Story (aired on February 17, 2008/written by Vince Gilligan; directed by Jim McKay): Walter finally told his wife about his illness three episodes into the series (and offscreen at that). As "Cancer Man" begins, however, he still hasn't told his son, let alone other family members like his brother-in-law or mother. Skyler takes care of that, breaking into tears as Walter recounts how they first met at a small family gathering, and forcing Walter to tell them all about his diagnosis. The rest of the episode will be dominated by two personal stories: Walter's reluctant agreement to a course of expensive chemo and radiation treatment and Jesse's return to his family home after a paranoid freakout. We meet Jesse's upper middle class parents (Tess Harper and Michael Bofshever) and his buttoned-up little brother Jake (Ben Petry), a musical and scholarly prodigy who couldn't provide a sharper contrast to his burnout sibling. When the Pinkmans discover a joint in the house, they have no doubt who it belongs to and quickly send their grown son packing again. Of course, Jesse is taking it on the chin for the child of the household, whose precocious innocence belies a fondness for weed. When the little boy thanks Jesse for covering for him and asks for the marijuana back, Jesse crushes it and shrugs, with a smile both knowing and mildly mocking: "It was skunk weed anyway." Walter has his own dramatic moment at the end of the episode, when he runs into an obnoxious blue-toothed yuppie for the second time and explodes the loathsome man's convertible with a well-placed squeegee beneath his hood.
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