CHAPTER TWO WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN’D ASTRONOMER As the show had proceeded at the end of Season 1, Walt and Jesse had already started dealing to well known distributor Tuco Salamanca. Tuco was a part of the cartel, and functioned as a marketer in the Northern Region. Forced by pleas of Walter, Jesse meets his friend Skinny Pete, who offers him to go to Tuco’s place with the new meth. After they reach Tuco’s lobby, Jesse and Tuco sit down to talk business, Jesse breaks out a full pound of meth and puts the packet in front of Tuco, Tuco skeptical, makes Jesse sniff a few crystals and then tastes the meth himself. Dazed and impressed he asks Jesse where did he get it from to which Jesse answered that he had a partner who he cooks with. While his henchmen were guarding the doors and eyeing Jesse, he demanded the money from Tuco. Tuco tells him, he will get his money and he should leave now. Jesse turns to his friend Skinny and asks him why this was happening as cash up front deal was made. This angered Tuco to see that a street level junkie was vouching for him. He puts $35000 in bundles in a cloth bag and extends his arm to pay the money and as soon as Jesse extends his arm to take it, Tuco beats him inhumanely with the money bundle. Breaking Bad is a story as much of Hank Schrader’s as it of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. An American hero, he believes in law and order, him being of the best officers in the Albuquerque he targets at keeping the streets clean. Hank cared about the Whites, he saw Walt Jr. as his own son, but never crossed his line with Walter. In one occasion, Walt Jr. who likes to be called Flynn goes to buy some beer but falls into the hands of a cop, who was just merely coming to the store for buying. He ends asking the man not knowing that he is really a cop, to buy him some beer, and he gets caught. He calls up his Uncle Hank to save him from busting. Hank saves him from the juvenile police and his dad, but Flynn was being a bit too nonchalant. On questioning him about the incident he answers back Hank asking him whether or not he had tried to get beer for himself when he was a teenager. Hank tells him that him buying beer at that age was not important but Flynn not calling up his father was insulting enough for Walter. Hank and Marie are childless and that is one primary reason they love their nephew and niece so much. This is an undeniable web of compassion, anger, love and hatred which Breaking Bad contains and that are what gives the characters a scope to develop, and in this case, as we see Marie Schrader is a bit too possessive about them. Hank Schrader was one of the most dedicated police personnel of Albuquerque DEA. He was known for his investigative methods which were innovative and who followed with perseverance each case. Walter decides to meet up Tuco, and here he adopts the pseudonym Heisenberg. Tuco asks him why he would walk in here knowing that he could lose his life. Walter answers him back asking his partner Jesse’s $35000, which he owed him. Tuco mocks him saying what would he do if he didn’t? At this Walt takes up a crystal which Tuco might have thought was meth and smashes it on the floor. There is a sudden blast and the neighborhood of bikers and hippies and hustlers come to a standstill. Well, we can say for the television act that was one blasting entree of Heisenberg. Tuco bewildered asks him what was that, and Walter answers back “Its fulminated mercury and a little tweak of chemistry. “ Tuco impressed by this, hands the money to Walter admiring his courage and asks him to cook him two more pounds of meth. Walter agrees on cash up front term and gives the money to Walter. They decide to meet in a junkyard for the next meet and Jesse and Walter reach ready with 2 pounds of meth ready to be sold. Meanwhile, White and Pinkman came up with this ‘blue sky’ meth in which the crystal was blue in color due to use of methylamine and no P2P or pseudo. Tuco asks Walter about the color and Walter replies the chemical used caused the change. Also getting 60 gallons of methylamine was not an easy task. They store it from Aniline Chemicals and the whole thing got captured in the camera. This was the first heist which Walter and Jesse had performed to get their hands on pure methylamine. A minor incident occurred when Tuco’s henchmen Gonzo had told Walter and Jesse to know their place, Tuco got erratic at this by his nature and asked Gonzo why he would say that, and does he think that his new partners are stupid. Gonzo denies thinking so but relentless Tuco asks him does Gonzo think that Tuco is stupid. Walter calls to Tuco to relax; Tuco mocks Walter’s voice and in a sudden fit of anger beats up Gonzo killing him with severe punches to his face and skull. He marches off valiantly asking Walter to make more of his meth and promising him a flourishing drug trade. Hank already had reports of blue meth but he had something else bothering him as well. Marie Schrader is the proud wife of DEA Agent Hank Schrader. But, she has her own problems. She gifts a tiara to her sister Skyler in the baby shower organized for Holly. When Skyler feels that this tiara is way too costly for her to accept as a gift she goes to the store from where it was bought and when she reaches there she is charged with shoplifting and theft. Skyler understands that it was Marie’s doing and somehow due to her pregnancy, she acquires the sympathy of the store owners and saves herself. Marie was a kleptomaniac. She was suggested therapy but she would avoid it denying the existence of this disease in her. Meanwhile as Walter and Jesse drive away from the junkyard they find Tuco’s car racing up to them. Gonzo was dead and Tuco had come back to his senses and he asks Walter in a nonsensical fashion to revive him. Walter says nothing can be done. Tuco understanding the situation tells them to leave but looks gravely at both of them and even shoves Jesse into the ground. Tuco had an expressionless face and he was already making up his erratic mind. Only later on, towards the evening Jesse comes up to Walt’s house and Walt surprisingly finds Tuco in the backseat with a gun held to Jesse’s temple. He ditches both of them into the trunk of Jesse’s car and drives south. Meanwhile, Skyler is dazed and stupefied at Walt’s disappearance and she ends up making missing posters. Walt and Jesse though were kidnapped knew for sure that it was either them or Tuco. They had already planned to kill him, by making ricin, a chemical powder derived from castor beans which would kill a person and in autopsy it would remain untraced. They mixed the powder in the meth hoping that he would take a snort of it. A Southern countryside and a broken house with an old man sitting in a wheelchair, inside the cabin a television is seen broadcasting a Mexican movie, and Spanish can be heard being spoken. The old man is Hector “Tio” Salamanca, who is an important part of the Juarez cartel and an established hitman about whom we will come to know in details later on. Walter and Jesse sit at Tuco’s hideout and decide to kill him with the ricin and mix them in his burritos. Hector interferes and though he was paralyzed he used a bell to indicate only ‘yes’ or ‘no’ with which he indicates Tuco that he could not trust them. Tuco at that turns his gun at Jesse and Walter and shoves Jesse to a pit to kill him. Jesse picks a rock and hits Tuco on the face shocking him and in a rough fistfight he manages to shoot Tuco at point blank range injuring him. Walt and Jesse hide in the nearby shrubs seeing an SUV heading towards their direction. Thinking that they were the cousins Tuco was talking about Jesse and Walter takes cover and find it was actually Hank who had come looking for Jesse in order to find connection to Walter’s disappearance. Hank sees a wounded Tuco and in a major gunfight, Hank took a headshot at Tuco Salamanca killing him instantly. Walt and Jesse are seen running across the Mexican border. Throughout the seasons two and three we get to view Vince Gilligan’s expertise with character building. He uses time travel very beautifully which is played as a teaser before every episode and then they are linked together to perform the exact story which would later on explain the meaning of all those preludes. These teasers had introduced us to two characters that would change the course of character development in the series. These episodes entirely framed the characters developing or rather as one could put metamorphosing into something which they were more. The characters introduced to us were Jane Margolis and Donald Margolis.