User Reviews

Hazard Pay was the best of the three we've seen so far, it had a direct and engaging story arc, and it moved along at a reasonably fast pace.

We've got a glimpse of what is to come for the three stooges and it's going to get messy. Already you can feel the tension and drama rising between the three.

Once again Walter drives his bony fingers into every hole he can and this time it was between Jesse and his girlfriend.

Walter is not happy with how much money is being divided to people he has never even met, and challenges Mike on this which leads to a tension filled scene with the three of them dividing their money. It ends with Walt 'warning' about flying too close to the sun. Is he threatening Jesse? Or is he trying to make an example to Jesse about Mike?

All in all, a good episode can't wait until next week.

This episode of Breaking Bad is great. Simply because a lot of ground has been covered in the minimal of time. It feels like a bunch of episodes rather than a single one and it has all been seamlessly joined together.

To start with, Walt and Jesse start cooking again in the most unexpected of locations. Thanks to Walt's genius and eye for detail. Meanwhile, tension grows between Skyler and Walt as the former gets increasingly irritated and fearful of Walt's presence in her house.

The alliance between Walt, Jesse and Mike is also getting strained because of Mike's increasingly controlling ways which don't sit all that well with Walt, who perceives himself as the sole emperor of his 'drug empire'. Walt fails to understand that he is no longer they "key member" of the trio. Mike is.

A noteworthy scene in this episode is when Walt and his son are watching the climax of "Scarface" (the shooting scene) and Walter Jr. remarks "Everybody dies in this movie, don't they?". This warrants a bit of thinking. Is this how Breaking Bad is going to end or is this just a misdirection? You tell.

All in all, I really enjoyed this episode of BB and can't wait for next week. I doubt Breaking Bad will ever disappoint.

Hazard Pay is one strong episode! Season 5 is picking up all the characters from previous seasons, putting them together in one team. They start all over with a genius like scheme of a mobile lab in private houses treated by pest control.

Three moments stand out: One is Walt and Junior watching "Scarface" while Skyler rests in her bed after a breakdown, listening to bullets flying. Walt in the living room asks the rhetorical question "everyone dies in this movie, don't they?" which could turn out to be closer to reality than it might seem at the time.

Second is the end, which is just as unclear to me. Walt mentions Victor (Guss' associate) to Jesse: "I've been thinking about Victor" - "Yah" - "I was sure that Guss did, what he did to send me a message. But maybe there is another reason." - "Like what?" - "Victor, trying to cook that batch on his own, taking liberties that weren't his to take. Maybe he flew too close to the sun? Got his throat cut." To me this sounds like a reference to Mike, "taking liberties that weren't his to take" respectively "flying too close to the sun." Right?

Third is the one unbearable friction between Walt and Skyler. Him behaving like nothing's going on, while she is not only terrified of him, but bursts into tears in front of Marie having a formidable breakdown. I find this one of the most cruel relationships in recent TV history!

I am so looking forward to episode 6!

And now Jesse, Mike and Walt are back in business. Walt had a great idea about how to do it. He is really getting more and more professional with this.

But we also see potential problems to arise. Walt is not happy with Mike paying off his guys from that money. And what he said to Jesse at the end about Gus killing Victor because he "flew too close to the sun" was a reference about what he wants to do with Mike. And Jesse seemed to understand it as well based on his facial expression.

And we also see Skylar not dealing too well with Walt's change. We can see it in her breakdown with Marie as well as her reaction to seeing Walt and the kids watching Scarface.

Once again, great acting by everybody as well as good moving of the plot.

Walter and Jesse finally get their enterprise up and running. There is a cautiousness. But they aren't in total control. Mike is really running the show. These huge amounts of money and blocks of currency are quite an eyeful. But with Mike running the distribution, he has a whole host of people he is paying off, including his friends in jail. They are getting hug sums (hazard pay) just for keeping their mouths shut. The way they are doing their thing is quite creative. On the home front, after Ted's "accident," Skyler is having a nervous breakdown.

Here's the thing. Always read the fine print I don't care how long it is you read those fine print because you'll be surprised how hard it is to build a drug empire that gives you a take-home pay of over 6.5. million a year. It's the cost of doing business, Walt. 250k for your mules they are the ones carrying the weight and it's a heavy load.

Lovely writing and some outside of the boxing thinking. A new 'mobile' lab of sorts to start cooking the blue stuff again. 8/10

Having decided to work together again Walt, Jesse and Mike set about finding a new location for their lab. Saul shows them a few possible locations but none of them are quite what they need, then in the final location Walt sees a large tent and comes up with a plan; they will set up their lab in the houses of people who are having them fumigated! Nobody is going to go snooping in a house full of poison gas and any smells from the cooking process will be assumed to be part of the fumigation. They agree that Walt and Jesse will take care of production while Mike takes care of the business side of the operation… however when it comes to dividing the profits Walt is not too happy to hear about all the overheads; particularly the amount Mike insists in paying 'his people' who are currently incarcerated for the work they did for Gus. Away from the business Skyler breaks down in front of Marie leading to Walt telling Marie about his wife's affair.

This season is moving along at a good pace; it is good to see Walt and Jesse back in business and Walt's solution to where they should cook was creative yet plausible. Jonathan Banks does a fine job as Mike; the scene where he explains the various overheads was great; as was Bryan Cranston's reaction in the role of Walt. It seems likely that their relationship won't survive but which of them will be the first to move against the other? Anna Gunn was believable as she depicted Skyler's breakdown and it was nice to see Betsy Brandt returning as Marie. As well as the usual drama some levity is provided by Jesse's friends Badger and Skinny Pete as well as the always entertaining lawyer Saul Goodman. Overall another solid episode that served to get the protagonists back into business but also served to highlight the tensions between them and how much Walt has changed over the course of the series.

...but it marks the deterioration of Walt's character. He has always been an arrogant narcissist and now he's become a despicable psychopath, and is openly trying to play the boss in this new partnership. Mike said at first that he wasn't interested in working with Walt because Walt is trouble. It turns out that Mike was putting it mildly. Walt is trouble, sure, but Mike hasn't realized just how much trouble Walt represents. Mike said that Walt is a time bomb. He will soon see just how right he was.

Mike tells him, "Just because you shot Jesse James, that doesn't make you Jessie James". Walt thinks it does. He acts as though he should be in Gus Fring's place, even though there's no such role to play now. Walt is on track to becoming insufferable to his partners. He already showed that he would kill a child to get his way. It appears that he is ready to do more of the same or worse.

Walt balks at paying what Mike refers to as "legacy cost", Mike's men in prison and the need to pay their hazard pay to keep them happy and quiet. Walt doesn't want to see that reality. He wants to be the kingpin and to rule the new partnership with an iron hand. He's intent on getting them all caught, though he doesn't admit it, not even to himself.

I've come to hate Walt. He can't get what he deserves fast enough to suit me.

A slightly slower third episode of the final season. That's fine because there's a new and complex plot that needs a lot of setting up. Only the pace is an issue as otherwise the usual strong acting and general sense of quality see it through.

That was another fantastic episode, and it really kept up the momentum built in episode two, after what I felt was a rather misguided and overblown series opening.

This episode contained two of my favourite scenes they've ever done, both involving movies. The first was when Jesse and Walt were sat watching TV after a cook, and had a semi heart to heart which ended with Walt's rather masterful manipulation. The second was of course Walt, Walt Jr and the baby watching Scarface, and Skylar coming into the room with that shocked, disturbed look on her face, just as Walt soaked up Montana's gun rampage with great enjoyment.

The only thing that disappointed me was the last five minutes. For a program that usually takes reasonable time dragging things out, Jesse breaking up with the girl seemed to jump the gun a little. I don't think he'd go that quickly from being taken in by Walt's sly, subtle maneuvering to ending what seemed to be a pretty deep relationship. Also, the oblique lines by Walt at the end that seemed to be designed to put fear into Jesse seemed a little misplaced. After all, the tone of the episode had been fast moving, almost triumphant at times. The scene with Mike and the distribution of costs was enough to add a slight edge to that at the finale - it didn't need to extra mile of Walt becoming more threatening.

It also damaged the fantastic Walt/Jesse dynamic they built in this episode, with the relationship being put back together and indeed them seeming to come closer than before. They could have waited a while before bringing that down to earth again. Still, this is impeccable television. Any criticisms are only relative to the absurdly high standard the show has set itself.

In this episode we see the rebuild of the drug business but this time Walter and Jesse are the employers not the employees. So, they started to look for a place to cook, So Saul is leading that research but a lot of the places he has chosen got refused by Walter so we witnessed a couple of funny scenes, until they had a genius idea and say let's not do it in a one place, let's do it in houses that are subject to cleaning and no one would think to enter it. So, they cook for the first time in major edited beautiful shots. I really enjoyed that 4 to 5 min of runtime. We see on the side of Skylar that she had a total breakdown, she kept screaming at Marie: share up for 15 or so times. But what's the cause of this? Is it really about ted? Is she afraid of Walter or she is just not accepting their new life? That's a question to be answered the next episodes.

The season 5 is molding in a superb fashion and this episode is a clear example for it.

The episode features Walt, Mike, Jesse cooking searching for locations to start their cooking. Finally Walt comes up with a Brilliant idea (as usual). The cooking in house is portrayed in an excellent way.

There is also a bit more of emotional touch in this episode. Skyler breaks down in front of Marie, and then we see Walt hinting Jesse to tell Andria about their cooking.

The Acting is as usual - Top Notch! so is the Writing. Totally Loved this Episode !

To have Marie (Betsy Brandt) remind us that it's been nearly a year since Walt was first diagnosed with cancer is a bit jarring. This series, and I know my fellow co-writers would probably agree, has always felt like a very long (yet wonderful) movie, and while its timeline is ever-presently tucked in the back of our minds, to think that everything Walter White has gone through over four seasons has only taken place within the span of 12 fictional months, well, it just makes this whole Breaking Bad ride that much wilder.

And not only that, but it seems to heighten Walt's development as a character. I know it's a topic I keep returning to, but this first half of the season so far seems to be placing a heavy focus on Walt's transformation (sometimes not so subtly), and Marie's comments only serve as a reminder of just how quickly that transformation has progressed. Sure, we're only three episodes in, but thus far, each one has contained a little (and sometimes not-so-little) tidbit that makes us hyperaware of who Walt was when we first tuned into the show, compared to who he is now, and I'm starting to wonder whether or not that's deliberate. Sure, the characterization most obviously sets our hero up for a glorious fall, but does it necessarily do so in the way that we think? After all, can a person truly change to that extent in just a year? (Normally, I would argue, yes, perhaps a person can, but for the sake of speculation and this review and to be, well, difficult, I'm risking debate.) What if the season's first scene (the flash- forward, remember?) isn't the culmination of Walt's newly acquired evil and a display of his self-serving tendencies, but rather the acknowledgement of his wrong-doings and an attempt to instead prove himself self-sacrificing (and it was the sneak peek into next week's episode that got me wondering, for the record)? Am I pulling this out of my…y'know? Absolutely. Is this a far-fetched idea? Sure! But the fact that a show can be so beautifully constructed so as to even inspire such thoughts, well, isn't that an accomplishment in and of itself?

If my musings are to be proved correct, last night's "Hazard Pay" certainly lends no insight—if anything, we simply get even more manipulative, evil genius plotting on behalf of Walt that renders my above paragraph pretty ridiculous. This week's episode opens with Mike posing as a paralegal, accompanying a lawyer to a prison housing a Dennis Markowski, one of the "my guys" Mike keeps referring to. He promises Dennis that despite the loss of the Gus income, he'll do everything in his power to make sure his men receive their promised hazard pay— they'll have everything they need to be "made whole," to support their families, and, of course, to keep their mouths shut. That is, after all, Mike's primary preoccupation in seeing all of this out; but despite the fact that Mike's gotten his hands plenty dirty, there's something endearing about his loyalty (as well as his unwavering love for his granddaughter). I think it's safe to say that Mike is certainly a key to this season's puzzle, but in the meantime, he's shaping up to be quite the fascinating character (is it weird to like Mike as much as I do?).

Additionally, he officially agrees to get back into business with Walt and Jesse on the condition that he alone manages the operation. Walt easily agrees, but not without making his own intentions of "handling Mike" known. Finally in agreement to reboot the business, the gentlemen enlist the help of Saul to scout a new location in which to begin cooking again, and after an amusing little hunt (the tortilla and arcade bits are particularly enjoyable), Walt settles on a rather beautifully simple idea. Allying themselves with Vamonos Pests, an exterminating company (who, according to Saul, once bought, stay bought), Walt and Jesse devise a plan to set up a portable mini-superlab inside the infested, tent-covered houses the company schedules for fumigation (a weirdly impressive plan on the part of the writers, so kudos to them); they agree to set up and take down shop after each cook, creating more work for themselves, sure, but ultimately reducing their chances of getting caught.

To read the rest (IMDb form too short) visit: http://custodianfilmcritic.com/breaking-bad-5-3- hazard-pay/

A great follow-up. It isn't quite as good the first two episodes, but I was still very invested from beginning to end.

Walter has become a real pierce of work, and scary. I'm not sure I mentioned it in my other reviews, but he's become kind of a creepy villain at this point. The directors and writers (and Cranston) have done a great job shaping him up as a true villain of his own story. The things he says about his family and colleagues is truly disheartening, especially toward the end when he basically reveals he has intentions of killing Mike if things don't go how he sees fit. His manipulation even gets Jesse to leave his girlfriend and her child, which seemed to be one of the only things he has at this point.

Their new business scheme seems insane to me, but I'm sure it'll be really entertaining this season as well. Great acting and plotting elevates this one for me.