"Breaking Bad" season five premiere: "Live Free or Die"
(CBS News) "Breaking Bad" returned to AMC on Sunday night for the beginning of its fifth and final season.
The episode, titled "Live Free or Die," mainly focused on the aftermath of last season's explosive finale, but first we see chemistry-teacher-turned-meth-dealer Walter White (Bryan Cranston) having some breakfast. (Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
Pictures: Bryan Cranston
Pictures: Aaron Paul
When the episode begins Walt is sitting at a Denny's, where he just ordered bacon and eggs. He arranges the bacon into a "52" on his plate, and tells the waitress it's his birthday. He also shows her a fake ID and tells her he's from New Hampshire. (Something to note: "Live Free or Die" is the state's motto.)
Another man enters the restaurant and both head into the bathroom. There, Walt passes him an envelope and then man gives him a set of car keys. In the parking lot, Walt opens a car with a New Hampshire license plate and grabs a gym bag. He then opens the trunk of another car in the same parking lot, which has a machine gun inside. He places the gym bag inside and the show cuts to commercial. The scene is likely a flash-forward, which means Mr. White will stay alive - for now, at least.
Back in the present, Walt needs to destroy evidence that links him, Jesse (Aaron Paul) and fixer Mike (Jonathan Banks) to Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), the fast-food mogul/drug kingpin he killed at the end of last season. He remembers that Gus had cameras set up in the meth lab and needs to get rid of that surveillance footage.
Mike tells Walt that the footage all went to a laptop that was in Gus' office - a laptop that is now in police custody. But that doesn't stop Walt, who uses his science background to figure out a brilliant way to destroy the computer without stepping foot inside the police station - a super-powerful magnet.
Walt gets a giant magnet and sets it up in the back of a van, which they pull up alongside the station. It works - first a tricycle starts moving, and soon the laptop is in a pile of damaged evidence.
When Mike asks how they can be sure the magnet scrambled the laptop, Walter responds coldly, "Because I said so." If last season's finale didn't cement it, this does - we're dealing with a different Walter White now.
Walt's wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn), meanwhile, is terrified of him. When she asks about Gus' death, which is all over the Albuquerque news, he tells her, "It's over. We're safe. I won." But she doesn't feel safe at all - she now knows he's not just a drug dealer, but a murderer too. At the end of the episode, he comes back to the house and forgives her for lending her former boss/lover Ted money, letting her off the hook for taking his funds, but also, chillingly, letting her know that she's stuck with him.
One other thing to note: As officers were going through the items destroyed in the evidence room, they noticed something hidden behind a smashed picture frame from Gus' office - a handwritten note in the corner that says "Bancsuisse Cayman" above what looks like a bank account routing number.
This final season of "Breaking Bad" will be split into two parts - the first eight episodes will air this summer, and the second half will be shown next year.
Tell us: What did you think of the season premiere of "Breaking Bad"?