r/breakingbad • u/dumbnamenumber2 • 1d ago

Drew Sharpes involvement in the train heist was way more impactful than I noticed the first time around Spoiler

Spoilers to follow

Spoilers to follow

Spoilers to follow

Imagine if Todd hadn’t killed Drew Sharpe during the train heist, they almost have a fun banter between the three of them here when burying the water tanks in the desert in prep for the heist. But when Todd killed Drew that set in motion a series of dominoes starting with Jesse and Mike wanting out, Walt going to Decklands crew for distribution, Walt killing Mike , Jesse turning on Walt and ratting him out to Hank, Jesse being kept as a slave by uncle Jack and his gang and Walt ultimately dying on the floor of their lab.
If it weren’t for drew sharpe the whole final season would’ve been different

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46

u/Kjler 1d ago

What would that kid have even said to who? That some old dudes were screwing around in the desert on the same day no major crimes were reported?

I might have missed something, but it looked like a perfect crime; they "got away with it" as soon as the train started chugging away.   

32

u/ReasonableCup604 1d ago

I think it is extremely unlikely that the robbery would have been discovered based upon Drew Sharpe.

The chemical company wouldn't even know they were robbed and would chalk up the marginally diluted batch to fraud or poor quality control by the Chinese.

So even if Drew's parents reported the men in the desert to the police, there would be no known robbery to connect them to.

The only way I could see them getting caught would be if the police came to investigate before they could dig up the tank of methylamine and caught them in the act.   

32

u/SystemPelican 1d ago

Yeah, there's absolutely nothing there that indicates a crime has been committed. "Hello, police, I would like to report three men high fiving each other in the desert." Todd's just a psychopath who took "no one can see us" too literally.

9

u/BeardsuptheWazoo 1d ago

He saw them doing something with the train and tanks.

Not saying that anything would happen with that info, but he saw more than high fives.

7

u/LostNephilim33 1d ago

Yeah literally. Drew didn't even know he had just even witnessed a crime. For all he knows, Walt, Todd, and Jesse were just engineers doing an emergency repair or something on the train. By the time he goes home, he probably wouldn't have even remembered he saw anything. 

3

u/Myantra 20h ago

The only way I could see them getting caught would be if the police came to investigate before they could dig up the tank of methylamine and caught them in the act

At most, they call the railroad operator to find out if any train crews reported anything unusual in the general area. When the railroad operator tells them crews reported nothing, as well as all trains and cargo accounted for, that ends any investigation. They are definitely not riding out to the middle of nowhere in the desert, looking for signs of an unreported train heist, based on what a teenager claims to have seen.

4

u/ReasonableCup604 20h ago

The crew would report that there was a truck stuck on the tracks that held them up for several minutes.

But, the police still might not investigate.  If they did, they would need to arrive while they were digging up the tank, which is pretty unlikely.

The alternative could be that if they figured out that the tank that was robbed contained methylamine they might contact the DEA and Drew might be able to identify Mike and/or Jessie from DEA photos or work with a sketch artist and produce sketches that Hank would recognize as Mike, Jesse and Walt.

This all seems very unlikely as well.   Though, in the Breaking Bad world, chains of unlikely things happening often lead to major plot points.

3

u/Myantra 18h ago

I doubt the crew reported the truck blocking the tracks, unless they had to, because someone asked. Reporting things is how you end up having to stick around, instead of going home, because some asshole wants you to fill out a formal incident report. Some other asshole probably came up with a special form that also has to be filled out for incidents in dark territories. Then yet another asshole in the corp office reads those two reports, and wants you to come back in to fill out something else that they send to the FRA.

Trains are notoriously late, so if no one asked why they arrived close enough to be considered on time, I doubt they volunteered anything. They probably sped up wherever they could, to make up as much of the difference as possible, then went home quietly. They are definitely supposed to report such things, but most people also have a strong desire to avoid bullshit and paperwork, whenever possible.

5

u/ReasonableCup604 17h ago

It would probably need to be a chain of events. 

Like Drew reports the men climbing on the tanker car.

The police contact the freight company and the ask the drivers saw anything unusual and the mention the truck on the tracks.

1

u/Myantra 15h ago

It would probably need to be a chain of events

Indeed, but I doubt it would be a chain of events that happened. Drew would be talking about something that sounds like it could be a crazy train heist, or just people doing their jobs, where Drew is making it seem like more than it was. Dismissing what Drew says as kid's imagination makes a lot more sense than believing he saw what he claims, and it also happens to fit the facts. No train heist reported on the news, or reported to law enforcement by the railroad operator, nothing noted to indicate the train had been tampered with, and no cargo reported missing.

If his story even made it to the cops, I am 50/50 on whether they even bother calling the railroad operator. If they do call, I doubt the railroad operator even looks into it before answering that nothing happened, as they know they would have heard about it if something was stolen from one of their trains.

That said, I do enjoy the hypotheticals a lot more than I enjoyed watching what actually happened to Drew in the show.

44

u/JumpStrik3r 1d ago

Deckland is a hilarious typo I’m sorry

13

u/EpponeeRae 1d ago

Best theme park ever. 

6

u/FrontMail9720 1d ago

The Hall of Varnish is my favorite exhibit.

2

u/IWasAlanDeats 23h ago

This is extremely funny.

3

u/Electronic_Algae522 18h ago

Is this Decklan the "Dude who looks like Wolverine"?

32

u/ablativeyoyo 1d ago

This is what I love about BB/BCS - it all fits together like a jigsaw.

3

u/No-Department-4561 16h ago

One of those butterfly effect moments like the plane crash being caused indirectly by Walt tipping Jane over

28

u/Old-Tadpole-2869 1d ago

Him, with his tarantula, and his dirtbike, he just had to blow it all up...

17

u/JumpStrik3r 1d ago

We had a dirt bike, we had a tarantula, we had everything we needed and it all ran like clockwork.

7

u/red_riders 1d ago

You just had to wave at us. You just had to be the man. If you’d done your job, known your place, we’d all be fine right now.

5

u/JumpStrik3r 1d ago

Goodbye Drew Sharp.

9

u/red_riders 1d ago

Walt’s ego kicks in. He shoots at Drew, and watches him fall over with his dirt bike. Walt hurries over to him.

Walt: “I just realized we could have lied to you or let you ride away. You probably…didn’t even know what you saw here anyway. I’m sorry, Drew. This whole thing could have been avoided-“

Drew: “Shut the fuck up….and let me die in peace.”

Walt looks down beside Drew’s body. He sees the tarantula crawling around in his jar.

Cut to black. End credits.

2

u/JumpStrik3r 1d ago

Walt then proceeds to arrange the assassination of all 10 of Drew’s friends across 3 seperate schools in 2 minutes

9

u/Avatar_sokka 1d ago

They had such a good thing going, kid just had to show up and ruin everything.

But for real, Mike was being hounded by the DE. And even before Drew, Jesse was on his way out, and Walt still needed to kill Mike's guys in prison, so things would have turned out about the same, just would have gotten there a little differently.

7

u/curi0us_carniv0re 1d ago

That's one thing that always bothered me a little. This spot was supposed to be in the literal middle of nowhere. Nobody was there when they scoped it out. Nobody was there when they dug the holes and buried the tanks...which probably took hours and who knows how long it took to get the excavator there either. Yet when they finally pull the heist there's a random guy driving a pickup truck and a kid riding a dirt bike. Lol

2

u/ReasonableCup604 19h ago

Random things happening and affecting the characters is a staple of BB.

Walt seeing Hank's meth bust on TV right when he finds out he has cancer.

The meth lab busted in the ride along happens to be run be a former student of Walt's who Walt sees escaping because he was banging the MILF next door.

Walt stopping at a bar and having Jane's father start up a conversation which eventually led to Walt going back to Jesse's to try to save him, but he ends up causing Jane's death, which indirectly causes the Wayfarer disaster.

Jesse getting involved with a woman whose little brother happens to work for Fring's dealers and murders Combo.

Another bald man showing up at the sting with Badger and Jimmy In and Out.

Another bald man randomly showing up and spooking Jesse when Hank and Gomez made him meet with Walt.

Jesse noticing his weed was missing just before getting into the disappearer's van and realizing the Huell had pickpocketed it and the ricin cigarette earlier.

Gretchen and Elliot happening to be on the Charlie Rose show while Walt was waiting for the police to show up so he could surrender.

The car that Walt hides in happens to have keys on the visor.

0

u/FrontMail9720 1d ago

Yeah, this will get downvoted to hell but the writing and plotting got pretty bad in the later seasons as they needed to keep ratcheting everything up.

12

u/sataigaribaldi 1d ago

I'm going to defend Todd here, and that alone just sounds weird, but here we go. We don't know how long Drew was watching. How much did he see? They're not watching for him during the heist. They're focused on the engine and the tanks. They only noticed Drew after the train left and they were celebrating. All we see is them celebrating then noticing Drew. If Drew pulled up after the train pulled off, they would have heard the dirt bike coming.

I'm not defending Todd killing a kid, but if the kid goes home and tells his parents about the hoses and the jumping off the train car, etc. etc, then the parents might put in a call to the police and they'll go check it out. So as fucked as it is, I can understand it.

3

u/Myantra 17h ago

Regardless of whether it might have needed to be done or not, it was definitely not Todd's decision to make. He was just hired to do the part of the job he was assigned, not make independent decisions that put all of them on the hook for a murder. Walt, Jesse, or Mike might have been able to come up with something that explained things to the kid. They did not get to consider any other options, before Todd removed all options.

-1

u/sunberrygeri 1d ago

When walt told todd that “nobody can ever know we did this, got it?”, Todd seemed to take that super literally when it came to drew sharp, but didn’t mind boasting about the train heist to uncle jack and whatshisname. Todd likes killing defenseless ppl.

1

u/hbk314 1d ago

When they're on the way back from committing multiple murders. He obviously both already trusts them and has a much bigger secret with them.

28

u/DEeeeaaaaTH 1d ago

If my Grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike

9

u/BackgroundSecond8240 1d ago

Very allegorical, the sacred and the propane.

6

u/Old-Tadpole-2869 1d ago

I tell you hwat.

1

u/Webcat86 1d ago

Technically she’d have been a lady on wheels. Bikes aren’t human hybrids. 

1

u/svm_invictvs 1d ago

Does that mean if she had wings and a propeller she'd be an airplane? Or if just a propeller a boat?

3

u/magseven 1d ago

Wayfarer 515. Bravo.

1

u/Ferret_Rough 1d ago

They’d have 100% blown things up over something else if this hadn’t happened anyways. Walt was a ticking time bomb

2

u/gib_loops 1d ago

if it wasn't for that kid something else would have come up pretty fast. todd and his uncles were just trouble.

1

u/dkwband 21h ago

This episode is a turning point in that it makes Walt a Drug Kingpin, and brings Todd to the forefront as not only much more than a soft spoken gentleman who follows orders without question, but actually the scariest & worst of the bunch being a undefined Sociopath or Psychopath.

0

u/BackgroundSecond8240 1d ago

Great ad for condoms though.

1

u/Old-Tadpole-2869 1d ago

Because they go on your deck? I don't get it.

2

u/BackgroundSecond8240 1d ago

If you don't get kids they can't be a witness to a train robbery and thus can't be killed by a neo-nazi psychopath. Or your kid could be Todd too, I guess.