So as we're treated to the end of that scene again, with a year's anxiety and anticipation packed into wondering what he'll do next, Hank's eyes flit away.
Suddenly, a gunshot as the screen cuts immediately to black.
Roll opening credits. Breaking Bad is back, bitch.
As we return, Hank's dead body is in the bathroom, a single gunshot to the head felling the bald bull. Police and paramedics are everywhere, but the sheet being pulled over Hank says enough: he's gone, and with him the secret about Walt. A police officer fishes the poetry book out of the toilet, stained with Hank's defecate, and informs the family that it looks like a loss. We cut to a close shot of the bottom of the book, with blue and black ink dripping from the pages. We don't see any poop on the book because come on, grow up. The officer apologetically tells the family they need to take the book into evidence, just in case, and none of the stunned bystanders offers any objection.
Everyone who was there at the cookout stands together in shock and sadness—even Walt—as the investigator informs them that this looks like a routine (but still tragic) suicide. The gunshot came from Hank's service firearm, all the adults were outside together when they heard the shot ring out, and everybody there tested negative for gunshot residue. There are no signs of forced entry, no eyewitness accounts of anybody entering or leaving the house except for those present and accounted for, and most importantly no fingerprints other than Hank's on the gun.
Hank's body is loaded onto an ambulance which then drives away. Its siren is silent; its lights remain dark.
[commercial break featuring Taco Bell's new Loaded Taco Burrito]
The next scene is Hank's funeral, an appropriately large and ceremonial affair. Hank's colleagues from the Albuquerque Police Department and DEA are all there, somber and dressed impeccably. Marie is wracked with grief, and who can blame her, while the light has gone out from Skyler's eyes. Walt is alternatingly dazed and horrified, unable to comprehend the suicide that took place in his own house right as he was ready to close the book on that chapter of his life. Things were supposed to be better.
During the seemingly endless stream of fellow officers politely offering the family their condolences, the crime scene investigator approaches Walt and Skyler. He apologizes for bringing business to them at a time like this but just wants to keep it brief. He tells them that they found Hank's fingerprints on the book, which is explains how it ended up away from the rest of the books, and that if they wanted it back that's fine; the print stayed intact on the pages, but whatever someone wrote inside the cover was lost, and there's, well... "water damage" to boot. Walt's eyes widen briefly before he informs the investigator that it's okay, it was just a book. The investigator nods and continues that as near as anyone can tell, Hank was holding the book when he killed himself, and it just fell in. Walt thanks the investigator for checking in, and the investigator leaves as Walt continues to console his wife. Walt looks off into the distance, his eyes betraying a deep pain.
[commercial break featuring Golden Corral's new endless shrimp fountain]
Scene: Jesse's house. There's a substantial fence around the perimeter now, cameras here and there, and we see three locks on the door and bars on the first floor windows. Jesse sits alone on an large, impeccable white leather couch. A large bong sits idly on the table in front of him, and he's holding a beer as he watches a nature show. His phone rings, and he blanches in terror.
"Hello?"
"We need to talk."
"I'm not cooking anymore. You know that, Mr. White."
"Neither am I. We need to talk."
"Is something wrong? Am I in danger?"
"No. But we need to talk."
"Dammit, Mr. White, I thought we were done here!"
"We are. And we need to talk."
We cut to Walt at Jesse's front door, through the view of the security camera. Walt's now-trademark porkpie hat is doffed, and he is sullen. Jesse welcomes him in, and in an absence of other suitable seating, Walt sits uncomfortably on Jesse's giant bean bag chair.
"Hank's dead," Walt says.
"Did... did you," Jesse begins to ask, but Walt is already shaking his head.
Walt then explains what happened: that the operation had ended, then Hank found out the secret, and the shock drove him to do something awful to himself. This shakes Walt to the core: though he and Jesse are now out of the business and so well compensated for their troubles that they may never have to involve themselves in that business or with those in it ever again—that they have essentially "gotten away with it"—the very knowledge of their involvement is so caustic, such a deep shame that they cannot control what happens to the ones they love if that knowledge ever gets out. Walt implores Jesse—with a genuine despondency we've never seen out of him—to protect his secret, and to make sure nobody finds out. At this point Chekhov's Ricin is irrelevant; information is the poison in their lives now.
[commercial break featuring new Star Trek-themed breath mints]
Walt returns home, where Skyler sits in a darkened living room. She's still at a loss as to why Hank would do that, and to a large extent, Walt is too. They talk about the things Hank had going for him, and it's a substantial list. He helped clean up his city's streets. He battled back from near-paralysis. He was the best investigator the police had. Why then?
And then because no grief comes without guilt, Skyler turns to Walt and asks, "...do you think he knew?" And because Walt is Walt, because he cannot bear to hurt Skyler again, because it is a truth not even he wants to confront, he tells her, stammering, no. He tells her that this is not their fault, and that everyone else is probably blaming themselves too. He is lying, and probably not very well, but it is the only way either of them will ever be able to convince themselves that Hank's blood is not on their hands.
[commercial break featuring little kids reciting talking points about the new Ford Focus in a conversation that doesn't even remotely resemble normal human interaction]
Skyler is in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on dinner. Holly sits in a nearby playpen, doing baby things. Skyler tells Walt that she'd feel better if Marie was taken care of for the rest of her life. Walt reminds her that Hank's pension will help with that, and Skyler agrees, but wants to see a small portion of their amassed fortune go toward helping Marie stay out of any financial straits that might make her... act out. The money has been sufficiently laundered and Marie doesn't have to know how much there is; she should just get a little something extra every month so she knows she still has a family she can call hers, even after Hank's suicide.
"And we're still out?" Walt asks.
"And we're still out."
Holly begins to cry, and Skyler rushes off to attend to her.
The family is gathered around the dinner table. They're all in obvious emotional pain (except for Holly, who is a baby) but they all know they're all hurting. Walt Jr. cracks a joke about the food being almost as good as breakfast, and his irrepressible joie de vivre brings a well-needed smile to his parents' faces. They're getting through this together.
Skyler begins to tell Walt Jr. a story, and as the camera is focused in on her, mid-sentence, there is a loud thump and clang at the table.
Walter White, Heisenberg himself, is face-down in his food, dead.
Junior calls his father's name helplessly and Skyler shakes him to no avail. The panic envelops the room until an empty vial, once filled with ricin, hits Walt in his lifeless head.
Walt Jr. and Skyler look up. It was thrown by Holly, the baby.
"Scawwed money don't make money," the baby says with cold steel in her eyes.
Just then, we cut to a flashback of Holly toddling away right as Hank excuses himself to go to the restroom, then slipping in (as a baby would) as Hank is engrossed in the Walt Whitman book. She slips the gun out of the holster on his pants as they sit crumpled at his feet, and only the raising of the handgun catches Hank's eye before the toddler fires the fatal shot. Holly wipes the prints off the gun on her clothes, then dunks the book in the toilet, keeping her father's secret safe.
Cut back to the present, with Skyler staring horrified at her baby.
Cut back to a second flashback, with Walter discussing the ricin with Jesse in the White household. The camera shifts focus from Walt to far behind one of his shoulders, as his daughter listens. We then see Holly crawling around her parents' bedroom and finding the loose electrical outlet and the vial behind it, then surreptitiously holstering the ricin in her diaper before being picked up by her mother and relocated to the playpen, where she hides the vial for future use.
Cut again to the dinner table, as Skyler sets Holly down in her booster seat then begins putting food down. Walt excuses himself to wash his hands and get Junior, and as Skyler's back is turned to continue serving the rest of the food, Holly pours a lethal amount of the ricin into her father's food while nobody watches. Walt then comes back in sits down, stirs his food absent-mindedly, and seals his own fate.
Back again to the present. "We cook again. Tonight," says the baby in her baby voice.
The camera cuts back to Skyler's face, frozen in fear, until a smile curls on her face. Holly is her father's daughter.
Little Holly puts on a little porkpie hat. Walt Jr. pulls on safety goggles. Skyler pulls out a cell phone. "Well," she says with a wry grin, "...better call Saul." Walt sits dead in his food. HEISENBABY HAS ASCENDED TO THE THRONE.
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