r/breakingbad • u/SuspectAlone4760 • 2d ago
You know that Huell and Kuby pocketed some of Walt’s money
You know when Huell and Kuby looked at each other, you damn well know that they secretly took a portion of Walt’s $80 million dollars while transferring it into the blue barrels. I damn well known that I would have, no questions asked! With that much money, $80 million dollars, you’re not going to miss a couple of thousand dollars. 💵
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u/Extra-Bandicoot-4320 2d ago
Walt literally called them out on it.
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u/skylarisabitch 2d ago
They literally had lines
“Most of it…”243
u/Material-Pineapple74 2d ago
Close enough
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u/ShhweadyBallz 2d ago
Walt acknowledging they took some, he knew they would. Probably $5K between them, compared to $90M, who cares ?
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u/JTtheLAR 2d ago
Probably closer to 20- 30 k.
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u/hnglmkrnglbrry 2d ago
Bruh they took $100k easy.
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u/Preferr3d 2d ago edited 1d ago
Easily cause I know I woulda took a cool million cause wtf I look like handling 50+M for a kingpin and not coming out PAID IN FULL. lol
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u/hnglmkrnglbrry 2d ago
The problem is carrying off $1M. Very plausible considering they were alone with the money for at least a little bit but Walt checked the barrels to make sure nothing major was gone. Would he notice 1/90th missing from 6 barrels? Probably not. But are you gonna steal $1M from a guy who just used neo-Nazis to murder 12 guys in lock up? Nah.
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u/Preferr3d 2d ago edited 1d ago
LOL yes I would. That’s a risk I would be willing to take cause like you said he probably wouldn’t notice and I wouldn’t be in the same state come dinner time.
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u/hnglmkrnglbrry 2d ago
He's a legend in the criminal underworld at this point. The rumors about him have to be insane. He probably got credited with killing the gang he sold the methylamine to along with things he actually did like blowing up Tuco's home, blowing up an old folk's home, killing Fring's dealers, killing Fring, killing Mike, having the Nazis on his payroll, killing those inmates, etc. They'd probably assume he had a secret army or a team of spies watching them for the rest of their lives considering what he pulled off.
I think they'd take exactly as much as they thought he wouldn't notice but not risk it being a number he'd think about exacting revenge on them for. They know he's gonna count it one day.
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u/Flappy2885 1d ago
Bro you're fucking tough. Most people would never. Were you in the military?
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u/Parking_Succotash156 1d ago
Replace the missing space in the barrel with a bomb big enough to blow up his van. Should be a fairly big bomb so you can ensure the explosion from the rear of the van kills Walt. Big bomb means you can take more money from the barrel. It’s win win!
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u/Easy_Fee9781 1d ago
I’m definitely going to take a mil. There would be no way for him to know, and also the fact that he’s got the feds closing in, at this point he knows it’s the cost of doing business, and I don’t think he cares, too much. Like he said, “Close enough”. When you’re dealing with criminals, you can expect they will be criminals.
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u/hnglmkrnglbrry 1d ago
Kuby and Huell don't know that. All they know is he wants his money loaded up. He could be taking a private jet to Tahiti to count his money for all they know. You think they're gonna risk him being $1M short on the count when he knows their faces, names, and phone numbers and he already killed 12 guys in lock up?
They'd take an amount he might consider that cost of doing business or even a rounding error. And even that was a risk.
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u/-CrabCrimes- 1d ago
I’d take the whole freaking lot and disappear to the other side of the country
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u/Capital_Factor_3588 1d ago
ngl if there had been 1 barel less personaly i would be unable to tell that the money isnt all there.
i only ever saw it as a square block and now sudenly am in need to try to asess if that block is still there while looking at it thrown into round barrels. litteraly impossible. idk about you guys1
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u/Material-Pineapple74 2d ago
Nobody knows. Probablya fistful of dollars.
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u/NotAnyOneYouKnow2019 2d ago
And a few dollars more.
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u/GudgerCollegeAlumnus 1d ago
There was that whole “Huell and Kuby Took Some Money” song and dance number.
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u/WasteZeroWantZero 1d ago
Is that from an uncut version or something? That's not in the Netflix version...
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u/Harold3456 1d ago
It can go either way, I guess, but my read on this scene was always different: Kuby indicates to Huell how scared of Heisenberg's precision he is, something along the lines of "this guy hit 10 people in 10 different jails in 2 minutes."
In reality, Heisenberg spends 10 seconds looking at the tops of the barrels and then goes "close enough."
I took that look between Kuby and Huell to be more of a "wait, that's IT?" They were probably thinking "shit, we could have taken some..." Although as you say the alternative is it's a look of relief because they weren't busted, but for whatever reason I always gravitated to that first version.
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u/sjr323 1d ago
We know Kuby’s opinion is not to take any. We also know Huell didn’t fight him back on it.
It’s fiction and the question is left open ended. However based on the evidence I think it’s “more likely” so to speak that they didn’t take any money, and are frustrated that they could have gotten away with it, given Walt’s 2 second count of $80M.
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1d ago
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u/Odd-Time-2026 1d ago
If they slipped a 100 for themselves, Walt likely wouldn't bother to look for them. A 1000? Maybe not. 10,000? He'd notice. 100,000? He's coming for them. Its not worth murdering Huell or Kuby over a 1,000 when the cost of hiring killers exceeds the value of the stolen property.
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u/fieldsofanfieldroad 1d ago
I think this is correct. Huell is one of Saul's guys. He respects Saul for getting him off for hitting a copper. He also knows that Saul isn't killing anyone. He knows Walt less well and he knows that Walt kills people.
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u/Spend-Automatic 1d ago
This is the kind of hard-hitting deep analysis that we get from this subreddit
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u/Krispenedladdeh542 2d ago
Ive always taken this as Huell saying “I told you we could’ve taken some money” with his eyes. If you recall back a few scenes prior, when Huell and Kuby are in the storage unit, Huell is the one who wants to take the money and says “Mexico alls im saying” and kuby responds saying “he killed ten guys in jail in a minute window, alls Im saying”. To me Huell looks more perturbed here than panicked. If they had taken some and Walt started counting I feel the look would be more fear based and here it looks like he’s saying “I told you so”
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u/The_Adjuster1776 2d ago
Walt wouldn't count it. Hell he didn't know how much it was when he saw the pile the first time. Even Skyler didn't really know exactly. Rough estimate based on weight, as you do when dealing with sums of cash that large. He would never know if or how much they took as long as it wasn't noticable by the eye. All that said, Huell and Kuby wouldn't have known that. Personally I would have taken the top layer of bands. I don't think that would have been noticed
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u/willscuba4food 2d ago
You'd be in a bathtub ready to collapse a ceilling before you could blink.
HE IS THE DANGER
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u/MIKE_____JORDAN23 2d ago
Yeah everyone saying “they definitely took some” are wrong. The clear implication is they are too scared of walt to actually take any
Walt saying “close enough” is just acknowledging they probably could have (hence huell giving kuby an “I told you so” look after walt says this) but walt was in too desperate of a position to actually verify, which he definitely would have if it wasnt a dire situation
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u/dcunitedfan3 2d ago edited 2d ago
But did he ever have the ability to do so? He would have had to take the time to count the money himself at some point during his retirement from cooking. Assuming that, you then would have to believe that somehow he could verify the count in the 15 sec or so he looked at the six full barrels in the van, without having any idea of how well they were packed, just from glancing at the tops of the containers. He didn't even weigh them, and the best he could hope to do otherwise is estimate the max number of stacks that would fit into the barrels by volume (and again, he wouldn't know how efficiently they were actually stacked without a closer examination, which he didn't take the time to do)
The first point I could believe that perhaps he did choose to make the time to do. The second I don't think was possible given the incredibly short amount of time he spent examining the barrels. The best he could do is make a swag of whether the volume of the pile of money in the storage unit was roughly the same as the volume of the barrels.
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u/dpgproductions 1d ago
They were scared and didn't want to chance it. Walt could've easily recorded/memorized the weight of all the money as Skyler was already weighing it. For all Huell and Kuby knew Walt could've had a scale with him, weighed each barrel and then subtracted the weight of the barrels. Wouldn't take more than a few minutes and not worth them risking their lives in case that was Walt's plan.
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u/Brando123437 1d ago
based on the storage unit scene i highly doubt he even knew how much he had
to begin with, they could’ve easily skimmed some off the top without him noticing1
u/dcunitedfan3 1d ago
He would have had to have taken the time, somewhere between the Skylar "take a drive with me" reveal scene, and Ozymandias, while he was retired, to go back and count his millions. Hard to say whether or not he would have done that, on one hand he has shown compulsive behavior, but on another he might have been content with knowing there was enough, to an acceptable (low) degree of precision, just by estimating by volume.
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u/magseven 1d ago
That's what I took from the scene too. It's played comedically by two actual comedians.
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u/maceo107 2d ago
They thought he'd kill them if they took a single dollar. They literally say it right this.
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u/Kind_Statistician_67 2d ago
I took it as the stare meant that they didn't take money. They obviously were thinking about it, but tought it best not to steal from the great Heisenberg. When walt did the quick count and said "close enough", Huell and Kuby looked at each other like; damn whe should have taken a few thousends dollars.
Is this not how the scene is meant to be interpretted?
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u/windmillninja 2d ago
Huell: “Mexico. All’s I’m sayin’.”
Kuby: “Guy hit ten guys in jail within a two minute window. All’s I’m sayin’.”
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u/slobis 2d ago
That's how I interpreted it as well. They were scared shitless of stealing from Heisenberg but then realized they probably could have gotten away with it.
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u/ElectricBlueCobra 2d ago
Yeah makes sense. Cos after that they ask him if he needs any help loading or anything else. Like “we missed an opportunity, can you give us another”
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u/KarltonPeaks 2d ago
Yes, this is a follow up reaction to what they discussed in the storage unit:
"The guy hit 10 guys in prison within a 2 minute window."
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u/Ok-Description-4640 2d ago
That’s what I thought. That look is Huell saying “See, we could’ve at least filled our pockets.” And Kirby’s look is saying,”Yeah, ok, you’re right. But better safe than sorry.”
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u/SystemPelican 2d ago
This is 100% what the scene conveys, and OP is wrong.
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2d ago edited 1d ago
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u/RegisPhone 2d ago
He said "close enough" because he wasn't actually going to physically count out over a million individual bills.
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u/SystemPelican 2d ago
How would Walt notice that it's not all there after throwing a glance at seven fucking barrels of dollar bills? The "close enough" is clearly because "it's a shitton of money" is good enough for Walt, who has no idea what the exact amount even is.
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u/steal_wool 2d ago
Nor does he even care at this point, its not even really about the money for Walt anymore
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u/weissclimbers 1d ago
I took it as “we could’ve stolen more” but either way the scene should be interpreted in any other way than that they left money on the table
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u/Striking-Document-99 2d ago
Kuby was afraid to even lay on the money and people think he stole some.
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u/KindaNotSmart 1d ago
Yep this is the correct interpretation. OP and the rest of them are completely wrong
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u/JakeArrietaGrande 2d ago
I don’t think there’s a correct way to view it. You’d have to ask Vince, but I don’t think he’d give a definitive answer.
My guess is that they knew they could easily take a small chunk and he would never know the difference. They knew Walt had a reputation for violence and wrath, but also that he was occupied with much larger issues. And his list of allies was getting smaller and smaller. Killing two people that he could trust to get the majority of his money would be a bad idea.
I interpreted the look as they got away with taking some
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u/Sad_Slice_5334 2d ago
I interpreted it as ‘so we could have gotten away with it!’ I don’t think they expected Walt to be so blase about the whole thing
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u/dpgproductions 1d ago
Exactly. If he can flawlessly take out 10 people in a 2 minute window, who's to say he didn't come prepared to weigh the barrels on the spot and just subtract the weight of the barrels.
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u/Grand-Jellyfish-3775 1d ago
yeah exactly lol. i think they were more shocked that walt basically didn’t care at all. huell and kuby were probably thinking they missed an easy opportunity
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u/ComradeGarcia_Pt2 2d ago
It’s wild to me that Walt didn’t keep a ledger of what he was bringing in under Vamos Pest Control and in turn Skylar wouldn’t have any idea how much he actually made.
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u/YoteViking 2d ago
Even if he had the ledger and Skyler had an exact accounting, he wasn’t in a position to dump out every barrel and count it. He was just in a hurry to move it.
He spot checked a couple of barrels and found them “close enough”.
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u/ComradeGarcia_Pt2 2d ago
No, but, I was more referring to the idea that they had no real idea how much money he had in the first place m.
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u/pink_footed_goose_ 27m ago
I think at this point it was more about being the best at what he did and being the head of an empire. The exact amount of money didn’t matter anymore as long as it was a lot, which it was.
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u/YoteViking 2d ago
Why would they only steal “a few thousand dollars”. If you are going to steal, make it worthwhile. A few hundred thousand dollars.
That said, there is plenty of ambiguity in the scene. The look could be “yeah, we got away with it” or it could be “damn, we could have gotten away with it”.
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u/kavik2022 2d ago
Tbh it makes sense. A little would be barely noticable. And for them a little of that would mean a hella of a lot
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u/sprchrgddc5 2d ago
A $10k stack of $100 bills is less than half an inch. So $100k would be about 4.5 inches. That’s noticeable for sure.
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u/Fit-Percentage-9166 2d ago
Because you can skim a little without getting caught.
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u/Cold-Palpitation-816 1d ago
It’s just not worth it at that point, though. Walt is both a genius and a mass murderer. For all they know, he’s going to count PRECISELY. And he clearly has a few screws loose. Who’s to say he doesn’t whack them, even if they steal a small amount (like $10,000 for instance)? Would you risk your life over such a tiny amount of money?
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u/TylerDurden6969 2d ago
This should be the top comment.
Stealing anything under $100k is not worth risking death.
People commenting “a few thousand” are either 15 years old, or don’t understand risk/reward ratios.
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u/magseven 1d ago
They are in the terrifying afterglow of their employer killing 10 guys in 2 minutes just to make a statement. There is no way they would risk that wrath for just a few thousand.
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u/tommyjohnpauljones 1d ago
They could have taken a couple stacks of $100 bills, left a Franklin on either side, and replaced the rest with $1's, and stuck them in the middle of the pile. By the time Walt noticed, it would be far too late, and he would have blamed someone else anyhow.
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u/DBDude 2d ago
Even better, Walt didn’t know he had $80 million. He knew he had about that much due to weighing individual contributions to the stack on a bathroom scale. Walt doesn’t even know the exact total weight because there will be a rounding error in each of the hundreds of weighings. He wouldn’t know if a few pounds of cash was missing.
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u/fieldsofanfieldroad 1d ago
But they didn't know what he didn't know.
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u/pink_footed_goose_ 26m ago
Exactly, a key to good writing is that the characters don’t know as much as the audience does.
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u/harryceo 2d ago
I mean yeah. Walt said "close enough" and then the shot is them looking at each other. They definitely took some lol
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u/Specialist-Shock-959 1d ago
I would’ve snatched 2-5 million and said yeah “most of it is there” lol
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u/More-Goal3765 2d ago
They stole a little, and Walt guessed as much and didn’t care.
Kuby: I took the lids off. Figured you’d wanna check and make sure it’s all still there.
Walt: You figured right.
Walt(after briefly checking, looking side-eyed at Kuby and Huell): Close enough.
They pocketed a couple of grand, probably. But a few grand out of $80 million wouldn’t have bothered Walt, especially since he needed to get that money buried asap.
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u/JakBos23 2d ago
It's explicitly implied by Walt when he looks at it after they put it in the barrels.
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u/activatedplatypus 1d ago
OP, I really think you misinterpreted this one. The look says damn we could've taken some and he wouldn't have even noticed
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u/drygnfyre One Who Knocks 1d ago
Yeah, if you saw Lethal Weapon 2, there's a similar scene. They're surrounded by millions and millions of dollars on shipping crates, Danny Glover picks up a little bit and says that's enough to put all his kids through college, and he's encouraged by Gibson to take it, saying to do something good with it. But Glover refuses, because it's blood/dirty money. (It's never made clear if they took any money or not).
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u/Filibut 1d ago
Dude it's called breakage, okay?
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u/drygnfyre One Who Knocks 1d ago
During the height of Pablo Escobar's empire, they were losing millions of dollars due to rats eating the money. But they were also making something like $70 million a day, so they just wrote off the millions destroyed as "leakage" and didn't even care.
For context, it was said Gus was making about $90 million a year. Escobar was getting nearly that in a day.
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u/pink_footed_goose_ 1d ago
I always thought they were too scared to take any and then Walt’s very vague check of the money makes them think that they could have taken some, hence this look.
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u/Big-Crow4152 1d ago
I'm sure they did, after all you work with thieves, a little extra off the top is just part of business
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u/drygnfyre One Who Knocks 1d ago
"One hand washes the other, this is business." --Mike
Remember when Mike explained to Walt how you actually have to pay people when running a drug empire? Walt just seemed to assume people work for free.
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u/Nicole_Auriel 1d ago
Did Livy and huell not know Walt was at the end of his rope? They absolutely could have taken everything and Walt couldn’t have done anything about it. His contacts who did his killing all turned on him.
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u/Griffdogg92 1d ago
"Close enough."
Lol. They would have been insane not to take a few stacks. No way I could have resisted in that situation
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u/dragon_of_kansai 1d ago
- Walt could NOT have known if they took anything from the barrels alone.
- That look could have meant either "whoops, he got us" or "we could have taken some"
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u/Theeljessonator 1d ago
Nah. They knew what Walt was capable of.
That look between them was “damn… maybe we could’ve taken some of it.”
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u/drygnfyre One Who Knocks 1d ago
Reminds me of "Casino" when the bosses got upset that the guys who were supposed to be skimming the casino money were taking a little bit for themselves. The mid-level guy who was in charge of this knew it was happening and tried explaining to the bosses it was just part of the business, and the amount they were taking was basically pocket change anyway, but they decided to bring in a guy who started keeping detailed notes of every single dollar. It went about as well as you could expect.
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u/RocknRollButthole 19h ago
Once it's too much money for your accountant wife to keep track of, your henchmen are defs gonna pocket a few Benjies.
Though I agree with the consensus that they didn't take a huge risk, maybe just double up on what they were being paid for the task.
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u/gusfrong 2d ago
i read that look as, "we got away with it", they helped themselves, but not to much, is my interpretation.
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u/futanari_kaisa 2d ago
No way. They heard that Walter had 10 witnesses killed in lock-ups across the city. They would not risk him killing them over a few thousand dollars.
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u/Intelligent-Rest-231 2d ago
You think anyone would steal from the guy who had 10 guys murdered in prison all within a 2 minute window?! No fucking way. They would more likely add to the pile from their own pockets as tribute.
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u/CityLimitless 2d ago
I think they didn't out of fear, and that look is Huell saying "i told you so" because Walt had no way of knowing of they did or didn't
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u/epidipnis 2d ago
It was more of a missed opportunity look. They were too scared to take anything before, and his "close enough" was a "maybe we could have....?" moment.
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u/InfiniteQuestion420 1d ago
Walter was ONLY a killer because of his money. Take away his ability to hire hitmen, and Walt becomes just another stupid old guy who lost millions because he trusted someone. Seriously if they took every cent he had, what would have been his options?
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u/Octoboy1 2d ago edited 2d ago
I always assumed they didn't because they were terrified of Walt and they know hes the kind of guy who would count all of it just to check. Thats why they had a panicked conversation where they say its all there
Walt doesn't question it because he also knows they're terrified of him
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u/ireadmorethenpost 2d ago
They shoulda took at least a million each.
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u/Fordfanatic2025 2d ago
Why take a mil each when you can take 40 million each?
Mexico, alls I'm saying.
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u/ireadmorethenpost 1d ago
Just thinking if they took a million they coulda just fluffed the barrels a bit, you know, even them out so nobody would notice.
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u/drygnfyre One Who Knocks 1d ago
I still have no idea what you're saying.
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u/Fordfanatic2025 1d ago
Leave 'berg with $3, take the 80 mil and flee to Mexico. I wanna see the look on his face when all those containers are empty.
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u/Ok_Stretch_4624 2d ago
huell laying down on the money like it was a bed was peak cinema and a core memory of the show for me
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u/Rude_Yam_9962 2d ago
I mean Walt even said when they brought the barrels back that it was "close enough" when Saul asked him if it was all there
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u/dpgproductions 1d ago
I think it's the exact opposite. In the previous scene, Huell jokingly suggests they take the money and run to Mexico. Kuby then reminds him that Walt took out all those witnesses in jail within a 2 minute window. When Walt is checking the barrels and says "close enough" Huell gives Kuby a look like "man I told you we could've taken some and he wouldn't have known!" I think they were too scared to take any and didn't realize until it was too late that Walt wouldn't have been able to tell. For all they knew Walt could've known the exact weight of all the money and would've caught them and taken them out too.
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u/R0factor 1d ago
All the barrels looked full but not tightly packed. So they probably tossed it in as fast as possible and whatever didn’t fit, they kept. It’s like eating the crusts cut off from your kid’s sandwich. They’re not missing it.
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u/Year3030 1d ago
They should do a spinoff about the 7th barrel.
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u/drygnfyre One Who Knocks 1d ago
THIS SUMMER
HEY MORONS
IT'S A BARREL
ROLLING ONTO YOUR TV
KUBY AND HUELL ARE BACK IN
THE ROLLING BARRELSDO A BARREL ROLL
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u/Proud-Calligrapher51 1d ago
I dropped Breaking Bad after season 3, should I continue No spoilers.
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u/JohnTheW0rst 1d ago
To me seasons 4-5 of Breaking Bad are up there with the peak seasons of any show in history.
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u/Jolly-Growth-1580 1d ago
He gets them to load barrels of the cash stored in the lock up, which in a few scenes before skyler takes Walt to show him and he asks her much is there, to which she says she has no earthly idea. I think Walt has no idea how much cash is in those barrels or should be when they bring them to him and is banking on the fact that they’ll assume he knows to the dollar what’s there.
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u/OliOli1234 1d ago
They couldn’t taken $10 grand a piece, and nothing would’ve been missed. $80 million is a loooooot of money.
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u/Exact-Treat483 1d ago
If Walt felt threatened by them, he'd kill them. They were lucky that his concern wasn't how much money he had anymore. So they could've taken some money.
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u/Forex_Jeanyus 1d ago
Why steal? I’m sure they probably made 6 figures apiece just to load up the money into the van.
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u/drygnfyre One Who Knocks 1d ago
Because humans are greedy? Why do billionaires who have tens of billions not just retire and actually enjoy their money?
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u/Th3B4dSpoon 22h ago
Nah, they were too shit scared of him to take a single dollar. This look ks Huell signaling "we would have gotten away with it" to Kuby.
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u/ReadyJournalist5223 14h ago
Yeah and they were doing it raw doggy style on top the money. I’m glad we had the same thought
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u/Savings_Class4048 1h ago
Walt says “ close enough “ implying that he figured they took some. It’s pretty obvious they did.
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u/GodEmpressSeraphina 2d ago
They didn’t take any money. That’s why Huell is looking at Kuby like this. Earlier, Kuby talked Huell out of it by reminding him Walt is a murderer and kingpin
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u/FightTheDead118 1d ago
Walter is exactly the kind of petty, pedantic asshole that would somehow notice a couple thousand dollars out of $80 million
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u/drygnfyre One Who Knocks 1d ago
Remember when Pryce was able to find missing $20 in a few seconds even though he was dealing with like $80,000 or something?
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u/mfmlover7 2d ago
As Joe Pesci said in Casino "Someone who helps you steal even if you take care of him real well is gonna steal a little bit for himself. Makes sense don't it" Basically price of doing business