Timeline / Breaking Bad

The timeline of the universe in which the events of Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and El Camino happen. WARNING: UNMARKED SPOILERS AHEAD. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Pre-1970s

1940s

• Mike Ehrmantraut is born.
• Chuck McGill is born.

1950s

• Walter White is born.
• Chuck graduates valedictorian from Francis Xavier High School at age 14, being the only student in the school's entire history to do so.

1960s

• Jimmy McGill, Chuck's younger brother, is born.
• Walt's father dies of Huntington's disease.
• Kim Wexler is born.
• Huell Babineaux is born.

1970s-‘80s

Undefined

• In the Chicago suburb Cicero, Chuck and Jimmy spend their childhood going down very different paths. Chuck idolizes their convenience store owner father Charles and does his best to live up to the example he sets, refusing to put a toe out of line, while Jimmy is resentful of the con men who repeatedly take advantage of his father and starts stealing money from the store’s till. The store eventually goes bankrupt, and Chuck tries to tell their parents Jimmy was responsible but they refuse to believe it. Charles dies six months later.
• Walt and his college roommate and chemistry prodigy Elliott Schwartz complete a project that leads them to create the pharmaceutical company Grey Matter. Walt at this time was dating Gretchen, but then found out about her high class background at a barbeque. Stung by the realization that he'd be forever overshadowed by his association with them, Walk breaks up with Gretchen, and then proceeds to sell his shares in the company, only to see it become a billion dollar earner. Gretchen then starts dating Elliott instead and ultimately marries him.
• Kim is raised by her alcoholic single mother in a small town on the Kansas-Nebraska border. Her mother rarely disciplines her or takes responsibility; when Kim shoplifts a pair of earrings, she pretends to scold her in front of the shopkeeper, but drops the act and laughs once they leave (to Kim's disappointment) and reveals that she kept the earrings for Kim.
• Now a teenager, Jimmy embarks on his own con games, often with his best friend Marco Pasternak, becoming infamous in the neighborhood as “Slippin’ Jimmy” (though he also sometimes uses the alias Saul Goodman, a play on the phrase “It’s all good, man”). However, his natural charisma results in his victims always laughing it off and letting him get away with it. Chuck, having never forgotten what he saw as his parents’ preference for Jimmy, grows increasingly bitter at his brother’s popularity despite his criminal actions while Chuck continues to stick to the straight and narrow without any such plaudits.
• Mike, now a Philadelphia cop, works in a horribly corrupt department, with every single officer taking illegal payments so that none will ever be tempted to inform on the others. On a domestic disturbance call, he gives the abusive husband an intimidating warning, but the man kills his wife a few weeks later. Mike decides his mistake was in using a “half measure” rather than simply killing the man, and resolves to never do so again.
• Mexican drug lords Eladio Vuente, Juan Bolsa, and Hector Salamanca form the Juarez Cartel, one of the most powerful drug empires in the country. Hector gains four nephews from different siblings, Alberto aka "Tuco", twins Marco and Leonel aka “The Cousins”, and Eduardo aka "Lalo". The nephews are inducted into the family business at a very young age; Hector is abusive towards the Cousins, and might have done the same to Tuco and Lalo.
• Chuck becomes a lawyer, and moves to Albuquerque where he encounters George Hamlin. Together they create the law firm that would eventually gain the name Hamlin, Hamlin, and McGill (HHM) after George's son Howard joins it. HHM becomes one of the most respected firms in the area. George passes away or retires at some point, leaving Chuck and Howard as the sole partners.
• Jimmy marries a woman who he soon discovers cheating on him with a man named Chet, leading to their divorce.
• Jesse Pinkman is born.
• Walt meets restaurant hostess Skyler Lambert while working in a chemical lab near Los Alamos, and eventually marries her.

1985

• The Nobel Prize is awarded to a breakthrough in determining crystal structures, which utilized some of Walt’s research. Still bitter about losing his Grey Matter shares and blaming Elliott and Gretchen for “stealing” his work even though it was his own decision to leave, he sees this as one more humiliation as he wasn’t able to get the prize himself.

1989

• Chilean drug lords and possible lovers Gustavo Fring and Max Arciniega establish a chicken restaurant in Mexico, Los Pollos Hermanos, as a front for their meth empire. They audaciously sell some of their product to Juarez men as a business offer, but while Eladio is impressed with their work, he declares they need to pay for their arrogance. Hector murders Max in front of Gustavo while Bolsa makes him watch, and Eladio enigmatically states he’s only letting Gustavo live because he knows of his past in Chile.

1990s- 2001

Undefined

• Tuco, having been specially groomed by Hector as his successor, moves to Albuquerque and establishes his own ring of the Juarez Cartel, his lieutenants including Ignacio "Nacho" Varga, Domingo Molina, "Gonzo," and "No-Doze." He establishes a reputation as an especially unpredictable and dangerous figure when, during a drug deal, he shot a gang associate in the head at point-blank range with a sawed-off shotgun, for no reason besides rage and paranoia.
• Gustavo becomes a low-level member of the Cartel, moving to Albuquerque and Anglicizing his name to Gus, while also making regular contributions to local charities to become regarded as a pillar of the community. All the while, he still holds a grudge over Max’s death and plans a long-term revenge on the three Juarez leaders, his greatest ire reserved for Hector. His own subordinates include Victor, Tyrus Kitt, and Lydia Rodarte-Quayle. In turn, Hector grows increasingly jealous at Eladio increasingly favoring Gus over him.
• Skyler briefly gets a job working for financial advisor Ted Beneke, but quits after he drunkenly makes a pass at her during an office party.
• Chuck marries a woman named Rebecca, but just like Jimmy’s marriage it’s short-lived and she ends up leaving him, though on relatively good terms.
• Jimmy has a brief romance with his mailroom co-worker Kim Wexler, and is impressed when she reveals her own ambitions to become a lawyer, and successfully gets her degree and starts working cases for HHM. Jimmy decides to do the same, and gets his own degree through a correspondence course at the University of American Samoa. However, Chuck still refuses to see Jimmy as anything but a con man, and forces his partner Howard Hamlin to deny him a promotion, all while keeping his own involvement secret. Instead, Jimmy becomes a public defender, scrounging for jobs at the courthouse defending petty crooks and making his office in the back room of a Vietnamese nail salon.
• Skyler’s sister Marie marries DEA agent Hank Schrader, whose hyper-masculine personality provides a further blow to Walt’s self-esteem.

1992-93

• Walt and Skyler, now living in a humble suburb of Albuquerque where Walt teaches high school chemistry, have a son, Walter Jr., who is born with cerebral palsy, putting a further strain on their finances. Walt ultimately has to take a second job at the A1 Car Wash.
• Jimmy encounters his ex-wife and Chet, and takes an impromptu revenge by the so-called "Chicago Sunroof", which is defecating through the sunroof of the man’s car. Unfortunately, their children are in the back seat, and Chet also has ties to the police, leading Jimmy to be swiftly incarcerated. Their mother Ruth begs Chuck to come back home to help, and he complies, getting the charges dropped through several legal loopholes. In return, Chuck convinces Jimmy to come to Albuquerque with him and get a real job, which ends up being in the mailroom of HHM.

1999

• Ruth McGill nears her death in the hospital with her sons Jimmy and Chuck by her side. Jimmy briefly leaves the room, and Ruth suddenly starts calling for him, not acknowledging Chuck’s attempts to tell her he’s there before she suddenly dies. Chuck’s decades of resentment cause him to claim to Jimmy that he didn’t miss any final words.

2001

• Mike’s son Matt, having joined him on the police force, faces the same pressure to join the station’s corruption. Mike reveals his own complicity and advises him to do it, leaving Matt devastated as he’d idolized his father all his life. He agrees to everything, but two other cops, Fensky and Hoffman, still suspect he’ll blow the whistle and murder him. Matt’s wife Stacey moves to Albuquerque with their daughter Kaylee for a fresh start, while Mike quits the force and descends into alcoholism.
• Chuck’s career is suddenly derailed when he develops a severe case of electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS), and is unable to bear the slightest trace of electricity. He retreats into his home and purges it of all electricity, relying on Jimmy to periodically bring him supplies even as everyone doubts just how much the condition is real or all in his head. Jimmy insists HHM pay Chuck his full $17 million severance package, while Howard insists on calling his situation an “extended sabbatical,” and Chuck himself insists he will get better and go back to work one day. He also goes to great lengths to hide it all from Rebecca.

2002

• Several months after Matt’s death, Mike finally puts the pieces together about who the killers were. He sobers up, and then uses his reputation as a drunk to get Fensky and Hoffman’s guard down. After confirming from their own words that they did it, he ruthlessly guns them both down, taking a bullet in the process, and then escapes the investigation by joining his daughter-in-law in Albuquerque. He goes to a veterinarian, Dr. Caldera, to stitch his wound, and Caldera reveals his role in providing jobs to the city’s criminals. Mike declines the offer of his help, and gets a job in the courthouse tollbooth.
• Jimmy loses Craig and Betsy Kettleman, a highly lucrative pair of clients accused of large scale embezzlement, to HHM, with Kim becoming their lawyer. Desperate for money, he convinces con artist brothers Cal and Lars Lindholm to pull a flopsy scheme with Betsy’s car upon which Jimmy will appear to defend her and hopefully regain their service. Cal and Lars end up targeting the wrong car, which drives away after hitting them. They follow the car home and disappear into the driver’s house, and when Jimmy comes looking he finds himself held at gunpoint by Tuco.
• Cal and Lars ruin Jimmy’s attempt to get them all out of the situation by spilling the whole scheme. Tuco takes them all out to the desert to kill them along with Nacho, Gonzo, and No-Doz, but Jimmy’s insistence about the truth of what happened ultimately gets their lives spared. However, Tuco still breaks one leg of each brother, wiping out Jimmy’s cash for their hospital bills, though he takes solace in proving himself “the best lawyer ever,” having effectively argued a death sentence down to six months’ probation.
• Nacho comes to Jimmy’s office, having been intrigued by the story of the Kettlemans and believing they would make ideal burglary marks, due to being unable to report the loss of money they’d stolen themselves. Jimmy refuses to be any part of it, insisting he’s not a criminal, but Nacho leaves his phone number anyway. Jimmy warns Kim that her clients are in danger, and also makes an anonymous call to the Kettlemans themselves.
• The next day the Kettlemans are nowhere to be found, and Nacho is arrested due to witnesses having seen him casing the house. He requests Jimmy as his lawyer and insists he didn’t do anything, plus Jimmy will be killed if this incident brings police attention to Tuco. Jimmy convinces Kim to let him investigate the house, and he uncovers clues suggesting the Kettlemans faked being kidnapped to escape with their stolen money.
• Jimmy gets in an altercation with Mike, who he has long had a rivalry with over Mike’s rigid insistence that Jimmy get an appropriate number of stickers for his car before he can enter or leave the courthouse parking lot. However, Mike is then impressed with Jimmy’s theory and recounts a similar case he dealt with as a cop, advising Jimmy on where to look for them. Jimmy tracks the Kettlemans down that night, hiding out in a tent with the stolen money. After some negotiations, he accepts a $30,000 bribe as a “retainer” for his lawyer services.
• While calculating how much of the bribe he can launder through various fees, Jimmy finds he still has $1,000 that can’t be accounted for. He thus concocts a scheme to get more business: he buys a billboard ad with obvious similarities to HHM’s ads, and gets in cahoots with the man assigned to remove it when they inevitably win their copyright claim. The man pretends to lose his balance and cling to the billboard for his life, while Jimmy climbs up and rescues him in front of cameras he’d set up to document a “human interest” story.
• Jimmy tries to hide this from Chuck by not bringing in the newspaper reporting it, but Chuck notices it missing and braves a trip outside to read the story in his neighbor’s paper. The neighbor reports him for stealing it, and the pair of cops who arrive are suspicious of the conditions of his house, and his rambling, frantic explanations and assume he’s a drug addict. They break in and taze him, tremendously aggravating his EHS and putting him in the hospital.
• Amid the various quacks attracted by his billboard stunt, Jimmy finds success in helping the elderly Mrs. Strauss set up her estate. When he shares the story with Kim, she suggests he could have a real future in elder law, but is interrupted by a call from Howard about Chuck.
• Chuck’s attending physician Dr. Cruz is doubtful about his EHS, and in front of Jimmy and Kim she turns on his hospital bed’s monitoring system without him noticing, to which he has no reaction. Jimmy chides her for the trick, and takes Chuck back home. He discovers Chuck knows about the billboard stunt, and insists it was only to help him get started and he now intends to be a legitimate lawyer, to which Chuck is still skeptical. Jimmy nevertheless starts bringing his advertising directly to nursing home residents.
• Stacey, having been suspicious of Mike since he moved to town, calls the Philadelphia police to report his whereabouts after discovering money hidden in a suitcase. Two detectives arrive to question him, and Mike requests Jimmy as his lawyer, calling in a favor for his help with the Kettlemans as he wants Jimmy to help him steal one of the detectives’ notepad. After succeeding, he admits everything to Stacey and simply says she has to decide if she can live with it.
• Jimmy returns the notepad after Mike looks through it, claiming to have found it on the ground. He then dismisses Jimmy, saying the matter is entirely in Stacey’s hands now during her own questioning. Stacey ultimately decides to side with Mike, and doesn’t turn him in.
• Chuck begins taking active steps to battle his EHS, gradually increasing the amount of time he can stand to be outside until he’s able to go back to work. Jimmy leaves some files in his house over Chuck’s protests, knowing he won’t be able to resist looking through them.
• The Kettlemans fire Kim after she insists they take a plea deal rather than go to a hopeless trial. They approach Jimmy to hire him, and even after hearing he’s now going into elder law, they force him to take the job by threatening to expose the bribe he took. Jimmy strikes back by getting Mike to find their hiding place for the stolen money using a planted stack of cash. Jimmy reluctantly returns his $30,000 to the pile, sacrificing the office space he was hoping to lease, and Mike takes it to the DA. The Kettlemans are thus forced to turn themselves in, and Jimmy steers them back toward Kim and her plea deal.
• While pursuing his elder law practice at the nursing home Sandpiper Crossing, Jimmy discovers the home is defrauding its residents through mass overcharging. Chuck, who’s been looking over Jimmy’s files, agrees that there is potential for a class action lawsuit. Jimmy returns to Sandpiper and finds its employees shredding the evidence, and desperately scribbles a cease and desist letter on toilet paper to stop them.
• Jimmy finds the shredded documents in Sandpiper’s garbage late at night, and goes to Chuck’s house to reassemble them, working himself to exhaustion. Chuck has finished the job by the time he wakes up, and advises Jimmy of a case law that would help. Jimmy asks Kim to print it using Chuck’s account, announcing he’s back. In a meeting with Sandpiper’s lawyers, Chuck demands $20 million and the case is on. Chuck is so energized from working again that he manages to unthinkingly go outside without any pain.
• Stacey asks Mike what she should do with the dirty money from the suitcase, as her bills have been piling up. Mike advises her to use it, but she says it doesn’t come close to covering her expenses. Mike returns to Caldera and asks if he still has criminal jobs available. He also buys a dog for Kaylee as an excuse for more frequent visits.
• Chuck starts to become overwhelmed with the paperwork for the Sandpiper case, and insists they need to bring HHM into it. After Jimmy agrees, Chuck sneaks out late at night and fights through the pain to use Jimmy’s phone to tell Howard about not letting Jimmy stay on the suit. At a meeting the next day, Jimmy refuses to accept their payment offer for the work he’s already put in and declares he’ll never let them join the lawsuit.
• Mike gets a job from Caldera as a bodyguard to Daniel Wormald, an employee at a pharmaceutical company who is starting to sell its products on the side. After showing his bona fides by easily defeating the two other men brought in for the job, they meet with Wormald’s buyer, Nacho. Mike has researched the deal and knows Nacho is doing it behind Tuco’s back, and thus he makes an issue of the payment being short by just $20, knowing Nacho won’t want things going south for any reason and getting word back to Tuco.
• Kim asks Howard why he’s so against letting Jimmy work at HHM, and Howard reveals the truth about Chuck. Kim then tells Jimmy to accept the firm’s offer, which is unusual enough that along with his phone’s dead battery Jimmy finally realizes the truth. He confronts Chuck, who admits that he’s been working against Jimmy due to not seeing him as a real lawyer. Jimmy in turn declares that he’s done helping Chuck with his living conditions. HHM subsequently assigns mailroom employee Ernesto to take over the job.
• After handing the Sandpiper case to HHM, Jimmy returns home to Cicero and reconnects with Marco, retreating completely into his old con man life after Chuck’s betrayal. They spend a week running their old scams, but then Jimmy finds his phone full of messages from people asking about his elder law practice and decides to go back. Marco talks him into one last con, but dies of a heart attack in the middle of it.
• Kim tells Jimmy about another firm that HHM has teamed up with for the Sandpiper case, Davis and Main. After hearing how the lawsuit got started, they’re interested in Jimmy and willing to give him a job that will put him on track to becoming a full partner. Jimmy arrives for the job interview, but then doesn’t go in, and instead talks with Mike about why they didn’t just split the Kettlemans’ money between themselves with no one the wiser. Mike says he wanted to finish the job he’d been given, while Jimmy did it because he wanted to prove himself to his brother, something he now says will never be a problem again before driving away from the Davis and Main job. He proceeds to vacate his own office as well.
• Wormald’s success at his first drug buy goes to his head, and he buys a garish Hummer to take to the next meeting with Nacho. Mike refuses to get in as it will attract attention, and Wormald simply tells him he’s no longer needed. Nacho proceeds to sweet-talk him into getting a look inside the Hummer, discovering his address on the registration.
• Kim confronts Jimmy over walking away from the Davis and Main job, but he replies that he’s done trying to please Chuck. He proceeds to rope her into a con game to show how much fun it can be, and together they get obnoxious financial consultant Ken to pay for a whole bottle of extremely expensive tequila (poured by Skyler). Kim is so energized that she takes Jimmy home and sleeps with him. However, the next day she has sobered up and realizes she has to get back to her real life. This is such a blow to Jimmy that he takes the Davis and Main job soon after.
• Nacho robs Wormald’s house, and he calls the police about the robbery, despite the risk to exposing his own criminal activity. He was so careless in covering it up that the arriving cops quickly discover the hiding spot for his drug money, which is empty. When Mike finds out, he advises the Wormald drop the whole thing right now, but he refuses due to the theft of his father’s baseball card collection. Mike offers to find the cards himself to make the situation go away. He quickly tracks down Nacho at his father’s upholstery shop, and threatens to reveal Nacho’s dealings to Tuco unless he plays along.
• Mike negotiates the return of the cards for Wormald’s Hummer, which Nacho plans to take right to a chop shop, while Mike pockets $10,000. However, the police still want to talk to Wormald. Mike calls Jimmy, having just gotten out of a tense Sandpiper meeting where Chuck arrived to “bear witness,” and offers him another job. Jimmy clears Wormald from suspicion with an elaborate lie that the hiding space was actually for fetish videos, going so far as to actually make one with him. His victory is soured with Kim’s shock at his fabricating evidence, and he simply replies that she won’t hear about such a thing again.
• Jimmy brings in hundreds of new clients for the Sandpiper case, which Chuck correctly suspects were obtained through illegal solicitation. Jimmy isn’t swayed by this, but he does feel regret when Kim also criticizes it. He approaches his boss Clifford Main about doing a TV commercial, and despite only getting an agreement to discuss it goes ahead and films one.
• Stacey tells Mike she’s worried about hearing gunshots in the neighborhood late at night. Mike keeps an all-night vigil, but doesn’t turn anything up. However, Stacey still insists the next day that there were more shots, and Mike agrees to move them to a safer neighborhood. This requires another job from Caldera, and it turns out a client has actually asked for Mike specifically: Nacho.
• Jimmy decides to not risk the commercial being turned down and sends it to air without permission. This results in a ton of new calls, but Clifford is still furious and demands to see him first thing the next morning. The other partners all want to fire him, but Clifford convinces them to give him a second chance, albeit one where he’ll be closely watched by associate Erin Brill.
• Kim faces her own consequences for not warning Howard about the commercial as soon as she found out, while Chuck smugly looks on. She’s banished to the document review room in the basement, and refuses to let Jimmy intervene on her behalf, as it would likely only make her lose her job completely. Jimmy furiously goes to confront Chuck, but relents on finding him suffering a serious EHS attack and stands vigil for the night.
• Nacho’s job for Mike turns out to be killing Tuco. Nacho has long been uneasy about his boss’ erratic nature, and now wants to take him out before word gets to him of Nacho’s solo dealings. Mike suggests using a sniper rifle, and meets with local arms dealer Lawson. In the middle of the deal, he suddenly changes his mind, knowing that Tuco’s death would draw attention from the Juarez Cartel, and declines to buy anything. Lawson says he’ll always be available down the road.
• Mike and Nacho implement a new plan while Tuco counts the weekly intake from Domingo. After Domingo leaves, Mike calls the police and then engineers a confrontation, clipping Tuco’s car and then refusing to show any fear of him. By the time the police arrive, they see what appears to be Tuco beating a helpless old man while his unlicensed gun lies nearby and arrest him. He ends up being put in jail for 5-10 years, his cellmate being the young newbie drug dealer “Skinny Pete.”
• Kim struggles to find new clients during every spare moment to get in good with Howard again, and finally gets a hit from Mesa Verde Bank and Trust. However, Howard quickly takes over the meeting with CEO Kevin Watchtell and senior counsel Paige Novick, sending Kim back to the basement. Chuck, sympathizing with her being screwed over by Jimmy, promises to talk to Howard. He gets her old job back, and a seat at the Mesa Verde meetings, but Howard is still unhappy with her.
• Tuco’s arrest brings Hector himself to town, and he offers Mike $5,000 to claim the gun the police found was his, reducing Tuco’s jail time significantly. When Mike doesn’t give an answer after a few days, Hector sends a pair of hitmen to his house. Mike gets the drop on them and sends them back after a beating. Hector responds by bringing in the Cousins, who covertly make a death threat toward Kaylee.
• Mike meets again with Hector, who has Nacho frisk him first. Nacho deliberately lets Mike keep his gun, and he pulls it out in the middle of the talks to demand Hector now give him $50,000, making clear that he knows he won’t survive if he shoots Hector, but Hector won’t either. Mike splits the money with Nacho, given how he’s now failed the original job to send Tuco away for years. The next day, he gets Jimmy’s help in amending his statement.
• Jimmy, now suffocating at Davis and Main while unable to step outside the rules, deliberately makes himself increasingly hard to work with so that he’ll be fired without cause, allowing him to keep his bonus. Clifford finally gives in, saying he knew what Jimmy was up to the whole time but fighting him isn’t worth it. He tells Kim, who’s been contemplating quitting HHM over Howard’s increasingly poor treatment, and Jimmy suggests they go into business together. Kim counters that they both run their own firms out of a single office space.
• Kim officially resigns, and on her way out hears Howard ask for a call with Mesa Verde, anticipating that she’ll try to take her biggest client with her. She manages to call herself first and makes a convincing pitch, but Chuck soon counters her with his own pitch, managing to keep his composure in the fully powered office until Kevin and Paige leave.
• Ernesto calls Jimmy to Chuck’s house, worried about him after the meeting. Jimmy sends Ernesto home, and takes the opportunity to look through the Mesa Verde documents. He then drives to a copy shop and spends hours meticulously transposing two numbers in the address of a proposed new branch of the bank on every single sheet it appears.
• Mike makes plans to fix his problems with the Cartel permanently, observing Hector and discovering he uses ice cream trucks to smuggle his drugs from Mexico. He then makes a spike belt using a hose and nails, and disables the next truck, stealing all the money it carries and leaving the driver tied up. That night, he observes Hector being informed of the hit and uses some of the money to buy drinks for a whole bar.
• At a hearing for the new Mesa Verde branch, Chuck repeats the altered address Jimmy fed him. The hearing breaks down and is rescheduled, and Howard, Kevin, and Paige are all left frustrated as Chuck continues to insist he was saying the correct address. At home, he discovers unaltered paperwork and realizes what Jimmy did. He accuses Jimmy with Kim alongside, and threatens to have her disbarred unless she reveals the truth. Kim sides with Jimmy and tells Chuck he has no evidence, but in private reveals to Jimmy that she knows Chuck was right.
• Nacho tells Mike he knows Mike was the one who hit Hector’s truck, and reveals that a man freed the driver, and Hector later killed him so there would be no witnesses. Mike is remorseful, as he was intending for the robbery to make the news and bring Hector’s operation to the attention of the authorities, and now a man is dead for nothing.
• Jimmy realizes Chuck will figure out where he altered the documents and gets the employee who helped him to agree to keep quiet with just minutes to spare. Chuck is furious at the denial, and combined with the massive electricity in the building he passes out and hits his head on the counter. Jimmy is forced to intercede and call for an ambulance, which Chuck picks up on. But Ernesto covers it, saying he called Jimmy beforehand, not wanting the brothers to become permanent enemies.
• Mike continues to follow Hector and discovers a meeting place in the desert. He gets back in touch with Lawson and buys the sniper rifle he turned down before. His attempt to kill Hector is foiled from two directions: first, Nacho realizes what he’s doing and keeps positioning himself in the line of fire until the Cousins kill the driver. Second, Gus has now gotten wind of Mike’s plans and is determined that Hector live to suffer Gus’ own long-planned revenge, so he arranges for Mike’s car horn to be triggered by a tree branch, along with a note that simply says “Don’t.”
• Howard calls Jimmy to say he’s worried about Chuck. Jimmy finds Chuck lining his entire home with metal sheeting, apparently suffering a total mental breakdown after his trick with the documents. Jimmy admits the truth and leaves, but it was all a trick, as Chuck had hidden a tape recorder in the room. He plays the tape for Howard, knowing full well that it can’t be used as evidence by itself, but says he has another idea. He arranges for Ernesto to overhear part of the tape, and then chastises him to never reveal it.
• Mike frantically disassembles his car in a junkyard, finally discovering a tracking device in the gas cap. He goes back home and finds another in his other car. After finishing his shift in the booth, he hides the tracker in an overpass pylon. He then meets with Caldera to request an identical device. He puts his own tracker in place of the original and then drains the original’s battery, resulting in someone arriving late at night to replace it, taking Mike’s tracker with him. Mike follows the signal to Los Pollos Hermanos.
• Jimmy and Kim hire a secretary, ending up with Francesca Liddy entirely because she was the first person to show up and Jimmy is eager to get his new office started. Luckily, she turns out to be appropriately chipper for the job, even when one of her first calls is from Mike.
• Mike tasks Jimmy with watching Gus’ henchman in the restaurant. Jimmy is so obvious about it that Gus covertly calls off the drop, and sends out Victor with the tracker. Mike follows it only to find the tracker in the middle of the street, along with a phone that Gus promptly calls. He shows up along with Victor and Tyrus, and says that he doesn’t want Mike to kill Hector, but wouldn’t mind if he keeps disrupting Hector’s business.
• Ernesto tells Kim about the tape, and she in turn tells Jimmy, who ignores her caution that Chuck can’t legally do anything with it. Jimmy barges into Chuck’s house and destroys the tape in front of him, all as Chuck planned, as Howard and a private detective are now witnesses to Jimmy’s breaking and entering, and destruction of property.
• Kim insists on representing Jimmy, but he turns her down, saying he’ll face the consequences himself. As all the local lawyers know Jimmy well, they can’t prosecute due to conflict of interest and Belen lawyer Kyra Hay is brought in. Chuck plays the conflicted brother for her, asking if there’s a way for Jimmy to avoid jail time. They present Jimmy with a PPD to be disbarred without further punishment, which finally gets Jimmy to agree to let Kim help him.
• Mike gets a brick of cocaine from Gus’ physician Barry Goodman, and uses a pair of shoes hung on a telephone wire to coat Hector’s next truck with it. The couriers are arrested at the border when the drug-sniffing dogs detect it. The next day, Hector shows up at Los Pollos Hermanos to demand Gus use his own supply line to bring in his drugs, just as Gus and Mike planned. However, Mike refuses payment for the job, saying they’re “square.”
• Kim finds the repair company Chuck hired to fix his door after Jimmy’s break-in through arduous trial and error, and cancels the appointment. Jimmy then gets Mike to pose as the repairman, and he takes several pictures of the house while doing the work. He also gets Rebecca’s phone number from Chuck’s address book.

2003-' 04

• Jimmy tells Rebecca about Chuck’s EHS and gets her to come down for the trial. He also hires another of Caldera’s men, Huell Babineaux, to plant his cell phone battery in Chuck’s pocket. After some opening questions to buy time, Jimmy finally reveals to Chuck that the battery has been in close proximity to him for almost two hours without any reaction. Chuck is caught so off guard that he launches into a rant about his long resentment of Jimmy, revealing his true colors to both the New Mexico Bar and Rebecca at long last.
• The Bar rules that Jimmy not serve any time or be disbarred, but that he have his law license revoked for a year, plus community service picking up litter. However, the victory is soured by Rebecca’s disgust at his tactics and continued refusal to make amends with Chuck. She leaves declaring that Chuck was always right about him. Jimmy also has to pull the remaining commercials he’d contracted for, leaving him with $4,000 worth of ad time he can do nothing with. However, he refuses to shutter the office and insists Kim keep working there on her own.
• Nacho grows increasingly uneasy about working directly under Hector after he’s forced to beat up Domingo for being short on his payments. He also suffers Victor putting a gun to his head after insisting Hector’s side take a bigger cut of the profits than Gus, though Gus quickly allows it when he’s called. Gus himself is being shown an industrial laundry building by Lydia, and agrees that it would make a good site for a meth-manufacturing lab. Hector crosses another line when he suggests using Nacho’s father’s business as a front, but he gets an idea when news arrives that Tuco has started a fight and increased his jail time, forcing Hector to scrabble for a bottle of pills when he starts shaking.
• Jimmy hits on the idea of selling his ad time to other companies, and brings back his old Saul Goodman persona to distance it from his law practice. However, he runs into difficulties balancing the new business with his litter collection, and also finds people reluctant to agree to his terms. He quickly finds himself short of cash. Kim is having her own problems, as her guilt over Chuck is causing her to sleep less and she snaps at Paige over a compliment for “destroying” him.
• Nacho approaches Wormald about getting empty capsules for the same kind of pills Hector takes. Wormald goes to Mike for help, but he refuses to get involved. However, this changes after hearing a story in Stacey’s grief support group from a woman whose husband disappeared while hiking, leaving her with no idea what happened to him and reminding Mike of the man he got killed with his attack on Hector. He approves of the plan after hearing it, but also cautions Nacho to make sure to switch the original pills back afterwards to avoid problems with Gus. He also asks Nacho for the location of the man’s body and anonymously reports it.
• Jimmy asks for a refund on his malpractice insurance, since he won’t be needing it until his suspension ends. The insurance agent explains that it doesn’t work that way, and he goes into a mental breakdown about all his problems, including Chuck’s mental illness. However, he walks out of the room completely calm, as it was all an act to increase Chuck’s insurance premiums out of pure spite.
• Jimmy manages to sell all his remaining ad spots by resorting to another flopsy scheme, but Kim remains skeptical he can cover his half of the expenses. At his next round of litter duty, Jimmy hits on a new idea as he threatens to sue the supervisor using several legal loopholes to allow a drug dealer in the same crew out to do a job, and is especially pleased at how well this kind of shady lawyering can pay.
• Jimmy learns from Irene Landry, the class representative of the Sandpiper lawsuit, that the nursing home has put an extremely lucrative offer on the table but HHM is still advising her to hold out for more. Wanting his own share of the settlement as quickly as possible, he sinks to ostracizing Irene from all her friends to pressure her into taking the offer as it stands.
• Mike goes back to Gus for help in laundering the money he stole from Hector’s truck. Gus says their shared rivalry with Hector will draw attention if they partner openly, but he has another suggestion. Mike meets Lydia at her regular office at Madrigal Electromotive in Houston, and takes a job as a security consultant.
• After a whole night of practicing tossing the pill bottle into a coat pocket, Nacho successfully manages to switch the pills. Hector has another attack when Bolsa informs him that the Cartel has decided to continue using Gus’ smuggling route exclusively, but the altered pills have no apparent effect. Nacho reluctantly tells his father the truth about what Hector is about to ask, and is ordered out of the house.
• The premiums of every HHM lawyer are threatened to be raised due to Jimmy’s act at the insurance company, and Howard finally turns on Chuck, suggesting he end active law work and become a professor. Chuck, who has been steadily working to cure his EHS, is outraged and threatens to sue for his full severance just like Jimmy originally wanted, which will bankrupt the firm, planning on Howard instead just dropping the issue and keeping him on.
• Kim takes on another major client in oil tycoon Billy Gatwood, eating even more into her sleep time. This results in her falling asleep while driving to a meeting with Gatwood, swerving off the road and crashing into a rock that breaks her arm. She decides to take the opportunity for a break, and advises Mesa Verde and Gatwood on other law firms while she rents a bunch of movies.
• Howard counters Chuck’s leverage by paying the severance out of his personal funds, also insisting on Chuck going through the humiliation of having his retirement from the firm be publicly announced to the whole team. Jimmy visits later, only for Chuck to coldly state that it’s in Jimmy’s nature to hurt people, and Chuck has never cared much about him.
• Jimmy is shocked to discover that even after Irene accepted the settlement, her friends still haven’t accepted her back. After several attempts to mend the relationship without revealing his own complicity fail, he finally sacrifices his hard-fought reputation as a paragon of elder law by arranging for all of Sandpiper to overhear him discussing his actions with Erin when she delivers the settlement. He and Kim shutter their office, though they promise to hire Francesca again if they get another practice going.
• Bolsa personally arrives to force Hector to agree to the new arrangement, and this time he’s enraged enough for the pills to take effect. As Hector suffers a massive heart attack, Gus urges Bolsa to run before the paramedics arrive, and performs CPR as he still wants to work his own revenge on them all. Gus suspiciously eyes Nacho as Hector is put in an ambulance, and has Victor tail him where he's spotted dumping the pills.
• Chuck suffers a relapse of his EHS, becoming increasingly unhinged as his house’s electrical meter indicates that there is still electricity being put out somewhere no matter how much he searches. He rips apart the walls and finds a stray wire, but the meter still keeps running, and Chuck is driven to destroy it. His paranoia increases until he can barely move, and he ultimately kicks over a lantern to commit suicide.
• After Chuck's funeral, Howard confesses to Jimmy and Kim that he thinks forcing Chuck out of the firm led to his relapse, in the process also revealing the insurance issue with no idea Jimmy was behind it. Jimmy refuses to let him off the hook, still bitter over their sabotage of his career.
• Mike takes to his new job by stealing a Madrigal employee's ID and uncovering numerous security flaws. Lydia is uncomfortable with his possibly jeopardizing the operation and calls Gus, who takes Mike's side that it's actually good for his employment to have witnesses.
• Jimmy's first job interview doesn't go well, and he retaliates by launching into an expert sales pitch that convinces the bosses to hire him on the spot, only to turn them down for falling for the act. He's also inspired to steal their antique Hummel figurine after his time in elder law educated him on their value, inviting Mike in on the scheme. Mike turns it down, so Jimmy goes to Caldera for another partner, Ira, who successfully pulls it off. The figurine sells for much more than expected, and Jimmy is impressed with Ira's integrity keeping him informed rather than making off with most of the money.
• Gus becomes obsessed with Hector's condition, even giving the hospital a huge grant to have an expert from Johns Hopkins take a look at him, all to continue his revenge. He also confronts Nacho with his knowledge about the pills, killing Nacho's partner in front of him and threatening to reveal his actions to the Cousins unless he follows Gus' orders from now on. Victor and Tyrus fake an attack to explain the partner's death which also involves seriously wounding Nacho, before taking him to Caldera to get patched up.
• Bolsa is spooked enough by the fake attack to stop all smuggling across the border. When Gus reminds him their current supply is running low, he authorizes Gus to recruit some local drug makers, just as Gus wanted as Eladio had always forbidden it until now. He visits Gale Boetticher, a local chemist who's been testing his products. Gale frankly says the quality is terrible and he could do a lot better himself, but Gus says that for now he's best suited where he is.
• Gus has Nacho implement the last step in his scheme, fingering the Salamancas' local support gang the Espinozas for the attack that killed his partner. The Cousins impulsively go on the attack immediately with Nacho's reluctant support, and wipe them all out. The Cousins head back to Mexico until the heat dies down, while Bolsa grants Gus the Espinozas' territory. The desperate Nacho crawls back to his father and begs for help.
• Gus confronts Mike about letting Nacho go ahead with his scheme against Hector, but Mike doesn't flinch as he knows Gus actually has a new job for him. This turns out to be vetting the candidates to covertly build a meth lab under the laundromat, and he ends up going with German contractor Werner who impresses with his old school tools and frank assessment of the job's difficulty. Mike sets up the crew with living quarters, secretly monitoring them at all times.
• After receiving his settlement from Chuck's will, including a glowing letter written before their problems came into the open, Jimmy gets a job at a cell phone store, and after being bored with the lack of customers takes inspiration from a conversation with Ira and advertises the phones' freedom from government surveillance. He makes out good for a while, but is discouraged when he's mugged by juvenile delinquents after an especially profitable night and becomes determined to take up his lawyer job again as soon as he can.
• Kim goes back to the courthouse to observe cases, having started to lose her initial passion for the job with Mesa Verde's corporate expansions moving far from the individual clients she started out helping. She starts picking up cases again, which ultimately causes her to skip out on fixing a serious paperwork error on Mesa Verde and putting her employment with them in jeopardy. She offers to join up with Schweikart so the firm's other employees can shoulder the load, though this also means she likely won't be able to join up with Jimmy again.
• Jimmy goes back to the phone scheme with his lawyer ambitions denied, and starts by taking revenge on the kids who mugged him, getting Huell and another of Caldera's men to intimidate them into fearing for their lives, after which they pass the word around that Jimmy's business is not to be touched. He also brings back the Saul Goodman name, becoming the only name his customers know him by.
• As the months drag on, the construction crew for the drug lab start to get stir crazy, with the demolitions expert Kai being a particular problem as he causes an accident that adds a significant delay. Mike allows them a night out to blow off steam, but this leads to Werner getting drunk and discussing parts of the job with others, putting the whole thing at risk.
• Hector recovers to the point of being able to move his right hand, and the specialist Gus hired says he might eventually regain more mobility. However, Gus ends her involvement, wanting to keep Hector in his current condition after confirming that his mind is still intact.
• Huell accidentally attacks a policeman who was confronting Jimmy about his phone selling, forcing Jimmy to reveal the whole scheme to Kim as he asks for her help. Kim agrees, and much to Jimmy's surprise comes up with an elaborate scheme involving making Huell appear as a hero of his hometown who would bring too much bad publicity to the court by going to trial. After succeeding, she decides she wants to join Jimmy's practice full time. However, when Jimmy fails to get his license back after his probation ends due to the board doubting his sincerity, he unloads all his frustrations on her and possibly fractures their relationship for good.
• Eduardo "Lalo" Salamanca arrives to deliver Hector a bell scavenged from a previous job, allowing for better communication with his hand. He also presents Gus an offer to team up to take down Eladio, but Gus declines as he's still after finishing his revenge plan.
• Werner begs Mike to go back home for a few days to see his wife. Mike tries to compromise by giving him an increased phone time with her, but Werner finally snaps and escapes. By the time Mike finds him, he's already given some information to Lalo (who also killed a travel agency employee during the pursuit), and the furious Gus won't accept any less punishment than death. Mike barely manages to talk him out of also killing Werner's wife, and does the deed himself. Gale is brought in ahead of schedule to assist with building the lab.
• Jimmy and Kim launch an elaborate attempt to make him more appealing to the board, including spending thousands of dollars on a reading room in Chuck's name. But after seeing the HHM board refuse a scholarship to a legal student due to a shoplifting incident, he grows completely disillusioned that the profession's gatekeepers will ever accept him. Instead he uses Chuck's old letter as a prop to sell the board on giving his license back, after which he promptly changes his business name to Saul Goodman, both so his phone customers will be able to find him and to erase the McGill name from any further involvement in the law as a final insult to Chuck.
• Jimmy sets about finding new clients through all kinds of underhanded tactics, with even Kim being unable to talk him out of offering discounts for non-violent crimes. He offers to help her with one of her own clients who's resisting taking a plea deal, and while she initially resists, she quickly succumbs to the temptation of his plan. While admitting it to Jimmy aferwards, she insists it can never happen again.
• Gus clears up the situation with Lalo to Bolsa's satisfaction, but Lalo himself remains suspicious. They also have to send Werner's crew back home before the job is finished due to their suspicions of what happened to him, and Mike is outraged by Gus' offer to keep paying him until they can find a new crew, even taking his frustration out on Kaylee when she innocently brings up his son.
• Gus uses a continued threat to Nacho's father to pressure him into reporting on Lalo. First, Nacho has to gain enough respect for Lalo to trust him with secrets, and gets his opportunity when a drug drop with some of Jimmy's emboldened new clients goes wrong and the drugs get stuck in a drainpipe. Domingo (now saddled with the nickname "Krazy-8" thanks to an ill-played poker hand) sets off getting them out, only for the cops to show up right when he succeeds and arrest him. Nacho makes a daring raid on the stash house under the cops' noses to get their product back, gaining Lalo's trust. He follows it up by recruiting Jimmy to help with Krazy-8.
• Lalo tasks Jimmy with feeding Krazy-8 the locations of Gus' dead drops, keeping him in the dark about who exactly he's going up against. When Hank and his partner Steven Gomez arrive to talk out the deal, Jimmy takes it upon himself to also set Krazy-8 up as an informant for them, feeding any information Lalo wants. Nacho informs Gus, who orders the drops be allowed to be seized so Lalo won't know anyone's informing on him. Gus lays out a plan for his messenger to get away from Hank and Gomez's stakeout while sacrificing his money, and after a tense late night he finally gets word that it worked.
• Kim has her idealism about her career challenged when she's ordered to abandon her full day of pro bono clients to help Mesa Verde kick out Edward Acker, the last holdout homeowner standing in the way of their new branch. She tries to reason with the man by bringing up her own impoverished childhood, but he doesn't see her as anything but a rich shark lawyer, leaving her to silently commiserate with Jimmy as she's started to get pulled to his level. She ends up enlisting Jimmy to represent Acker against Mesa Verde.
• Mike remains profoundly affected by killing Werner, and is driven back to alcoholism and even driving away Stacey and Kalee. He ends up picking a fight with a street gang who shiv him, only to find himself at a memorial Gus set up for Max, and given medical treatment. Gus tells him he should get off the path he's on by coming back to work, and appeals to their similar desire for revenge.
• Jimmy overloads Kim's team with numerous quick annoyances to Mesa Verde's attempts to get Acker to leave, but none of it ends up moving Kevin, who still insists on forcing him out. Jimmy is ready to give up and asks Kim if Acker's really worth the jeopardy she's put her career in, and Rich even sees right through the scheme and offers her an out with being able to get back to her pro bono cases. But Kim has passed her own moral line and now insists on continuing her plan against Kevin purely out of spite.
• Gus introduces Nacho to Mike as his new contact, unaware that they already know each other. Once they're left alone, they quickly get to work in taking Lalo off the map by steering the police toward him for the murder of the travel agency employee. With Mike covertly getting the information to the police and Nacho reporting on Lalo's movements, they soon get him arrested.
• Kim quickly changes her mind about going ahead with the scheme against Mesa Verde, but Jimmy refuses to let it go and even incorporates Kim's own outraged reactions into the plan to blackmail Kevin over his father stealing the bank's logo from a photographer. Kim is furious when they get home, and declares they either have to end things now, or dive in completely and get married.
• Jimmy and Kim go ahead with the wedding at the courthouse, with the agreement on full disclosure between them from now on. While Kim saves her job at Mesa Verde, Jimmy is saddled with representing Lalo, who won't accept anything less than immediately getting out on bail. Luckily, Mike decides it would also be best for his and Nacho's plans if Lalo was out, and presents Jimmy with the evidence of his witness coercion, which is enough for the judge to grant it. In the meantime, Lalo orders Nacho to destroy Los Polos Hermanos, with Gus doing the deed himself to maintain Nacho's cover.
• Lalo sends Jimmy to an isolated spot near the Mexican border to receive his bail money from the Cousins. The hand-off itself goes well, but on his way back Jimmy is attacked and nearly killed by another gang until Mike arrives and saves him. His car is destroyed in the shootout, forcing them both to make an arduous trek back to civilization that pushes Jimmy to his absolute limit and forces him to confront what he's truly doing any of this for. In the meantime, Kim is worried enough by his disappearance to reveal to Lalo all that she knows trying to get him back.
• Jimmy returns home with a story about his car breaking down, though Kim can tell something bigger happened and even finds his thermos with a bullet hole. This adds enough to her ongoing stress and guilt that she quits her job and leaves Mesa Verde behind for good in favor of pro bono work. In the meantime, Gus figures out Bolsa sent the men who attacked Jimmy and Mike, and Lalo heads back to Mexico now that it's too hot for him in America. But along the way he finds Jimmy's abandoned car with more bullet holes and goes back to confront him about it at home, leading to Kim standing up to him and getting him to leave without any more fuss, for now.
• Lalo takes Nacho to meet his family in Mexico, allowing Gus to track the location and call in a hit. Nacho escapes as the team attacks, but while the rest of the family is killed, Lalo is able to escape through a hidden tunnel and circle around to take out all but one, who he forces to make a call that the job was successful before heading out to get revenge.
• After Mike tells Jimmy about the hit on Lalo, he and Kim believe they're in the clear, and after Howard confronts Kim with a series of harmful pranks Jimmy pulled in response to a job offer, Kim is offended enough at his condescension to propose destroying his career to finally put an end to the Sandpiper lawsuit and get their payout, leaving Jimmy stunned at her sinking even past his level.
• Lalo decides to fake his death but informs Hector that he is alive and seeking proof that Gus was behind the hit. He travels to Germany to track down Margarethe Ziegler, Werner's wife, and uses a keepsake from her bedroom to identify one of Werner's boys, Casper. He confronts Casper on his property and interrogates him.
• Gus realizes that Lalo is alive from an interaction with Hector. He tries to set up Nacho, who is on the run in Mexico, to be killed by the Salamancas, but Nacho escapes. Nacho, knowing that Gus will kill his father if he doesn't solve the situation, volunteers to sacrifice himself and take the blame for Gus' hit on Lalo. Nacho is brought before the Salamancas and claims to have been working for a Colombian rival, then reveals that he was behind Hector's stroke before shooting himself.
• Meanwhile, Kim and Jimmy hatch a plan to discredit Howard and force Sandpiper to settle. They plant fake cocaine in his golfing locker where Cliff Main will see, they manipulate Craig and Betsy Kettleman into seeking Cliff's legal services while implying that Howard is a cocaine addict, and they steal Howard's car so they can stage a scene for Cliff in which it looks like Howard throws a prostitute into the street without paying. Jimmy also rents his signature office and hires Francesca back after his reputation of defending Lalo earns him tons of clients, and Kim continues her public defender work.
• Gus gets increasingly paranoid and needs Mike to monitor his entire operations at all time, including Kim and Jimmy. Kim notices that she is being followed, so Mike informs her that Lalo is alive, but she does not tell Jimmy. Gus finally realizes that Lalo plans to go after the superlab as proof of Gus' betrayal of the cartel, and plants a gun in the unfinished superlab for later use.
• Howard finds out that Jimmy is going after him and challenges him to a boxing match, then hires a P.I. to track his every movements. Meanwhile, Kim and Jimmy have a final plan that involves taking blurry pictures of Jimmy colluding with an actor who looks similar to the judge mediating the Sandpiper case. Cliff Main offers to get Kim an interview with the Jackson Mercer Foundation, which fights for reform to the justice system, but her lunch is on the day of their final scam. When Jimmy encounters an unexpected problem on the day, he calls Kim to let her know. Kim abandons the interview and returns to fix the scam.
• Lalo returns to Albuquerque after learning of Gus' laundry superlab from Casper, and wants to reveal its existence to Don Eladio. He tricks Gus into pulling his surveillance team off of Jimmy and Kim to prepare for an assassination attempt.
• Kim and Jimmy redo the blurry pictures of Jimmy colluding with the fake judge, cover them with a cocaine-like drug obtained from Dr. Caldera the vet, and hand them off to Howard's P.I. (who actually works for Kim and Jimmy). The P.I. gives the photos to Howard, who unknowingly drugs himself by touching them. At the Sandpiper mediation, Howard sees that the judge matches the man from his P.I.'s photos and accuses him of taking a bribe from Jimmy, embarrassing himself in front of Cliff and the opposing counsel.
• As Kim and Jimmy celebrate their scam's success, Howard shows up at their apartment to chew them out for their smear campaign. During his rant, Lalo walks through the door and tells Kim and Jimmy that they need to talk, then shoots Howard in the head.

2004-‘ 08

• Realizing that they bring out the worst in each other, Kim leaves Jimmy. Overcome with grief over the loss of all the best parts of his life as James Mcgill, Jimmy fully adopts the persona of Saul Goodman.
  • Closing out their time together, Kim comes to "Saul" to finalize their divorce. Unable to fully face the enormity of losing the love of his life, Jimmy feigns indifference, signs the divorce paper, and sends off his ex-wife with a brisk "have a nice life kim."
• Skyler finds herself unexpectedly pregnant again, which may finally bring her and Walt's finances to the breaking point.
• With Tuco in jail and Hector disabled, Krazy-8 strikes out on his own in the drug trade. He recruits his cousin Emilio, who in turn brings in his childhood friend Jesse Pinkman, currently a student in Walt’s class. Jesse’s parents are well aware of his drug problems, and when he flunks out of school they kick him out of the house. He moves in with his aunt, and stays in the house after she dies of lung cancer, eventually making his own name as “Cap’n Cook” along with his friends Christian “Combo” Ortega, Brandon “Badger” Mayhew, and Skinny Pete, after the latter two get out of jail.

2008

• At Walt’s 50th birthday party, the show is stolen by a news report on a large drug bust by Hank and Gomez, including more than half a million dollars. The next day, Walt collapses at the car wash and learns at the hospital that he has lung cancer, with two more years to live at the most. He initially keeps it secret from anyone, but still furiously quits his job at the car wash and profanely insults his boss Bogdan on the way out.
• Walt takes up Hank on the offer of a ride-along to another drug bust, which turns out to be Jesse and Emilio’s operation. Emilio is arrested, while Jesse was next door having an affair with the lab’s neighbor and manages to escape. Walt recognizes him, and approaches him that night with an offer to partner up in the meth trade, combining Jesse’s knowledge of the drug business with Walt’s chemistry expertise to provide his family enough money to live on after his death. Walt steals equipment from the school’s chemistry lab, and also empties his life savings to buy an RV as their cooking station on Jesse’s suggestion. Jesse instead spends the money at strip clubs, but luckily Combo sells them his mother’s RV, which she keeps quiet about to keep him out of trouble.
• Walt and Jesse’s first batch of meth is a fantastic success, and Jesse takes a sample to Krazy-8 to work on selling it. He’s then surprised by Emilio, who’s gotten out on bail and suspects Jesse’s escape was because he reported them to the cops. They force Jesse to take them back to Walt, and at gunpoint he offers to show them his cooking technique. Instead, Walt uses his chemistry knowledge to create an explosion of phosphene gas that quickly overwhelms the two, and makes an awkward escape driving the RV with him and Jesse in respirators.
• After getting the RV back to Jesse’s house, it turns out that Krazy-8 is still alive. Jesse calls Walt at home to deal with the situation, raising Skyler’s suspicions. They lock Krazy-8 in the basement and then focus on disposing of Emilio’s body. Walt is confronted by Skyler and claims Jesse sells him marijuana, to which Skyler confronts Jesse and narrowly misses seeing Emilio’s body. Jesse then disregards Walt’s suggestion to dissolve the body with hydrofluoric acid in a plastic container, using his bathtub instead. The acid destroys the tub and splatters the half-melted remains all over the room below. They struggle to clean it up without vomiting.
• Skyler asks Marie about marijuana on the pretext of a story she’s writing, to which Marie concludes that Walter Jr. is getting into drugs and asks Hank to straighten him out. Hank takes Walter Jr. to meet meth-addicted prostitute Wendy, who ironically has Jesse as one of her regulars.
• Walt has serious trouble bringing himself to deal with Krazy-8, and while bringing him food collapses from his cancer and shatters the plate. They later make an emotional connection talking about their life problems, but when Walt goes back upstairs he discovers that Krazy-8 swiped a large, sharp piece of the broken plate. He finally strangles Krazy-8, taking a couple stabs to the leg in the process. The experience drives him to reveal his cancer to Skyler and Walter Jr.
• Hank and Gomez discover Walt and Jesse’s cook site, along with Krazy-8’s car. Hank alerts his crew that a powerful new drug kingpin may be getting started. He gets his first piece of evidence when a local kid finds a respirator that Walt left behind.
• Jesse is driven by his recent experience to reconnect with his parents and much younger brother Jake. At the same time, he gets pressure from Skinny Pete and Combo for more of the meth he cooked with Walt, but Walt insists he’s done with the scheme. Jesse entices him with $4,000, half what he’s gotten for it so far. His parents end up kicking him out again upon finding a joint in his room, which is actually Jake’s. Jesse keeps this to himself, wanting his brother to have a real chance with them.
• Skyler, Marie, and Walter Jr. all pressure Walt to get medical treatment, but he balks at the expense for a procedure that might not work at all. However, his newfound confidence comes to the fore again when he encounters Ken, the man Jimmy and Kim previously conned, and retaliates against his annoying behavior by putting a wet squeegee on his car engine, causing it to blow up.
• Walt and Skyler attend Elliot’s birthday party, where Skyler covertly informs him and Gretchen about Walt’s cancer. Elliot offers Walt a job, but overplays his hand when he talks about its health program. He refuses to take charity from the people he still blames for stealing his work. He finally relents to Skyler, saying he’ll take their money for chemotherapy, but then lies to Gretchen that his insurance will cover it.
• Jesse approaches Badger as a new cooking partner, but the dimwitted dealer is no help at all and both tempers eventually flare in the close quarters as Jesse rejects every attempt. Finally, Jesse kicks Badger out and drives away. Soon after, Walt comes back to him and asks to cook some more.
• Walt grows frustrated with the small amount of money coming in, and asks Jesse to start moving their meth in bulk. After Krazy-8’s death, Tuco has regained his position as the area’s biggest drug distributor with the end of his own jail time, and Skinny Pete helps Jesse arrange a meeting from their time in jail together. When Jesse insists on getting paid up front, Tuco beats him up and steals the sample he brought.
• Hank tracks the respirator to Walt’s school, and discovers the other missing equipment, but still doesn’t suspect Walt, who passes the suspicion on to the janitor Hugo, who gets sent to jail when marijuana is found in his truck.
• Upon hearing what happened to Jesse, Walt arranges his own meet, taking steps to establish his own criminal persona by shaving his head and introducing himself as “Heisenberg,” after the German scientist. He brings another bag of white crystals with him, and then reveals they’re not meth but the highly unstable explosive fulminated mercury, and blows up much of the office with just a small amount. He threatens to use the rest to kill everyone in the building including himself, and Tuco ends up agreeing to the deal with cash up front.
• Marie impulsively steals a tiara, and gives it to Skyler at her baby shower. Skyler tries to return it and narrowly avoids being arrested herself, and is then frustrated when Marie refuses to admit anything. Hank reveals that this has been a problem for a while, and says she’s getting help for it.
• Walt and Jesse run into problems procuring enough material to fulfill their new deal, to which Walt audaciously offers even more to come at their next meeting. He creates homemade thermite to break into a local warehouse to get their chemicals, and manages to live up to his promise, though the new meth also ends up a distinct blue color. He also adds a porkpie hat and shades to complete his new Heisenberg persona. The next meet in a junkyard goes south when Tuco snaps at No-Doze speaking out of turn and savagely beats him, causing his death soon afterward. Gonzo is left to take care of the body, but is killed himself when a wrecked car falls on him, leaving both bodies to be discovered by the police.
• Jesse grows increasingly paranoid that Tuco will kill him and Walt as witnesses to the murder, and buys a gun, while Walt suggests they instead put ricin in their next meth delivery which Tuco will undoubtedly sample himself. Hank sends Walt a picture of No-Doze and Gonzo’s bodies, to which he grabs Jesse’s gun and races home to protect his family. There’s no problem at the moment and he stashes the gun and his cash in a diaper box, but that night Tuco arrives with Jesse already captured and orders Walt in the car at gunpoint.
• While searching for the missing Walt, Marie reveals to Skyler that she suspects Walt might have a second cell phone for his supposed drug deals with Jesse.
• Tuco takes Walt and Jesse to Hector’s house in the desert, where he takes their wallets and discovers Walt’s real name, saying it in front of Hector. He now plans for the Cousins to help him transport Walt to Mexico, while Jesse will simply be killed. Their attempts to poison Tuco with the ricin all fail, and get Hector’s attention, causing Tuco to take them outside. Walt insults Tuco to get his attention off Jesse, who attacks him with a rock, and they leave him wounded. However, Hank arrives at this moment after following the lo-jack on Jesse’s car and they’re forced to hide. Hank and Tuco have a shootout that ends with Tuco’s death, and Walt and Jesse run into the desert on foot.
• Walt and Jesse hitch rides back to town, and Walt covers for his disappearance by entering a supermarket and stripping nude, pretending that he’s been experiencing a mental breakdown and fugue state. Despite a close call when he remembers the cash and gun that were left in the box, he’s able to sneak out of the hospital to hide them again. However, Skyler questions him about his second phone, and is doubtful when he denies having one.
• Jesse makes his own cover story by having Badger call the cops to a motel room where he’s sleeping with Wendy. Wendy covers for his story, having taken a dislike to Hank during the encounter with Walter Jr., but then Hank brings in Hector. However, Hector absolutely refuses to cooperate with the authorities even if it means avenging Tuco, and Hank is forced to release Jesse.
• Jesse’s parents discovered his meth kit while he was missing, and kick him out of his aunt’s house as they still own the lease. Walt refuses to help, saying he should deal with his own problems. He spends a night in the RV, and steals it the next day to drive right to Walt’s house. They have a vicious fight, but with all their grievances aired they end up patching things up and splitting their current money.
• Hank’s job prospects improve after killing Tuco, with the legend of new kingpin Heinsenberg and his blue meth growing on the streets. However, he is starting to suffer from PTSD, and retreats home to his old beer brewing project. This backfires when it explodes in the middle of the night, triggering the condition again.
• Jesse finds an apartment being rented out by tattoo artist Jane Margolis. He promptly makes it his new headquarters with Badger, Skinny Pete, and Combo all getting assignments to sell the blue meth. Skinny Pete is beaten up by a pair of prospective clients, and Walt insists Jesse handle it, giving his gun back. Meanwhile, the clients steal an ATM machine, killing a man in the process and leaving a bag of the meth behind. Jesse manages to get the money back after a tense standoff with the couple’s young son caught in the middle.
• Skyler calls Gretchen to thank her for supposedly paying for Walt’s treatment. Gretchen plays along, but coldly drives away without a word when Walt asks to talk. He meets with her later, but the conversation breaks down as he accuses her and Elliott of stealing his research. Gretchen retaliates by telling Skyler they can’t pay anymore, forcing Walt to find another explanation for the money.
• Word gets out about Jesse supposedly killing one of the thieves, leading to the rest of their clients eagerly paying their own shares. Jesse quickly gets on board with making use of this new reputation, and looks into expanding his team while also raising prices. He and Jane also start to grow closer.
• Hank goes to Mexico to meet Juarez informant Tortuga. Shortly afterwards, Tortuga is killed by the cousins, Bolsa having long known he was selling them out and using him to lure the DEA into a trap. They cut off Tortuga’s head and rig it with a bomb, then send it out on the back of a turtle. Hank is saved when his PTSD causes him to run away and vomit, and he’s left to wander through the carnage.
• Skyler has been acting out more and more since her suspicions about Walt were roused, and even goes so far as to get her old job with Ted Beneke back, resulting in Ted quickly asking her to lunch.
• Badger is caught in a sting operation, with the blue meth getting him pegged as working for Heisenberg. Jesse’s new reputation also makes Skinny Pete and Combo too afraid to tell him right away, and by the time they do, Hank has gotten involved. Jesse recommends Saul Goodman, who ironically recommends Badger’s best chance is to give up Heisenberg. Walt and Jesse kidnap him, prompting Saul to assume Lalo has come for revenge for his family's death and try to blame Nacho, but upon realizing who they really are he’s quickly convinced to not let Badger talk. Saul suggests making use of “Jimmy In and Out,” a man who takes payments to go to prison for others. Badger nearly blows the deal by talking to the wrong man, forcing Walt to intervene and block Hank’s view until Jesse can straighten things out. After things go down successfully, Saul offers to keep helping Walt using the underworld connections he’s established.
• After the costs of saving Badger, Walt’s cash is again getting low, and after seeing a large shadow in his latest x-ray he takes Jesse into the desert for a four-day marathon cooking session, claiming to Skyler that he making a visit to his mother. After a scare when the RV’s battery dies, Walt is able to construct a new one from the materials at hand and get back home. However, he then learns that his cancer is actually in remission, meaning he might live to face the consequences of his criminal actions.
• Jesse meets Jane’s father Donald, but she is reluctant to introduce them as she is a recovering heroin addict and knows full well Jesse is a drug dealer.
• Walt tries to compensate for his new lease of life by obsessively trying to eliminate the “rot” in the house, scaring Skyler who moves closer to Ted despite discovering he’s been committing fraud with the company’s books. At first Walt intends to retire from the drug business after selling what he has left, but upon encountering two rookie dealers he can’t resist taking a role as a respected superior, giving them advice and a warning to stay out of his territory.

2009

• Jesse starts to expand into new territory, which gets Combo killed by Tomas Cantillo, a child paid off by rival dealers. Skinny Pete now wants to quit, and Jesse has lost his reputation after the word got out that he didn’t kill anyone. Saul steps in and offers to connect them with Gus, who’ll buy their meth in bulk. Gus is unimpressed when Jesse arrives late and high and calls off the meeting, but a face to face with Walt changes his mind.
• Victor tells Walt to bring all the meth to an imminent meeting as his one chance to make the deal. Unfortunately, Jesse has started taking heroin with Jane’s help to deal with Combo’s death, and Skyler also goes into labor at the same time. He barely makes the meeting, and arrives at the hospital to find his daughter Holly already born, with Ted having taken Skyler there.
• Walter Jr. sets up a website for people to donate to Walt’s treatment. Saul suggests this would be a perfect way to explain his new money, but Walt is frustrated that his family won’t know that he alone was the source of it.
• Donald discovers Jane is using heroin again when she misses an NA meeting, and intends to send her back to rehab. Jane begs for just one more day, and he relents.
• Walt, furious over Jesse almost screwing up the meeting with Gus, refuses to pay him his share until he’s off drugs completely. He tells Jane, who blackmails Walt with the threat of making his drug dealing public. After delivering the money, he happens to run into Donald at a bar, where they discuss their shared difficulties as fathers without realizing their connection. Walt is inspired to go back and talk sense into Jesse, but finds them both unconscious after taking more heroin. He rolls Jane onto her back while trying to wake Jesse up, and she soon starts to choke. Walt moves to help her, but then stops, realizing how many problems would be fixed by her death, and lets it happen.
• After Jesse discovers Jane’s dead body, Saul sends Mike to fix up the scene and remove any trace of drugs. Donald arrives shortly afterward to pick up Jane for rehab, and upon discovering her body being taken to the morgue he simply gives Jesse a brief glance and leaves without a word. Jesse goes to a crack den, where Walt finds him with Mike’s help and takes him to rehab.
• Gus makes his regular contribution to the DEA and notices Walt’s picture, leading Hank to explain the situation while Gus learns the whole truth about his new partner.
• Walt undergoes an experimental new treatment to further fight his cancer, and while under medication he finally reveals to Skyler that he does indeed have a second cell phone. Over the next two months, Skyler pieces together the rest of his lies and orders him out of the house, saying she’s afraid to know what it was all about.
• Donald returns to work as an air traffic controller, but remains distracted by Jane’s death. He ends up causing two planes to crash directly over Walt’s house, giving him a front row seat to the biggest consequences of his actions yet. Donald commits suicide a few months later.
• The Cousins set out for revenge on Walt over Tuco’s death. They sneak into America dressed as poor farmers, and once over the border kill everyone else in the group.
• Skyler starts divorce proceedings, while Walter Jr. and Marie are frustrated that she refuses to tell them why. She has also figured out thanks to Walt’s connection to Jesse that he’s involved in drugs, and he admits the rest. Skyler leverages selling him out to get him to sign the divorce papers. This causes Walt to tell Gus he wants to quit. Saul visits Walt to assure him Skyler will never actually do it due to the blowback on the rest of the family, but their loss is all Walt cares about. Saul promptly sets Mike to watching Skyler.
• Jesse finds that his parents are selling his aunt’s house, and with Saul’s help forces them to sell it to him at an extremely low price due to his own meth lab.
• The Cousins meet with Hector, now put into a nursing home. He gives them Walt’s name, and they come to the house just after Mike has installed cameras. Walt breaks in and takes a shower while the Cousins wait to ambush him, but Mike calls Gus about them, and he sends them a warning to back off. They leave without Walt ever knowing. Bolsa comes to a meeting between Gus and Hector, and Gus insists they wait until his business with Walt is finished before killing him, to Hector’s outrage.
• Walt refuses to leave the house, and Skyler finds she has no legal way to force him out without revealing the meth business. Walt tries to reason with her that everything he did will be for nothing if she refuses to accept the money he made, but Skyler retaliates by finally sleeping with Ted and then promptly telling Walt about it. Before Walt can confront Ted about it, Mike picks him up, and Walt realizes Saul bugged his house and fires him. Saul retaliates by pulling the plug on Walter Jr.’s website for the money laundering as the cameras are removed.
• Walt’s increasingly erratic behavior at the school gets him placed on leave, and on his way out he runs into Jesse, who’s started cooking the blue meth on his own and wants a meeting with Gus. Walt refuses, insulting his cooking skills. Jesse goes to Saul instead, and upon hearing that their relationship has broken, Gus agrees to hire him. However, Jesse only receives half the payment, with Victor delivering the other half to Walt. Walt insists to Jesse he wasn’t part of the deal, but still refuses to give him the money due to Jesse using his technique.
• Walt confronts Gus over his manipulation, to which Gus shows him the newly completed meth lab under the laundromat. He also urges Walt to consider his role as a provider for his family even if they don’t appreciate it, and Walt finally agrees to go back to work. He goes back home and packs all his things, and Skyler returns from her latest tryst with Ted to find him gone and the divorce papers signed. He then lets Jesse know Gus was only using him to get to Walt, and gives his half of the money over, taunting that it’s the last drug money Jesse will ever make. At the lab, he meets Gale, who is to be his new assistant.
• Hank gets a lead on the blue meth from a woman Jesse sold to, leading him to look for an RV. This takes him to Combo’s house, where he finds a picture of Combo and Jesse. He follows Jesse to a meeting with Badger and Skinny Pete where they discuss going back into business. Marie reminds him of Jesse’s connection to Walt, and Hank asks Walt about it, alerting him that Jesse is in trouble.
• Walt arranges for the RV to be destroyed, only for Jesse to hear about it and lead Hank right to them. Walt calls Saul, who has Francesca pose as a police officer as she calls Hank and tells him Marie was in an accident. After he races to the hospital, the RV is destroyed, while Hank is left furious when he realizes what happened.
• The Cousins try to intimidate Gus by coming to the restaurant every day and simply sitting in a booth, not ordering anything. Gus finally talks to them, and learns that Walt is actually a secondary target as Bolsa won’t let them go after Hank, who actually killed Tuco. Gus retorts that they’re on his territory now, and gives permission.
• Hank goes to Jesse’s house and savagely attacks him, and in the hospital Jesse tells Walt and Saul he plans on ruining Hank with a lawsuit, and he’s going to start cooking again, intending to turn Walt in if he’s caught. Walt solves the problem by bringing Jesse back on board, pretending that Gale isn’t working out and admitting to Jesse that his meth is just as good as the original.
• Hank is suspended from the DEA, and on his way out Gus anonymously calls to warn him the Cousins are about to attack. As his gun was just taken away, when the Cousins do indeed arrive Hank has a highly messy and bloody fight with them, ending with Marco dead and Leonel and Hank badly injured and barely able to move.
• As Hank and Leonel are treated in the hospital, Bolsa calls Gus and accuses him of arranging the hit on Hank. He also reveals that Leonel survived, leaving Gus worried. Gomez invites Walt to see Leonel, who has had both legs amputated. Leonel finally sets eyes on Walt and furiously drags himself across the floor before the doctors can subdue him. Gus is also frustrated that Walt isn’t doing his day’s cooking, and personally delivers chicken to the hospital to check up on him. This also serves as a distraction for Mike to finish off Leonel with a lethal injection, finally getting revenge for the threat against his granddaughter. Gus’ plan finishes when the battle also brings the Federales down on Bolsa, who calls Gus while trying to escape. Gus listens with pleasure as Bolsa is gunned down, the first of his three targets finished. He then visits Hector to personally rub it in.
• Jesse starts growing frustrated with how much money Gus is making from their product compared to them, but Walt just tells him to be happy he’s a millionaire, also letting Gus know he’s figured out the whole situation with the Cousins and agreeing to a new indefinite employment. Jesse skims some of the next meth batch and again asks Badger and Skinny Pete to team up, this time covertly raising awareness of the meth at Jesse’s drug support group. Badger and Skinny Pete soon find themselves getting genuinely attached to the group, and refuse to sell to them.
• Marie goes off her health plan for Hank’s recovery, frustrated at the little therapy it allows. Skyler suggests she and Walt could pay for it, spinning a story that Walt’s newfound wealth is actually due to him developing a gambling system and winning it in poker. Walt is quite impressed at her helping him like this, but Skyler then makes clear that this is all about helping Hank, and she knows full well the hit was his fault.
• Walt grows increasingly paranoid over his arrangement with Gus and Skyler’s refusal to understand his actions, and eventually even obsessively hunts a fly in the lab, much to Jesse’s frustration. He also discovers the meth consistently coming in underweight, and warns Jesse that he won’t be able to do anything if Gus finds out what he’s up to.
• Jesse meets a woman named Andrea at an NA meeting, and upon getting involved with her discovers she has a son named Brock. She also hesitantly brings up her much younger brother Tomas, who got involved with a drug gang and killed someone. Jesse realizes this is Combo’s killer, and goes to his corner where he discovers Tomas selling the blue meth, showing he works for Gus.
• Skyler insists the payments for Hank’s therapy be laundered properly, and is unimpressed with Saul’s suggestions, saying they should instead buy the A1 Car Wash. Saul counters that they need an accomplice on the inside to make sure everything works. Skyler offers to be this person, as she never signed the divorce papers herself and is protected from testifying against Walt.
• Jesse sees that Wendy is a regular customer of Tomas’ immediate employers, and plans to get her to kill them with ricin like they planned for Tuco. Walt reports it to Saul, who himself informs Mike. Mike and Victor then stop the plan and bring Jesse to a meeting with the other dealers, where Gus orders them to stop involving children and tells Jesse this will have to do. The dealers then kill Tomas, and Jesse heads out to kill them. However, Walt gets there first and kills both men in front of Jesse, then tells him to run.
• Gus becomes preoccupied with the Cartel sending men after his business fronts, and agrees to keep Walt on, but with the locks on the lab changed so Victor has to let Walt in and Gale returned as his assistant. Mike threatens Saul for Jesse’s address, but Saul gives a fake one and warns Jesse he’s coming. Walt suspects Gus is having Gale learn his cook system to take over completely, and says their only move is to kill Gale. Mike and Victor arrive to kill Walt before it happens, so Jesse is forced to do it himself.
• Jesse is so devastated he can’t leave the scene, and Victor quickly brings him back to the lab. Victor then insists that after supervising so many of Walt’s cooking sessions, he can do the job himself. Gus arrives, and after silently listening to Walt’s desperate justification surprises everyone by killing Victor after he was seen at the murder scene. He then leaves, simply saying “Get back to work.” Walt, Jesse, and Mike all dispose of the body, this time using the hydrofluoric acid properly.
• Saul hooks the now even more paranoid Walt up with Lawson, who sells him a concealable revolver that he practices with until he can confidently draw it. However, Mike tells him when he returns to the lab that he’s never going to be in a room with Gus again for this very reason, and meets Tyrus as his new supervisor. He tries to get Gus at his home, but Tyrus calls and simply tells him to go home, revealing that he’s being watched at all times. He finally tries to talk Mike onto his side, only to be knocked down with one punch.
• Bogdan refuses Skyler’s attempt to buy the car wash, and insults her due to the rude way Walt quit. This gets Walt completely on board, and Kuby is sent to pose as an inspector who tells Bogdan there are dangerous contaminants in his water supply. It works, but Walt immediately slips up by buying an expensive champagne bottle to celebrate, to Skyler’s annoyance.
• Hank’s frustrations with his physical therapy make him increasingly hard to live with, and Marie reverts to her old shoplifting habits to escape the house. When she gets caught, Hank agrees to help with Gale’s murder in exchange for the charges getting dropped. During a visit, Walt discovers the evidence Hank was given and offers to help so he can hide anything pointing to him.
• Jesse has become increasingly unhinged and careless since the murder, holding nonstop parties at his house where people freely steal from him, and refuses to tell Walt if he left any evidence behind. Mike and Tyrus pay him a visit to see just how bad it is, and Mike advises Gus they need to deal with it now. Rather than kill him, Mike takes Jesse along on his rounds collecting money from drop points in the desert. He and Gus stage a robbery attempt for Jesse to foil, which then starts to turn him against Walt when Walt still talks down to him afterwards.
• Hank comes to believe that Gale is Heisenberg, and leaves the case as he feels he has the closure he needs. When he tells the rest of the family, Walt can’t stand to see Gale get the credit for his work and insists that his lab notes look like they’re copied from someone else. Hank looks a bit further, and discovers the oddity of Gale frequently going to Los Pollos Hermanos despite being a vegan.
• The Cartel becomes more brazen in its attacks on Gus, openly shooting up his trucks. Mike foils one robbery attempt, but the next one, led by Eladio’s top lieutenant Gaff, learns from what happened and counters for it, successfully pulling off the heist.
• Mike continues taking Jesse on his trips, and grows to care more about him, seeing another chance to save a young person like he couldn’t do for his son. They eventually get word of a group of junkies using blue meth they didn’t get from Gus, and Jesse uses his knowledge of how to deal with these people to easily get inside and find Gaff’s message requesting a meeting.
• Walt starts acting more erratically as it becomes clear how much he’s under Gus’ thumb. He tries to make a power play by getting a group of laundry workers to clean up the lab, but this only gets them sent back to Honduras. He also buys Walter Jr. a flashy car, only for Skyler to again point out how this doesn’t fit their cover story. Rather than return it, Walt drives dangerously around a parking lot before blowing it up.
• Walt convinces Jesse that Gus is the real enemy, reminding him about Tomas. Jesse slips some ricin inside a cigarette, but the plan is complicated when he next sees Gus at the meeting with Gaff. Negotiations break down when Gaff refuses anything less than total surrender, and drives off with nothing settled. Jesse’s growing guilt also causes him to finally reveal to the NA group that he was trying to sell to them, and he leaves for good.
• Hank visits Gus at the restaurant, and gets his fingerprints from a refill cup. He goes to the DEA and reveals he’s uncovered a connection to Madrigal through Gale’s notes, and has matched Gus’ fingerprints to the unknown ones in Gale’s apartment. Gus manages to come up with a cover story that satisfies the other agents, but Hank still suspects him.
• Hank takes Walt to plant a tracker on Gus’ car, and upon seeing Mike watching, Walt goes inside to talk to Gus himself. Gus tells him to plant it, and Walt later begs him that Hank has no evidence. He goes on to tell Jesse they have to kill Gus soon, but discovers Jesse is lying to him about when his meetings with Gus are held.
• Ted tells Skyler that the IRS has finally caught on to his fraud and is auditing him, which could bring attention to Walt. Skyler attends the meeting, pretending to be a dumb blonde who got a bookkeeping job by sleeping with Ted and messed up the company’s accounts by pure accident. It ends the investigation, but Ted still has to pay penalties he can’t afford. Skyler gets Saul to arrange a sudden “inheritance.”
• Hank gets no evidence from the tracker, and keeps Walt in the loop about going after the restaurant’s factory farm next. Walt calls Mike, who gets to work covering everything up with Jesse’s help. Suddenly Gaff arrives with a sniper rifle and starts shooting, only for Gus to walk right into the field of fire and call his bluff. He agrees to the Cartel’s demands, and tells Jesse he needs to come to Mexico and teach their manufacturers how to make the blue meth. Walt is furious that Jesse still hasn’t killed Gus, leading to a fight that ends with Jesse ordering him out of his life for good.
• Jesse goes with Gus and Mike to a Cartel lab, where he quickly starts acting just like Walt, berating the filthy workplace and insisting they obey his every instruction. After cooking all night, the Cartel chemist is so impressed with the result he agrees to take on Jesse full time. This gets them invited to a party with Don Eladio, where Gus finishes his plan by poisoning Eladio and all his top men with tequila. Gaff doesn’t take a drink, so Mike kills him separately. Gus also has to take a drink himself before the others will do it, and Mike is shot by a lingering henchman, leaving Jesse the only one able to drive them away. He takes them to Dr. Goodman, and leaves with Gus when it turns out Mike will need more recovery time. Gus again visits Hector to revel in his final victory, resolved to give Hector the cruel mercy of his remaining days paralyzed and knowing how thoroughly his side lost.
• Ted infuriates Skyler by buying a new car with his money rather than paying the IRS, and later he even tries to give the rest of it back to her, also implying that he would blackmail her over wherever it came from. Saul sends Huell and Kuby to intimidate him into writing the check, and after filling it out he tries to run but trips and breaks his neck.
• Hank surprises Walt with a trip to the laundry, having traced Gale’s notes that far. Walt resorts to causing an accident to delay the investigation, and Hank resolves to get his own hand-controlled car so he can continue on his own. Soon after, Tyrus abducts Walt and Gus sternly tells him he’s fired, and while killing him would end Jesse’s cooperation, Gus is going to take care of Hank, and any further moves by Walt will result in him also killing Skyler, Walter Jr., and even Holly. Walt goes to Saul to get his family a whole new identity, as well as leaving a tip for the DEA. However, he then finds there isn’t enough money for the process due to how much Skyler gave to Ted.
• The Whites are placed together with Hank and Marie so the DEA can protect them all, but Walt talks Skyler into letting him stay alone at the house to wait for Gus’ men. Hank talks Gomez into investigating the laundry, which turns up nothing, but Gus still insists to Jesse that retaliation must be made. Jesse then finds Saul preparing to also go into hiding and learns about the threat to Walt. Huell pats him down before he goes in, actually a pretext at Walt’s behest to steal the ricin cigarette. Walt then arranges for some poisonous lily of the valley to get to Brock, who ends up in the hospital while Jesse discovers the ricin is missing. Jesse confronts Walt, who puts the final touch on his plan as he insists he would have nothing to gain from Brock’s death and this must be Gus trying to frame him. Jesse is successfully turned against Gus again.
• Walt prepares a pipe bomb, and attaches it to Gus’ car when he arrives at the hospital to tell Jesse to get back to work. However, Gus soon realizes his vulnerability and decides not to take the chance, leaving the car where it is as Walt helplessly watches. As they meet back up, Jesse is arrested for what he said about ricin during Brock’s illness. Walt tries to find Saul, but Francesca demands a large bribe first. Walt knows his house is likely being watched by Gus’ men, so he risks the life of his neighbor to get them out before getting the money.
• Jesse informs Walt that Gus and Hector are enemies, so Walt approaches Hector to work together for revenge on Gus. Hector claims to want to talk to Hank, but only gives crude insults once he’s at the DEA headquarters, all under the watch of Tyrus, who promptly reports back to Gus while also kidnapping Jesse. Gus takes the bait and insists on finishing off Hector himself. Walt has given the bomb to Hector, who uses it in a final suicide attack when Gus enters the room. Hector and Tyrus are killed instantly, while Gus manages to retain a dignified stance with half his face blown off before he too dies. Walt rescues Jesse and they blow up the lab, after which Walt calls Skyler and smugly says “I won.”
• While Hank and Gomez investigate the destroyed lab, Walt remembers the camera footage Gus kept. He and Jesse go to Mike, still recuperating in Mexico, who grudgingly agrees to help them destroy the computer the footage was kept on. The computer has already been taken to the police station, but Jesse has the idea to wipe it from outside with a powerful electromagnet. Walt insists on using the maximum voltage, creating a new problem when a picture of Gus and Max is broken and reveals Cayman Island bank account numbers inside the frame.
• Saul finally informs Skyler of Ted’s accident, as he’s just woken up. Ted is now terrified of Skyler, and promises he’ll never say a word, to her relief. Walt is also informed and says he forgives her, but she is still hesitant to accept his resulting hug.
• Walt makes a final cover-up of his scheme to poison Brock, creating a fake ricin cigarette that he plants in Jesse’s house to give the impression he simply dropped it, while stashing the real one behind a wall socket in his own house.
• With the police having Gus’ bank account numbers, his associates around the world are rounded up. Lydia approaches Mike with a list of men who could be trouble, but he insists he trusts all of them not to talk. In his own interview, Hank reveals that the DEA has found the account where he was keeping the money he stole from Hector years ago, but he still refuses to break. Lydia manages to sell another henchman, Chris Mara, on the deal, but Mike outsmarts his trap and kills him. Mike goes to kill Lydia, but instead realizes she could be a new source of drug materials to partner up with Walt, now that he needs money again.
• Saul suggests several potential cook sites, and finally brings them to Ira, who now runs a crooked pest control company with Saul having defended them for years. While their headquarters is unsuitable, Walt suggests cooking inside houses that are being fumigated. One of the employees, Todd Alquist, impresses him by finding a camera and disabling it. He also convinces Jesse to break up with Andrea so there’s less chance of his poisoning Brock being discovered. However, he’s frustrated at Mike reserving part of their profits for Gus’ men who have been imprisoned.
• Skyler, having grown increasingly more afraid of Walt and the situation she’s been trapped in, asks for Walter Jr. and Holly to be sent out of the house. Walt refuses, so she forces the issue by staging a suicide attempt during his 51st birthday party, getting Hank and Marie to take the kids until she’s recovered. When Walt challenges how long she can keep this up, she counters that her only real plan is to wait for his cancer to come back. She ultimately makes a deal to continue helping Walt launder his money if he keeps the kids out of it.
• Lydia grows more nervous as the DEA closes in, and Mike suspects it won’t be long before she turns them in to save herself. She desperately informs them that a freight train will be passing through with a huge amount of chemicals they need. Jesse comes up with a way to covertly steal it without needing to kill anyone, which goes off flawlessly with the help of Todd and some other pest control employees. However, a young boy named Drew Sharp was playing nearby, and Todd impulsively pulls out a gun and kills him. After some discussion on how to handle Todd, he ends up getting demoted back to tenting houses despite Jesse’s desire to fire him.
• Mike discovers the DEA is following him, and opts to retire, selling his shares to a rising drug dealer named Declan. Jesse takes the opportunity to follow him, but Walt refuses, remembering how he impulsively sold his shares of Grey Matter. Declan won’t make the deal without getting everything, so Mike ties Walt up and goes to sell it all. But first he and Saul have to tell the DEA to back off, and Walt escapes and hides all the chemicals, informing Mike when he gets back that he has a new plan.
• Walt offers that Declan become his new distributor while Walt himself stays on top of the drug empire, saying it’s a way for everyone to win. Declan agrees, and Mike cashes out his shares, then sets to burying all the evidence of his involvement just before the DEA arrive to search his house. Walt refuses to give Jesse his own shares, thinking this will get him back on board, but he simply walks away without it.
• The lawyer who has been arranging the payments for Gus’ men is caught and quickly flips on Mike. Walt overhears Hank talking about it, and calls to warn Mike while he’s out with Kaylee. Mike is forced to leave Kaylee alone while he goes on the run. Walt brings him supplies, but they get into an intense argument over all of Walt’s actions, making him so furious that he impulsively shoots Mike, who tells Walt off one last time and asks to be left to die in peace.
• Walt turns his attention to the final loose end, Gus’ imprisoned men. He brings ricin to a meeting with Lydia to get their names, but doesn’t need to use it as he simply accepts her plan to expand their distribution to the Czech Republic. Todd introduces Walt to his uncle Jack Welker, the leader of a powerful neo-Nazi gang, who carry out the executions with brutal efficiency. Todd also replaces Jesse, having quickly become an expert in Walt’s methods.

2010

• After three months of the business going smoothly, Skyler shows Walt a massive pile of cash she has been unable to launder, saying it’s easily enough that Walt can retire now and they can bring their kids back home. Walt also finally gives Jesse his rightful share of the profits, and returns to tell Skyler it’s over. However, during a celebration of the kids moving back home, Hank discovers a book in the bathroom that Gale had left a message in, finally turning his attention toward Walt as the true identity of Heisenberg.
• Lydia visits Walt at the car wash and begs him to come back, as the quality of their meth has dropped considerably without him. He tells Skyler the truth about it, and she orders Lydia to never come back. But he’s still pulled back into his old life when Jesse insists on dividing his money between Kaylee and Drew Sharp’s parents, which Walt tries to talk him out of for the attention it will bring to both of them. Jesse instead randomly throws the cash around late at night in a poor neighborhood, where one of the recipients finds him passed out in a playground.
• Hank goes over all the Heisenberg evidence once again, and becomes more and more convinced that it was actually Walt the whole time. Walt discovers his book missing, and finds a tracker under his car, and goes to confront Hank. After some uneasy pretending, Hank simply punches him in the face and accuses him point blank. Walt returns that his cancer is back, and even if Hank is right he won’t live to go to jail.
• Hank meets with Skyler, who refuses to talk and forces him to leave by attracting the public’s attention. Walt still suspects she’s turned him in and has Huell and Kuby move the unlaundered cash to the spot in the desert where he first started. Hank also tells Marie, who is outraged that Skyler remained silent after Hank was shot and even tries to take Holly away before Hank stops her. Hank knows Walt fooling him for so long will end his career, but is determined to make this his last bust. And soon enough, Gomez informs him that Jesse has been taken in. Saul arrives before any progress can be made.
• Lydia goes to Todd to come back on board to make their meth as good as it was under Walt, but Declan refuses to let him in. Lydia had anticipated this, and Jack’s gang is waiting to ambush them, with the whole gang ending up slaughtered. Todd then calls Walt and asks him to come back in.
• Walt and Skyler meet Hank and Marie at a restaurant, but are unable to come to any arrangement. Walt presents them with a video where he’s managed to use all the events since his cancer diagnosis to frame Hank as Heisenberg, which he’ll give to the police if Hank keeps trying to take him down. Walt then suggests Jesse use Saul’s identity cleaning service to start a new life, but Jesse is offended that Walt won’t tell him the truth about why he wants this. He still agrees, but then notices Huell’s skill at swiping the drugs in his pocket and finally realizes the truth about what happened to Brock. After confirming it with Saul, he goes to burn down Walt’s house. Hank arrives after he’s poured out some gasoline, and suggests they take down Walt together.
• Walt is forced into another lie to explain the gasoline smell, and after moving into a motel, Skyler gets the truth out of him. She surprises Walt by suggesting he has to kill Jesse.
• Jesse reveals the whole story to Hank and Gomez, but they need solid evidence to arrest Walt. Hank convinces Jesse to go to a meeting Walt requested the previous night while wearing a wire, saying that Walt clearly wouldn’t kill him after the effort put in to protect him from Gus. However, he shares with Gomez that Jesse might well die in the meeting but he doesn’t care as long as he gets the evidence. Jesse gets a better idea as he heads to the meeting and calls Walt with a vague threat, getting Walt to call Todd for Jack to kill Jesse.
• Hank and Gomez make a fake picture of a dead Jesse, and use it to convince Huell to turn on Walt. He tells them about moving the money, and gives them the van company. Jack agrees to do the job in exchange for Walt giving more meth lessons to Todd, who hasn’t been able to match him yet. They use Andrea to call Jesse, but Hank gets the call first and deletes it.
• Jesse makes a bluff that he knows where Walt’s money is and threatens to destroy it. This gets Walt to head for the site, and upon realizing the trap believes Jesse is bringing a hit squad to kill him. He calls Jack and gives him the location, but then is shocked to see it’s actually Hank and Gomez and tries to call the rescue off. Hank and Gomez arrest Walt, and Hank calls Marie to tell her the good news. Then Jack and his men show up, and despite Walt pleading for them to leave, everyone starts shooting. Gomez is killed, and Hank is left at gunpoint. Walt begs for his life, offering up all the money buried nearby, but Hank insists he’ll keep going against them all and Jack kills him. They dig up the money and bury Hank and Gomez in the hole, and then leave some of the money for Walt at Todd’s request while taking most of it. Walt blames Jesse for everything and points out his hiding place, and Todd suggests they interrogate him before killing him, with Walt stopping Jesse’s struggling by revealing how he caused Jane’s death.
• Marie, unaware of anything since Hank’s phone call, tells Skyler that Walt is being arrested, and if she wants any hope of their relationship continuing she has to destroy all copies of the video. She also offers to let Skyler be the one to break the news to Walter Jr., insisting that she will if Skyler doesn’t. Walter Jr. refuses to believe it and stalks off, while Marie urges Skyler to take him home.
• After Jesse convinces Jack that Hank and Gomez were working alone, Todd again spares his life, only to chain him up inside their lab so he can cook the gang’s meth. A picture of Andrea and Brock is also put up as an implicit threat to kill them if he doesn’t cooperate.
• Skyler and Walter Jr. arrive home to find Walt packing all their things, and he insists they need to leave before Marie reveals everything to the DEA. Skyler realizes that Hank must be dead, and attacks Walt with a knife. As they fight, Walter Jr. realizes everything was true and tackles Walt, then calls 911 to report his father may have killed someone. Realizing they’re both now firmly against him, Walt abducts Holly and drives away.
• Holly says her first word, calling for her mother, and Walt realizes he has to give her back. But first, he calls Skyler knowing the police are listening, and deliberately plays himself up as a terrifying criminal who kept her in line through fear, giving her an alibi for everything she did to help him. He leaves Holly at a fire station with a note of their address, and then takes the money Jack left him to finally make use of Saul’s identity cleaner, Ed. Saul himself also takes the opportunity to get out of dodge, and is sent to Nebraska after finally standing up to Walt, who’s helpless to stop him when he suffers a severe coughing fit.
• Jack’s gang steal Jesse’s confession from Marie’s house, and that night pay a visit to Skyler to make sure she doesn’t say anything to the DEA. Lydia insists this won’t be enough and wants to get out again, but Todd persuades her that Jesse has gotten their meth back to top quality.
• Jesse escapes but is caught by a security camera and recaptured. Jack takes him to Andrea’s house and forces him to watch Todd kill her, then reminds him they still have Brock as a hostage for his continued servitude. The gang's associates at Kandy Welding create a much stronger harness to hold him.
• Walt is taken to a remote cabin in New Hampshire, unable to be in public at all due to his recognizable face. For months, he suffers a life of complete isolation and boredom as his cancer keeps getting worse, while back home Skyler goes back to her maiden name to escape their connection and moves to Eubank, where she gets work as a taxi dispatcher. Their house is unable to be sold due to Walt’s notoriety, and is instead fenced off as a tourist attraction.
• Todd's cleaning woman discovers his hidden share of Walt's cash and he kills her, then forces Jesse to help him dispose of the body.
• Walt finally goes into town and calls Walter Jr. at school, saying he’s sending his remaining money so all his misdeeds won’t be for nothing. Walter Jr. refuses to accept it and furiously tells Walt to die before hanging up. In complete defeat, Walt calls the agent in charge of the Heisenberg case and reports his location. While waiting for the police to arrive, he sees Elliot and Gretchen on Charlie Rose, denying his involvement with Grey Matter besides inspiring the name. Newly energized by the lies, he leaves before the police arrive. He steals a car and heads back to Albuquerque.
• Once back home, Walt sets about tying up loose ends. He breaks into Elliot and Gretchen’s house and orders them to funnel his money to a trust fund for Walter Jr., also claiming that a pair of hit men will kill them if the money isn’t received for any reason. These are actually Badger and Skinny Pete, shining laser pointers at the house. He meets Lawson again to buy an M60 machine gun, and retrieves the ricin hidden in his house. He approaches Todd and Lydia and offers to teach them a better cooking method, and Lydia pretends to agree but covertly tells Todd he should kill Walt at the meeting that night. Finally, he visits Skyler and tells her the real truth that he didn’t make his drug empire for his family, but because he liked it. He also gives her the location of Hank and Gomez’s bodies so they can have a proper burial, and assures her Jack’s gang won’t be a problem anymore. He leaves after a final glimpse of both Holly and Walter Jr.
• Walt enters the trap at Jack’s base, and buys time by accusing Jack of working with the “rat” Jesse. Jack brings Jesse out to prove he’s a captive, and Walt tackles him to the ground as he activates a garage door opener that the machine gun has been connected to in the trunk of his car. It wipes out most of the gang, and while Todd survives, Jesse promptly attacks him and breaks his neck. Jack is badly wounded and tries to bargain with the location of Walt’s money, but Walt simply finishes him off. Walt gives Jesse a gun to kill him, but Jesse refuses to do it, noticing Walt was hit by the machine gun too. Lydia calls Todd’s phone, and Walt informs her the whole gang is dead, and he also put the ricin in her tea earlier. Jesse drives out to freedom, while Walt walks into the gang’s lab, smiling at the equipment as he finally expires from his wound. The police swarm in to find his dead body.
• Jesse holes up with Skinny Pete and Badger, but has to run when the police activate his car's LoJack. He heads for Todd's apartment and finds the cash from when Todd killed the cleaning woman, but the Kandy Welding owners also arrive and force him to split it with them. He goes to Ed, who insists on being paid for the aborted first identity wipe as well as this one, which Jesse's share doesn't quite cover, so he lures his parents and the police watching them out of the house to get his grandfather's gun and heads back to Kandy, where he kills two of the owners and blows the building up after getting the rest of the money. Ed drops him off in Alaska, and takes a letter to Brock back.

Post- 2010

• Mr. Driscoll, previously known as Jesse Pinkman, lives out the rest of his days in Alaska running a woodworking shop, following his passions for carpentry. He keeps a modest lifestyle and lays low, forever abandoning the drug trade. Meanwhile, the authorities believe that Jesse fled to Mexico thanks to Badger driving Jesse's El Camino to the border and abandoning it there.
• Gene Takavic, formerly Saul Goodman, formerly Jimmy McGill, lives a dreary life managing a mall Cinnabon in Omaha. He is regularly paranoid that someone from either of his old lives will track him down, and also wary of having any contact with the police. He heavily misses his previous life, and wishes he could be Saul Goodman again.
• One day, Gene reluctantly points out a shoplifter to the mall cops, then gets a surge of his old energy as he urges the kid to not say anything until he gets a lawyer. As he goes back to work afterwards, he suddenly collapses. He's quickly released from the hospital when they don't find any major problems, but on his taxi ride home he's unnerved when the driver, who is from Albuquerque, appears to recognize him.
• Several days later, the driver, a man named Jeff, reappears and shows that he indeed recognized Saul, and pressures him into admitting it. Saul promptly calls Ed for another identity change, only to change his mind partway through the call and declare he's going to take care of the situation himself.
• Saul tracks down Jeff's mother Marion and befriends her. Upon making contact with Jeff again, Saul persuades him into aiding him with a heist. Assisted by Jeff's friend Buddy, they steal expensive clothing from a high-end department store. Saul then warns the two that if either of them expose his true identity to the police, he will rat the two of them out.
• Saul makes contact with Francesca again who updates him on the situation in Albuquerque. With Walt dead, Skyler having taken a plea bargain and Jesse supposedly having fled to Mexico, Saul is now the DEA's prime target in the Heisenberg investigation. He also learns that Kim has left Albuquerque and now works at a sprinkler company in Florida. After the phone call with Francesca ends, Saul makes another call to Kim. The conversation quickly becomes heated as Kim suggests turning himself in, to which Saul counters that she should turn herself in.
• The incident gives Saul a taste for conning again, and under the new alias "Viktor St. Clair", teams back up with Jeff and Buddy as they pull a series of identity thefts across Omaha. Meanwhile, Saul's words weigh on Kim as she returns to Albuquerque to confess her involvement in defaming Howard to his widow Cheryl. While Kim cannot be formally prosecuted, Cheryl threatens to sue Kim for defamation on behalf of her late husband.
• Following a con gone wrong when Buddy walks out after learning their target is a cancer patient and Jeff getting himself arrested for a traffic accident, Saul accidentally hints to Marion that he was a lawyer from Albuquerque when he shows knowledge of the city's bond declaration rules. Marion later discovers "Gene"'s true identity as Saul Goodman after finding his commercials on the internet. As Marion calls the police, Saul tries to contact Ed again to flee Omaha but fails and is arrested.
• Saul is transported back to Albuquerque pending his trial. His lawyer is prosecutor-turned defence attorney Bill Oakley, though Saul ends up doing all of the work negotiating a very generous plea deal with the prosecution. It is here that Saul learns Kim confessed the truth to Howard's death and that his widow Cheryl is planning to take legal action against her.
• Saul is transported again, this time to North Carolina for his sentence hearing. With Kim and Marie in the audience, Saul, reverting to the name Jimmy, confesses to being a willing and indispensable accomplice to Walt's criminal empire, effectively destroying the plea deal he bargained for himself. He credits Kim for walking away from the criminal lifestyle, essentially shifting all of the blame for Howard's death onto himself and protecting Kim from legal action.
• Jimmy, now sentenced to eighty-six years in a maximum security prison, is respected and regarded by his fellow inmates for his career as "Better Call Saul". Kim poses as Jimmy's lawyer to visit him in prison as the two share a cigarette, having finally made amends with each other.

---