Although individual episodes are sure to keep us guessing, we know what to expect from Breaking Bad’s final season: Walter White, having killed Gus Fring, finally seizes the power he’s wanted so badly for so long. As creator Vince Gilligan has said, Walt is transforming from embattled hero into full-blooded villain, and these final 16 episodes are sure to make last year’s bomb-planting and kid-poisoning look tame. Since we spent the Season 5 premiere drinking blue cocktails and doing spit-takes over Walt’s ridiculous, audacious, and often reckless swagger, we’ve decided that this year we’ll be rounding up each episode’s biggest Walter White WTF moments. The top five for this week, when Skyler took an unexpected dip in the pool and Hank got a promotion, are after the jump.
1. Walter totally gaslights Skyler. She is so adamant about getting Walter Jr. and Holly out of their father’s dangerous (and psychotic) and environment that she walks into the pool and appears to attempt suicide while Hank and Marie are over, to convince them to take the kids for a while. But instead of realizing that his wife has a pretty great point, seeing as he’s back in the meth business, Walt refuses to acknowledge that his family is vulnerable. “What are you gonna do to stop it?” he demands when Skyler announces her intention to do whatever she can to keep him away from the children. Then, as she attempts to out-maneuver him, all he can do is taunt her with the consequences of each plan and proclaim, “I’m not hearing a solution.”
2. After selling his old car for $50, Walt gets ostentatious new ones for both himself and Walter Jr. But don’t worry, Skyler — he didn’t buy them. He’s just leasing them, which totally fits into your financial plan!
3. “He changed his mind about me, Skyler. And so will you,” says Walt, relating to her the story of how Jesse showed up ready to shoot him. Of course, he leaves out the part where his partner was totally right about what an awful person Walter is and would have been entirely justified in killing him for poisoning little Brock.
4. Mike and Jesse are squabbling over whether to kill Lydia, the loose canon at Madrigal who tries to scare them away by planting a tracker on her own barrel of methylamine, and it comes time for Walt to weigh in. “Nothing stops this train. Nothing,” he says, as though everyone exists merely to do his bidding, no matter what potential danger it entails.
5. Walt makes a painfully bullshit birthday speech. “You guys kept me going,” he tells Hank and Marie, and starts to relate a story of how Skyler took care of him after his chemo treatment. Meanwhile, she’s got her back turned to him, staring into the pool. Eventually, she just wades in with all her clothing on and forces Walt to save her.