With each week it becomes harder to a recall a time when he was sympathetic. But “Buyout” reminds us that while Walt’s criminal achievements may be big, he’s a small man - a control freak who’ll say or do anything to preserve his inflated self-image, and who doesn’t care what harm his actions cause as long as he makes a fortune and stays out of prison. His schemes have become increasingly elaborate and preposterous, with touches of James Bondian sci-fi (“Live Free or Die,” with its giant electromagnet) and big-budget Hollywood action spectacle (“Dead Freight”). The series has taken Walt from cancer-ridden chemistry teacher and suburban schnook to borderline comic-book mastermind in the space of one screen year. He’s a self-starting monster, Horatio Alger from hell. He can’t excuse his actions by saying that he was only doing what he was told, or that he was raised in a family of gangsters, or that he’s traumatized from the war, or even that he’s dying of cancer and needs the money to pay for medicine and support his family. Jesse is a criminal who can still feel shame and remorse, and fights to hold onto the remaining shards of his humanity.

As written by Gennifer Hutchinson and directed by series TV veteran Colin Bucksey, it’s mainly about Walt and Jesse. But the bulk of “Buyout” is only glancingly concerned with the disposition of the boy’s corpse and the fate of the shooter. “Buyout” picks up in the aftermath of Walt and the gang’s daring freight train robbery - a crime that seemed to go off without a hitch until a tarantula-hunting boy stumbled upon them and got killed by one of Walt’s helpers, the clean-cut sociopath Todd. After one of the loudest, most visually spectacular Breaking Bad episodes comes one of the quietest - and one of the most perversely funny.

Breaking bad season 1 episode 6 summary