Breaking Bad S5E6: Walt Turns Down a $5 Million Exit Strategy

Throughout the series of Breaking Bad, Walt has told himself (and his wife) he's doing all the evil things he's doing as a rising drug lord for his family. His family would be bankrupted by his medical bills for cancer treatment. The drug money takes care of that. His family would be unable to afford basic living expenses once he dies. The drug money takes care of that. After his death his wife would have to go back to work, with an infant daughter and a special-needs son, just to come close to making ends meet. The drug money takes care of that. There'd be no money to send the kids to college. The drug money takes care of that. Walt even calculated how much money he needed, early in the series. He came up with a figure of $727,000. He just needed to get that much money, for his family, and then he'd be done.

Walt's financial target proved to be a moving goal. Partly that was because earning money illegally entailed challenges he didn't anticipate. There were costs for equipment. Costs for shady lawyers and payoffs. Costs for things breaking or being stolen. Costs for laundering money. That was a big one. He couldn't just leave his family a surprise bank account with three-quarters of a million dollars after a subsistence job teaching high school. He and Skyler— who, by that point was helping him launder money— boughtg a car wash business for $800,000 to launder excess profits through it.

Along the way Walt also raised his sight higher. That's laid bare in this episode, entitled "Payout", where Walt, Mike, and Jesse have the option to take $5 million, each, to be done with the drug trade. The money would come from selling the chemicals they robbed from a freight train to a rival drug lord in another state. They take the money and be out of the drug trade.

Mike wanted out. It was his idea to set up this deal. He was ready to retire, as the feds were tightening the noose around him and his former associates.

Jesse wanted out, too. In his evolution as the conscience of the Odd Throuple, he was so troubled by a gang member murdering an innocent boy during the train robbery that he wanted out.

But not Walt. Walt turned down the $5 million exit strategy. It wasn't good enough for him.

Indeed Walt had moved his own goal posts, significantly. He explains in a scene with Jesse that he's now no longer thinking about "doing it for his family" but doing it, basically, to settle a score with the universe.

Back in grad school, Walt explains, he founded a small scientific company with two fellow grad. When they had a falling out— something involving differences between him and his fiancée, who married the other business partner after she and Walt broke up—Walt sold his 33% stake in the company for $5,000. "That company is now worth over $2 billion, billion with a B," he laments to Jesse. "And I sold my share for a few months rent." Now he's not out just to get enough money to provide for his family after he's gone; he's out to build an empire to rival the one he lost.

Testing the Limits of Unlimited PTO

This year I've been pushing the limits of unlimited PTO (paid time off) at my job. ...No, I don't mean been lounging in a hammock for 2 months instead of working. Sorry if the userpic here and my opening sentence painted that picture. 😅 It's that relative to my moderate norms of taking time off I've taken a lot off this year.

Since my company switched to an unlimited PTO policy several years ago I've continued my taking time off at about the pace I had for several years beforehand under traditional accrued PTO policies, 3-4 weeks a year. This year, though, I've really taken advantage of the plan.

Today I checked my records for the year and noticed that, including time off planned in the next few weeks, I'll have used 28 days of PTO in 2024. That's over 5 weeks! And that doesn't include a few freebie days my company is giving to all employees around Christmas or the freebie days I got for the President's Club trip back in May. If I count those in I'm at close to seven weeks for the year!

So far I've haven't gotten any pushback about the amount of time off I'm taking. That's good because that's the supposed point of unlimited time-off. As long as I'm getting my share of the work done it shouldn't matter whether I take off 3 weeks, or 4, or 5... or more.

Breaking Bad S5E7: Say My Name / Mike's Exit

After a lot of talky scenes in the previous episode, where Walt explains at (almost painful) length why he won't take a $5 million exit strategy, Season 5 episode 7 of Breaking Bad returns the standard of action, tension, drama, and tragedy from two episodes earlier, the one about robbing a freight train. In this episode Walt strikes a deal to move further up the food chain as a criminal gangster and Mike makes his exit, all while the DEA tightens its net around the bunch of them.

Walt Commands Respect

The episode's title, "Say My Name", comes from a tense scene in the desert where Walt bargains with a rival drug gangster from Arizona. The rival, Declan, doesn't know Walt and treats him dismissively. Walt, who's feeling his oats, fires back— verbally—with a taunt that Declan's gang can't make meth anywhere near as good as his "99.1% pure" product and a boast about taking out Gus Fring.

"Say my name," Walt hisses, after Declan again claimed not to know him.

"You're Heisenberg,"

"You're damn right."

Yeah, that retort sounded a lot like a line from Shaft.

The Cops Tighten the Net

While Walt is proving to himself that he can build an empire, the cops are tightening their net around it. Hank's team has been gunning for Mike, as they strongly suspect he's the street boss in the gang. They get a warrant to search Mike's house but find nothing. Mike knew they're were coming via the bugs Walt planted in Hank's DEA office and threw away or hid all his contraband elsewhere. Mike has a $5 million payout from the baller deal Walt negotiated, and he's ready to get out of the business and disappear anyway.

The DEA team is frustrated that Mike's place is clean. They know he's connected, though. Hank notices in the paperwork that all 9 of Mike's known criminal associates have the same lawyer. He directs his team to follow that lawyer. They track him to a local bank and apprehend him with a gym bag full of over $100,000 cash he's placing into safe deposit boxes.

The cops move to arrest Mike after this. Walt hears via the bugs that they're coming for him and calls him, frantically. Mike almost doesn't answer Walt's call, but it's good he does. He looks up in time to see cops starting to encircle the park where he's relaxing while his granddaughter plays on the swings. Mike's wily, but it's not clear if he's going to make it out.

Mike's Exit

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