Jesse Pinkman is about to leave Albuquerque. All he has to do is wait for the man who can give him a new identity.
Why Does Jesse Change His Mind While Waiting For A Lift?
Jesse Pinkman is about to leave Albuquerque. All he has to do is wait for the man who can give him a new identity. Then he reaches for something in his pocket. A bag of marijuana has vanished. An apparently minor theft gives him the missing piece of a much older puzzle involving a sick child and a cigarette. Major spoilers follow for Breaking Bad.
What Jesse Believed When Brock Fell Ill
Jesse had carried a cigarette containing ricin, intended for Gus Fring. When Brock became seriously ill, Jesse discovered the cigarette was missing. He suspected Walt of taking it and harming the boy. Walt persuaded him that Gus had reason to turn the two men against one another. Jesse was desperate for an explanation and had just enough evidence to accept the wrong one.
Brock had actually been poisoned with lily of the valley. The diagnosis established that the ricin had not caused his illness. It did not explain how the cigarette had vanished at precisely the moment its disappearance would make Jesse suspect someone. Walt exploited that gap by helping Jesse “find” a replacement in his robot vacuum cleaner. For Jesse it became a story about a terrible accusation he had made against his friend.
The audience had another piece of evidence. The season-four finale showed a lily of the valley plant at Walt's home. Jesse never saw that shot. It is easy, on a rewatch, to forget how much longer he has to live with the false account than the viewer does.
Why The Missing Marijuana Matters
Before the arranged pickup, Huell has the opportunity to lift the drugs at Saul's office. Once Jesse discovers the loss, he understands that someone can take an object from him even when he is alert, anxious and sure he would notice. The disappearance feels familiar because he has already experienced its essential steps.
The marijuana gives Jesse a mechanism for the earlier theft. Huell had access to his pockets, Saul had reason to do Walt a favour, and the missing cigarette had sent Jesse looking in exactly the direction Walt needed. Suddenly the discovery in the vacuum looks staged. The most important clue is the recurrence of the method.
What Saul Confirms
Jesse returns to confront Saul. Under pressure Saul acknowledges his part in the cigarette theft and says he had not understood that Brock would be harmed. This confirms a deception, although Saul's knowledge and Walt's intentions remain different questions. The show never needs to produce a scene of Huell explaining every movement of his hands.
Nor does Jesse conclude that Brock swallowed the ricin. He already knows what doctors established about the poison. He realises that a child could be poisoned with one substance while the disappearance of another was used to control what he believed about the attack. The cigarette was an instrument of persuasion.
That is why Jesse abandons the chance to disappear. A clean start would have required him to take one final lesson from Walt into his new life: that his own suspicions about Brock had been cruel and foolish. In the instant his hand finds an empty pocket, Jesse gets back something Walt had taken from him long before the marijuana. He has grounds to trust his memory.
