BREAKING BAD 5.12 - "RABID DOG"

This week’s cold open is more plot-oriented than we normally get from that segment. BB stages suspense sequences as well as any show out there (or movie this side of No Country For Old Men), so this is tense stuff, even though we pretty much know that neither Walt nor Jesse is going to shoot the other before the opening credits of the 5th to last episode.  The pullback down the hallway after Walt storms into the bedroom, leading to a heart-dropping second where you’re just sure Jesse is going to step into frame, is a particularly nice touch.

But I like the sequence after the credits even better, as Walt tries to pull a Mr. Wolf routine to clean up the mess before Skyler comes home.  For you fans of metaphor (and I know how much you kids these days love the metaphors), the carpet is soaked through with stinky gasoline.  And no matter how much he offers to pay the cleaners (like Skyler last week, he can’t seem to give his dirty money away), they tell him that until he pulls up the carpet and replaces the flooring entirely, “this is as good as it gets.” “This” being a version of the house that looks like the old, comfortable place where the Whites felt safe, but with the stench of Walt’s misdeeds wafting up from the foundations.

The sequence is also fun for giving us Walt in a mode that we’ve seen less of as he’s ascended further into evil mastermind status.  Watching him wordlessly work through a problem, adding details and texture to the lie he’s spinning out, is great fun, and allows Cranston to channel a little bit of Malcom in the Middle’s Hal through Walter White, in the way he furtively shuffles from one place to place, mind racing but unable to break into a full run.  Donna Bowman at the AVClub calls it his “bullshit walk”; me, I can’t help hearing Dr. Zoidberg’s scuttling sound played really low under it.

And just a reminder, another complex, sometimes repellant hero wraps up his television odyssey this week

I generally complain about only getting a single Saul scene in a given week, but this one was good enough that it seems churlish to do so. His lamentation about his dojo membership and droll “what you have to understand, is deep down he really loves me” explanation of his Jesse scars would probably have been enough on its own.  But our favorite sleaze, much like his least favorite client, truly seems to believe that there is a magical combination and order of phrasing that will bring his audience around to his point of view, no matter how offensive they find the content of his message.  Belize didn’t do the trick, and Old Yeller didn’t pass muster either, so I guess he and Bill Burr will be burning the midnight oil brainstorming new metaphors.

Skyler has even less patience for metaphor than Walt, insisting that The One Who Knocks live up to his protestations that all of his crimes have been to protect the family, now that her predictions have come true and danger has literally kicked in their door.  Their extended conversation will probably only fuel the fires of the Skyler-haters out there, since they’re not interested in viewing things through her perspective, but the logic at work is quite simple.  She knows Walt has killed before, and doesn’t understand why he would balk at doing so again after such a direct attack.  After all, “What’s one more?”

“It is only a waffer-thin bit of murder.”

We know, of course, that this one is not like the rest. Walt can’t put any conviction behind the assertion that Jesse has never killed anyone, but neither can he explain that when he did, it was to save his mentor’s life. Is it that he can’t admit that Heisenberg The Great And Terrible needed saving by a junkie, or that he doesn’t want to acknowledge that Jesse has stained his soul on his behalf?  He protests that the reason he won’t kill the kid is basic decency, because he’s a human being. But he’s careful to avoid acknowledging that he’s a person that Walt owes his life (and a great deal more) to.  Would Skyler understand that better? I think so. Would she care? Not so sure.
Hank doesn’t much care about Jesse’s well-being either, but he’s no less interested in the threat he represents to the Whites than his sister-in-law.  It’s telling of how fast things are moving toward their end that we do not even see the scene where he brings Gomez into the loop.  One of the most remarkable things about BB is how it has not sprawled out into an ensemble piece as it goes.  This is the natural development of a TV show as it gets on in years; it is hard to mine 60+ hours of content out of a single character, no matter how well developed.  BB, though, has at any given point had about 5-6 important characters, and has never run out of new ways to challenge, compromise and illuminate its protagonist, such that it still does not have time to pretend Gomez needs a spotlight.

“This much.  This is precisely how much more I matter than you.”

Because the focus, as it should be, is on Hank and Jesse, and how their mutual desires to “burn Walt to the ground” do and do not align. Hank sees in Jesse a tool that he can use to strike back at Walt, really the only way to thoroughly discredit the confession tape.  Even after listening to Jesse’s tale of woe, he doesn’t feel much sympathy, viewing his wounds as largely self-inflicted.  He’s willing to roll the dice with Jesse’s life, on the (pretty reasonable) assumption that Walt is not going to murder him in a town square in broad daylight.  This may raise our hackles, as he’s gambling with the life of a character we feel very protective of, but it’s not such a huge step for the character as it may feel.  Cops risk the safety of informants every time they use one, but in this situation its only really notable for how they are coloring outside of official DEA lines.  And Hank does have better reasons for going rogue than your average Vic Mackey figure, so I’m not ready to write him off as pure villain just yet.

Heck, things are so bad that even his wife is contemplating murder this week, in even greater detail than her sister, no less.  The fact that she’s researching untraceable poisons raises some interesting questions about how she and the ricin will come into play in the next couple weeks.  That can’t be a pure red herring, can it?  In any case, Betsy Brandt continues to be awesome in even the briefest scenes.  Her quick assessment of the Jesse situation (“Will this hurt Walt?” Good, I’ll make lasagna”) shows her in a polar opposite place from her sister; while Skyler will dispiritedly go along with any harebrained scheme of Walt’s if it seems like it might keep the family a little safer, Marie will jump behind any action that has a chance to hurt the Whites.

Even if it means not wearing purple for an afternoon

The wild card in all this, of course, is Jesse. He wants to hurt Mr. White as bad as anyone, but he’s also done being a pawn in the schemes of older, balder men. His plan to hit Heisenberg “where he really lives” has to relate to the meth empire, right? Jesse’s whole beef is based on Walt’s willingness to collaterally damage innocents, so I can’t imagine he’d really hurt the kids, and besides he seems content to bring Hank along for the ride.

It’s going to be bumpy ride, in any case, if that last phone call is any indication.  We’re only 3 episodes away from The Bearded Future (© Chud message boards, 2013), by my estimation, and I’m thinking that bodies are going to start dropping sooner rather than later.  Next Sunday can’t come fast enough.

New spinoff idea: On Meth Two Dads, Jesse moves in with Hank 

to help raise baby Holly after their plan to take down Mr. White

 leads to his and Skyler’s deaths. Oh, you bet your ass shenanigans ensue.

Murders – Emilio, Krazy 8, Jane, two of Gus’s dealers, Gale Boetticher, Gustavo Fring, Tyrus, Hector “Tio” Salamanca, two other Fring goons, 14 year-old arachnophile Drew Sharp, Mike Ehrmantraut, Dennis the Laundry Manager, Dan the lawyer, 8 more of Mike’s guys

Collateral Damage – One innocent janitor loses his job and goes to jail on a bullshit marijuana charge. Hank had to kill a guy, even if he was an insane, degenerate piece of filth who deserved to die, giving him fairly severe PTSD. Combo was killed dealing for Walt. Jane’s father’s life is utterly ruined. 167 passengers on two planes are dead. Skyler is forced to become an accessory after the fact (or take down her son, sister and brother-in-law with Walt). 3 broken Pontiac Aztek windshields. Jesse’s RV is destroyed. On their mission to kill Heisenberg, the Cousins kill 9 illegal immigrants and their coyote, an old woman with a handicap-accessible van, a grocery-shopping bystander, an Indian woman and the Reservation sheriff that investigates. Also they shoot Hank multiple times, forcing him through a long, painful physical therapy process. Andrea’s kid brother is murdered by Gus’s dealers due to trouble Jesse and Walt stirred up. Jesse murders Gale, crushing him with guilt and destroying his hard-fought sobriety. Gus murders Victor to send a message to Walt and Jesse. Three Honduran workers get deported (or maybe worse). Walt purposefully wrecks a car, straining an already-injured Hank’s neck in an unspecified fashion. Ted Beneke breaks his neck fleeing from Heisenpire goons. Brock is poisoned and nearly dies. Tio blows himself up, but no one’s weeping for that vicious old fucker. The staff of an industrial laundry is out of their jobs. Dozens (hundreds?) of criminal prosecutions are compromised when the guys wreck the APD evidence locker. Hank’s boss gets pushed out of his job for his failure to apprehend Fring or Heisenberg. Herr Schuler, Chau and a low rent hitman get offed as Lydia scrambles to cover up Madrigal’s connection to Fring’s drug empire in the wake of his death. Walt manipulates Jesse into breaking up with Andrea. Mike’s lawyer is arrested, depriving his favorite banker of sweets. Hank has that last great pleasure of a middle-aged man, a quiet, leisurely excretion, ruined by one of histories greatest monsters. Walt’s tutelage of Todd and enabling of Lydia lead to their murder of Declan and a half dozen of his guys. Jesse beats Saul for his role in Brock’s poisoning. Walt’s living room carpet and car upholstery are ruined via soaking in gasoline.

Heisenberg Certainty Principle – “You think I came all this way to let something as silly as lung cancer bring me down? Not a chance.” It’s the emphasis on “me” that is the key here.
 
Best Lie – Walt’s long story about spraying gas on himself is not his best performance, as his little, supposedly “naturalistic” flourishes about the “nozzle, the metal thing, the thing you squeeze?” and how “I suppose, in my naivete…” come out sounding so phony and rehearsed that even Flynn can’t help but notice. Luckily, the manipulative he laid on his son last week laid the foundation for an offensive rebound of a lie, as Jr. assumes he’s trying to hide how weak the recurrent cancer has made him, rather than his criminal co-conspirator attempting to burn their home to the ground.

Official Walter Jr. Breakfast Count: 15. But when he avails himself of hotel room service off screen, I think we all know he got the pancakes, time of night be damned.

We Are Done, Professionally – Walt tries to talk Jesse back to his side (again), but a serendipitously-placed bald guy denies him his chance to incriminate himself by doing so, and Jesse remains committed to burning Mr. White to the ground.

It’s The Little Things – “I never should’ve let my dojo membership run out.” Badger’s ongoing sci-fi fandom. Hank has the Deadwood DVD set on his shelf. Vacuum cam!  The return of the tighty whities.  The perfect casting of Marie’s therapist, who appears to be Gary Cole’s little brother, the guitar next to his chair, and little wince he gives after trying to ask Marie about the parking situation at work.  “Were you spying on me?”/”Yes, and I feel just awful about it too,” – Anna Gunn is not the most gifted comedienne to ever grace the silver screen, but her deadpan is one of the few laugh out loud moments in the character’s history.  How Walt has to pause for the ever-polite Todd to get his pleasantries out before getting down to business.

BREAKING BAD 5.11 - "CONFESSIONS"

Even racist mass murderers respect the badassery of Hal Needham.  That was my big takeaway from the cold open this week.  I’m sure that Todd’s message will return as a factor somehow, but otherwise the scene seems primarily there to remind us of what we know about the train robbery and make explicit a plot point that didn’t really need explanation.  It’s not a bad scene, and it does reinforce Todd’s imminent failure as a chemist (the better to spur the Nazis into forcing Jesse to cook for them) but I doubt anyone would have been confused if they just showed up in Albuquerque next week.  Still, it does serve as the first of several recaps of earlier events in the series, wherein the teller whitewashes out their own culpability.  Todd simply omits the child-killing coda to his tale of outlaw derring-do.  Saul insists that he wouldn’t have gone along with the poisoning plan if he had known Walt’s full intentions.  And Walt, well, we’ll get into that more later, but his retelling manages not just to skirt the blame, but shift it to an entirely innocent party.  So I suppose the opening is interesting, but it still pales in comparison to each and every fraught, purposeful scene to come in the shortest goddamn hour of the week.  Plus, I wondered why they wouldn’t have that scene take place in the same diner where Walt stops to pick up the M-60.  I guess just because Arizona and New Hampshire lie on opposite sides of ABQ.

Anyhow, a TV series being able to draw to a close on its own terms is a relatively new phenomenon, but at such a time it becomes important to refocus in on what the show has always been about.  “Confessions” serves as a reminder of the Big Picture ideas that Breaking Bad has been explored since its inception:  masculinity, honesty, and the financial desperation of the supposed “middle class”.

Walt has long passed the point where he can justify his actions based on desperation or just trying to provide for his family (as a man does, according to Gus Fring).  That doesn’t jive with proclamations about being in the Empire Business, and besides he’s collected the $737,000 he calculated he needed to secure his family’s future back in the S2 premiere about 50 times over by now.  He has so much money, burying it in the desert seems like the most practical way of handling it.  No, Walt continues to do what he does because he wants to feel like a man, like he’s the one in charge of his fate, even if it is to be horrible.  He wants to be the one who knocks, regardless of whether the guy on the other side of the door did anything to deserve what comes next.

And even if they make objectively awesome karaoke decisions

Hank has different ideas.  He tells Walt that the only way out of this mess is to “Step up, be A MAN, and admit what you’ve done.”  One of the subtler arcs of the show has been the steady reversal of Hank and Walt’s positions, vis a vis masculinity, as the series has gone on.  In the first season, Hank was a swaggering alpha douche who would wrestle the spotlight away from his brother-in-law at his own birthday party without a thought, and Walt was the meek sliver of a man who didn’t even require a fully attentive handjob on his birthday (and don’t get me started on the improper sidearm technique).

He was the anti-Needham, if you will

 But as Walt sought to assert himself in increasingly callous and eventually hugely destructive ways, the trauma heaped upon Hank served to gradually uncover that underneath the bluster, there was actually a caring and upstanding man.  There’s a point in “One Minute” (which is starting to get some serious competition for my favorite hour of the show here in the home stretch) where Hank tells Marie “I’m not the man I thought I was,” and that’s “not who I’m supposed to be.”  This is just before he elects to come clean about his beating of Jesse and take his punishment. Like a man.  To Hank, honesty is an inherent component of masculinity.

Though a refined palette in excretory literature certainly doesn’t hurt

But Walt, he doesn’t just lie, he lies big.  Is there any problem so large that it can’t be solved by an extended, faux-emotional, explosively-hypocritical monologue?  “Confessions” seeks to test that, and to be fair, Walt should be pretty confident in the tactic’s efficacy.  It is, to quote one of the more paradoxically honest men on the show, an option that has worked very well for him in the recent past.  It wasn’t that long ago that he brought Jesse around from pointing a gun at his head to helping him suicide bomb a nursing home.  First of all, Jesus, when you actually type that out… But mainly, I can see how that turnaround, and his bringing Jesse back into the fold after the beating from Hank caused him to swear up and down he wanted nothing more to do with the Great Heisenberg, would cause Walt to be a bit lazy and transparent with his latest idle “suggestion” that Jesse call the up the Vacuum Man and skip town.  He wasn’t particularly subtle when he planted the idea of breaking things off with Andrea last year, either.  And it does actually work anyway, if only because Jesse is too weary to do more than insist that he drop the folksy paternalism.

Walt puts more effort and nuance into his lie to Flynn about where his shiner came from, using only the softest touch necessary to get him to avoid the Schraders for a night so that he and Skyler can concoct an insurance policy against them that makes the issue of using your cancer to manipulate your son into avoiding information about your international meth/murder ring look downright quaint.  That “confession”…damn if it isn’t the most impressive, fiendish, elaborate lie of the series.  It’s a jaw-dropping scene when it is revealed, and acted with sickening gusto, with Walt playing broken, morose victim to the hilt even as we know him to increasingly view himself as the master of the universe.

To take a derail into acting for a minute, aside from the impressive displays the character of Walter is putting on this week, it should be noted that the entire regular cast is on fire this entire episode.  Okay, RJ Mitte is still just struggling to find a new spin to put on asking what’s going on, but Cranston and Paul are knocking things so incredibly far out of the park that it can be easy to overlook how great Odenkirk is at playing Saul both in his element (in the interrogation room) and in distress (when Jesse storms the office), or how good a submission episode this would be for Dean Norris, even if it only consisted of the 10 minutes between when he steps into that day-glo Mexican monstrosity and when he and Marie react to the video.

We thought they couldn’t do a more awkward dinner than 

Jesse’s green bean disaster.  But we did not yet know Trent.

 But it would also be ignoring Betsy Brandt, who is phenomenal in the restaurant scene, and surprisingly lands the ultimate dramatic gutpunch.  I love how she can’t bring herself to even look at Walt until she drops her cold, hard, eminently practical suggestion on him.  Advising someone else to commit suicide is sort of a ludicrous suggestion on its face, but really, if Walt were to off himself it would solve most of the problems for everyone else at that table.  He, of course, has other ideas, revolving around a special edition, “director’s cut” of the “not a confession of guilt” video that opened the pilot.

“My name is Walter Hartwell White. To any law enforcement agencies, 

this is not an admission of guilt, and also, if you find my pants, 

please return them to 308 Negro Arroyo Lane…”

In this version of history, Walt was conscripted into cooking on behalf of his greedy, violent brother-in-law, who had decided to work the other side of his badge and scoop some of that gold from the streets.  This is evil because it foists the blame for all of Walt’s misdeeds onto a completely innocent family member, but it’s genius because of how many true details he was able to work in bolster the frame of the lie.  Hank did take Walt on a ridealong just before the blue meth appeared, and did take the kids from their terminally ill father’s care, which are easily verifiable.  He did have an enmity with Gus Fring that led to the other man to send the twins after him in the parking lot.  Walt did create the bomb that killed Gus.

But that’s all circumstantial, and could probably be fought off in a he said/she said court battle.  Not saying that Hank would get to keep his current gig, but I don’t see him doing jail time based on those parts of the story alone.  The real nails in Hank’s coffin come from his own dishonesty and financial desperation.  I wouldn’t say that Hank has “broken bad” in the way that Walt or even Skyler has, but it is interesting that he and Walt’s positions have flipped around to the point where it’s Hank who has been backed into a corner by prohibitively expensive medical treatments.  But of course it’s dishonesty that has tightened the noose.  Marie’s in trying to navigate around Hank’s pride, and Hank’s in refusing to expose Walt until he can bring him in on his own terms.  These are eminently understandable decisions given the context in which they were made, but they provide just the threads that a master of the lie form like Walt needs to complete an utterly damning mosaic of Hank Schrader: Criminal Mastermind.

Wait, a methsaic!  Is it too late to change that to methsaic? Because that’s totally like a pun on methamphetamines.

A mosaic. Made of threads. Of amphetamine.  Metaphor = Nailed.

The “confession” appears to be an utter checkmate on Hank’s ability to hurt Walt.  But then Saul had to get cute with having Huell lift Jesse’s sack of weed.  Obviously, Jesse is not going to get very far setting fire to the Whites’ house, which is stripped out but not burnt out in the flashforwards, but the ramifications of his finally realizing what went down with Brock have 5 more weeks to play out, and if he and Hank do not end up working together in some capacity, I’ll be a disarmingly polite meth-monkey’s racist shitbag uncle.

This spin-off is still possible.  All’s I’m sayin’.

Murders – Emilio, Krazy 8, Jane, two of Gus’s dealers, Gale Boetticher, Gustavo Fring, Tyrus, Hector “Tio” Salamanca, two other Fring goons, 14 year-old arachnophile Drew Sharp, Mike Ehrmantraut, Dennis the Laundry Manager, Dan the lawyer, 8 more of Mike’s guys

Collateral Damage – One innocent janitor loses his job and goes to jail on a bullshit marijuana charge.  Hank had to kill a guy, even if he was an insane, degenerate piece of filth who deserved to die, giving him fairly severe PTSD.  Combo was killed dealing for Walt.  Jane’s father’s life is utterly ruined.  167 passengers on two planes are dead.  Skyler is forced to become an accessory after the fact (or take down her son, sister and brother-in-law with Walt).  3 broken Pontiac Aztek windshields.  Jesse’s RV is destroyed. On their mission to kill Heisenberg, the Cousins kill 9 illegal immigrants and their coyote, an old woman with a handicap-accessible van, a grocery-shopping bystander, an Indian woman and the Reservation sheriff that investigates.  Also they shoot Hank multiple times, forcing him through a long, painful physical therapy process.  Andrea’s kid brother is murdered by Gus’s dealers due to trouble Jesse and Walt stirred up.  Jesse murders Gale, crushing him with guilt and destroying his hard-fought sobriety.  Gus murders Victor to send a message to Walt and Jesse.  Three Honduran workers get deported (or maybe worse).  Walt purposefully wrecks a car, straining an already-injured Hank’s neck in an unspecified fashion.  Ted Beneke breaks his neck fleeing from Heisenpire goons.  Brock is poisoned and nearly dies.  Tio blows himself up, but no one’s weeping for that vicious old fucker.  The staff of an industrial laundry is out of their jobs.  Dozens (hundreds?) of criminal prosecutions are compromised when the guys wreck the APD evidence locker.  Hank’s boss gets pushed out of his job for his failure to apprehend Fring or Heisenberg.  Herr Schuler, Chau and a low rent hitman get offed as Lydia scrambles to cover up Madrigal’s connection to Fring’s drug empire in the wake of his death.  Walt manipulates Jesse into breaking up with Andrea.  Mike’s lawyer is arrested, depriving his favorite banker of sweets.  Hank has that last great pleasure of a middle-aged man, a quiet, leisurely excretion, ruined by one of histories greatest monsters.  Walt’s tutelage of Todd and enabling of Lydia lead to their murder of Declan and a half dozen of his guys.  Jesse beats Saul for his role in Brock’s poisoning.

Heisenberg Certainty Principle – “I beat this once.  And there’s no reason to think I won’t do it again.”  Walt’s talking about his cancer, except he’s not.

Best Lie – Walt’s “confession” video is obviously a four course, diabolical, kaiju-sized bear trap of dishonesty.  But I want to single out the offhand way Walt responds to Hank accusing him of running a drug empire with an almost exasperated “there’s no drug empire.”  I hope someone has already edited that to be followed immediately by “I’m in the Empire Business,” in full Arrested Development-style.

Official Walter Jr. Breakfast Count: 15.  And here I was dead certain that Jess would look up from splashing gasoline all over the floor of the White house to see Flynn staring at him over a bowl of Raisin Bran Crunch.  I could still see that being the opening next week.

We Are Done, Professionally – Walt tries to send Jesse on a real trip to Belize, but Jesse puts together some pieces and decides he wants to say goodbye to Mr. White first.  Saul will probably be closing all his files marked “Pinkman” pretty soon.

It’s The Little Things – The new spin on the signature time lapse shot, of an interior with the cops fruitlessly interrogating Jesse.  Walt’s running the five steps from his car to the door of the car wash before stopping to compose himself.  The tarantula in the desert (and it only now occurs to me that tarantulas have a way of scaring the crap out of people, despite being essentially harmless to humans, making for an apt reminder of Drew Sharpe).  Walt fretting with Skyler’s concealer to mask his shiners from Jr.  The smorgasbord of bold, clashing colors on Saul’s, shirt, striped tie, and Wayfarer ribbon. Skyler mumbling “thank you for your honesty” to a customer who returns a couple bucks in extra change.  The Hello Kitty phone returns!  Everything involving Trent the Waiter, who gamely tries his usual upselling technique, with no way of knowing that this is the absolute last 4 top that would be interested in watching someone lovingly handcraft a distinctive, brightly colored concoction for their consumption right there at the table.

BREAKING BAD 5.10 - "BURIED"

Not every cold open can be a flashforward of intriguing, specifically calamitous portent (not that I don’t eat those up).  Some weeks you get more oblique foreshadowing, like the introduction of Dirtbike Kid in “Dead Freight” or the blood in the water in “Hermanos”.  Some weeks it’s a flashback, letting us see a deceased character like Gale or Jane again.  Sometimes it’s a little tone poem, establishing a particular character’s mindset.  Once, if you’re very lucky, it’s a bonkers narcocorrido video whose actual existence within the show’s reality is never clarified.  This week it’s the tone poem one.  Jesse’s complete shut down after his Paperboy act will circle back to becoming an important plot point at the end of the hour, but the extended, silent opening just acts as a way to get us into his head space, and to give us that purdy revolving shot of him lying on the merry-go-round, going round in circles without any real progress or destination.

Just thinking about the time he met Bob Barker, I’ll bet

From there it’s off to the races, as director Michelle MacLaren (in addition to her recent work on stuff like The Walking Dead and Game Of Thrones, she did last week’s premiere, last season’s finale, S4’s “Salud”, S3’s “One Minute”, and S2’s “4 Days Out”, so let’s just call her the best TV director in the world and move along) brings us back to the garage for a non-too-subtle but plenty-too-awesome shot of the guys staring each other down, fingers literally twitching like Old West gunfighters.  As soon as Hank lowers the door, Walt is scrambling, and regular readers might have been able to guess, I loved that – my consistent gripe last year was that Heisenberg triumphant is less exciting than Walt scrambling.  Hank makes a beeline for Skyler, while Walter decides that protecting the money is the priority.

For that, he brings in his top guys, Huell and Bill Burr (I know the character has a name, but I have a good time thinking that he’s playing a bizarro version of himself who fell on hard times after a series of bad gigs in ABQ).  They, as any reasonable people would, take some time to just lounge on top of the giant pile of money and contemplate running away to Mexico together.  And while I would watch that show, they eventually decide that Heisenberg is not a safe person to steal from, so I’m inclined to think they didn’t skim anything before driving it back to Saul’s, where Walt can’t even pretend to give it a real count.  I wonder how much they would’ve taken had they known that his plan was to drive it out in the desert and bury it like he’s goddamn Long John Silver?  I can see how something like that, if rumors got out, would go a long way toward making Heisenberg the type of urban legend whose name would get spray-painted on the walls of abandoned houses.

Before he heads out, Walt clarifies for us and Saul that he is not going to consider killing Hank as a solution.  In part this is a plot necessity, as that would make for an abrupt end to the current conflict, but I also like to think that his stance is motivated in part by the knowledge that, whether he wants to admit it or not, Hank is about the only person he can rely on to look after what’s left of his family after he’s gone.  Who else would be Holly’s guardian if Skyler gets busted or hit by a bus? Elliot and Gretchen? I doubt he’s going to trust Saul to maintain a trust fund until the kid turns 18.  Bill and Huel maybe?

Actually, I’d watch that show too

But this is not really Walt’s episode overall.  If last week’s premiere was mainly about Hank’s reaction to his discovery, this week was about Skyler learning that the “monkey is in the banana patch!”  That scene in the diner, where Hank is laying out his plan to move against Walt, oblivious to the length and depth of Skyler’s complicity in his crimes, is the sort of powerhouse only possible on longform TV, as we see a relationship and status quo that we have spent 5 years investing in crumble piece by agonizing piece.

Hank is obviously still reeling from his confrontation with Walt in that moment, because he essentially repeats the mistake that allowed Heisenberg to operate right under his nose for so long – he takes it as a given that a family member must be largely innocent in crimes this heinous.  It’s only after she makes a scene and storms out that he decides to bring out the big, purple guns.

YA DONE FUCKED UP NOW

Betsy Brandt is probably taken the most for granted out of the entire cast, but she brings her A game for the first real dramatic material she’s gotten since early season 4.  When Marie works out just how far back her sister must have known, to an interval that encompassed multiple threats and attempts on her husband’s life, well, I don’t really blame her for smacking her sister one.  Though trying to snatch the baby was perhaps not so well thought out.  But I think it does make sense as a heat-of-the-moment impulse to take something away from the Whites, infuriated at the prospect that they might actually be able to run out the clock and avoid answering for their crimes.

What makes this such a rich vein is that while the Schraders are completely in the right, and the Whites’ cannot be allowed to go unpunished just because Walt will die anyway, I still feel for Skyler in this situation.  Having seen what she’s gone through every step of the way, I believe her when she says “I can’t remember the last time I was happy.”  She doesn’t get to wear the porkpie hat, or rob trains, or be praised as the very best in the field of money laundering, or any of the other things that have made the endeavor seem worthwhile to Walt.  She just gets a giant pile of money she can’t spend and a giant pile of fear to go with it.  I can see why she thinks that the experience has been punishment enough, if she can just make it to the end, even though I know that’s not right.  Walt is not just a pusher and thief, he’s a mass murderer, and if nothing else the victim’s families deserve to know that the man responsible for the killings is not walking free, enjoying the proceeds of his crimes.

When this guy is making this face, you’ve officially Gone Too Far

What is not entirely clear is whether Skyler thinks that she has earned not just a pardon for her participation Walt’s crimes, but the right to enjoy those proceeds herself.  Lying on the floor of the bathroom, he begs her not to let him “have done this for nothing,” and it’s not the first time he’s done so.  She essentially parrots his closing line to Hank from last week back to him, saying that their best move is to do nothing and wait for time to expire.  Does she actually intend to ever use the money?  I can’t imagine she plans to give up the car wash that it purchased, but she can’t think that she could really get away with spending any of the stacks under Hank and Marie’s nose, even after Walt is gone.  She has chosen to side with her husband at this crucial juncture, but I think it’s from a doomed hope that if he “wins” then her kids could be spared the trauma of his exposure, whereas if Hank wins they might avoid the worst of all possible outcomes, but it’s guaranteed that her family will be hurt in the process.  I don’t think greed really factors in.

Hank’s story, meanwhile, is heading for a tragic end, as he lays out what has been clear in implication for seasons: that even in a best case scenario wherein he brings Walt to justice, he will be ending his own career in the process and facing disgrace.  He lays it out for Marie, saying that his last hope of salvaging a little dignity out of the situation is that “I can be the man who caught him.”

Which is silly, because we all know what he’ll ACTUALLY be remembered for

 What Hank wants, what he needs, is a choice. To feel like he has some control over how his situation resolves, even if all of the potential outcomes are dire.  If that sounds familiar, it’s because Walt said as much back in the first season when it was his turn to hold the talking pillow.  I don’t think that puts Hank on his level, or even the level he was on back in Season 1, it just says that men are motivated to make bad choices by the same basic impulses.

But it’s the women of Breaking Bad that currently control those men’s fates.  Walt puts his future in Skyler’s hands.  Hank needs Marie to get any useful info out of Skyler.  Lydia is ordering up murders by the dozen in order to reorder the Southwest meth trade to her liking.  It almost makes you wish they were making better decisions than their male counterparts, but then that wouldn’t make for very good TV, would it?

Again, just because it’s lovely

Murders – Emilio, Krazy 8, Jane, two of Gus’s dealers, Gale Boetticher, Gustavo Fring, Tyrus, Hector “Tio” Salamanca, two other Fring goons, 14 year-old arachnophile Drew Sharp, Mike Ehrmantraut, Dennis the Laundry Manager, Dan the lawyer, 8 more of Mike’s guys

Collateral Damage – One innocent janitor loses his job and goes to jail on a bullshit marijuana charge. Hank had to kill a guy, even if he was an insane, degenerate piece of filth who deserved to die, giving him fairly severe PTSD. Combo was killed dealing for Walt. Jane’s father’s life is utterly ruined. 167 passengers on two planes are dead. Skyler is forced to become an accessory after the fact (or take down her son, sister and brother-in-law with Walt). 3 broken Pontiac Aztek windshields. Jesse’s RV is destroyed. On their mission to kill Heisenberg, the Cousins kill 9 illegal immigrants and their coyote, an old woman with a handicap-accessible van, a grocery-shopping bystander, an Indian woman and the Reservation sheriff that investigates. Also they shoot Hank multiple times, forcing him through a long, painful physical therapy process. Andrea’s kid brother is murdered by Gus’s dealers due to trouble Jesse and Walt stirred up. Jesse murders Gale, crushing him with guilt and destroying his hard-fought sobriety. Gus murders Victor to send a message to Walt and Jesse. Three Honduran workers get deported (or maybe worse). Walt purposefully wrecks a car, straining an already-injured Hank’s neck in an unspecified fashion. Ted Beneke breaks his neck fleeing from Heisenpire goons. Brock is poisoned and nearly dies. Tio blows himself up, but no one’s weeping for that vicious old fucker. The staff of an industrial laundry is out of their jobs. Dozens (hundreds?) of criminal prosecutions are compromised when the guys wreck the APD evidence locker. Hank’s boss gets pushed out of his job for his failure to apprehend Fring or Heisenberg. Herr Schuler, Chau and a low rent hitman get offed as Lydia scrambles to cover up Madrigal’s connection to Fring’s drug empire in the wake of his death. Walt manipulates Jesse into breaking up with Andrea. Mike’s lawyer is arrested, depriving his favorite banker of sweets. Hank has that last great pleasure of a middle-aged man, a quiet, leisurely excretion, ruined by one of histories greatest monsters. Walt’s tutelage of Todd and enabling of Lydia lead to their murder of Declan and ten of his guys.

Heisenberg Certainty Principle – “Guy hit ten guys in jail within a two minute window. All’s I’m sayin’.” Absentee badassery is perhaps the most potent badassery of all.

Best Lie – Nobody’s really lying this week. But credit to Jesse for not giving the Feds a shred of anything to work with. It seems like a simple thing to just clam up completely when being questioned by the police, but practically no one actually does it.

Official Walter Jr. Breakfast Count: 15. No Flynn at all this week. I feel kind of bad saying it, but I’m not looking forward to the episode that focuses on his reaction to the truth about his father.

We Are Done, Professionally – It would appear that Lydia’s partnership with Declan has come to an end.

It’s The Little Things – Rolling Barrel Cam! Doomed GPS Device Cam! The shells dropping down through the fan grate in front of Lydia. Todd’s helpful, accommodating attitude toward her thirty seconds after a mass murder. “I’ll send you to Belize.” How much darker Hank’s office looks when he returns burdened by his new knowledge.  “It’s not filthy, it’s just, it’s dimly lit.”

BREAKING BAD 5.09 - "BLOOD MONEY"

In the past week or two I’d seen a bunch of folks with early screeners of the premiere say something to the effect of “holy shit! So incredible! And that’s just the cold open!”  Now, Breaking Bad’s cold opens are the best in the biz, and one of my favorite aspects of the show.  But could this one live up to the hype?

Well, not entirely, as it’s not actually that eventful.  It’s basically a tease, but a tantalizing one, revealing new aspects of what drove Walt into Hampshirean exile (whatever happens, the state of the house indicates it will be nice and public) as well as what’s to come (someone’s getting ricin’d! Dad went to the trouble of making the stuff, and someone’s going to eat it, damn it!), as well as featuring Cranston’s remarkable physical transformation into the post-Heisenberg, walking dead version of Walter. That lingering shot of the shattered reflection of Walt’s face speaks volumes about how far into the ground his inflated self-image from season 5A has been driven by this point in the future.   There’s no kingpin in that reflection, no father, not even a chemistry teacher.  Just a husk.

Before getting to the meat of things, let’s check in with Jesse briefly.  He is a hollowed out shell of himself, struggling with the guilt of a death that he played a part in last year.  But by this point we should probably just expect him to start out a season that way.  This time, instead of slumping through rehab or throwing the world’s most soul-deadening party, he’s playing a demented live action version of Paperboy with $10,000 bundles of cash.  Aaron Paul does crushing guilt like a champ, and he and Cranston still play off each other so well that you hardly notice that their long talk here is basically pieces of a dozen prior conversations stitched together.  I’m still impatient for him to take more action against/with the other major characters.

We also get a glimpse at the booming car wash business, and a brief Skylar vs Lydia skirmish.  Oh, Lydia, you might be a dangerously unstable business associate, but you don’t stand a chance against the fury of Mrs. White when her slice of domestic bliss marginal acceptability is threatened.  It’s a rarity to see Skylar get to be assertive, since she’s been stuck in such a tight box ever since she learned of Walt’s activities.  But I bet even the haters were on Skylar’s side in this one, and that both the character and Anna Gunn enjoyed having a deserving place to vent.

Hank, meanwhile, quickly shows himself to be less suited to maintaining an elaborate façade than his brother-in-law.  He may be a blustery sort, but he just isn’t able to conceal the depth of hurt and anger he feels over this revelation, and seems to know it as he sequesters himself in the garage to work out the extent of his brother-in-law’s crimes.  His detective-ing montage, complete with funky 70’s-ish music, was terrific all around, but the shot of the goofy Schraderbrau logo put it over the top into sheer awesomeness.  If that is not the avatar for at least 3 members of the Chud message boards by the time this posts, I officially do not understand the internet.

Honestly, Walt figuring out that Hank must have taken Leaves Of Grass is quite a leap, but it’s one that leaps us right to the real meat of the cat and mouse game that must ensue, so I was pretty much all for it. When it cut out on Walt standing in his driveway, GPS tracker in hand, I figured that was it and was all ready to start writing up a very favorable review.

But what gives me so much hope for these last episodes is that it didn’t end there, although it would’ve been a perfectly adequate revelation on which to end a premiere. No, we then get one of the most significant scenes of the series entire run, something we’ve been anticipating and dreading since the pilot: Hank confronting Walt about his crimes.  It does not disappoint.  Punches are thrown.  Curses are hurled.  Lies are feebly put forth, and quickly abandoned for threats.

I should probably state for the record that Bryan Cranston and Dean Norris are really fucking incredible actors.  It may be early and foolish to make such a call, but I’d say that not only is Cranston a shoe-in to win one last Actor award from the Emmys this year, but Norris might even elbow past Aaron Paul for the Supporting trophy (Emmy voters certainly play favorites with shows and like to honor ones as they wrap up, so tough break Mandy Patinkin and John Slattery).  One of the pleasures of these remaining episodes will be seeing these two guys play off each other with their hole cards showing, and this was a fine start.

And it happened so fast!  I’ve talked before about how Breaking Bad has a reputation as a slow-paced show that is not quite deserved.  The show has always been fascinated with process and, abetted by a protagonist who thinks through his problems methodically, it will go in for extended sequences where we just watch a character work, or stew in their own juices.  But the show has also burned through a ton of plot in its 60 or so episodes, and has made a habit of progressing its storylines at a thrillingly haphazard pace.  Remember how abruptly the Tuco situation came to a head, or how the Cousins were swept off the board midway through the third season, or how Walt expanded internationally, made hundreds of millions of dollars and retired from cooking in the course of a montage at the end of last year.  And so just as it feels like we’re settling in for an extended chess match between Walt and his new nemesis, Gilligan and co. say “nah, fuck that” and cut right to the quick.  It’s exhilarating to see the narrative pedal put to the floor like this, but also probably wise, since Hank is no dummy but probably can’t compete with Gus Fring as a chess player (particularly since Hank has so muchto lose by exposing Walt), and there is not enough time left to play out that particular string in a way that would not feel on some level like a rushed retread of that dynamic.  

Plus, we now get to see Hank confront Skyler about her role in all this, and interact with Jesse…

Only 7 more episodes. I don’t want to get my hopes up too far (my trust still carries a LOST-shaped scar from the last time I thought a show might really nail the landing). But if this episode is an indication of how the season as a whole will play out, things are going to go quickly, badly, and end on the strongest note of all.  And even if the end somehow sucks, I will always carry Badger’s Star Strek spec in my heart.

Murders – Emilio, Krazy 8, Jane, two of Gus’s dealers, Gale Boetticher, Gustavo Fring, Tyrus, Hector “Tio” Salamanca, two other Fring goons, 14 year-old arachnophile Drew Sharp, Mike Ehrmantraut, Dennis the Laundry Manager, Dan the lawyer, 8 more of Mike’s guys

Collateral Damage – One innocent janitor loses his job and goes to jail on a bullshit marijuana charge. Hank had to kill a guy, even if he was an insane, degenerate piece of filth who deserved to die, giving him fairly severe PTSD. Combo was killed dealing for Walt. Jane’s father’s life is utterly ruined. 167 passengers on two planes are dead. Skyler is forced to become an accessory after the fact (or take down her son, sister and brother-in-law with Walt). 3 broken Pontiac Aztek windshields. Jesse’s RV is destroyed. On their mission to kill Heisenberg, the Cousins kill 9 illegal immigrants and their coyote, an old woman with a handicap-accessible van, a grocery-shopping bystander, an Indian woman and the Reservation sheriff that investigates. Also they shoot Hank multiple times, forcing him through a long, painful physical therapy process. Andrea’s kid brother is murdered by Gus’s dealers due to trouble Jesse and Walt stirred up. Jesse murders Gale, crushing him with guilt and destroying his hard-fought sobriety. Gus murders Victor to send a message to Walt and Jesse. Three Honduran workers get deported (or maybe worse). Walt purposefully wrecks a car, straining an already-injured Hank’s neck in an unspecified fashion. Ted Beneke breaks his neck fleeing from Heisenpire goons. Brock is poisoned and nearly dies. Tio blows himself up, but no one’s weeping for that vicious old fucker. The staff of an industrial laundry is out of their jobs. Dozens (hundreds?) of criminal prosecutions are compromised when the guys wreck the APD evidence locker. Hank’s boss gets pushed out of his job for his failure to apprehend Fring or Heisenberg. Herr Schuler, Chau and a low rent hitman get offed as Lydia scrambles to cover up Madrigal’s connection to Fring’s drug empire in the wake of his death. Walt manipulates Jesse into breaking up with Andrea. Mike’s lawyer is arrested, depriving his favorite banker of sweets. Hank has that last great pleasure of a middle-aged man, a quiet, leisurely excretion, ruined by one of histories greatest monsters.

Heisenberg Certainty Principle – “If you don’t know who I am, then maybe your best course would be to tread lightly.”


Best Lie – Certainly not his feeble attempt to convince Jesse that despite all signs pointing and flashing at it, he did not kill Mike.

Official Walter Jr. Breakfast Count - 15. The writers are apparently making a late-game surge to have the kid’s onscreen dinner tally match his breakfasts.  They’ll need to squeeze about 9 more into the next 7 episodes, but I think they’ll get there.

We Are Done, Professionally – Walt rejects Lydia’s entreaties to teach a summer course in remedial chemistry to his replacement cooks.

It’s The Little Things – “Feliz Cumpleanos, Enrique!” (for some reason this made giggle). Saul having one phone with Hello Kitty decals on it in his drawer full of burners. The brief glimpse of the picture of Hank posing over No-Doze’s corpse back in, er, “happier” days.  Walt still rocking the tighty whiteys.  Hank’s neighbor playing with the replacement RC car Hank presumably bought to replace the one Marie ran over several seasons back.

ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK IS THE NEW GREAT

God, I am awesome at titling things.

Netflix has been making careful forays into original programming for a while now.  No one really noticed Lilyhammer.  Hemlock Grove was apparently a mess.  House Of Cards debuted to solid reviews, but few outright raves, which was somewhat surprising given its impeccable creative pedigree.  The resurrected Arrested Development was a miracle of sorts, but still a kind of disappointing, albeit in ways that probably would not have been helped by being on a traditional network.  But in any case, digging up the corpse of a show a network cancelled years ago is no way to create a brand identity as a producer of original content.
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Orange Is The New Black, the new series based on Piper Kerman’s memoir of the same name, is precisely how you make such a name.  It’s not just the best show Netflix has produced so far, or the best show to premiere in the current wastes of summertime TV, but one of the best shows to air on any network(/streaming service) this year.  And it shouldn’t work at all, with half a dozen aspects that would send any network dependent on advertiser revenue fleeing for the hills.  It’s an hourlong comedy, a format no one seems very interested in pursuing. It’s a fairly realistic look at life in prison, which seems like a downer and turn-off for those shopping for a comedy.  And it’s not like it’s the most intense, supermax/death row sort that would promise the maximum amount of life-or-death drama, but a minimum security place populated mostly by short-timers.  And it’s a women’s prison, so the vast ensemble is extremely female-heavy, not to mention non-white, and they mostly look like actual women you know (we’re not going to pretend you don’t know a bunch of convicts, not here) rather than television stars.  Finally, it has Jason Biggs in a non-pie molesting capacity.

Some motherfuckahs are always trying to iceskate uphill

Not that this is completely unprecedented.  It’s been almost two decades since HBO started nabbing serious attention for its original programming with its own multiracial prison drama Oz.  Very much like Netflix, its subscriber model meant that it could take chances on shows that advertisers wouldn’t touch, because edginess and the ability to provide things that a standard cable package couldn’t are of higher importance to a premium service.  Whereas a traditional TV channel thrives on shows inoffensive enough that people won’t tune away during commercials, a subscription network needs to be splashy enough to not just draw people’s attention as they flip through the dial, but get them sufficiently intrigued to shell out an extra $20 a month.  They need people talking about their shows in order to clear the higher barrier to entry.
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Not that Orange approaches the shock value of HBO’s breakthrough, however, or really tries (a prison official flat-out says “this isn’t Oz” when checking our heroine in for her stay).  Matching Oz’s level of transgression wouldn’t even be possible now, 15+ years after the revolution in dark cable programming that it presaged, and in any case it’s not that the show is totally unconventional so much as uncommercial.  And we do get a pretty white girl to function as our introduction to this world, so there is some effort to provide a surrogate for your typical Netflix subscriber.  Piper Chapman, is a yuppie-ish, pretty blonde who finds her impending nuptials placed on hold while she spends a year behind bars for carrying money for a drug-running ex-girlfriend a decade earlier.  Taylor Schilling, fresh off of playing the lead in Atlas Shrugged: Part One, has no problem conveying the fear and discomfort a modern woman feels upon finding herself trapped in a decrepit, underfunded system devoted to outmoded and misguided values.

Except in prison, rape is somewhat frowned upon

Piper is a difficult role, needing to be smart and somewhat experienced in criminal enterprises, but still naïve enough about the prison experience to need the guidance that provides the audience with our exposition.  She also has to remain  basically sympathetic while having a dark enough edge for us to understand how she could’ve ended up in this situation and fit in amongst the crowd of flawed cable-drama protagonists.  For the most part, this balance is struck nicely; a lesser show would’ve made her more innocent and concordantly more dumb, to avoid making the audience uncomfortable, but this one is rightly confident in Schilling’s ability to walk the tightrope.  Actually, the only missteps come late in the season, when the show overplays condemning her selfishness, seeming to declare her generally toxic to everyone she encounters when her only really awful act involves making a mess of a relationship.  Don’t get me wrong, what she does is shitty, but it’s a kind of shitty that relatively normal people are to each other all the time without the extreme pressures of prison as an added factor.  It’s a broad and harsh critique that feels slightly out of sync with a character and performance that is generally kind and conscientious, and like it’s just there because alienating loved ones is how flawed cable protagonists end a season.

But it’s a minor issue in the scheme of things, as the series really shines once the setup is dispatched and Piper’s story recedes a bit to allow the rest of the ensemble to take center stage and bounce off each other.  The standouts are a near-unrecognizable Kate Mulgrew as the scowling czarina who rules the kitchens with an iron fist, and The Wire’s Pablo Schreiber as an utter scumbag of a guard appropriately nicknamed “Pornstache” (his defense of said stache when it’s intimated that gay men have appropriated the look provides one of the season’s biggest laughs, due mainly to his grave delivery).  But I was probably most impressed with newcomer Madeleine Brewer, who broke my heart with a tremendously vulnerable performance as an inmate struggling to cope with the loss of her girlfriend and drug supply in rapid succession.  She’s far from a main character, but part of the beauty of this series is how it makes even the tangential storylines feel important enough that they could carry the show on their own, even as the episodes always circle back around to Piper eventually.

There are way too many other names that also warrant mentioning, as even folks like Laura Prepon, Jason Biggs and Natasha Lyonne are given characters pitched directly to their narrow strengths.  But it’s the largely unknown cast that are the real fun, excelling across the board at crafting immediately identifiable characters from within a system that garbs them all in identical smocks and does its best to lump them together along racial lines.  If I start singling more people out, I might as well just link to the imdb page (though it does feel wrong not to mention Taystee or Crazy Eyes at all), so I’ll just say that Netflix needs to give their casting director a raise and lock her down for all their future productions.  The only bum note is the series “villain” played by Taryn Manning, a hillbilly religious nut who is the one character that doesn’t become a fully rounded human even after we learn about her background.

This won’t mean much if you haven’t watched yet, 

but once you do you won’t be able to unsee it

For sure, there are still some kinks to be worked out in Netflix’s all-at-once release model, as the cultural conversation doesn’t seem to quite know yet how to integrate a show when it’s served buffet style.  Which is to say that when I’ve talked to people about it person, no one ever seems to be on the same episode or be sure completely sure which one they are on themselves.  And this review somehow feels very late and at the same time like it’s going up before a lot of people have had the chance to finish it. Which might seem beside the point when the product is this good, but as mentioned previously, elbowing into the cultural conversation is vital for a subscription based content producer.
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So even if Orange Is The New Black does not prove that Netflix is the future of television, it does prove that Netflix has a future producing television (and this show specifically, as a second season was greenlit before the first dropped). If you have the service, fire it up on Instant. It’s consistently funny, sometimes moving, and uses its very limited setting to depict an unusually broad swath of several levels of society with acuity, humor, and surprising warmth.  It’s a rare female-centric show that doesn’’t lose any appeal for the guys. And Breaking Bad doesn’t start for another couple weeks anyway, so what else do you have to do?

“Holy shit, that’s really Captain Janeway?”

GAME OF THRONES 3.10 - "MYHSA"

Game of Thrones, for all the unpredictability of its plot, follows a pattern with its seasons.  The penultimate episode is where the big fireworks (decapitation, Blackwater, now the Red Wedding) go down, and the finale is much more what you would expect from a typical premiere, setting various folks on various roads to various places they probably won’t arrive at until well into the next year.  There was a bit of a question whether this year, which unlike the first two concluded in the middle of a source book, would follow suit, but it certainly did in the end.  Arya hits the road again, in much the same position (but worse) as she was in the last two finales.  Bran heads north of the Wall with a small party to protect him, much like Jon did at the end the first season.  Sansa remains a caged, miserable bird at King’s Landing as a new set of meager hopes are cruelly dashed by the horrific murder of her elder relations.  Yara sets out to rescue her brother, Stannis refocuses on the threat of the Walkers, and Dany, having decided that walking over everyone and everything in Essos is too much work, is now crowdsurfing her way to Westeros (at the same leisurely pace).

What previous finales had, and what I think largely prevented people from complaining about them as anticlimaxes following the episode where Shit Goes Down, was truly striking closing images that promised major changes to come.  Dany rising from the fire with her dragons is the signature image of the series thus far, and the army of the dead marching through the snow was unexpectedly epic in scale and gave us a nice jolt to end on, even if this year ultimately did remarkably little to follow through on its promise.  The Walkers are aptly named, it would seem, having spent all year shuffling through the off-screen snow without reaching anywhere we might recognize.  One of them appeared for exactly one scene between the pre-credits sequence of the premiere and the finale where they remained an unseen threat even as they drew the attention of more important characters.

 

 Characters packing serious weapons

The eponymous sequence of “Mhysa,” however, packs less of a punch, because it neither surprises nor promises anything new.  Dany’s been on this messianic path all year, and the actual conquest of Yunkai took place last week, so I’m not sure what the tension of the scene was supposed to be, or whether it was supposed to feel like more of a game-changer than it did.  She already had some freed slaves as followers, now she has some more.  Bully for Danaerys Stormborn, The Unburnt, The Breaker of Chains and Addendumer of Superfluous Titles, but given that this was her only scene of the finale, this fell a bit flat for me.

Indeed, I think the last two episodes may have benefited from rearranging.  If you move all of the Yunkai material to the finale, and pack as much of the Jon and Bran scenes as possible into last week, I think “Rains Of Castamere” could’ve been a counterpoint to last year’s “Blackwater,”  with the focus squarely on the Starks and their hangers-on rather than the Lannisters.  It may not have worked as well, since it still would’ve had to remain more geographically diffuse compared to the King’s Landing-bound “Blackwater,” but I think having the closing sequence immediately follow the taking of Yunkai would’ve given it more kick, and made it feel like a resolution rather than a postscript.

 

 JAZZ HANDS!!!

But enough about the ending, how about the opening?  The initial shot of Bolton surveying the devastation of the Stark bannermen was gorgeously composed, and the chaos of the massacre as brutal as we’ve come to expect from this show.  And seeing Robb’s body defiled and paraded through the camp was a kick in the gut even after last week’s elaborate atrocities.  It was good to see Arya enact a little antipasto of revenge on some Frey goons later, but it’s a very small, very cold comfort after having to witness that on top of every other horror she’s endured.  With no home left to go to, one wonders if the Hound could be convinced to escort her all the way to Braavos?  The idea of Arya meeting up with Dany in Essos and returning for her main course on the back of a dragon is certainly enticing, but then when was the last time the show gave a sympathetic character that satisfying a triumph?

Anyhow, the other big rousing moment of the night came from the long-absent, mostly-asshole Greyjoys.  Well, actually just Yara.  And sure, she’s a remorseless killer, and we haven’t seen her or her father all year, and she’s closing the barn door after the cock has left the building, but darn it, I like her and anyone who can potentially do some damage to the Boltons is in my good books for the time being.  

 

 In local news: at the Dreadfort today, a 

human-shaped dick ate a dick-shaped sausage

And while I can’t say the Theon material was fully worth all the time spent on it throughout the year, I am glad to at least have a positive ID on his tormentor.  He is, as suspected, Bolton’s bastard, and his cheeky letter to go with the present for Balon was a new level of theatrical villainy for the show, not to mention how he ostentatiously chows down on a sausage in front of the newly-gelded Theon.  If we’re going to have him around awhile – and I assume we are, as apparently at some point in the third book, Martin did a survey of the terrain and decided “hmmm, what this story really need is less sympathetic heroes and more leering, elfin sadists” – it’s better to know a little about him, particularly since it’s not like his identity is significant enough to warrant building up any more “mystery” around.

So go Yara, and go Arya!  Also go Hodor!  Bran may still be trekking vaguely north as he was at the beginning of the year, but at least we got the best “Hodor!” of the series when he was playing in the well.  Maybe next year, once Bran starts mixing it up with the White Walkers or Mance (or at least meets up with his uncle Benjen), I’ll start looking forward to his bits the way I do the stuff in King’s Landing.

Which, surprise surprise, is where the best parts of the episodes are set once again.  Joffrey’s giddiness at the news of the Starks’ deaths and plan to serve Sansa her brother’s head at his wedding are horribly in character, and the entire Small Council gainsaying him to the extent that they dare was queasily funny.  Tyrion goes so far as to make an overt, albeit vague, threat, but it’s Tywin who of course scores the knockout blow.  “A king who has to say ‘I am the king!’ is no true king.”  Boss. And then Jack Gleeson’s petulant delivery of “I…am not…tired!” was one of his best, if broadest, acting moments.

But he can’t help but be outshined by the rest of the Lannisters.  Dance and Dinklage as always shine brightest bouncing off each other, where both characters can speak the most plainly.  Tywin’s declaration that he wanted to kill Tyrion as a child could be seen as a retread of their meeting in the premiere, and indeed the Imp jokingly said as much to Jon Snow way back in the second episode of the series, but it strikes me as a true character beat that hearing it from the old man’s mouth would draw blood all over again.  

But if anyone walked away with the acting award for tonight it’s Lena Heady, who is unfailingly great at making the prickly Cersei human, but has been increasingly marginalized over the course of the year.  Her reaction to Jaime’s return broke my heart a little, which it probably shouldn’t have, all things considered.  But her monologue about Joffrey as a cute little inbred baby (all sixth fingers and webbed toes) was her finest work in a long time.  

 

 Ahh, wookit da widdle shwithead...

Also knocking it out of the park was Liam Cunningham as Davos, who is increasingly the conscience of the show.  The framing of him as the angel on Stannis’s shoulder opposite Melisandre’s devil certainly suggest it, which of course is cemented by his freeing of Gendry simply because no one deserves to be sacrificed, no matter the potential gain.  And Stannis needs that conscience, as he is not the warmest of guys despite being cozy with a Fire God, and it looks like he is the realm’s best hope at turning back the White Walkers.  I’ve never been Team Stannis in that I think he’d make an atrocious king, but am I eager to see how he goes about bringing the fight to an army of dead men?  Fuck yeah, I am.  Almost as eager as I am to see how Jaime reacclimates to the capitol, and how Brienne reacts to finding out another of her sworn lords has been murdered, or what mischief Littlefinger gets up to in the Veil, or what happens when Joffrey finally decides to push back against his overbearing grandfather…

Is it next April yet?  Oh, god damn it.   I guess I know what I have to do to pass the time…

 

It's not easy, but if it were, everyone would do it

GAME OF THRONES 3.09 - "THE RAINS OF CASTAMERE"

Okay.  Okay.  Okay. 

Jesus, it’s not okay.  Nothing will ever be okay and no one will ever smile again.  God damn.

So, anyway, for the first time ever that I recall we have an entire episode with no time at all spent in King’s Landing, and it’s…oh, fucking hell…

 

 Come on man, you can do this

But so things are really moving in the Jon Snow storyline now, with his loyalties revealed and Gareth gutted and coming this close to reuniting with Bran.  Bran, who it turns out is not just a warg but some sort of wereHodor, and, andandand ohfuckme that was just, just brutal…

 

 Keep it together, man, keep it together

Ahem.  Arya also comes within a hair’s breadth of…of reuniting with her…ah Jesus, that poor girl…

The goddamn wolf too?  Ugh.

 

 Come on, Schwartz, you just gotta hack it

And, uh, Dany freed some more slaves!  That’s nice, right?  Sure, the parts of your brain that process positive feelings are currently offline, but slavery is bad, you definitely remember that being a thing.  So Dany making less slavery must be good. Well, she didn’t do it so much as sit back and let her trio of admirers do the actual work, but there was some…ah Christ…some pretty nifty action, even if it’s not on the level of Blackwater, or…or…

 

 Fuck it.  Fuck all of it.

Yeah, you know what, fuck it.  It was probably a waste to even spend the money to choreograph the action scene we got in Yunkai, because it could have depicted the conquest of the city on twice the scale of Blackwater and no one would remember this episode for anything but the sickeningly, viciously dark Red Wedding sequence.  

I’m a guy who appreciates darkness in my fiction, particularly in genre fare that constantly has to contend with the inherent goofiness of most sci-fi/fantasy worlds.  I also highly value (too highly, folks annoyed by my anti-spoiler pathologies might say) the ability of a work to genuinely surprise, to upend its status quo and commit to following through with serious repercussions to its world.  To that end, I also generally celebrate creators who are ruthless with their own creations, and are willing to hurt them or kill them off in unusual places or ways (and indeed, this has been a consistent source of my praise for the show in the past).  I’ve never understood fans who criticize folks like Joss Whedon or Ron Moore for raining misery upon their heroes at every turn.  Drama does not spring naturally from happy coincidences or stable relationships, and to some extent I wonder what the point of even creating fictional characters is if you are not going to push them to their absolute breaking points.

But this episode, man, was a rare case where the abuse of fictional characters felt tantamount to actual sadism.  It wasn’t shock or outrage, really; part of the reason I love being surprised by TV shows so much is that I spend so much time watching, reading about, talking about and otherwise analyzing shows that I can usually see at least the general shape of a season or episode from the early going.  Most of the people I talked to seemed convinced that Robb was going to meet a bad end soon (to the point where my pathological parts started to wonder if some of the ostensibly unspoiled ones didn’t know more than they were letting on), so it wasn’t like it caught me completely off guard.  I definitely knew that something bad was going to go down at that wedding, as Frey appeared way too eager to accept uncle Edmure as a consolation prize.  So I was sitting there on the couch, joking with my friend at the 32 minute mark that we had about 15 minutes left until something really, truly awful happened.

So I should have been ready for this, but holy sloppy shit, I was not.  I knew it was a trap, but had predicted that Talisa would get it before Robb (cue friend: “Well, technically…”), and figured that he might be captured or Catelyn killed, but I did not think the entire war for the North could come crashing down in one fell swoop like that.  I’m not sure what the primary conflict of the show will be now that the war is done.  I’d be more excited by that question if I wasn’t so emotionally drained right now.  Stannis doesn’t seem ready to mount a full comeback and the Greyjoys don’t seem like they’re up to the challenge of conquering more than a town or two. I doubt Blackfish could rally the whole of the North in his grand-nephew’s name, and Bran needs to complete his spirit quest beyond the Wall before he can muster any sort of resurgence. I guess Dany or Mance (or both) need to hurry along their plans in order to give things more of a focus now that there’s such a gaping hole in the center of the plot.

But man, those Starks.  When they lose, it is not in a squeaker.  No coach’s challenge necessary to review the call on the field for this one. They are decimated in truly, utterly horrendous fashion.  Even being sure that something bad was looming did not prepare me for just how many little twists of the knife they packed in to the massacre sequence. The talk about baby Ned, the lingering on Cat’s dawning realization when “The Rains Of Castamere” started playing, Bolton’s kiss off line, shooting the wolf, Arya being so close to reuniting with her family before it is snatched away from her forever…

In fact, things may have veered a little too close to repeating Ned’s demise beat for beat.  It’s episode 9, the head of the Stark family humbles himself before an adversary who repays it by murdering him in front of a loved one, Arya is right there before being dragged off by a hard-edged protector, even the smash cut to black on the snipping of the neck.  This was all very familiar, which made it even more maddening.

But the cruelest thing the episode does is something Game Of Thrones has proven particularly adept at; it offers a sliver of hope, an escape hatch that seems just plausible enough to fool you for a moment into thinking that it might be a viable way for the story to continue without the worst happening, right before it does.  I’m thinking of things big and small, like how Ned and Theon both had the possibility of joining the Watch dangled in front of them as a way of escaping execution, or Lord Mormont seemed like he might shrug off the backstab for a minute before realizing he was dead, or the alternative Robb’s advisors concocted for dealing with Lord Karstark that he declined to accept, or how it looked like Jaime might have saved Brienne from violation without paying a price, or even down to the moment where it looked like the price might be an eye, the loss of which a great swordsman could more easily recover from than a hand. 

Cat’s desperate play to stop the massacre was never going to work once you gave it the slightest bit of thought (Michelle Fairley acts the living shit out of it, though), but in the moment you so want to believe that she and her son could recover from their seemingly non-fatal wounds that you almost do, mere moments after you almost believed that Arya could release Robb’s wolf and that would make some sort of difference.  This sort of thing is the real strength of Martin’s writing, from what I can tell.  I’ve heard his prose style is not the most impressive, but he clearly puts thought into all the roads that could potentially be traveled, and doesn’t tip his hand by only bothering to examine the one that will be taken.  Which feeds into the two greatest strengths of the series; the way that there is no one protagonist that we are manipulated to sympathize with above all others, and the genuine unpredictability that comes along with that.

On the micro scale, this amounts to managing red herrings that keep us off balance from moment to moment.  In a larger sense, allowing each character the time and attention to weigh their long term options, regardless of which route they will take or even whether they will be around to take any of them, keeps us from intuiting who is going to be more important than who.  When a new character pops up a couple years in to the show’s run, we don’t know whether they will be dead by the end of the episode like the Titan’s Bastard, or stick around for a multi-year arc like Ygritte, because the show does not treat one as more immediately disposable than the other. 

A more “focused” show might not spend the time on scenes outlining Sallador Sahn’s plans for the queen, or Stannis’s intention to make the low-born Davos the Hand of the King, knowing that those plans will not come to fruition.  Such scenes are not strictly necessary to the plot, but including them makes it harder for us to dismiss Stannis’s chances, since we expect everything we are shown to matter.  Or to bring it back to this (miserable) episode, we have spent enough time on Robb’s grand plan to take Casterly Rock that it does make it subtly harder to accept that his rebellion could really end this ignobly. 

But Jesus, ignoble doesn’t even cover it, does it?  It would be one thing if any of the Starks had been allowed a slightly heroic death.  But it’s that they’ve all been so thoroughly defeated, and died with utter despair in their hearts, that pushes things into the sadistic territory.  I was genuinely left feeling like these characters’ creator somehow despised them.  And it’s a complete fucking bummer.  I genuinely did not sleep well after this episode. 

So, congratulations, Martin/Benioff/Weiss?  You shitheads.

Is it next week yet?  That’s…okay, actually.  I could use a little break right now.