canyonwalker | Breaking Bad S5E2: Yes, Walt Did Poison a Child

The cataclysmic last episode of Breaking Bad season 4 ended with a clue that Walt had poisoned Brock, the child of Jesse's girlfriend, to manipulate Jesse. Online fan sites mostly stated it as a fact that Walt did this dastardly deed. I pushed back in a journal entry I wrote, explaining that the clues were very scant, hardly at all probitive, and that important links that were missing were how Walt could have stolen a key item from Jesse (the two were estranged and got in a fist fight immediately the one time they saw each other) and given the poisoned item to the child (whom he also saw only briefly). Well, in the first two episodes of season 5 the writers show plenty of evidence that, yes, Walt did it.

The new evidence goes like this:

When Walt's cleaning up evidence in his house from murdering Gus Fring, he throws his potted plant, lily of the valley, in the bag with the bomb-making equipment he's disposing of. Lily of the valley was what the child, Brock, had ingested.

Saul gives Walt the ricin-laced cigarette Walt made for Jesse to give to Gus. Indeed, Walt had had no opportunity to take it back from Jesse without Jesse knowing. Saul says, in a bit of expository, that his security goon, Huell, had pick-pocketed it from Jesse.

Walt takes the ricin cigarette back to plant it in Jesse's house, as Jesse is freaking out that it went missing from his pocket.

Okay, the writers want us to know that Walt did this evil thing. It makes sense as a new low for his character. But the circumstances still don't make much sense as writing.

How and when did Huell pick-pocket Jesse? Huell is a physically large man portrayed as a bit clumsy and totally unsubtle. He'd have to perform not one but three sleights-of-hand. One, to pilfer the pack of cigarettes from Jesse's pocket. Two, to remove the ricin cigarette (and know which one it was). And Three, to put the pack of cigarettes back in Jesse's pocket. The writers' explanation of how this happened strains belief.

And how was the poisonous Lily of the Valley given to Brock? Did Huell do that also? What, like some big intimidating stranger comes up to a kid and says, "Here, kid, eat this candy," and the kid eats it? The show is set in 2010, not 1970 when 10 year old kids might have been naïve enough to gulp down candy from strangers.

Oh, and the whole cigarette switcheroo wasn't even critical path for the poisoning. It was a red herring to get Jesse agitated. And there was no guarantee it would've worked. One, Jesse had to notice it at the right time. And two, the point was to get Jesse suspecting Gus. That was a very tenuous link (as I explained in my previous blog on the topic), and Walt could've made the argument just as well without the red herring of the missing cigarette.

Again, I get it, the writers are making it clear that Walt poisoned the kid. It's their story, and what they say, goes. But as an audience member it's my prerogative to point out it's lazy, poor writing.