End Times (Breaking Bad)

"End Times" is the twelfth episode of the fourth season of the American television drama series Breaking Bad, and the 45th overall episode of the series. It originally aired on AMC in the United States on October 2, 2011.

Plot

After receiving an anonymous warning from Saul (Bob Odenkirk) about Hank (Dean Norris) being targeted by a drug cartel, the DEA dispatches a squad of agents to guard Hank and Marie's (Betsy Brandt) house. The White family is also brought to the Schrader household for protection, but Walter (Bryan Cranston) convinces Skyler to let him stay behind at the house, ready to face the consequences of his actions. He sits nervously in the backyard spinning a gun on the table that keeps landing on him, but takes note when it lands on a potted plant. Hank deduces that his investigation of Gus (Giancarlo Esposito) is the reason for the threat on his life, so he asks Gomez (Steven Michael Quezada) to search the industrial laundromat for him.

Gomez and an officer with a drug-sniffing dog later check out the laundromat but find nothing, although Jesse (Aaron Paul) and Tyrus (Ray Campbell) were below them in the hidden meth lab. Gus tells Jesse that the police attention is Walter's fault and that Walter must be killed to protect themselves, but Jesse again refuses to cook if Walter is harmed. Saul later hands Jesse's entire share of the meth profits to Jesse since he is planning to temporarily flee Albuquerque until the feud between Walter and Gus is over. He reveals that Gus took Walter to the desert and threatened his family, and Jesse is taken aback by this revelation. Jesse later receives a call from Andrea (Emily Rios) that her son, Brock, has become seriously ill and is in the hospital. Jesse discovers that the ricin cigarette that he kept on him to poison Gus is missing, from which he concludes that Brock somehow ingested the ricin.

Jesse confronts a paranoid Walter at his house. Jesse grabs Walter's gun and points it at him, accusing him of poisoning Brock out of spite. Walter claims that Gus must have planned Brock's poisoning and framed Walter for it in order to manipulate Jesse into killing him: the cameras around the lab probably spotted the cigarette and Tyrus must have taken it out of Jesse's locker; he later tracked down Brock and poisoned him. Walter and Jesse know Gus is not above killing children after the death of Andrea's younger brother, Tomas, and Jesse ultimately decides that Walter is innocent. The two team up to kill Gus.

Jesse visits the hospital every day, but Andrea refuses to let him see Brock after he divulged knowledge about the ricin poisoning. He refuses to leave the hospital which ruins the latest meth cook, saying that he will only leave if Gus orders him to in person, which is part of the plan to kill Gus: when Gus arrives to the hospital, Walter plants a homemade car bomb under Gus' car and waits from a nearby rooftop to detonate it. As Gus and his bodyguards return to the car, Gus senses something is amiss and leaves the area, leaving Walter distraught at missing his chance.

External links

• "End Times" at the official Breaking Bad site
• "End Times" at the Internet Movie Database
• "End Times" at TV.com