Breaking Bad 5.05 "Dead Freight" Advance Review

Breaking Bad started off its fifth season with "Live Free or Die," which played like a mini-heist movie. Walt, Jesse, and Mike hatched an ingenius plan to destroy evidence the DEA had obtained against them, and executed it, albeit with a few hiccups. It was a pitch-perfect episode of the series that felt self-contained while playing into the show's larger narrative.

Get ready for that magic again with tonight's episode, "Dead Freight." The episode plays like an essentially self-contained mini-heist movie, with Walt, Jesse, and Mike working to find a new source of methylamine after Lydia revealed last week that her stocks had been bugged.

But while the episode deals heavily with the quest for new methylamine (and boy, is their plan zany), it also deals with the debate between the three over what to do with Lydia, who may or may not be tricking them with the bug on the bottom of the methylamine barrel. Mike is convinced that she's a bad apple, and makes no bones about the fact that he still wants to put a bullet right behind her ear. Jesse, on the other hand, remains the show's moral compass, unwilling to let a person be murdered on a whim. Walt's the tiebreaking vote, it appears -- but will he side with Mike, or Jesse? What happens next leads to a spectacular sequence where Skyler looks at Walt's hands and asks if he's been burying bodies in the desert. His answer is perfect, and will have fans chuckling in glee (and Skyler's eyes widening in shock). 

Once it gets going, "Dead Freight" doesn't stop. The episode is chock full of tension, which only abates for a moment toward the end before exploding. The ending will leave you shocked, afraid, horrified, and undoubtedly dying to see what happens next. I'm not one to throw the phrase "game-changer" around, but "Dead Freight" will undoubtedly mark a shift in the tone and direction of season 5, part 1. And with only three episodes to go after this one, you can bet that they're going to pull out all the stops.

If I give away any more of the episode, I'm afraid that Mike might come and put a bullet right in my head himself. (He likes reminding people how capable he is of shooting them. In the head.)

"Dead Freight" airs tonight at 10/9c on AMC. Tune in for a great hour of television. Breaking Bad's fifth season just keeps getting better and better, and if you're not watching, you're really missing out.