of the established tricks of screenwriting is, when stuck, put two characters who haven’t had any scenes together in a room and see what they say. I’ve never knowingly had to resort to this, because I never run short on material, and I doubt the writers of Breaking Bad were exactly “stuck,” either — surely the aftermath of last week’s devastating murder was rife with possibilities for where to take “Buyout.”

Still, this episode does something unexpected — it puts the two most important people in Walt’s life in a room together. And the truly surprising thing isn’t that it happens, but that it only highlights how strange it is that Skyler and Jesse have seen so little of each other throughout the series when we’ve seen so much of the two of them.

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(Read about the previous episode here.)

Well, that didn’t go according to plan.

Kids are often placed in harm’s way in movies and on TV. How many times have you seen a guy take a child hostage as leverage?

But the kid gets away. Almost always. Because seeing children die is unpleasant, especially when it’s done in a violent way.

On Breaking Bad, though? You never know.

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