Breaking Half: "Peekaboo"

Bryan Cranston

Are you tired of long, tedious accounts of Breaking Bad episode recaps? Then look no further than Breaking Half: a weekly column that takes the good and bad from each week's episode of Breaking Bad and dilutes it down to the core necessities. Each Monday, Breaking Half will attempt to take a few key moments from the episode and boil it down to one juicy paragraph.

Season 2, Episode 6
"Peekaboo"

"Hey, man, I'm slingin' mad volume and fat 

stackin' benjis, you know what I'm sayin'? 

I can't be all about, like, spelling and shit."

-Skinny Pete (Charles Baker)

After Skinny Pete (Charles Baker) tells Jesse (Aaron Paul) about the two meth heads that robbed him, Jesse goes to their house where he meets their son (Dylan and Brandon Carr), who lives in a very dirty house and rarely gets a good meal. Meanwhile, Walter (Bryan Cranston) is back at school teaching and gets distracted when he tells a story involving the diamond inventor getting ripped off by his coworkers. Gretchen (Jessica Hecht) is also in town and after a call with Skyler (Anna Gunn), decides to meet up with Walter for some lunch. It turns out that Skyler doesn't know that Gretchen isn't actually funding Walter's cancer treatment. This leads to a lot of speculation and a meal with Walter that results in him yelling at her for stealing his idea and getting rich off of him. However, Gretchen claims that he walked out and that he was to blame. Meanwhile, Jesse meets the owners of the house: Spooge (David Ury) and his woman (Dale Dickey), who reveal that they have an ATM machine in the backyard, which they try to crack open. After disarming Jesse and stealing his drugs, the two go at the machine and yell at each other. This results in the woman slamming the ATM machine on Spooge's head as he tries top open the bottom. After the machine opens and he collects the money, Jesse finds a moment to escape, calls 9-11, and leaves the kid on the front porch before running away. Skyler is told that Gretchen is cutting off funding and is unaware of the truth. Walter says that the reason is that Gretchen is poor and that he'll take care of everything.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Left to right: Paul and Dylan Carr

MVP: Jesse (Aaron Paul)

It may be one of the most profound, bizarre hours in television history, but Breaking Bad solidify their status in greatness with this episode. Taking place in a house with meth heads and attempting to paint the relationship between Jesse and the child as something endearing, the show has found its groove and attempts to find light in very dark places. Jesse especially has been shining as an actor in the past few episodes. Here, his relationship with the kid is just heartwarming, though sadly tragic, as it ends with Spooge dead and his mother most likely arrested. Still, it almost feels like at very least, this is the episode where Jesse goes from the ignorant fool to a more caring person. It also marks the first of many times that children are directly affected by the consequences of the show, which is a testament to how powerful the writing on the show can be.

Best scene: For many, the highlight of this episode is one of the series' most notorious moments. In almost a spontaneous scene in which a woman is tired of being called skank tosses an ATM machine on her accuser's head, TV history was made. It was cringe inducing and slightly tame, but the immediacy and shock of the actual attacks impacts the scene greatly. Even the simple fact that a kid is now fatherless only adds emotional weight to the moment. It is something that works because despite being shocking, it somehow seems logical within the context of the episode. It is something that the series strives for and succeeds most of the time.

Come back tomorrow when we recap the episode "Negro y Azul"