Breaking Bad recap: it's Walt's world I beat this once. There's no reason to think I won't again. Right now Breaking Bad is a minute-to-minute proposition. Assumptions don't hold, expectations aren't met, and the characters are either in some kind of terminal velocity emotionally or furiously trying to save themselves. As they once said of Sinatra: it's Walt's world, everyone else just lives in it. Walter White's most powerful achievement may be that in his rise he's forced everyone else to live by the knowledge that their lives are forever on the verge of being destroyed, as his was in season one episode one. He's dragged everyone down, and that's what Hank pitched to Jesse in the Albuquerque Police Department interview room when the two men who despise Walt the most - although Jesse wasn't quite ready to admit that - faced off after the cold open of Todd and his neo-Nazi uncle relaxing in a diner post-massacre before heading for New Mexico to cook. Jesse drifted out of his catatonic state to defy an old foe - "why don't you try to beat it out of me," he sneered - but Hank, who updated Jesse with a simple "I know," told the reluctant millionaire that they'd both been used. Hank was whispering instead of yelling and the burden of what he knows, and the position he's in, is readily apparent now. Hank, most cleverly, was offering Jesse hope in his appeals to cash Walt in. The next front of the family war was Marie trying to lure the returned Walt jnr to her and Hank's house. It was more subtle than trying to walk out the door with baby Holly, but a still bruised Walt wasn't going to let it happen. He sat his son down and confessed that his cancer was back and he'd returned to chemotherapy. Walt jnr was devastated, and it was easy to despise Walter for the way he twisted his innocent's son's emotions to keep him close at hand, all the while professing that everything would be okay. "I don't want to keep things from you," he began, and that was a lie Walt deserved to choke on - great work in close up by RJ Mitte, too, as his composure cracked. Our desperation to know what comes next - we're as frantic as certain characters as we await the weekly broadcast of the final eight episodes - was crudely exploited in "Confessions" for the scene where Walt, having told Skyler it was the only way, sat down in their bedroom with a video camera and began recording his "confession." It cut off before anything was actually said, which was a definite tease. The two couples, Walt and Skyler opposed by Hank and Marie, then met at a Mexican chain restaurant where the only person who couldn't dig the deadly downer vibe was perky waiter Trent (they don't want guacamole made at the table, Trent!). Walt was polite, Skyler looked traumatised, Hank was seething and Marie was repulsed by who she was sitting with. "Please leave our children out of this," Walt asked, but Hank was having none of it, making several choice threats. Skyler tried to place Walt's crimes behind them - "It's over. It's in the past," she said - but Marie put a cap on the stilted conversation by suggesting that Walt solve the situation by pre-empting his cancer and killing himself. At this point, Marie is almost more of a threat than Hank is. Walt has said that he won't kill Hank, but something terrible may happen between Skyler and her sister. Walt gave Hank a disc with his confession on it and it was diabolically good. "If you're watching this I'm probably dead," he said, "murdered by my brother-in-law Hank Schrader." Walt, apparently besieged by guilt, gave a brilliant performance (does that make Bryan Cranston's work in the scene twice as good?) as the meth-making chemist to Hank's drug lord. Everything that had happened was pinned on Hank, including the bomb hit on business partner Gus Fring, and it made complete sense that if anyone had broken bad it was the head of the DEA in Albuquerque. The look on Hank's face was priceless. How far has Walt come since that first panicked video confession that opened Breaking Bad? This confession neatly illustrated to Hank the cards Walt held, with the kicker being that that $177,000 spent on Hank's rehabilitation had been financed by Walt from illegal drug money. With Hank stymied, Walt turned to Jesse, driving out to the desert to meet him and Saul. "Jesse, will you let me help you?" asked Walt, going to work on his other, unofficial, son. He pitched an identity change and a relocation, through a fixer Saul had, and Jesse finally lost his cool. "For once stop working me," he yelled, telling Walt to either ask him for a favour or kill him as he did to Mike. Jesse was tearful, but Walt drew closer - it reminded me of Michael Corleone saying goodbye to his doomed brother Fredo in The Godfather: Part II - and hugged the younger man. Jesse decided to take the offer, although the way he said "Alaska" suggested a certain fatalism, but as he awaited the ride to a new life on the side of the road the realisation that Saul's bodyguard, Huell, had picked his pocket of a marijuana baggie, segued into realising that Huell had previously picked his pocket - on the orders of Saul and Walter - for the ricin cigarette he believed Gus Fring had used to poison Brock, the six-year-old who was becoming Jesse's own son. It was the tipping point for Jesse, who walked away from his new life, and stormed into Saul's office - Huell is not the best bodyguard - and assaulted the lawyer, taking his gun from him and making a bloody, terrified Saul admit that Walter had commissioned the theft from him of the ricin. Jesse hadn't taken up Hank's offer, but he was now an adversary of Walt's, who alerted by Saul was soon arming himself. It was a tease to show Jesse furiously storming into Walt's house and slinging around gasoline, since we've already seen the home look trashed and deserted, but not burnt out, in the future narrative. Of course, the question is what stops Jesse from putting a match to his handiwork? It truly is a minute-to-minute proposition at this point. "Did you hit your head or something?" Saul queries Jesse's faculties after the multimillion-dollar money fling. Todd calls Walt "Mr White" and tells enthusiastic stories of their train heist, but that doesn't mean that Todd, or his uncle, won't hesitate to try and bring Walt back to his old lab if their own efforts to cook meth don't cut it. Is this bad for Walt, or actually an angle he can possibly work? When Jesse was waiting for Walt to arrive he spied a tarantula, the same spider Drew Sharp played with before his fateful motorbike ride. Was this meant to suggest that Jesse was about to die? Breaking Bad is big on foreshadowing the loss of life, and it wasn't clear if Jesse was going to leave the desert alive, or if his new identity pick-up was in fact a hit being put in motion. Another point about Walt's "confession": even as he framed Hank, he was still concealing events from Skyler. He didn't mention anything she didn't know - such as the bloody prison purge - as he created a new narrative. He's a monster, but a smart one. Five episodes to go - I'm not the first to suggest that Jesse will be stopped from torching Walt's house by meeting Walt jnr. The two, each manipulated by Walt, have never met, but Walt jnr's innocence is perhaps the only thing that could hold a vengeful Jesse back. Is Hank going to give up? Or will he become more dangerous to Walt if he's working without official sanction? Who is Walt's biggest threat? How much is Saul getting paid to deal with all this?