UPDATE AUGUST 26: After last night’s episode, there are a lot of questions about Jesse’s desert revelation and how it all fits together, so I updated this post to include that toward the end, to keep it chronological. You can skip to that part here.
I’ve noticed that a lot of people come across my blog from googling something like, “How did Walter White poison Brock?” or “What happened to the ricin cigarette?” or “what happened berries Walter Brock” or something similar. On the Breaking Bad message boards, questions about these topics still rage. While watching the latest episode on Sunday night, some friends were asking the the same questions. This storyline definitely has to be one of the most complex–maybe even convoluted–plotlines on the show. Some of it is more left to assumption than explicitly shown. So I thought I’d try to elucidate with my understanding of what happened, start to finish.
In episode 407 “Problem Dog,” Walt makes some ricin in the superlab. He gives it to Jesse, who puts it in a “lucky cigarette” that he keeps upside down in his cigarette pack. The ricin cigarette is born.
In episode 412 “End Times,” Walt is despondent and doesn’t know what to do. Gus has just threatened his wife, son, infant daughter and brother-in-law. Walt knows that Gus could be close to turning Jesse against him and that Jesse’s flagging loyalty is the only thing keeping Gus from killing him. Since Skyler gave a big chunk of Walt’s drug money to the IRS for the Ted thing, Walt doesn’t have the money to get himself and his family out of town through Saul’s disappeaerer “vacuum guy.” He sits out back behind his house and spins a revolver. The first two times, it points at him. The third time though, it points to a potted plant, which (we will later come to see) is a lily of the valley plant. Here is where Walter White gets his idea.
A few things to keep in mind from previous scenes and eps: First, Walt saw Brock and Andrea at Jesse’s apartment. He knows to some extent who they are and that Jesse cares about them. Second, Jesse has been carrying around a vial of ricin inside a cigarette for awhile now to (maybe) use on Gus. Lastly, Gus has used children before. His meth empire used kids like Andrea’s little brother Tomas, and when Jesse gets upset about this, Gus’s people kill Tomas (episode 312 “Half-Measure”). So Gus has hurt kids in Andrea’s family before.
So here’s (my assumption of) Walter’s plan. He has Saul deliver the lily of the valley berries to Brock in some way. This is never shown exactly but probably Walt did something with the berries like made them up into some candy (chemistry skills) or something and had Saul deliver it to the boy. This wouldn’t have been too weird because earlier in Season 4, before Jesse and Andrea got back together, Saul used to deliver money from Jesse to Andrea and had seen and talked to Brock in the past.
UPDATE: At the 2013 Comic-Con Vince Gilligan explained exactly how he and the writers imagined Walt got the poison to Brock, and it wasn’t, as I had thought, through Saul. Instead they pictured Walt as the “Evil Juice Box Man” going into Brock’s school and giving him a juice box that had juice from the poison berries. And if you’ll look closely at episode 413 “Face Off” (thanks to Greg below for pointing this out), when Walt busts into Saul’s office, Francesca is shredding school schedules. It’s a big spreadsheet of classes and times but there are notes on the side that seem to be one student’s personal schedule, most likely Brock’s. So, kudos to the writers on including that little detail, and again to Greg for noticing that what’s was being shredded. End of update.
Then, Walt has Saul, through his bodyguard Huell, remove Jesse’s ricin cigarette by switching out the packs. He removes Jesse’s pack with the cigarette containing the ricin vial and puts in a pack without it. This happens when Huell gives Jesse a pat down after Saul calls him to the office. Recall that Jesse got many, many urgent messages from Saul demanding that he come in to the office–this was done to get him there so Huell could do the cigarette pack switcharoo–then Saul kinda blows off Huell, as if he knows nothing about it (Saul’s good like that) and tells Jesse that these are “the end times, kid.” Walt has to make sure Jesse’s ricin cigarette is removed so he can convince Jesse that Gus or Tyrus stole the ricin cig to poison Brock.
So then, Jesse gets the call that Brock is in the hospital. He hears Brock has flu-like symptoms that aren’t getting better, which is exactly what Walt told Jesse back in the Tuco days is what would happen to someone with ricin poisoning. Jesse figures out EXACTLY what happened–that Walt poisoned Brock (likely through Saul) and then had Huell remove the ricin cigarette from him. This is exactly what he accuses Walt of when he threatens to kill Walt. In fact, if you’re still having questions about this whole deal, watch this scene where Jesse almost kills Walt because he gets it exactly right (except that Walt didn’t actually use ricin).
But then Walt turns it around and convinces Jesse that Gus has done it as an attempt to frame Walt and get Jesse to finally give his consent to kill Walt or to kill Walt himself. Jesse’s refusal to give the okay to kill Walt was the thorn in Gus’s side. Gus has used children before, he argues, and he swears that he himself would never do such a thing to a child. He convinces Jesse that Gus knew about the ricin cigarette because Gus had cameras on them all the time. Jesse, who on some level loves Walt and thinks of him as a father figure, decides to believe Walt rather than shoot him, and helps Walt to kill Gus.
Afterward, Jesse finds out that Brock wasn’t poisoned with ricin after all, but lily of the valley. He thinks it’s all a coincidence and Walt assures him they still did the right thing in killing Gus. All seems well as Walt relaxes out back behind his house, in a much different state of mind then he was in before. In the last frames of Season 4, the camera focuses in on the same plant that Walt’s revolver pointed at in the earlier scene, and its tag, which says “Lily of the Valley.” This is supposed to let us as the audience know that yes, Walt poisoned Brock.
So why did Walt go to the trouble of doing it with lily of the valley instead of just using ricin? Well, as evil as Walt has become, he doesn’t actually want to murder a kid. The implication is that if he had actually used ricin, it would have killed Brock but with lily of the valley, it was “touch and go” but Brock pulled through. Also, I think that Walt, true to character, isn’t even thinking far enough ahead to think of what a weird coincidence it could look like. All he’s thinking about is survival, about getting Jesse to think Gus poisoned Brock with ricin so Jesse will get back on his side. That’s it.
In season 5, some loose ends still need to be cleaned up. The first is that Walt throws out his lily of the valley plant, destroying the evidence. Then, in his meeting with Saul, Saul hands the ricin cigarette that Huell lifted from Jesse back to Walt. Saul also says that he had no idea that Brock would end up in the hospital. It’s never explicitly spelled out but this conversation is what reveals that it probably was somehow through Saul that Brock got the poison, and that Saul didn’t really know what he was actually doing. That’s what leads me to believe Walt made the berries into some type of treat for Saul to deliver. Walt is a chemist who made poison out of beans, after all.
Then in episode 502 “Madrigal,” we have more loose ends to tie up. One is that Jesse still doesn’t know what happened to his ricin cigarette. He doesn’t have it, he doesn’t know Walt has it and he no longer believes Gus had it, so in his mind it’s MIA. Walt tries to convince Jesse that he must’ve lost it in the superlab before they torched it but Jesse doesn’t think so. Jesse’s making himself crazy worrying that some innocent person will come across it wherever he lost it and get sick and die because of it. Walt says he’ll come over and help Jesse toss the house and find it. So Walt makes up a dummy ricin cigarette, using salt instead of ricin. He hides the real vial of ricin behind an electrical socket in his bedroom. He then plants the fake cig in Jesse’s Roomba as they are tearing the place apart. We don’t see him do this, but when he offers to help Jesse find it while making a fake one, we assume he’s going to plant it somewhere.
Then Walt pretends not to know what a Roomba is (“What the hell is that thing?”) and convinces Jesse to look inside it. Jesse does and lo and behold there is his “ricin” cigarette. Jesse now believes he made a huge, huge mistake, originally thinking Walt was behind it. He almost killed Walt, and now thinks that Walt, or should I say “Mr. White” was completely innocent. Jesse feels awful and can’t figure out what’s wrong with himself that he would make such a huge “mistake.”
It is genius on Walt’s part. He has gotten Jesse back to his side. He has Jesse doubting his own instincts about what’s going on, feeling like he is instead stupid. Then Walt comes in as the comforting father figure and talks to him about moving forward, so he gets Jesse on board with cooking meth again.
And then in 503 “Hazard Pay,” Walt completes this long con of Jesse by manipulating him into ending things with Andrea, and hence Brock. And then showing absolutely zero interest or concern. Walt has become one sick, twisted dude.
UPDATE
This next section addresses how this plotline about the Brock poisoning and the ricin cigarette plays into episode 511 “Confessions.” DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER if you haven’t yet seen the episode as this will be a big spoiler. You’ve been warned.
In episode 511 “Confessions” Jesse goes to Saul’s office to hire the same “disappearer” that Walt once planned to use. Jesse starts smoking pot in Saul’s office (not the first time, that was nicely set up two episodes back). Saul freaks out and says the disappearer won’t take him if he’s high. So Huell does what he does–he pickpockets Jesse’s pot. If you watch closely, you can see Huell doing this.
Then Jesse, waiting for the disappearer, looks for the pot in his pocket. It’s not there. He starts freaking out, finds the cigarette pack. He realizes that Huell lifted his pot and this triggers Jesse to realize that Huell had switched the packs before, that he’d been right all along (remember, this was his original suspicion). So he goes and beats and threatens at gunpoint the truth out of Saul.
The confusion for a lot of people is that Jesse yells about ricin when he screams at Saul but Brock was poisoned with Lily of the Valley. He screams about the ricin cig because that’s Saul’s part in the plan. Saul and Huell lifted his ricin cigarette (so that Walt could convince Jesse that Gus via Tyrus had stolen it at the lab). He realizes then that he must’ve been played by Walt, that Walt must’ve been the one to poison Brock with Lily of the Valley.
Jesse has been getting smarter for seasons now. And he’s been suspicious of Walt ever since late in the first half of Season Five, and especially since Walt had the guys in prison killed, which told him all he needed to know about what happened to Mike. He’s been terrified of Walt. And there was a lot of talk about Walt playing and working Jesse leading up to this moment in the episode. So, I think Jesse’s in a different place in that he’s readier to see this truth about Walt. It must be under the surface, a seed of suspicion.
In that moment in the desert, waiting for his new life in Alaska, when he finds the cigarette pack in his pocket, I think the whole convoluted plot becomes crystal clear to Jesse in all its detail.
Oh shit.
I decided to add on some more because I noticed that a lot of the people who left comments were having trouble believing the leap Jesse made from seeing the cigarette pack to putting the whole plot together. This was a little surprising to me because as soon as I saw Jesse looking at the cigarettes (and I believe it’s a similar camera angle as when he looked at his cigarettes in 412 “End Times” when he realized the ricin one was gone), I started freaking out and silently screaming to myself, Jesse knows! So anyway, I thought I’d try to illuminate in more detail why it was believable to me.
The first thing to remember is that not all that much time has passed since Brock was poisoned in the world of the show. Just a few months. Maybe four or five. For us, it’s been almost two years since the end of Season Four. A lot more time has passed for us as viewers than for the characters on the show. The whole Brock thing wouldn’t be that far buried in Jesse’s mind. He’s also been relatively sober (except for the pot) since, and Jesse’s always smarter when he’s not dipping into the crystal blue persuasion.
The other thing is that Jesse originally put all the pieces together quickly when he came to Walt’s house. Well, he didn’t know Walt had used lily of the valley, but aside from that detail, he’d figured out the whole plot. So, in Jesse’s mind the poisoning of Brock and the lifting of his ricin cig through the pack switchup were already linked in his mind. Maybe that’s why it didn’t seem like much of a leap to me, because Jesse had essentially already figured it out once, and because these things were always linked for him. Walt worked hard to spin a fiction around the whole thing, but it makes sense that once one piece comes tumbling down, like Jesse realizing Huell had switched packs on him back then, the whole castle falls. It’s like Walt built a very big and complicated Jenga tower and all it took was that one piece pulled out to bring it all down. Plus there would’ve been no reason for Walt to have Huell switch cigarette packs on Jesse if he hadn’t poisoned Brock. The two things have always gone together.
And I also think that this is the way realizations work in real life. Consider a more commonplace example, since most of us (I assume) haven’t dealt with having a drug dealer partner mentor father figure poisoning our significant other’s kid in a convoluted plot to win back our loyalty. Consider instead infidelity. You find something that makes you think your spouse/partner/lover/sex friend/whoever is cheating. They give you a plausible (maybe not 100% convincing but plausible) story that explains things away. They appeal to your emotions and swear that they would never do that, they love you and you are their one and only sex friend or whatever. You believe them because you want to believe them, because they seem like the kind of person who would never cheat. And maybe they orchestrate some corroborating evidence to their story (ricin decoy in the roomba equivalent). But all it takes is one tiny little hole in their story–a receipt in a pocket, something out of place in the house, another person who was involved in the cover story (the boss they were supposedly working late for, let’s say) saying something just the slightest bit out of sync with the story, catching a wayward look in a crowded room, a whiff of mysterious cologne or perfume–and suddenly you KNOW. All of it. You were played.
I’m not speaking from experience really on that one, from either side of the scenario, so I’ll go with something less related but it’s the first thing that comes to mind with realizations–Mystery Diagnosis. It’s a show that was (still is?) on Discovery Health about real-life scenarios of patients with illnesses that go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed, sometimes for years. If you think the Brock and ricin storyline is convoluted and muddied, diseases and conditions are worse. Their symptoms overlap so it can be difficult to tease them apart. They are so, so complex. They affect different people in different ways. Especially when you get to the more bizarre ones. This can’t be understated, these were stories of people who serious went sometimes over a decade (or more), to one doctor after another and not getting answers. The doctors who did solve the cases usually did so in a moment. Suddenly it all came into focus, all the different symptoms suddenly slid into place of the one correct diagnosis. And as a viewer watching the show, that’s always happened for me. I couldn’t solve that many (I have no medical training whatsoever, just a biology major including a year of anatomy and physiology, and a lot of time spent watching House back in the day) but I got a handful, maybe ten or so, before it was revealed on the show. And whenever I did, it was because it would suddenly crystallize. Somehow just one word or one symptom would suddenly conjure up some book I’d read a few months or years back, or a patient on House, or something I’d read in A&P or another class, or several of these would come together and I’d start screaming at the TV, “It’s Stills Disease!” or “Acute Intermittent Porphyria, bitch!” or “It’s Addison’s!”
I know this seems like a big tangent, and it kind of is, but the point is that I think the way light bulb realizations work in real life is that stuff bobs around under the surface of our unconscious minds, and sometimes when we’re mentally ready to see something, or when the right little clue piques our interest, that’s all it takes for a complex thing to come into crystal clear focus. I think it’s just very true to human life. Of course not every realization is a light bulb moment, but plenty are.
And Jesse, he’s probably had some questions and curiosities about the Brock poisoning bobbing in his unconscious for awhile now. It was a little too coincidental, you know? That Brock got poisoned and he lost his cigarette and they’re somehow just two odd occurrences that led him to help Walt murder Gus must seem a little weird. I don’t think Jesse totally believed Walt was innocent until he found the decoy in the roomba. And so for awhile he believed Walt’s story. But then, Walt killed Mike’s guys and Jesse figured that meant Walt must’ve also killed Mike. He saw Mr. White in a new, more diabolical light. And lately there’s been all this talk about Walt playing him. And at his house in “Blood Money” he saw what a good liar Walt can be, how convincing he can come off, when Walt lied about Mike being alive. So all it takes is that one thing–his pot–out of place for him to see it all in focus. To essentially go back to his original gut instinct about what happened to Brock (except substituting Lily of the Valley as the actual poison used on Brock) and Saul’s involvement. Remember these two things–Brock being poisoned and Huell switching his packs–were already linked in his mind originally. It really wasn’t that big a leap. All the pieces were there, Jesse just needed a little push to put it all together.
Totally believable and true to life in my eyes.
~Chrys
P.S. I still plan to get to everyone’s comments. Had to stop replying for a bit to get my episode write-up done and now this. And other life things that are not in front of the computer! Some great discussions going on, and I will attend to it all as soon as I can. Rock on all you observant, dedicated and awesome BrBa people!
Related Articles:
- Season 5 Part 2 Predictions and Detective Work: Putting All the Clues Together
- Hank’s Dilemma in All its Dimensions
- Walter White’s Moral Demise and the People Jesse Pinkman Loves
- Why Breaking Bad Needs Season 5
- That “Leaked” Breaking Bad Season 5 Premiere Script
- My Official Breaking Bad Season 5 Predictions Post
Chrys Buckley 
I have never watched an episode of Breaking Bad. But I do like what you have to say about it. This is really just to say thank for following my blog, Written in Blood. It means a lot to me and I have since returned the favor. Thank you!
Emilia,
I read the article you posted that explained how Walter White poisoned Brock, all in an effort to make it look like Gus was the culprit, resulting in Jesse assisting Walt in the assassination of Gus. All I can say is: your article was fantastic! I’ve watched every episode of Breaking Bad with little difficultly; I believe I’ve comprehended everything that’s happened thus far, with the exception of who poisoned Brock. You in fact mentioned in your article that many viewers were also confused by this.
Prior to reading your article, I foolishly was under the impression that Brock had inadvertently eaten berries from a lily of the valley plant. The fact that camera repeatedly showed the plant in Walt’s backyard merely made me think that the show was acting in typical form: dark and ironic. This was clearly not the case!
Thank you so much again for taking the time to explain this aspect of the plot clearly. With there being so many blogs and forums about this topic, especially ones that are not well written and hard to follow, it was refreshing coming across an article such as yours. Keep up the great work, and I’m anxious to look at the other entries you have on your website, especially those concerning Breaking Bad.
All the best,
-Mitch R.
Just for the record, my search term was “How does walter white substitute ricin with lili of the valley” (that’s correct, I didn’t include a question-mark). I think you’re doing a bang-up job here. I think you solved the mystery! In response to your comment about the mustard swirl, I believe EVERYTHING in this show happens for a reason, so Huell’s arbitrary pat-down of Jesse in order to “swich it up” probably wasn’t an exception, and therefore likely lends credibility to your analysis – it’s certainly the best thing the have to go on yet. Keep it up!
totally didn’t pic up on the pointer-detail of the spinning gun
Thanks for the intricate details there. I never watched the show until Thanksgiving break and I watched every episode from beginning to end. (Don’t ask how I was able to watch season 5 on line) I am a kind, vegetarian birdwatcher who turned into a badass. Still kind, but something changed in me. Maybe it’s because I’m close to Walt’s age or have other similarities (not gender, but we’re all just bags of meat and chemicals anyway) but something clicked. I miss a few details because some of the family moments bore me so thanks for filling me in and helping me get caught up. Personally, I hope that the only one who is left alive is Jesse, it would be ironic because he is the one who was originally going to get killed off in the first season and the one most likely to die. He is a red-shirt wearing, Sam Rockwell in Galaxy Quest kind of character.
I just have to say this:
Your text was amazingly spot-on and is really appreciated! Thank you so much for the work you put on this. These type of kindness, to write an whole article to help others, is what makes internet so good. I kind of knew how the whole poisoning thing went down, but I was unsure how the ricin cigarette disappeared. I searched “breaking bad what happened with the ricin” and found this and all of my questions were answered. Thank you for your time and effort you dedicated to this.
/Joakim, Sweden
My search term was:
“episode with breaking bad poisonous flower of the lily was first seen in episode”
No one had satisfactorily explained how Walt had poisoned Brock until I came across this post. I’ve just spent the last four weeks binge-watching “Breaking Bad” on Netflix. through the end of Season 4. The final episode was confusing, and this brought clarity to it. Many thanks for this.
Great explanation, Emilia! Thanks.
Thanks so much for all the replies, everyone! I really think this whole deal was one of the most difficult things to follow on BrBa so far, and it stretched over several episodes, including the break between seasons 4 and 5, making it that much harder to follow.
And I definitely didn’t see things quite right at first. Hahahaha, for a hot second I thought that somehow Gus had planted the LOTV plant in Walt’s backyard because I just couldn’t believe Walt would have poisoned Brock, but after re-watching and analyzing, there it was, stark proof that WW had reached a new level of badness.
Oh I also just wanted to say thanks to those who have shared this post! I hope that it’s clarifying :)
~EJ
Nice write up! I wasn’t connecting the dots with Walt spinning the gun until you mentioned it. At first, I thought he was just using the gun as an 8-ball to determine if he or Gus was going to survive in the end.
I just finished watching Season 4 and when I saw the Lilly of the Valley end shot. I was slackjawed. I said no out loud Walt surely didn’t poison Brock. Then I immediately googled “Do we really Think Walt Poisoned Brock” Your page was number one after typing this in. I follow things quite closely and since I I watch several episodes at a time on Netflix, I catch most things. I totally missed this. When I saw the picture I remember him looking at the plant but I would not had remembered until I saw your picture. What an amazing plot line. This show is pure brilliance. Everyone kept telling me how good this and Mad Men were and then I finally started BB. I have watched it all in about 6 weeks. Can’t wait till season 5 hits Netflix. Your blog and putting it all together was very well written and I thank you for putting together such a well written, descriptive and inclusive blog post about the incident. That said I was wondering if you would be interested in hearing how to start making some serious money by blogging just like this? if so please email me at info@jzisenterprises.com
I just finished watching Season 4 and when I saw the Lilly of the Valley end shot. I was slackjawed. I said no out loud Walt surely didn’t poison Brock. Then I immediately googled “Do we really Think Walt Poisoned Brock” Your page was number one after typing this in. I follow things quite closely and since I I watch several episodes at a time on Netflix, I catch most things. I totally missed this. When I saw the picture I remember him looking at the plant but I would not had remembered until I saw your picture. What an amazing plot line. This show is pure brilliance. Everyone kept telling me how good this and Mad Men were and then I finally started BB. I have watched it all in about 6 weeks. Can’t wait till season 5 hits Netflix. Your blog and putting it all together was very well written and I thank you for putting together such a well written, descriptive and inclusive blog post about the incident. That said I was wondering if you would be interested in hearing how to start making some serious money by blogging just like this?
if so please email me at info@jzisenterprises.com … I would post a link but I do not want to spam your comments : ) I hate it when others do that to me.
Excellent analysis and detail!
I love this show, but your thoughtful explanation helped me connect all the dots. And I wonder, how many times has Jesse threatened to kill Walt? More than ten?
Poor Jesse.
And why did they kill off Mike? I think you should do a blog on that. :)
Rose
Walter is very smart. Even though he claims Gus was always 10 steps ahead of him, most of the time he figured out Gus’ plans without anyone having to tell him. Walter probably knew that with Brock’s symptoms, Jesse would figure Ricin, notice his missing cigarette, and act accordingly. He probably knew that, knowing and liking the kid (from seeing them together playing video games) Jesse would tell Andrea or the doctors he thought it was Ricin, and Walt probably knew that knowing such a thing (if the tox screen came back positive) would implicate Jesse and get him convicted.
That’s why Walt didn’t use the RIcin, aside from not actually wanting to kill the kid. He wanted it to look like Ricin, have the kid live, and have Jesse stay out of prison.
Also I want to say that the wikipedia entry states he wanted Walter White to slowly and subtly shift from protagonist to antagonist, and that’s exactly what’s happened by Season 5.
@Lou – yes, Walter is brilliant here, cold but brilliant. I agree that he also considered keeping Jesse out of jail. I read somewhere else that maybe Walt also wanted to keep Jesse in the hospital and police station to keep him safe from Gus. I don’t know about that, but not sure. He definitely didn’t want Jesse going to jail, that’s for real. He also really didn’t want to kill the kid – that’s a step too far even for Walt (and maybe it’s also calculated, if Brock had died, what state would Jesse have been in?) and even a little bit of ricin would have been deadly.
Walt really has made the shift to antagonist by Season Five, and this con he pulls on Jesse and poisoning a child and all the lies that came with it, all of that goes a long way to move Walt in that direction.
~EJ
This is a good summary, but I was under the impression that Walter took the ricin cigarette when he bummed a cigarette off of Jesse. That’s why Jesse made the comment about how you are supposed to inhale the smoke, since Walter did not inhale it.
I think when Walt asked Jesse for a cig, he was trying to “hang” with Jesse a little, check in and see if Jesse was turning on him. Just like how he tried to start conversations about what Jesse watches on TV and all that. I think the cig w/Jesse was an excuse also to get to talk to him for a moment outside the lab, away from cameras. I don’t think Walt’s plan was in play then and pretty sure we see the ricin cig still in Jesse’s possession after that point. But I could totally be wrong. Gearing up to rewatch Season Four so I’ll have to pay attention for that.
~EJ
Gotta love the internet: search and you shall receive. I need look no further than your page for the answer. Thank you thank you for your insightful analysis. It was going to drive me crazy wondering what I’d missed, not having time to re-watch Season 4 right now. Now I can finish up with Season 5 in peace, knowing that I’d merely failed to pick up on some very subtle clues.
Hey billiegt, thanks for reading! Your comment showed up in a weird place so I hope it’s cool that I moved it to this post (pretty sure that’s what you were replying to).
So glad to be of help, everyone should watch Season Five in peace. The details of this ploy are so subtle. I can’t remember if I already said this but at first when they showed the Lily of the Valley plant by Walt’s pool, my VERY first thought was OMG how did Gus plant it there?! Hahaha, it took a lot of rewatching and paying close attention to figure it all out. I still get friends who watch the show asking what the deal is with the ricin cig and the poisoning. You are not alone!
~EJ
Nice write-up. I am on board with Walt’s responsibility for the poisoning but I can’t picture Saul and his knucklehead enforcer pulling off the actual execution of the plot. Oh well, I suspend disbelief on this show all the time so no reason to quit now…
Hey metal guy! Have you seen the first part of Season Five yet? Saul makes it pretty clear he didn’t know what he was getting himself into. He says to Walt (paraphrasing here), “You didn’t tell me that kid would end up in the hospital!” And Saul also makes a comment about Huell and his clumsiness and how Huell could’ve easily busted open the ricin cigarette.
~EJ
Just saw episode 1 of season 5 tonight EJ and you are right. Forget the ricin stuff though I am now officially creeped out by Walt. I never thought I would root for his demise…
He gets pretty high on being the king in S5. You’ll have to watch what he does with the ricin in episode 2.
~EJ
I dont think jessie should go back to cooking meth because hes not as selfish as he used to be. But I think walter might, and if he does he finds gus’s money to start him kingdon
Hi dunno! You will have to see what happens in Season Five! I completely agree that Jesse should not go back to cooking. He has grown up a lot, become much less selfish as you say, become more of a moral compass, and getting smarter. He’s been sober for awhile too, which must play a part in all of this growth for him. But like I said, you’ll have to see what happens.
~EJ
You missed the part before Walt breaks Saul’s glass door, Saul’s secretary is shredding school schedules. I believe they had Brock’s name on them.
Greg – O M G seriously? I JUST watched that episode but never even thought to look at what Francesca (aka HT, haha) was shredding. I will have to go back and look at that again and look into those details. I was thinking I needed to update this post anyway after the Comic Con panel, but this detail, if true, would just put me in awe of the writers, and you for figuring it out.
Do you have a website or anything? I’d like to link to you to give you credit for picking up on this if it checks out!
~EJ
Hi. I just finished rewatching the series through the first half of Season 5. Ended up here because I was “sure” that there was a scene where Jessie, having somehow found out that Walt did poison Brock, confronts him. Walt admits it, but says he tried to make sure it wasn’t a lethal dose. How odd. It’s like I can hear Walt saying he kept the dose low enough so that Brock would have a good chance of surviving. I did fast forward thru a very few bits this time through — just a couple of things I didn’t want tp see — but unlikely I missed it. And, certainly, you would have mentioned it here if it happened. I must have drempt it or something?
Thanks. And really good to find your blog.
Thanks for reading Nomi!
Maybe you had a psychic dream, and that scene is coming in the final eight episodes? It could happen…
~EJ
There is some evil lurking in there and nobody, not even Walt can justify it by claiming it’s to protect his family. It’s made abundantly clear when he calls “Becky” to check on the house. Obviously knowing that some harm may come to her. That is a serious lack of morality. ……….And though you cannot see the name “Brock” on the papers being shredded, it’s obvious they are school schedules. Never saw that……….thanks for a great blog.
Hi Christopher, thanks for reading!
I agree that asking Becky to check on the house is one of the shadier things Walt has done. He’s putting a completely innocent person in harm’s way. I think in Walt’s mind he still tells himself it’s all for the family but that gets shakier and shakier as the story progresses. Oh and if you look at the schedules, there’s one handwritten on the side of the papers, that has to be Brock’s.
~EJ
If one were to re-watch that pat down in Saul’s office you will see Hual put his hand into his own jacket imediately after taking his hand out of Jesse’s pocket to show he lifted the cigs
Those papers that H.T. was shredding at Saul’s have zero evidence of being school schedules. Who goes to school at “6:30 to close,” as written on the shredded papers? Those are most likely just work schedules of employees that Saul, preparing to fly the coop, had no future use for. I have absolutely no idea how the notion that those were school schedules of students came to be, other than wishful conjecture.
Or because one of the columns says “course” at the top…
Must suck for Brock to take that 6:30 to close course ;)
Was just going through my previous posts and saw this one. I haven’t watched Breaking Bad since it was on so I don’t remember at all what we were talking about, but I do notice that I was being an abrasive, immature dork here, so I apologize for that, lol. Best wishes : )
Great post, thank you.
Just under 6 minutes into episode 413 “Face Off” Francesca is indeed shredding papers that could be school schedules.
But although Vince Gilligan and the writers may well have imagined that Walt got the poison to Brock by going into Brock’s school and giving him a juice box that had juice from the poison berries, that is a completely preposterous supposition. They needed to imagine something more plausible to fill in this hole in the plot.
The only time Brock had ever seen Walt was when Walt showed up as Jesse’s door when Brock and his mom were there, and they were both startled by Walt aggressive behavior. Brock himself would not have been willing to accept anything from that man who had startled him, and the school officials would certainly not have permitted a strange man to just show up at school with a juice box. Stop and think about how that would play out at ANY school, even before the recent spate of school shootings.
About the only way Walt could have accomplished this would be if Brock took his own lunch to school, and in the space of maybe 12 hours or less (based on what Jesse told Walt while holding him at gunpoint), Walt somehow managed to extract a poison derived from the Lily of the Valley plant, and then managed to break into Brock’s house undetected, inject it into the exact juice box (or other food item) that Brock would take to school that day, which is just about as equally implausible as Walt being able to show up at any school with a tainted juice box and actually get it to Brock (who certainly would not trust him even if Walt succeeded in doing that). And none of this would be possible if Brock got his lunch at school. Any other method (e.g.: dropping tainted candy around Brock’s house) would be far too unlikely to succeed, since Brock might never see any of that (but other kids might). While it’s almost impossible to prove a negative, it appears that there that was no way Walt could have done it within the timeline established by other events & statements.
Hey Nomad, you bring up some excellent points I hadn’t thought of before.
I think this is why I was so attached to the idea that Walt had Saul deliver the poison to Brock, somehow without Saul knowing exactly what it was. Saul visited Brock and Andrea presumably on a regular basis to give Andrea the money from Jesse (I think he said it was a weekly thing) before Jesse and Andrea got back together, and Saul and Brock talked. Brock would’ve trusted Saul. I think it would’ve been more plausible.
Maybe the writers just liked the idea and image of Walt the evil juice box man? It does have a certain ring to it.
I’m on the fence about the school schedules. Sippycupz pointed out the “6:30 to close” discrepancy which I didn’t see for myself, which does throw a wrench in the idea. But what else would list courses? And that I did see. Man, I paused and froze and screen-captured the shit out of that paper shredding scene (both on my TV and on the computer) but got very little to actually work with. It was just so blurry every time.
~EJ
Great blog and really insightful reading. Very well done! You’ve made the bookmarked list.
@Kelly – thanks! And thanks for checking out other stuff too.
~EJ
Thank you for helping fill in the blanks! My wife and I who have been watching the show from the beginning were completely lost! Thanks especially for the episode references.
Glad I could help, negativghostrdr. I think a lot of people have felt lost by this storyline.
~EJ
Very informative summary! I really needed a checkup of this subplot and you’ve answered all my questions. So thanks a lot! :)
David, I live to serve. LOL.
Seriously, glad I could help!
~EJ
Wow! Thank you so much for clearing this up. I just COULD NOT recall the reason Brock was poisoned.
Anytime, yo!
~EJ
I just don’t see the logic of all of this. Walt tries to convince Jessie that Gus poisoned Brock, when Jessie knows Walt made the ricin. Yes, while Jessie knows first hand that Gus is an experienced poisoner, and eventually it is revealed that ricin wasn’t actually used on Brock. But this does not explain why Walt stole the ricin back from Jessie. Why would Walt do that, knowing that it would implicate him in Jessie’s mind (since Walt was the one person who made the ricin, and knew where Jessie kept it, and Jessie would notice it missing)? Seems like just a plot device to create conflict and tension. What motive did Walt have to steal the ricin back?
The only possible explanation would be that Walt had thought of using the ricin on Brock, but then had a change of heart (didn’t want to kill the boy, implicate himself vis-a-via Jessie, and send Jessie to prison). But couldn’t Walt just make more ricin if he wanted it (not sure if there was enough time to make any)? But an experienced chemist like Walt could come up with a million other poisons if he wanted to. Cyanide comes to mind.
One thing is, as we know from the foreshadow of (presumably) fugitive Walt visiting his run-down former home, he does still have the ricin vial. Perhaps Walt confronts Jessie as he is about to burn down his house, and says, “but wait, yes I stole the ricin back, but I still have the vial in my wall socket, see?” Maybe he will say he wanted it to kill Gus himself, so he stole the ricin back, but decided to blow him up instead. We know the house doesn’t burn down because we saw it, run down, but not torched, in the aforementioned foreshadow.
Hey JDSoCal,
I think he took the ricin to make Jesse think that Gus had stolen it, because that’s what Walt pitches to Jesse when Jesse has the gun on him in “End Times.”
He keeps saying that Gus or Tyrus took the ricin cig out of Jesse’s locker. When Jesse says something like they couldn’t have, Walt says (something like), “You don’t even believe that!” and talks about how they had the cameras on them all the time. So I think that was the plan, make him think Gus/Tyrus had lifted the ricin cig and used it on Brock. And really, all Walt needs is a seed of doubt, enough to get Jesse on Walt’s side.
I think Jesse was honestly still somewhat suspicious until he found the cig in the roomba. At that point, he thought his suspicions were wrong but until that point I bet Jesse had some doubts going on.
But you have a point, maybe Walt originally intended to use ricin. I’d like to think Walt wouldn’t be THAT bad as to actually kill a child but he was a desperate man.
Thanks so much for your really well thought-out comment!
~EJ
In the opening scene of Season 4, Episode 12, at about the 3:45 point, Walt is shown in a closeup as he gets off the phone with Hank, just before Skyler and the kids were taken to Hank’s house by the Feds.
After the break is the infamous scene where Walt, apparently deep in contemplation, spins his handgun only to have it point back at himself twice, but on the third spin it points at the Lily of the Valley plant. The shot then zooms into a closeup of Walt’s face, which sure appears to display the look of someone who has just gotten an idea, who has figured out a solution to a problem. This ‘eureka moment’ is when Walt decided to use the Lily of the Valley plant as part of a convoluted scheme to get Jesse to help him kill Gus.
Breaking Bad does jump around in the timeline a lot, especially in scenes before and after the opening title break. But in these two scenes, the two closeup shots establish them to be roughly in sequence, because not only is Walt wearing exactly the same clothes, but even more importantly, his facial injuries and bandages are in exactly the same condition in both scenes.
These two shots, combined with other scenes that include statements by Jesse about when his cigarettes went missing and when Brock got sick, establish that Brock was (somehow) poisoned before being admitted to the hospital the next day (or maybe no later than the day after that, and even that is a stretch based on Jesse’s statements).
In Season 5, Episode 1, at about 39.5 minutes, (after Walt confronts Saul about having helped Skyler without telling him, and tells Saul that he works for him, not Skyler):
Saul: “Clarence Darrow never had a client ask him for something (pulls out the bag with the ricin cigarette) like this. I put my ass on the line for you. Huell too. Huh. He’s got fingers like hot dogs. He could easily have busted this in two and killed everyone in the office. But do I complain? No. Beg, borrow or steal, I’m your huckleberry. I go the extra mile… Only you never told me that kid would wind up in the hospital! Ya know… Take that thing and get the hell out of here. You and me, we’re done.”
That last statement “I go the extra mile… Only you never told me that kid would wind up in the hospital!” is the key.
If Walt had managed to get the Lily-of-the-Valley derived poison to Brock himself, without Saul’s help, he would have never told Saul about it, so Saul would not have known, and even if he had, he would certainly not have made that statement above, which sure seems to at least indirectly implicate Saul (or at least one of his henchmen, if they weren’t busy with Ted during this time). Saul still HAD the ricin-laced cigarette in his safe for the entire time the other events played out (including Brock’s hospital stay), and he clearly knew it was so deadly that even accidentally breaking it might have “killed everyone in the office.”
This, combined with the timeline pretty firmly established in S4E12 make it clear to me that the show as aired does not support the VG’s ComicCon explanation that he and the writers imagined a tainted juice box taken into Brock’s school by Walt as the “Evil Juice Box Man” himself or through an impromptu proxy (e.g.: “Hey kid, see that other kid over there at the bus stop? Go give him this juice box or candy bar. Here’s twenty bucks.”)
So I believe that Emilia Jordan’s assumption, that Walter had “Saul deliver the lily of the valley berries to Brock in some way. This is never shown exactly but probably Walt did something with the berries like made them up into some candy (chemistry skills) or something and had Saul deliver it to the boy.” is the only explanation that is plausible based on what is shown on the show as aired (as opposed to what VG and the writers may have imagined or intended). And even that would be almost impossible within the very tight timeline established in the opening segments of S4E12. I think about the only way it could have worked would have involved something like an ice cream truck, or some other type of mobile snack vending scheme that could manage to show up near Brock’s school (or some other place where Brock might have been individually accessible, such as a playground). Like I said before, it’s impossible to prove a negative, but this looks like a hole in the plot that wasn’t tied down to start with, and got even more muddled as more real-world time elapsed between season 4, to 5a, to 5b.
So you’re basically saying my explanation for how Brock got the poison was better than VG’s? I’ll take that.
It always made the most sense to me that it would happen through Saul. Just because of what I mentioned before–Saul had been to the house, talked to Brock, Brock trusted him and would accept a juice box or lollipop or even some straight up berries from him. And like you pointed out, what Saul says to Walt in 501 strongly implicates him more deeply in the plot.
The writers are very imagistic and I honestly think the whole “juice box man” thing came up later and that they liked the idea of that image. Because, who wouldn’t? Walter White the evil juice box man really does conjure up an interesting image. But I do think Saul is more plausible. But that’s just my opinion.
Great job doing all that excellent digging, Nomad!
~EJ
Hi,
you do a great job and thank you for that! i totally forgot some of the very important sequences of the episodes, especially the dialouges!
i totally agree with your assumption, but there is one little thing i just don’t really get. i think that jesse’s line of thought, when he realizes that saul must have switched his pot with the pack, is way too fast to know that saul, or rather walt, must have posined brock with the lily of the valley. for me, there’s something missing…but maybe it’ll all become clear in the following epsisodes (for me) ;)
ps: i hope you understand my text – i’m not the best at english.
again, thank you for this solution! :)
Hi Michael,
I think the thing is that Jesse had pretty much figured it all out originally, but Walt convinced him otherwise. Back then, Jesse didn’t see, AT ALL, how truly manipulative Walt was. He believed Walt, especially after he “found” the cigarette in his roomba.
But now that he’s much more aware of who Walt is, all it took was one little crack in that story for Jesse to realize he was originally right. Why would Huell ever have lifted the pack with the ricin cigarette if Walt hadn’t poisoned Brock? It’s a “light bulb” moment where suddenly it all becomes clear.
Hope that helps some! And your English is great.
~EJ
Update on the papers being Francesca is shredding:
I couldn’t find a 1080p video of S4E13, but I was able to review a 720p version, in which it is pretty clear that the papers Francesca is shredding have something to do with a school class schedule. However, the “Course” column includes classes labeled “PSY” (presumably Psychology), “SOC” (Sociology) and “FREN” (French), and after the “Course” column there are numbers like 105, 201, etc., and before the “Course” column is a column titled END DATE with dates in 2003. This makes it clear that whatever those papers have to do with a school schedule, it pertains to college level courses that ended several years before the show first aired, not any classes Brock might have been attending in any plausible timeline of the show.
Great detective work, Nomad! Man, I do have 1080p on my DVD player but couldn’t get that level of clarity. Thanks for checking it out.
So, school schedules, but nothing to do with Brock. Got it. I’m going to go fix that in the post by deleting that section because it seems unrelated.
~EJ
wow thanks! you’d done bang up job! greetings from poland
Hey Konrad, thanks for reading. It’s so great that people are watching this show and posting about it from all over the world. Greetings from Portland :)
~EJ
thanks for this, I was halfway there but wanted a nice round up and this was perfect! – kinda crappy that the gap between these episodes has been so long and its really hard to pick up on such small details from so long ago without re-watching!
Hi Ben,
Yeah this story has taken place over seasons 4, 5a and 5b, so there have been some big gaps. I love that Breaking Bad always goes back to things from past episodes but sometimes it does mean some refreshing is in order. Glad I could help.
~EJ
I think there is a mistake about what you said on episode episode 511 “Confessions”.
Huell just stole the pot, he didn’t switch it with the pack of cig. the pack was already in Jesse’s back pocket.
Hey lovevinceg, you’re right. I watched it again and saw that. Fixed it in the post :)
~EJ