keep the company afloat and support its employees. Skyler says she will not turn him in, but cannot be a part of his illegal doings; however, she later comes back to work. Walt gets a message telling him to come to the restaurant, where he learns that the distributor is not the restaurant manager but the owner of the Los Pollos Hermanos chain of stores, Gus Fring. The actual manager, who appears oblivious to Gus' criminal activities, tells Walt that Gus is not currently at the store. Just as Walt is about to leave, an associate of Gus named Victor blocks him from exiting and tells him to deliver the meth to a truck stop within the next hour in exchange for $1.2 million cash. Walt rushes to Jesse's apartment and breaks in while Jesse and Jane are in a heroin-induced haze. At the same time, Skyler goes into labor and tries to contact Walt. Walt is tortured about his choice but decides to go make the transaction anyway. Title meaning Mandala is a symbol of significance in Hinduism and Buddhism, and a Sanskrit word meaning "circle." In the context of this episode, it refers to the circle of birth and death, as the episode begins with Combo's death and ends with Skyler giving birth. Critical reception The episode received positive reviews, but was noted for its slower pace. Seth Amitin, of IGN, gave the episode an 8.6/10, commenting the episode was: "about crossing the lines..." and that it "is the beginning of the set-up for the finale in two weeks". Donna Bowman of The A.V. Club gave the episode a B, writing that "it's inevitable that we'd have a merely good episode at some point" and, like Amitin, thought that the episode "seemed to be mostly concerned with moving the pieces into place for the finale". In 2019 The Ringer ranked "Mandala" 46th out of the 62 total Breaking Bad episodes. References External links "Mandala" at the official Breaking Bad site 2009 American television episodes Breaking Bad (season 2) episodes