One Minute

Several years ago, a younger and physically-well Hector "Tio" Salamanca watches over two nephews, Leonel and Marco, as he talks on the phone about a South American "chicken man" that he is none too trusting of. Marco, the older of the two boys, breaks one of Leonel's toys, prompting the younger of the two brothers to complain to Hector, crying that he wants him dead. Hector calls Marco over to hand him a beer from a tub of icy water next to his chair. When Marco reaches in, Hector suddenly holds his head under the water and starts to drown him. Leonel, realizing that he never really wanted his brother to die, tries to pull Hector off, eventually punching him in the face.

With Hector's grip on Marco released, Leonel rushes to his brother's side as Hector looms over them, imparting on them his intended lesson: "Family is all."

The two brothers would take this lesson to heart as they grew into men, sharing a bond with one another as they became the most dangerous assassins that the cartel had in their employ. Now, they set their sights on Hank Schrader, the man who murdered their cousin Tuco.

Hank drives to Jesse's house. Furious that he was tricked into believing that his wife was in hospital to lure him away from Jesse's RV, Hank violently attacks Jesse, knocking him to the floor and beating him unconscious. Realizing he's gone too far, Hank stops himself and calls for an ambulance. As Jesse is being taken to the hospital, Merkert approaches Hank and advises that he talk to a lawyer.

At the hospital, Walt comes to Jesse's hospital room to find Saul, eager to use Hank's act of police brutality in their favor. He's got a picture of Jesse's face, covered in bruises and cuts with one eye swollen shut, that he calls Jesse's "Get Out Of Jail Free" card. Walt is taken aback at the severity of Jesse's injuries. Jesse blames Walt for his predicament because he was the one who tricked Hank, so he tells Walt what he plans to do next: he’ll press charges against Hank and sue him into bankruptcy, then haunt him for the rest of his days until he drives him to suicide. Not only that, but he's going to resume his own meth cooking operation, and if he gets caught, he'll sell Walt out. "You're my free pass...bitch..." Jesse finishes, leaving Walt and Saul unsure as to whether he can be reasoned with.

At the DEA field office, Hank makes a statement to the Internal Affairs about what happened at the junkyard, but invokes the Fifth Amendment when it comes to his actions at Jesse's house. With Jesse filing charges, the investigators ask to photograph his bruised knuckles for the record. Marie comes to accompany Hank as he leaves, holding him as he weeps in her arms during the elevator ride.

Skyler visits Walt at his new condo and asks for his help in convincing Jesse not to press charges against Hank. Afterwards, Walt heads to the superlab to work with Gale, who has already set up the equipment exactly to Walt's liking and anticipates his every request. Gale says that this is the start of a beautiful friendship, but Walt just looks annoyed.

In the desert, the Cousins meet with a talkative arms dealer who is selling a wide array of weapons from the back of a trailer truck. He gives them a free hollow point bullet — nicknamed "Black Death" — and shows off his bulletproof vest, which the Cousins test by shooting him point blank. When the arms dealer survives, they purchase two vests and leave him on the floor complaining about possible broken ribs.

At the superlab, Walt checks their equipment and tells Gale that he set the wrong temperature for the batch, completely ruining it. Gale is insistent that Walt told him that temperature and that he'd written it down, but it does nothing to cool Walt's anger. Walt turns away with a pensive expression, the wheels turning in his head.

At home, Marie suggests to Hank that he lie and tell his superiors that Jesse instigated a confrontation with him, but Hank refuses. Marie states that it will be Jesse's word against Hank's; a low-life addict versus a long-time DEA agent. Hank, however, says that he did wrong and confides in Marie that he has been not well since his confrontation with Tuco and witnessing the El Paso bombing, suffering from panic attacks that are getting worse, and is afraid that his career may be over.

Walt calls Gus and tells him that Gale is not working out as a lab partner. He asks to hire Jesse since the two have history and a "shorthand" that allowed them to work together perfectly. Gus is wary about hiring a drug addict, but Walt reminds him that when he was hired, he was told that the lab was his, and he knew how to run it.

Afterwards, Walt goes to the hospital to ask Jesse to partner with him at Gus's superlab. Jesse thinks Walt is simply trying to save Hank, but Walt tells him that they’ll be equal partners and stand to make $1.5 million each. Jesse refuses and breaks down, telling Walt that ever since the two of them started working together, his life has gone to hell. He’s still hurt and furious at Walt for telling him his cook was garbage. Walt, letting go of his pride for a moment as he turns to leave, admits to Jesse that he was wrong: his cook was every bit as good as Walt's.

In his car, Walt sits in contemplation. He hears his cellphone ring and answers it. After thinking over the offer for a moment, Jesse reconsiders: he agrees to be Walt's partner once again, if they split the profits 50-50.

At the DEA office, Hank admits to assaulting Jesse. When he refuses to amend his statement fraudulently to place him (and by extension the agency) in a better light, Merkert puts him on suspension without pay, ordering him to surrender his gun and badge. As Hank leaves, he learns from Merkert that word on the grapevine is that Jesse is not pressing charges after all. When a surprised Hank asks why, Merkert muses that he might have a guardian angel.

Later, Hank visits a shopping mall, buying flowers for Marie. As he's about to get in his car, Hank receives a phone call. An electronically disguised voice warns him that he has one minute before two men show up to kill him. Hank, defenseless without his gun, scans the parking lot. After one minute passes, Leonel appears and shoots out the rear window, hitting Hank in the arm. Hank throws his SUV into reverse and pins Leonel between his rear bumper and the trunk of a car parked behind him, crushing his legs. Marco then opens fire on Hank's car from the driver's side, hitting Hank in the hip as he grabs Leonel's gun and dives out the other side. Marco shifts Hank's car into drive, releasing Leonel. A badly wounded Leonel tells his brother to "finish him".

Marco searches for Hank, killing a passerby along the way and almost killing another woman, only failing because his gun has run out of bullets. As Marco reloads, he doesn't notice the Black Death bullet fall out of his pocket. As he continues to advance, Hank surprises him from behind and shoots him five times with Leonel's gun, unaware that he's wearing a bulletproof vest. Marco, still standing, shoots Hank twice in the chest. Hank falls to the ground, bleeding profusely. Marco walks up on him, points his pistol at Hank's head, but stops. He decides that shooting Hank in the head would be "too easy" after what he's done to Tuco and Leonel, so walks back to their car to retrieve his axe.

As Marco walks away, Hank notices the Black Death bullet lying on the ground nearby. His hands slicked with blood, Hank grabs the bullet and painstakingly loads it into the gun. As Marco returns and raises his axe to strike the killing blow, Hank finally manages to load the bullet and fires. The bullet blows out the back of Marco's head and he falls to the ground, dead, his axe lodging itself in the pavement a few inches away from Hank. Hank then passes out from blood loss as the parking lot falls deadly silent, the silence only broken by the sound of a car alarm.

This episode provides examples of:

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: When Hank kills Marco with a headshot, the axe falls out of Marco's hands and cuts into the asphalt far enough to stay upright. It wasn't even swung downwards — it just fell about 7 feet and landed on the blade. Some fans theorize that Arizona's usual heat could've soften the asphalt.
• Abusive Parents: Tio Hector beats the "family is all" mantra into his nephews by holding Marco's head underwater and forcing Leonel to save him.
• Arms Dealer: A genial yokel with a semi-truck full of serious hardware who sells a couple of Bulletproof Vests, handguns, and some hollow-point bullets to Leonel and Marco as they prepare for their assassination of Hank. They test his own vest out before paying up, but luckily for him he sells good merchandise.
• Artistic License – Physics:
  • Zig-Zagged, as the episode has both a realistic and unrealistic depiction of bulletproof vests. As demonstrated by the truck driver/arms dealer, bulletproof vests do not make the wearer immune to bullets. A vest only stops penetrating injury — not the high energy of an impacting round, which can easily break ribs and cause internal injury, as happens with the truck driver. But then Hank empties five bullets into Marco's upper chest (two of which seem to land in areas not protected by the vest) with Leonel's gun — the same gun that was used to wound the arms dealer — only for Marco to be unfazed. That many hits at such close range in such a small zone would have, at minimum, shattered several ribs and potentially punctured one or both lungs — both critical and incapacitating injuries. Realistically, Marco should then be unable to lift his pistol to shoot Hank in the chest twice, much less walk all the way back to his car and swing a heavy axe. But given the Salamanca Twin's portrayal as unstoppable super-assassins, Marco can evidently just shrug it off.
  • In the fight between Hank and the Cousins, Hank rear-ends Leonel into another car and keeps going until he hits a second car. This would not be possible as the first car would've had its brakes engaged from having it in park for an automatic transmission (the car is identified as a sixth-generation Cadillac DeVille which only had an automatic). Hank does have a much larger car, and Hank's tires are visibly smoking with the effort, but it still seems unlikely.
• Ax-Crazy: When the Salamanca cousins ambush Hank, Marco refuses to shoot Hank in the face when he had the chance, choosing instead to go back to the car to get the axe. That decision works out about as well as it usually does, as Hank manages to get the drop with Leonel's gun before Marco gets a chance to axe him.
• Ballistic Discount: Subverted. The Salamanca cousins meet with a gun dealer and test out the Bulletproof Vests he's selling by shooting the one the dealer is already wearing. After checking to see that the bullet in fact did not penetrate through the vest, they actually pay the dealer and leave him groaning on the floor. After all, why waste a good supplier?
• Be Careful What You Wish For: In the flashback, Leonel tells his uncle Hector he wishes his brother Marco was dead after Marco broke one of Leonel's toys. Hector responds by dunking Marco's head into a tub of water to drown him, to Leonel's horror. The entire point was Hector's twisted way of showing the two the importance of family above all else.
  Hector: This is what you wanted. Your brother dead, right?
  • And at the end of the episode, he actually gets his wish. It just took a while.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: The show from this point would have probably gone much differently if Marco chose to just shoot the incapacitated Hank rather than return to his car to grab his axe and slowly walk back, dragging the ax head on the pavement. This gives Hank time to get the bullet dropped from Marco's pocket and use it to shoot his would-be killer.
• Bookends: The first scene has Hector telling Leonel that he has less than a minute to save his twin brother. The ending scene has the voice on the other end of the phoneline from Hank telling him he has one minute before the two men come to kill him.
• Boom, Headshot!: Hank kills Marco with the Black Death bullet.
• Bottomless Magazines: Between Leonel and Hank, Leonel's pistol is fired 14 times before it is empty and Marco fires his 11 times before needing to reload. Since they both carry a Colt Gold Cup National Match (essentially an M1911A1), they would've only had 8 shots each at most (7 in the magazine and 1 in the chamber).
• Broken Tears: On the elevator down from the DEA office, Hank breaks down in Marie's arms from all of the stress and trauma leading up to this point.
• Bulletproof Vest: The Cousins purchase a pair from an illegal arms dealer. Played realistically: one of them shoots the dealer in the chest to test the vests — he survives, but one of his ribs is broken and he's left moaning in pain on the floor as the Cousins walk away. Marco, meanwhile, takes five shots point-blank without even flinching during the firefight with Hank.
• Call-Forward: The wooden chair on which Hector "Tio" Salamanca is sitting in the flashback strangely looks like the wheelchair he now uses.
• Camera Abuse: When Hank kills one of the twins, brain matter from the exit wound hits the camera lens.
• Car Fu: Hank cripples Leonel by backing his car into him and then pinning him against another car.
• Chekhov's Gun: The hollow-point "on the house" bullet that the Cousins got from the arms dealer is used by Hank to kill Marco.
• Conspicuously Public Assassination: The Cousins' attack on Hank is in broad daylight in a public parking lot, and at least one bystander is killed in the crossfire.
• Contrived Coincidence: The bullet the arms dealer gives to one of the cousins is conveniently dropped by Marco where Hank can reach it after the gun Hank is using runs out of bullets.
• Deadly Euphemism: When Jesse goes on the warpath and becomes determined to sue Hank, Saul warns Walt that, for their own sake, they may need to "talk options". He doesn't elaborate, but given the situation and other euphemisms he makes later in the series, his intent can be inferred.
• Death by Irony:
  • Hector nearly kills Marco (as a kid) to teach Leonel that "family is everything" and he shouldn't wish his brother dead, even as a joke. When Marco tries to take revenge on Hank for killing a family member, Hank kills Marco with a) Leonel's gun, and b) an expanding round that Marco dropped.
  • The round is a knockoff Black Talon, which was intended for law enforcement use, but Hank is a cop suspended for issues arising from the exact same shooting the Twins want revenge for.
  • If Marco hadn't tried to make the death dramatic (as actual cartels often do), he would've just killed Hank outright. Two highly-efficient, hyper-logical, near-sociopathic killers lose because of a personal, emotional vendetta.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: Marco had Hank completely defenseless, all he had to do was shoot him. But Marco decides that's "too easy" and goes to get his axe. This buys Hank enough time to grab the Black Death bullet that Marco dropped earlier, reload his gun, and as Marco returns and raises his axe for the kill, Hank takes aim and splatters Marco's brains all over the pavement.
• Dirty Cop: Defied. Hank receives counsel to reframe his attack on Jesse as self-defense, as the worth of an exceptional officer is judged to outweigh a bottom-feeding junkie's, but he insists on telling the truth and facing the music.
• The Dog Bites Back: Until he gives in and accepts Walt's offer (and despite being confined to a hospital bed), this entire episode is arguably an example of this for Jesse. After 2 seasons of being constantly verbally abused and manipulated by Walt and physically assaulted by multiple people, he finally snaps, expressing in no uncertain terms his desire to make both Hank and Walt pay for what each of them has done to him, to the point where it's heavily implied both Walt and Saul see him as a legitimate potential threat going forwards.
• Double-Meaning Title:
  • Tio suggests Marco has one minute to live as his head is dunked in icy cold water.
  • Hank has one minute left until he is attacked by the Cousins.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Walt protects Hank's career by convincing Jesse to drop the charges, although some may argue this was more about Walt saving his own ass since Jesse was threatening to give Walt up to the DEA.
  • Walt also rejects Saul's advice to kill Jesse due to feeling this way about him.
  • The Salamanca twins are shown to genuinely care for one another, with a flashback showing Leonel upset when Hector starts to drown Marco, only stopping to reinforce the lesson of "family is everything". Later, when Leonel gets crushed between two cars by Hank, Marco actually stops chasing Hank to check on Leonel, looking visibly worried for his brother, only reverting back into his stoic persona and going after Hank because Leonel explicitly tells him to finish Hank off.
• Foreshadowing: The arms dealer selling to the Cousins touts his hollow point bullets, saying they will "shred your mama's head like a cabbage". Three guesses as to how one of the Cousins dies, and with what kind of slug.
• From Bad to Worse: Hank accepts the repercussions of assaulting Jesse and is suspended. He gives up his badge and gun. And later in after buying his wife some flowers... yup, the Salamanca cousins show up to murder him (but not without warning).
• Gaslighting: In order to get Jesse hired as his lab partner, thus keeping him from pressing charges against Hank, Walt admonishes Gale for getting the temperature setting wrong (when it is the correct one) just to find an excuse to fire him.
• Gone Horribly Right: Walt's continual dismissal and belittling of Jesse, unfortunately, worked so well that Jesse repeats Walt's words in his teary-eyed angry rejection of Walt.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Hank messes Leonel's legs up something fierce, such that they have to be amputated in the next episode. The viewer can't see the extent of his injuries, but judging by Marco's reaction, it was pretty gnarly. A doctor in the following episode describes his femurs as feeling like "a bag of wet gravel".
• Heroic Willpower: When the Salamanca brothers ambush Hank, he manages to reload his pistol and kill his assailant despite the fact that he'd just been shot multiple times.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Marco is shot with the very hollow-point "Black Death" bullet that the arms dealer gave to him as a freebie.
• Hope Spot: Walt convinces Jesse to be his partner for meth cooking under Gus and to drop the assault charges against Hank. After willingly forfeiting his badge and being temporarily suspended without pay, Hank gets the good news that Jesse is dropping the charges. Then, as Hank is about to drive home to celebrate with Marie, he's shot four times in an assassination attempt by the Cousins and left bleeding out on the pavement barely clinging to life.
• Is This a Joke?: When Hank gets the anonymous phone call telling him that two men are rapidly approaching him with the intent to kill, he initially thinks it's a prank. He's paranoid enough to start preparing anyway, which is a very good thing, because it's absolutely not a joke, and he would've been dead for sure had he disregarded the warning.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: Marco checks on Leonel bleeding out in the parking lot, and his brother tells him to finish off Hank.
• Just Following Orders: Tio takes Leonel's wish that Marco was dead (Marco had just broken Leonel's toy) to the extreme and begins drowning Marco in the cooler, responding to Leonel's shock by saying, "This is what you wanted!"
• Mistaken for Prank Call: At first, Hank fails to take the warning call that the Cousins are coming seriously, thinking it's a prank from Gomez. However, he realizes midway through calling Gomez's number that the call wasn't a prank.
• Motor Mouth: The Arms Dealer. Most importantly, he makes the mistake of letting the Cousins know he's wearing a bulletproof vest, leading the pair to conduct an impromptu demonstration of its effectiveness (to the arms dealer's detriment).
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Once again, Saul offers lethal counsel when Walt encounters the problem of an associate liable to blab.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After a deception allows Walt and Jesse to elude him, Hank is enraged to the point of severe Police Brutality against Jesse. After he calms down, he is visibly horrified at his actions and later testifies the entire truth even though it will cost him his career and possibly send him to prison (although, thanks to Walt convincing Jesse to drop the charges, this doesn't happen).
  • In the Cold Open, a young Leonel clearly displays this reaction when his uncle begins to drown Marco after Leonel shouts that he wishes Marco were dead.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: In a rage over Jesse somehow knowing the name of Hank's wife, and using her to get Hank off of him, Hank shows up at Jesse's house and promptly decks him. Hank furiously asks Jesse how he did it, while hitting him over and over so hard that Jesse can't even say anything. Afterward, Hank himself calls an ambulance for Jesse, Jesse's wounds being so severe that Saul thinks Jesse pressing charges would be the sort of case that would annihilate Hank.
• No-Sell: During the shootout between Hank and The Twins, Hank shoots Marco several times at close range with a handgun, who is wearing a Bulletproof Vest, and the guy barely budges. This is notable as when they tested the quality of the vests by shooting a guy who was wearing one, the guy they shot lived but immediately went down and started shouting that his ribs were broken.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Skyler, for the first time since their divorce, speaks to Walt in person, clearly seeking his help. It's because Hank's life as he knows it is on the line and Walt talking down Jesse from pressing charges was serious enough for Skyler to discuss.
• Pet the Dog: A rather sociopathic variation. The Cousins have no problem with risking the life of their armour dealer by shooting him to test its effectiveness but when he survives, they let him live and actually pay him for the vests when they could easily have gone for the full Ballistic Discount. After all, his product is as advertised, isn't it? And if he died...well then he wasn't a trustworthy seller.
• Police Brutality: Hank's attack on Jesse also falls under this. The possibility of Hank embellishing his story in order to make him look better (implying self-defense for example) is brought up by Marie, but Hank doesn't take it and is suspended without pay for his misdeed.
• Pretty Little Head Shots: Averted. Hank shooting Marco in the head leaves a pretty nasty looking exit wound◊.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Jesse delivers a hell of a one to Walt when the latter tries to convince him to be partners again.
  Walt: Let me understand this... You're turning down 1-and-a-half million dollars?
  Jesse: I'm not turning down the money, I am turning down you! You get it?! I want NOTHING to do with you! Ever since I met you, everything I have ever cared about is gone, ruined, turned to shit, DEAD! EVER SINCE I HOOKED UP WITH "THE GREAT HEISENBERG"! I have never been more alone! I have NOTHING! NO ONE, ALRIGHT?! IT'S ALL GONE! GET IT?!
  [Beat. Walt seems truly regretful of how his actions affected Jesse.]
  Jesse: No... No, no, why? Why would YOU get it?! What do you even care?! As long as YOU get what YOU want, right?! You don't give a shit about me! You said I was no good, I'm nothing! Why would you want me, huh?! You said my meth is inferior, right?!
  [Walt gets up from his chair...]
  Jesse: You said my cook was GARBAGE! HEY, SCREW YOU, MAN! Screw you...
  Walt: Your meth IS good, Jesse. As good as mine.
  [Walt walks out of the hospital room.]
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Hank, still reeling from Walt's deception in the previous episode, opens this one by giving Jesse a brutal beatdown.
• Shout-Out: While working with Walt in the lab, Gale quips "This might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
• Small Role, Big Impact: The two civilians Marco shoots while looking for Hank inadvertently save Hank's life; while the man is killed and the woman flees, Marco runs out of ammo and has to reload, and while he's reloading, the Black Death bullet falls out of his pocket where Hank will later pick it up to kill Marco.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The parking lot shootout is a masterwork of realistic actions and consequences. The Twins acknowledge that they're now facing a harder target than Walt and come equipped with body armor, also using numbers to their advantage. On the flip side, Hank is a trained Federal agent able to operate under pressure; a one minute warning, coupled with his quick reflexes and attention to detail enable him to get the upper hand. Finally, all the training in the world doesn't make one Made of Iron when receiving multiple gunshot wounds, which sideline Hank for months and require extensive hospital care and physical therapy.
• Title Drop: "One minute" is mentioned during both the opening and ending scenes.
• Trunk Shot: When Marco is retrieving the axe from his car.
• Unstoppable Rage: After Hank discovers that news of Marie being in the hospital was faked (to allow Walt and Jesse to escape an RV they were hiding in), he tracks down Jesse at his house and assaults him, outraged that they knew some of his important personal details. He ends up getting suspended by the DEA as a result.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Jesse declares his intense hatred and refusal to ever work again with Walt, having only suffered, been constantly berated, and lost so much ever since they started working together the first time, but Walt is able to immediately turn his opinion around by saying that the blue meth Jesse cooked by himself was just as good as his own. The one, brief compliment was enough for Walt to get Jesse back on his side completely, and even drop the charges against Hank.
• Wham Episode: Hank beats up Jesse as revenge for an earlier Batman Gambit which made him think his wife had been in a car accident. After the beating, Hank is disgraced by the DEA and has his badge and gun taken away. As he's about to meet Marie, he gets a phone call claiming that the Cousins are coming to kill him and that he has one minute before they arrive. In the following gunfight, he is shot multiple times before managing to paralyze one of the cousins and kill the other, and the episode ends with all three men down.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: When Marco has Hank on the ground and helpless after shooting him, he looks as if he's about to put a final bullet in his head, but says "No. Too easy." His decision to finish Hank off using his axe gives Hank time to load his retrieved gun with the hollow-point bullet, and Marco takes that same bullet through the brain as he's about to bring the axe down.
• Xanatos Gambit: Gus granting Leonel and Marco permission to go after Hank instead of Walt, then warning Hank when the Twins are about to ambush him. This plays into Gus' plans perfectly: if Hank dies, a potential threat is gone, and the police turn up the heat on the cartel's operation, allowing Gus to corner the market; if the attack fails, Walt is safe, two of the cartel's biggest hitters are down, and Gus can force a sitdown...after a high-profile cartel assassination attempt on a DEA agent, so the police turn up the heat on the cartel's operation, allowing Gus to corner the market.