Breaking Bad, "Box Cutter": I don't consider him a professional

My review/recap of last night's season premiere after I bid on a new mineral. 

Well, Season 4 of Breaking Bad started off with a bang. I was not expecting any of that to happen, other than Walt living to see another episode (he is the main character - he can't die [just yet]).

The episode opens with a flashback of Gale (David Costabile) opening up the lab equipment in Gus's secret lab. He tells Gus that the meth he can make is 96% pure, while the blue meth he tested (Walt and Jesse's) was 99% pure and that Gus should hire the person who cooked it.

Jesse is sitting in his car after he kills Gus, when Victor (Jeremiah Bitsui), one of Gus's assistants, gets in and has him drive to the lab where Mike is holding Walter. Later, Walter tells Mike and Victor that they need to start cooking to stay on schedule for Gus. Instead of letting Walter and Jesse go and start cooking, Victor turns the equipment on and starts cooking himself. Walter doesn't think that he will be able to cook using his recipe ("I bet he forgets the aluminum").

Gus shows up at the lab and silently undresses and puts on one of the cooking suits as Walt and Victor argue over who should cook. Victor says that he has been watching Walt cook and knows his recipe. Walt calls him a short-order cook and tells him that just following a recipe won't work. Gus grabs the box cutter that Gale used to open the boxes at the lab, walks behind Victor and cuts his throat. He then cleans himself off, gets dressed, and tells Walt and Jesse to "get back to work."

With Mike's help, Walt and Jesse get rid of Victor's body and Walt and Jesse go to a Denny's to get breakfast/lunch. Jesse assures Walt that Gus will not kill them next because he won't be able to find another chemist able to cook good meth that he can trust.

The sub-plots with Skylar, Saul, and Hank and Marie, were not essential to this episode, but did seem to set up plots for the characters. Skylar wants to be part of the decision making with Walt, but doesn't want anyone to think that they are back together, and Saul is paranoid that someone bugged his office  It was pretty hard to watch the Hank and Marie scene, with Hank being confined to the bed bidding on minerals on eBay, while Marie has to help him use the bathroom.

This was a very good episode to open the fourth season. It seems like the show is going back towards Season 1 in terms of how the story will be told. Season 1 went really slow in terms of the story. It took 3 episodes for Walt and Jesse to kill Krazy-8 and Emilio. There was even a call back to that in this episode with Walt and Jesse struggling to clean up Victor's body. The slower pace is what made this show different - it showed parts of the story that other shows would gloss over.

It looks like the Albuquerque police will be the next problem for Walt, Jesse, and Gus as they search through Gale's apartment. I'm sure they will find his "Lab Notes" notebook and may be able to find that it was Jesse who killed him.

They had to kill Victor right when I was starting to like his character, and Gus sure is a scary man, even without talking.