"Can the Breaking Bad soundtrack get more diverse?", you may ask. "Yes.", responds Vince Gilligan and adds Australian dubstep duo Knife Party for the scene of Walt and his son enjoying themselves with their freshly leased muscle cars. Just as this intro isn't of much importance for the rest of the episode, this also applies for the introduction of my review and I'm now going to make a similarly unsmooth change of topic.
As we meet Lydia again, not only will native German speakers notice that Laura Fraser's German is the epitome of halting, but her story arc is also getting more interesting. Her relationship with Mike hasn't got any rosier since he was on the verge of blasting her head off in "Madrigal" and a little GPS tracker on a methylamine barrel secures that the next episode, "Dead Freight", will be outstanding. That adjective isn't yet fitting for "Fifty-One", but the season's fourth episode has clearly got its moments to shine, to wit the scene that Fraser and Aaron Paul share together and that leads to the aforementioned discovery or the last shot of Walt's birthday present clock ticking. However, that's about everything worth mentioning, which is a fairly low yield from an episode lasting three quarters of an hour.
With that, I'm not insinuating that I didn't like "Fifty-One" since Sam Catlin did a nice job with the script and made some of the duller story lines a bit more interesting. Nevertheless, the episode was too slow for my taste and I disliked the lengthy scene at the White house, which also sets off a new living situation for the family that I'm not too fond of. Additionally, there's a blemish with the episode's title and the actual overall number of it, which is the 50th and not the 51st. But my generous self won't be reducing the rating for "Fifty-One" just because of that.
