Raw Data: Rabid Dog

Thoughts and observations for Breaking Bad episode 5-12 (the fourth of this half season) "Rabid Dog".  Four episodes remain in the series.  The title brings to mind "Problem Dog" from the fourth season where Jesse tells the NA group a story about a "problem dog" (Gale) he had to put down.  "Rabid Dog" has similarities except now Jesse is about to be put down rather than put down the dog in question.  Breaking Bad loves to play with the episode titles, like "The Cat's in the Bag..."  "...and the Bag's in the River" or "737" "Down" "Over" "ABQ" or "Kafkaesque" and "Fly" or "Fly" and Bug".  This one seems to have the plots linked more closely.

Written and directed by Sam Catlin, longtime producer on the show and writer of episodes like "Hermanos", "Fifty One" and "Crawl Space".

• Skyler's hesitancy to make the fake confession video comes up again when she refers to that "awful" video.  But the fact remains she's chosen her husband and abandoned her sister.  On Talking Bad they stated the tones of her clothes match Walt's to represent being on his team. Apparent when they went to Guapo's to meet Hank and Marie
• And that the light earthy tones also represent her being drained.  Very apparent at the car wash when she's so dazed she gives a customer incorrect change
• While Jesse never gave his permission to Gus to whack Walt, he's now working with Hank, the law, to bring Walt down.  Snitching would go against his ethos but it appears from the final scenes that he's going to try to bring Walt down on his own terms, not Hank's.
• When the twins attacked Hank, Marie was upset at the ASAC for making Hank surrender his weapon following his suspension for beating up Jesse.  Marie turned on Skyler when it became apparent their operation had something to do with Hank's attack.  Now Marie is serving coffee to the kid who played a part in Hank's suspension and surrendering his weapon
• Walt storms his house, gun drawn, with all the flair of a guy who is basing his approach on movies where he saw something like this.
• Walt's lies get worse and worse.  Not even close to believable.
• Even Junior can tell he's lying.  He doesn't come up with the correct answer but he knows the one Walt is giving is wrong
• Walt is more than glad to have a better lie supplied to him
• RJ Mitte does a great job in his few scenes.  Junior may be the only innocent character left.  I see lots of discussion about when to stop rooting for Walt.  To be honest, I'm indifferent but I am more concerned with avoiding harm to players like Junior and Jesse.  
• Harming Jesse would alienate even the most stringent Walt supporters, if there are any left.  Generally the debate ranges from Jane to Brock to Mike to where viewers stop rooting for Walt
• The episode feels like a slight change of pace from the previous three.
• Walt's conspiculously in his underwear again
• I keep mentioning this becaeuse in the first seasons they make a conscious effort to make Walt as pathetic looking as possible, with an "impotent" mustache, love handles and underwear.  Now that he's out of the game, he's bumbling around again, passing out and giving terribly unconvincing lies
• I'm not sure Walt is Heisenberg anymore
•  That doesn't stop him from lecturing Skyler about how she doesn't understand the finer points of his ridiculous meth business. God, Skyler, you're so stupid
•  Hank is so eager to take Walt down it may hinder him.  He's willing to sacrifice Jesse so don't think any of these scenes between them aren't just Hank using him as a piece to get what he wants.  Hank may wind up manipulating Jesse as Walt did.  Or trying to.  Based on how the meeting went it doesn't seem like Hank will be able to control Jesse as Walt did
• "He's the devil" echoing "You're the devil" from "Blood Money"
• Badger manages to be hilarious even when off screen "For five hours all he talked about was Babylon 5".  I think the best jokes are the ones where you say, "yep, that character definitely would say that"