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" &amp;quot;He really did a number on you, didn&amp;#039;t he?&amp;quot; Hank has never been one of Breaking Bad&amp;#039;s most emotionally insightful characters; that was proved again last week in his ham-fisted attempted manipulation of Skyler. But with this line, delivered with real poignancy by Dean Norris, he seems to have struck to the heart of Walt and Jesse&amp;#039;s powerfully abusive relationship, which detonated at long last this week. While Hank can&amp;#039;t possibly know exactly how Walt has manipulated Jesse over the course of the show, what&amp;#039;s really significant is that Jesse himself is finally seeing it. Their confrontation in the desert was a long, long time coming, and specifically Jesse finally calling Walt out on his relentless manoeuvring. &amp;quot;Would you just, for once, stop working me? Just drop the whole concerned dad thing, and tell me the truth,&amp;quot; he begs, raw, after Walt suggests that he leave town and make a new start for his own good.   Of course, Walt just wants him gone so that he won&amp;#039;t talk, and in Jesse&amp;#039;s mind the alternative is that he will be killed just like Mike. And Walt won&amp;#039;t even grant Jesse&amp;#039;s request for honesty \u2013 instead, he hugs him, knowing that Jesse is too vulnerable and alone and desperate for reassurance to resist this gesture. It&amp;#039;s an incredibly loaded moment and in many ways just one more abusive power play from Walt, who knows this is the one way he can win in this situation. All that being said, Walt&amp;#039;s concern for Jesse is not totally feigned, and Jesse is probably way off-base with the idea that Walt would happily off him if he refused to leave town. As manipulative as the embrace is, it&amp;#039;s also a genuine gesture; it&amp;#039;s Walt saying &amp;quot;I would never hurt you&amp;quot;. He wouldn&amp;#039;t send Jesse to Belize any more than he would Hank, and there&amp;#039;s probably a part of Walt \u2013 the caring teacher who wanted Jesse to apply himself \u2013 that desperately wants him to have that fresh start in Alaska. So close.  &amp;#039;Confessions&amp;#039; feels like a companion to season four&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;End Times&amp;#039;, not only because it picks up several narrative strands from that episode, but because it feels as though the sky is falling from almost the first moment. The end times are very much here, even before Jesse puts the pieces together about Brock&amp;#039;s poisoning in those apocalyptic final moments. Jesse uncovering Walt&amp;#039;s sins is the single biggest dramatic time bomb the show has had, arguably even more so than Hank realising Walt is Heisenberg, and Aaron Paul played the emotional weight of that lightbulb moment (or cigarette box moment, as it shall henceforth be known) with devastating precision. It was arguably a leap for Jesse to connect the dots based only on Huell having swiped the ricin cigarette, since Brock wasn&amp;#039;t poisoned with ricin, but it played believably because it felt like the piece in a puzzle that has been in progress for months. Jesse isn&amp;#039;t Hank; he isn&amp;#039;t building a case against Walt. He&amp;#039;s working solely on emotion and gut instinct, and he has known something is deeply wrong with Mr White for a long time. All he needed was that single missing piece.   The other dramatic lightning bolt was Walt seemingly taping his own confession (in a nice parallel to the pilot episode) only for it to be revealed that he&amp;#039;s actually recorded a statement framing Hank for all his crimes, and casting himself as the victimised accomplice. If this account of events were probed, there would doubtless be a huge number of holes, but the story holds together a whole lot better than we could have predicted.  Much though it should be galling to watch Hank boxed in by Walt yet again, there has always been something thrilling about Walt intellectually out-manoeuvring an opponent, and this was a really bravura move. And Marie was telling Walt to &amp;quot;just kill himself&amp;#039; before she saw that video! At this point, it won&amp;#039;t be a total shock if she runs into Jesse at the White house next week holding her own can of gasoline. It&amp;#039;s rare that RJ Mitte gets non-breakfast related business to play, but here that touching scene with his dad laid the emotional groundwork for Walt&amp;#039;s twisted surrogate dynamic with Jesse to later be spotlighted. And what Walt was asking Jr to do in that scene \u2013 effectively to &amp;quot;stay positive&amp;quot; and pretend everything was fine despite knowing deep down that it was not \u2013 is exactly what he&amp;#039;s been doing to Jesse for months, firmly intoning &amp;quot;I need you to believe me&amp;quot; as he lies through his teeth.  This isn&amp;#039;t the first time Walt&amp;#039;s two sons have been paralleled \u2013 we still haven&amp;#039;t forgotten a drugged-up Walt calling Jr &amp;quot;Jesse&amp;quot; \u2013 and given the place the episode ended, is a scene between the two finally on the cards? The Whites&amp;#039; house looks gutted in the flash-forward, but not burned down, so we can assume something is going to stop Jesse in his tracks next week. Jr seems to be home most of the time, and it definitely doesn&amp;#039;t feel in character for Jesse to harm Walt&amp;#039;s family even now. Fingers crossed for a dramatic meeting of the sons!  Other thoughts: - Somebody needs to compile a top ten list of tense dinner sequences on Breaking Bad. This episode&amp;#039;s White-Schrader family outing is right up there, but you&amp;#039;ve got last year&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Great green beans, Mrs White&amp;quot;, Walt&amp;#039;s 51st birthday dinner, Walt and Jesse trying to poison Tuco&amp;#039;s burrito, every dinner Gus ever shared with another person\u2026 any other contenders? - One of the mobster uncles says that every time he sees a kid on a bicycle, he wants to smack the s**t out of him. Todd can do you one better, sir! - Speaking of Todd, it wasn&amp;#039;t entirely clear what his phone call to Walt was designed to achieve, although it seems as though he&amp;#039;s seeking approval in much the same way Jesse once did \u2013 see also him proudly recounting the story of the train job to his uncles. Walt in his glory days is already becoming something of a Jesse James-esque legendary figure among local criminals. - &amp;quot;There is no drug empire&amp;quot;. It&amp;#039;s striking to hear Walt admit this, after proudly stating only last year that he&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;in the empire business&amp;quot;. That megalomaniacal stint seems firmly in the past. - We&amp;#039;re used to seeing those anxiety-laced time lapses on the Albuquerque skyline, clouds passing frenetically over the White house or the desert, but here there was a beautiful one used as Jesse numbly watched those two idiots attempt to interrogate him. He is long overdue a violent meltdown. - Having personally sampled some of New Mexico&amp;#039;s finest tableside guacamole, we felt bereft on behalf of that poor waiter. A side of avocado goes great with psychological warfare!  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/breaking-bad/review/a509830/breaking-bad-recap-jesse-reaches-breaking-point-in-confessions/>