libraryseraph

The cold open for this season shows men army-crawling through a Mexican village, being ignored by the inhabitants. The cousins arrive, in a fancy car that sets them above the rest of the inhabitants, and join the crawling procession. They enter a shrine to Sante Muerte, and while leaving their offerings, we see a picture of Heisenberg. This establishes the much larger role the cartel will play in this season and that someone has it out for Walt.

After the title, we see a breaking news announcement about the plane crash from last season. This makes the scope of the crash clear, and provides a convenient way to give exposition about the crash.

Walt was watching the news, and the floor of the living room is covered in articles about the trash. There's then a scene of him burning his money in the barbeque in the back yard. He's dealing with the plane crash and his role in it, and trying to get rid of money he got in a way even tangentially related to it. He can;t go through with it, however. WHen it comes to the wire, he's still willing to benefit from terrible things.

Skyler is consulting a divorce lawyer. She's officially reached her breaking point with Walt.

Flynn isn;t interested in having another waffle, and Walt has moved out of the house. The family is fully split up by now.

We see one of Walt's students trying to use the plane crash to get an automatic pass. WHile it's a joke, it does establish that when tragedy happens, people will try to benefit from it. Walt tries advising his students to look on the bright side, since noone on the ground was killed and neither plane was full, so it could have been worse. He just comes off as insensitive and ignorant of other's trauma, since he's not taking the time to acknowledge that just because something could have been worse doesn't make it not horrible.

We see the cousins again. All of the Mexico scenes have a heavy sepia filter that distiguishes them from the America scenes, and gives them the vibe of an old Western. The cousins are from a different culture and place than the other characters. This scene also establishes a strange sense of honour with them. They take clothes off the family's line, and they don't interfere since the cousins are obviously cartel, and then the cousins lave the leys to their fancy car behind with the little girl. They're willing to pay back people, provided those people don't get in their way.

Skyler is cutting Flynn and Marie off from information about what happened with Walt. She's too upset about the whole thing, so she's trying to deal with it all on her own, which is very similar, if less intense, to what Walt did.

Jesse is at a rehab centre that preaches radical self-acceptance. Jesse doesn't buy it, because he's dealing with too much guilt to be comfortable with who he is. The group leader tells his story about running over his daughter while drunk. Jesse doesn't get anything about the idea that hating yourself doesn't help; we can see him obviously considering it before the scene changes.

Walt is shocked that Skyler would serve him divorce papers, and assumes it's punitive, because the idea that it might be about Skyler and not him doesn't occur to him. He keeps reframing things back to him through this scene, insisting that he's happily married (as if that changes Skyler's feelings) that he loves Skyler (as if this sort of thing can't happen even when people love each other), that he'd do anything for her (which is kind of the problem).

After picking up Jesse from rehab, Walt is trying to protray what happened as a good thing, because they got clean. Jesse says that Jane's dad was the aircraft controller, and it happened because of his grief. Walt immediately jumps to it not being Jesse's fault, but it's obvious Walt is trying to alleviate his own guilt by saying it out loud.

Jesse says you can run from things, or you can face them, and he's facing that he's the bad guy. This shows the darker side of that self-acceptance, since when you've decided that you're going to be bad forever and you have to face that, it takes away any drive for self-betterment. Jesse is better at taking responsibility, but he's not doing the right thing with that responsibility.

Walt tells Gus he's done. Even with how good Gus' offer is, he's still insisting that it "isn't him". Walt isn't able to face the bad parts of himself in any meaningful fashion.

The cousins are hiding in a bus full of farm migrants to get across the border. When one man sees their distinctive boots, they kill the whole bus to cover their tracks. They don't even treat it as an issue; just as a non-emotional business decision. They aren't aggressive about it, but that doesn't change how violent they are when they think it's necessary