WARNING: This Breaking Bad review will be mostly spoiler free, but it will mention a few important moments and delve into some minor plot developments, so if you want to go into Blood Money feeling pure, maybe you should just favorite this article and come back to it a little later on.
It's been a little under eleven months since Hank had an epiphany while reading on the toilet, and Breaking Bad pretty much picks up exactly where we left off. Before that though, we get another flash-forward like we did at the beginning of Season Five. The White family home has been deserted, boarded up and fenced off, and there are some skateboarding kids in the empty pool at back, using it as a trick park. Walt returns to his former castle, hair returning and straggly beard in place, and breaks into the house to retrieve something from behind an electrical socket. Then it's straight back to Hank on the toilet...
It’s clear where the back eight of the series is headed, with Walt and Hank on a collision course, and if you were concerned that it might be dragged out, worry not!
Jesse doesn’t show up in the episode for nearly 20 minutes, sitting silently through a hilarious conversation his stoner friends are having about Star Trek, before heading to Saul's office with $5 million and some addresses. Jesse is still having trouble dealing with the children's lives he's had a hand in either ruining (Mike's grand-daughter) or ending (that kid on the bike under the bridge), and he's attempting to cope by any means necessary.
There have been some developments with the women in the show, who have been - correctly or otherwise - painted as nagging harpie: Skylar seems to be warming to the downgraded Walt, with talk of opening another car-wash. She even goes all Mama Bear when a potential threat shows up. Meanwhile Hank's wife Marie doesn't have much to do, but it is nice to see her dote over him when she thinks he's ill.
The episode is filled with some fantastic moments, such as the thrill of watching Hank going over five seasons worth of evidence like the world's greatest montage, or the hilarious callback of Walt waving hello to his neighbour, or that hair-raising moment when the garage door begins to close (you’ll know it when you see it), and it's nice that we can now see the final stretch. For as much as we all LOVE Breaking Bad, it's fair to see we’re all dying to see how it ends.
While far from perfect - another episode of Jesse being mopey (albeit righteously so) and his actions with the money at the end were borderline melodramatic, there was no mention of Todd or a few other dangling plot threads - there are still a tantalising seven more episodes left to tie everything, and if Blood Money is anything to go by, then we’re in for a fantastic time.