BREAKING BAD 5.07 - "SAY MY NAME"

(This piece was originally published on Chud.com)

We open this week, not with a stylized tone poem, but with a BB mainstay:  some gangsters meet in the desert to talk business and why they should/shouldn’t murder Walter White.  The outcome of this meeting is not really in question; not only is it beginning of the episode, but we have half a season to go and Declan is too new to the scene to pose a serious threat to any of the regulars.  Which is not to say that 10 episodes from now he won’t have Jesse cooking meth at gunpoint, necessitating the intervention of Walt and a little friend.

At first I felt like we’re supposed to view this as a triumphant exercise of our hero’s power, exactly the kind of scene that those who were frustrated with Walter’s backsliding from the badass Heisenberg persona for the majority of seasons 3 and 4 wanted.  These are the people who hate Skyler for being a wet blanket that prevents Walt from pursuing his kingpin destiny.   The thing that many of the Skyler/Carmela/Rita Morgan haters don’t seem to understand is how boring the kingpin business would get without the tension between it and the more grounded, domestic side of the character.  Heisenberg is ascendant throughout the scene, dominating Declan at each turn and forcing him to kiss the ring before he’s actually delivered anything.  But was it as exciting as any one of the similar meetings with Gus, where Walt had to carefully, gingerly lay out the arguments for keeping him and his partner alive?

Not to me, but I also found it hard to enjoy the scene on a power trip level because I thought Walt did a terrible job of selling himself.  He pumps up himself and his partner and product, which is fine, but he also spends a ton of time running down this crime boss in front of his underlings, which one should always be careful about.  He calls him to a tee-ball team to his Yankees, then launches directly into a second, superfluous metaphor about how the blue meth is classic coke.  “Would you really want to live in a world without Coca-Cola?” is his counter to the obvious question of why this crew shouldn’t leave him in the desert to die.  Fuck Yes I do, if I produce and distribute of RC Cola.

But anyway, this works, as it must, even after Walt makes the pointlessly humiliating demand that Declan name him as the boogieman of the Southwest meth trade.  This is good for the rest of the season, as my primary concern about the season so far is that after the premiere there was no pressing need for the characters to make any of the decisions they’ve been making outside of their own greed and pride.  Now that they have a quota to meet again to avoid the ire of dangerous people, there will be more pressure on them to rob the next proverbial train immediately (whereas if they weren’t ready in “Dead Freight”, they could’ve waited for next week’s train just as easily).  I know to some extent the characters bringing all of these problems on themselves is the point, but those external threats crank up the intensity which was always the most impressive thing about the show to me.

Anyway,  the opening scene is a rare case where I thought to myself “it’s a good thing you’re the protagonist of this TV show, Walt, because a real gangster would feel obligated to react violently to being talked down to so openly in front of his underlings, even if the deal being offered was a great one.” But he is, so we’re off to the episode proper with Mike ready to retire, which seeing as this is a crime story, was the equivalent of putting a black hood on his head. I tried to convince myself that he would make it out of the hour briefly, but then his lawyer had to go ahead and joke about how he was going to need a second deposit box for his granddaughter (you FOOL!!  Don’t you know anything about dramatic irony???), I started saying my goodbyes.

But before we get to that, let’s do a drive-by on the other characters we check in with this week.
Our one scene with Saul (and the writers really need to check with the FDA if they think that meets a growing audience’s daily Saul requirements) is brief but typically delightful.  Calling the other attorney a “clown”, worming his way out of making the bag hand off himself, his drawer full of burners, and of course a quick shot of that majestic inflatable Lady Liberty on his roof.  I cherish our time together, counselor.

Potentially ominous foreshadowing:  when Hank is serving the search warrant on Mike is watching a scene in The Big Heat where characters muse about what happens when a cop shoots himself.  Later, when leaving the faux-distraught Walt in his office, he mimes shooting himself in the head.  Man, I hope I’m reading too much into this.

Todd has really made it now.  He may not be Antoine Lavoisier, but he does get to take part in a stylized meth cooking montage, complete with a time-lapse exterior capper.  Congratulations, guy, that means you have officially made it in Breaking Bad terms.  You can now look forward to short, miserable stint as Mr. White’s lab assistant, most likely followed up by a horrible death at his hands.  Mazel tov?

Walt and Jesse’s argument about the latter leaving the business felt a little rote, but no matter how many times we’ve seen a variation on it the actors are still tearing into the material like the pros they are, and I liked that Walt explicitly appealed to the pride of being the best at something (even if that thing is horrible).  It’s been implicit to his motivation for a long time, and Jesse’s, who Mr. White is correct in pointing out that he doesn’t have much else going on or licit skills to fall back on.  But it’s not clear whether it will be enough to keep him on board this time.  Because his brief, awkward interaction with Skyler at the car wash indicates a growing understanding that their situations are more similar than he would’ve thought.  I’m betting we’ll be seeing those two work together more before the end.  Whether it will be to clean up a mess Walt has made or actively plotting against him remains to be seen.  Maybe the former leading into the latter?

I also like that after all of the largely abstract talk about the kids safety for the last 6 episodes, Skyler quickly points out, with only the vaguest understanding of the context, that Walt’s deal with the Phoenix crew is bringing a real threat closer to their door.  This is another reason I think it might have been better to introduce them and the deal earlier, so that crucial point of contention between them would not have seemed so hypothetical while they were having those arguments.
So…the ending.

First off, beautiful.  Just a gorgeously shot sequence in a wonderful location.  This was Breaking Bad by way of Barry Lyndon, and I would’ve been impressed even if I watched it on mute.  Second, a lot of people seem to have a problem with Mike letting Walt do the handoff, but I’m fine with it.  I think the argument against having Saul do it holds water, and Mike doesn’t want to risk dragging Jesse down with him, but he doesn’t give a rat’s ass if Walt gets himself caught and probably doesn’t mind the last chance to give him a piece of his mind.

Walt doesn’t wear his Heisenberg hat when meeting and shooting Mike, which I think is an important touch.  Because while on one level, this is him getting rid of the biggest thorn in his side in a way that he could easily get away with, but it actually comes across as a crumbling of his badass kingpin persona.  In his meeting with Declan, he is calm, still, purposeful.  When he scurries off screen to grab the gun and shoot Mike, he looks petulant, and mortified after he pulls the trigger.  Heisenberg would never apologize to the man he just shot, but it was actually Walter who pulled the trigger. Because Walter doesn’t like to be compared to Gus Fring, and he really, really hates being told to know his place.  This made me rethink the opening a bit, because if that is supposed to be Heisenberg at his most overweening, and the threads on the porkpie hat are going to be rapidly unraveling, it plays differently.  I still think it cuts off Declan’s credibility as a character at the knees, but at least the stupid aspects of Walt’s speech are knowingly unnecessary.

“I just realized Lydia has the names, I can get them from her.”  What a macabre punchline to the biggest character death the show has done so far (Gus was huge, but he was also squarely an antagonist in a way that rendered his death further within the bounds of convention).  What a strange show whose major character deaths even have punchlines.

RIP, Mike The Cleaner.  I have a feeling things will only get messier without you around. Particularly for your 9 guys and their families.

Estimated Profits: + $62000

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

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.

Sequences To Make Hitchcock Proud – Walt meets Mike to hand off the bag and demand 9 names, with everything cranked up a notch by the pointed shot of the revolver in the bag that preceded it.

Heisenberg Certainty Principle – “You’re goddamn right I am.”

Best Lie – Hank promises his boss that he will not have Mike tailed anymore, but says nothing about tailing his lawyer.

Official Walter Jr. Breakfast Count: 15.  The kid has been absent from several episodes now, to no one I have encountered’s consternation.  People may loathe Skyler, but no one even cares about Flynn.

We Are Done, Professionally –  Mike officially retires, even dumping an arsenal that would make Nico Bellic jealous down a well.  Jesse tries to follow him, but we didn’t really think that would happen, did we?
It’s The Little Things – Cufflink Cam!  The giant goofy smile on Gomey’s face when he busts the lawyer.  The smash cut from Skyler walking away from the dinner table to Walt giving an even more historionic performance than before in Hank’s office.  “If you want me to read that, I’m going to need my glasses” – Mike could out-deadpan a slab of frozen beef.

BREAKING BAD 5.06 - "BUY OUT"

(This piece originally ran on Chud.com)


Our cold open this week is a spin on the “body disposal” sequence we’ve seen in many a crime movie/show over the years, including this one.  But rather than a graphic dismembering of the kid’s body, we get a somber, methodical dismantling of his dirtbike.

I’m not sure why exactly the went this unusual route, other than to give it some sort of new twist, but I imagine that part of it was knowing that they couldn’t craft anything as visceral as the gross-out bathtub scene from episodes 2/3 of the first season or the murder and disposal of Victor in “Box Cutter”.  It’s all for the best though, as it’s a beautifully shot, wonderfully moody scene, and while it would undoubtedly have been upsetting to see them handling the body of a dead child, just the sight of Walter setting out a barrel to receive his earthly remains was incredibly chilling, without showing anything that might draw the ire of the censors.  My only small complaint is that I’d rather have had it cut out right there, instead of tacking on the short bit of Jesse decking Todd for trying to be nonchalant about the whole thing.  I like when the cold opens are little conceptual pieces unto themselves, and that part felt  like it could’ve kicked things off after the opening titles.

Todd actually appears very little after the conclusion of last week’s episode seemed to thrust him directly to the center of the story.  But his dialogue is unwittingly pointed as he echoes justifications we’ve heard our guys use on their previous murders.  “It was him or us, and I chose us” was exactly what Walt said about Gale, and of course it was only 2 weeks ago where Skyler was yelling at Walt that murder is not something you shrug off as “shit happens.”  The guys do decide to keep Todd around, just for the sake of keeping a close eye on him, but then the whole operation promptly unravels in a way that makes it sort of moot.

I noticed a lot of people on the boards seem to be jumping to the conclusion that Todd is actually a complete psychopath who got off on killing the kid and kept the tarantula as a sort of trophy.  While we haven’t gotten much of a look at his interior life, I think that judgment is way off.  Because ultimately, this show is not about Todd.  It’s about Walt and Jesse, and having his act be a fundamentally pragmatic one reflects more strongly on them and their chosen business.  I look at the show, for all the depravity it depicts, as  strongly moralistic overall, and I don’t think its been coy about negatively judging Walt’s actions for quite some time.  I expect that to come into even sharper focus as things approach their end, and to have our guys suddenly playing off a serial killer obfuscates their moral culpability and removes some of the onus from them.  If the guys’ mistake was to bring Jeffrey Dahmer on an Ocean’s 11-style heist, isn’t that a rather weak-ass statement on their overall choices compared to saying they created a situation where an impressionable but sane individual would contemplate the viability of murdering a child?

The episode jumps around quite a bit, so much that I’m not sure how I would grade it, if these were that sort of reviews.  This was especially surprising to me as I thought the ending of the last episode was going to crystallize the overall seasonal arc.  But while it did lead in a way to the band breaking up, the whole process was relatively cordial and professional, even when Mike was cuffing Walt to a radiator.  The new head of the Phoenix organization could potentially be the sort of threat that Walt could address with an M-60, but for now all he’s trying to do is pay our guys $15 million.

While the episode jumps around a lot, it’s from strong scene to strong scene, so I liked it a whole lot despite feeling very much like a middle chapter rather than a self-contained story.  We got a little of Skyler and Marie, in a sad but darkly funny exchange that started with Marie obliviously explaining how frazzled taking care of a teenager can make you, followed by the long-delayed reunion between Jesse and Skyler, who I believe have not shared a scene since the second episode of the series.  The reunion is not so much joyous as excruciatingly awkward, with Skyler doing her best Lucille Bluth impression while she pounds wine and flaunts her lack of domestic effort.  It’s great stuff, wrapped around some classic Cranston-monologuing about his history with Grey Matter and how he has nothing left but regrets and vague imperial ambitions for his meth operation.

All of which vocalizes what has been clear for a long time now, which is that Walt is not concerned at all with providing for his family anymore.  Jesse even points out that the current offer on the table, which would allow for Walt to retire and safely bring his children home, is for over 7 times the amount he calculated he “needed” to leave for them before he quit.  But Walt views the $5 million as nothing, as “selling out” (though Jesse notes that protecting the integrity of a meth operation is an inherently silly conceit), because he’s still filled with bitterness over how he gave up on the company he started as a young man.  Those regrets are understandable at their core, but he takes them to ludicrous, delusional levels when he tells Jesse that he’s not in the meth business (which is a lie), or the money business (also known as just “business”), but the empire business (not an actual thing).

Ultimately, Jesse is so frustrated by Walt’s megalomania, and disturbed (in a goofily on-the-nose bit) by his nonchalant whistling while he works ten seconds after lamenting the death of the Sharp boy, that he decides to pull the ripcord even without his partner-in-crime/surrogate father.  This is an encouraging sign, as Jesse has spent the season so far on the sidelines, caught between two increasingly different father figures.  While the show has repeatedly reminded us that for all his kingpin swagger, Walt has failed to put away any meaningful cash reserves for his family, we have seen Mike repeatedly insist on providing for “his guys” in their time of need, to the point that he will hold his nose and partner up with a man he loathes to make sure they get what he has promised them.  Yes, there is a strong element of self-preservation to that decision, but he is eventually willing to pay them all off out of his share of the methylamine profits, and even when angered, he doesn’t present it as a pragmatic necessity, but simply states that “this is what you do.”  A man looks out for his own, rewards loyalty in kind, or at the very least, pays his debts.

Hopefully that’s the sort of man Jesse becomes, anyway, as it will be quietly devastating if after they’re gone we see that he has taken more after Mr. White’s psychological diet of preening and bullshit rationalizations than Mike’s quiet competence and steadfast providing for those in his familial or professional care.  He looked like he was stepping in that direction for most of the episode, but at the end he seems to have backslid to the point that he convinces Mike to once again refrain from firing the gun he’s holding to Walt’s head and listen to his pitch,  even though a few minutes earlier he was saying with complete accuracy and conviction that “the last thing I need to do is listen to you.”

We also get a little bit of Hank and a bit of Saul doing his typical, always fun, sleaze routine to round things out.  I hope Saul and his horrendously clashing salmon-shirt, green-tie, sky-blue Wayfarer ribbon (still rocking it!) ensembles are more involved in the future, as he provides a flavor that none of the other combinations of characters can duplicate.   And I’m optimistic that as Hank and the DEA clamp down harder on Mike, we’ll get just that.  This half-season may be a bit structurally awkward for the show, but I fully expect some fireworks in the last two episodes to leave us breathlessly awaiting the final stretch in 2013.

Estimated Profits: +$62000

Murders – Emilio, Krazy 8, Jane, two of Gus’s dealers,  Gale, Gus, Tyrus, Hector “Tio” Salamanca, two other Fring goons, 14 year-old arachnophile Drew Sharp

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.

Best Lie – Walt assures Jesse that in a year, year and a half, when they’re done cooking, there will be plenty of time for soul searching.  Of course, only one of them is likely to live longer than that under the best of circumstances.

The Erlenmeyer Flask Is Mightier – Walt Macguyver’s an ersatz soddering iron out of an extension cord…

Heisenberg Certainty Principle – …so he can blowtorch his own arm halfway off and free himself from the radiator.  Watching his skin turn black was stomach-turning.

Official Walter Jr. Breakfast Count: 15

We Are Done, Professionally –  The whole episode is built around Mike and Jesse attempting to untangle themselves from the Heisenpire.  Of course by the end Mike is holding a gun to Walt’s head, but no one really believes that he’ll use it and apparently we’re going to have another complicated scheme for them to work together on.

It’s The Little Things –  Skyler’s expression when Marie asks how great she must feel after “coming clean” about Ted.  “These are very green beans, Mrs. White.”  I’m pretty sure they gave Aaron Paul a chair with a lowered seat for that dinner scene so that he would look more childlike sitting between between the two big parental figures in the foreground (and yammering on about how the image the packaging on his frozen dinners masks a less appetizing truth, while the couple stares stonily across the table at each other) .  Walt carefully removing the watch he received from Jesse before roasting his wrist with the wires.  The brief, completely dead-eyed glance Mike gives Saul after he describes him as a senior citizen.  “I have never seen someone work so hard to not get 5 million dollars.”

BREAKING BAD 5.05 - "DEAD FREIGHT"

This week’s cold open is short and simple, as we are introduced to a kid taking the dirt bike out tarantula hunting, which is one of those activities that sounds absolutely filthy until you realize it’s literal.  This would be obtuse or confusing on another show, but I’ve been conditioned at this point to expect that all of BB’s seemingly arbitrary openings to pay off in a satisfying way (well, minus that one where the big reveal was that Hank threw Tuco’s grill away).  And since I had been “spoiled” to the extent that the episode would involve a train heist, I was fairly certain as to the context in which the kid would reappear, if not the outcome when he did.

The show proper begins with a miniature heist before we get to the big one, as Walt manipulates his way into Hank’s office to plant bugs.  Oh, and I totally forgot to mention last week that Hank was promoted to a desk job as Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the ABQ office.  On a plot level, this gives them a little more justification to keep him from being hot on the Heisenberg trail, something the show constantly struggles to do (so as not to shatter the basic set up) without making him just come off as dense.  But it also sets Hank up as another potential contrast for Walt’s new role as the boss, in addition to Mike and the ghost of Gustavo Fring.  I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that in the coming weeks, we’ll see Hank’s managerial technique, while imperfect, demonstrated to be superior to Walt’s.

This is all to set up the moody, noir-ish sequence where the gang kidnaps Lydia and forces her to call Hank at gunpoint.  Or pistol point, as Mike fastidiously corrects, noting that he is “expecting precision here.”  This is the Mike I like best; cold, methodical, dryly funny and implacable without being an invincible paramilitary force unto himself.  It might have more impact if Lydia were a better defined or more sympathetic character, as Laura Fraser’s jittery performance has not done a lot to make us concerned for her fate.  Plus, she explains the concept of Dark Territory to Jesse with nary a mention of Steven Seagal or Eric Bogasian, which…come on, lady.  Anyway, the upshot of all of it is that the guys decide to rob a train, “like Jesse James,” the second time this year the outlaw has been name-dropped, and Walt clearly fancies himself an legend of that variety.

But two things to keep in mind about Jesse James.  One, as much as he may have stolen from the rich and given to the poor (probably none), he also killed people who got in his way or witnessed his crimes.  That obviously came into play sooner rather than later.  But the other thing is that James was shot in the back by a young member of his gang who had previously idolized him (superbly dramatized in 2007’s forgotten masterpiece, which opens with a stunningly gorgeous train robbery sequence of its own).  If the name is mentioned one more time I’m officially putting my bottom dollar on Jesse being the one to pull the trigger on Walt in the end.

The heist itself is simple but clever enough to work, and makes for a fun, exciting sequence.  My one quibble on the practical side of things is why they didn’t have the hoses and compressor set up and just covered in dirt or something before the train arrived, but that’s a minor point.  There’s also Walter’s refusal to pull the guys off early (what is 900 gallons of methylamine really going to do for them that 750 won’t?), but I think that could be justified by needing to make sure the right amount of water gets in so that the scales don’t tip off the chemical company.  He doesn’t say anything about that to Mike though.  So I look at it as an extension of the subtext I’ve been reading all season, that Walt feels insufficiently challenged by the simple process of cooking meth in the post-Gus era, which leads him to antagonize people like Mike and Skyler more overtly, or to manipulate Jesse into breaking up with Andrea as much to see if he can as  because she represents a serious threat to his freedom.  This is just one more example of his pushing things further than necessary to provide himself extra excitement.

Then the kid shows up, and Todd does something great and terrible.  Terrible because, well, he murders a child.  Great because it turns what had been a high-spirited romp of a heist (though I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be getting another of those so soon after the premiere) into something with lasting weight and consequence, and managed to be shocking even though I thought we were heading there from the cold open.  Most importantly, it creates some conflicts for our main characters that have to be addressed immediately, and not just because Walt is bored or doesn’t feel like cooking less or slower.  Jesse doesn’t take kindly to hurting kids, nor, one surmises, does Mike, who is not a fan of Walter to begin with.  We knew this combination was unstable, but the reactions have begun and I can’t wait to see how they play out.

For the next three weeks anyway.  Then…arrgh.

Estimated Profits: +$72000 – at least $10000 in prep costs and compensation for the train job = $~$62000

Murders – Emilio, Krazy 8, Jane, two of Gus’s dealers,  Gale, Gus, Tyrus, Hector “Tio” Salamanca, two other Fring goons, a poor kid who went tarantula hunting in the wrong stretch of desert (the felony murder rules of New Mexico and Arizona would hold Walt and Jesse liable for first degree murder, although only Todd could get the death penalty)

Lesser Included Offenses - Grand theft, kidnapping, assault

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.  A young arachnophile is murdered to cover up the train job.

Sequences To Make Hitchcock Proud – The whole heist sequence is terrific, all leading up to that gutpunch at the end.  I expected it after the cold open, but my stomach just dropped out when the kid comes into focus.

Heisenberg Certainty Principle – “Out burying bodies?”  “Robbing a train.”

Best Lie – Walt turning on the waterworks to drive Hank out of his office so he can plant the bugs again contains just enough truth to sell the deeper lie, and also really underscores just how good he’s gotten at deception in the past year.  I also let out an extremely childish giggle at the way it briefly looked like Hank caught him wanking as he hunched over and fiddled with the picture in his lap.

The Erlenmeyer Flask Is Mightier – Walt schools Todd on the relative density of aqueous methylamine and how much they can dilute it without arousing much suspicion.

Official Walter Jr. Breakfast Count: 15

We Are Done, Professionally – The guys are right on the verge of the murdering Lydia throughout the first 20 minutes, but decide to give her a pass even though she put out “a hit…like the mafia” on Mike.  It’s hard to imagine Walt, Mike, Jesse, and Todd all still working together next week

It’s The Little Things –  The way Lydia hisses “ASSHOLE” at Mike when the wiretap clears her of the GPS thing.  Mike telling Jesse “everyone is Meryl Streep with a gun to their head” in front of the last guy to hoodwink him at gunpoint.  The way the argument in Jesse’s house frames him as increasingly hemmed in by the bickering father figures on each side.  The shot of Heisenberg looking over the train tracks, complete with the proverbial black hat of a western villain.  The waves.

BREAKING BAD 5.04 - "51'

(This piece originally ran on Chud.com)

Adios, Pontiac Aztek.  You were one of television’s great punching bags for the last few years, and you will be missed.  I have to imagine your new owner will treat you kinder than the last one, though.  I’m even starting to suspect he may have been harboring some passive-aggression toward what you represented about the identity he presented to the world and the one that he embraces privately, and this may have led him to treat you more roughly than you deserved.

That guy is having a harder and harder time maintaining the facade identity, not because of any particular demand of the alter ego (which is still facing the occasional speed bump, but no threats of the existential variety), but because he has just lost the taste for it.  His decision to dump the Aztek and buy (sorry, lease) two muscle cars is prompted by the mechanic mentioning that he could put another 200,000 miles on it, leading him to the the obvious conclusion that even if the wagon did, he doesn’t have that many miles left in him.  And he doesn’t want to spend them pretending to be an ineffectual drip when he is clearly the baddest, smartest, swingingest dick west of the Rockies.  He’s even wearing the hat, the lynchpin of his Heisenberg “costume”, in front of Junior.  If he’s careless enough to also put it on in front of Hank, will it spark him to remember the description of Heisenberg as wearing a goatee and porkpie?

A question for another day, as Hank may think Walt’s spending is reckless, but he is distracted at the moment by even more erratic behavior on Skyler’s part. Her unsettling dip in the middle of Walt’s birthday dinner was also the cinematic highlight of director Rian Johnson’s return to the show after season 3’s “Fly”.  You don’t see a lot of feature film directors guest-shoot on TV, as series have a locked-in look and style that is going to constrain even the most visionary of auteurs.  Breaking Bad, though, has always had a lot of flair in its style, allowing for a good deal more technical flourishes than most shows, and also enough cultural/critical cache to attract a “name” like Johnson.  Incidentally, if you haven’t seen his Brick, it’s simply incredible, Brothers Bloom is a fun romp, and you should definitely see his upcoming Looper in theaters.  He’s one of the most interesting young directors working and those guys need all the support we can muster.

Anyway, we’re halfway through this sorta-season, and it is looking increasingly unlikely that we’ll be catching up to the flash forward opening before 2013 and the final batch of episodes.   I wasn’t really expecting us to, as Walt’s bearing suggested that even if things go off without a hitch, it’s not the sort of plan that would support 8 episodes worth of story in its aftermath.  But we’re still only halfway from pilot to the diner in story time, and the new big threat to the Heisenpire still has not begun to coalesce.

Well, the type of threat that requires an M-60 to address, anyway, because at the moment, Skyler is shaping up to be Heisenberg’s primary antagonist.  She doesn’t have much of a plan as yet, but I very much doubt that getting the kids out of the house and waiting out the clock is going to work well enough to remain her permanent plan of (in)action.  Walt seems to relish his chance to square off with her, flaunting his superior experience at spinning elaborate lies and rhetorically countering all of her moves as quickly as she can spitball them.  The man’s need to assert himself has so far outpaced all the concern for his family that was his ostensible motivation for starting down this path that if he’s not being sufficiently challenged by the criminals in his life, he’ll threaten to have his wife committed, gladly using the potential trauma to his kids to get one over on her.

The whole scene is as jaw-dropping and ugly as anything the show has produced, and makes this the strongest episode of the year so far.  It’s also a powerhouse for both actors, Gunn in particular. Reminding Walt that he was the one who explained to her that he was the danger, violently rejecting his attempts to make excuses for her role in things, and crowning things off with the devastating declaration that she is just counting the days until he croaks; if she produces another, better Emmy submission episode than this for the final season, she’ll be a mortal lock to win.

It also sets up a fascinating contrast between how the ticking clock affects both characters.  While his imminent demise is spurring Walt to act out in more and more reckless fashion, the same knowledge paralyzes Skyler with the thought that if she simply eschews any of the terrible options laid out in front of her, the Walt problem will eventually take care of itself.

This is not a show where problems take care of themselves, though.  And it is a show where taking control of your fate and becoming more assertive (despite being the requisite growth that 99% of fictional characters “need” to complete in their own dramas) can be a very, very negative thing.  Walt may be happier with his current persona than the milquetoast he was in the pilot, but there’s about 200 people listed in the sections below who would be much better off if he had remained a passive doormat until the cancer ate him away.  I’m almost as afraid of what Skyler will do when her hand is forced as I am to see what Walt does with the gun.

Estimated Profits: + $97000 – ~$25000 (new car leases) = +$72000

Murders – Emilio, Krazy 8, Jane, two of Gus’s dealers, Gale, Gus, Tyrus, Hector “Tio” Salamanca, two other Fring goons

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.

Official Walter Jr. Breakfast Count: 15

We Are Done, Professionally – Mike is already trying to go back on his decision not to murder Lydia two episodes ago.  It appears that Walt came up with some idea for dealing with her that won’t cut off their methylamine supply, but we won’t see how that plays out til next week.

It’s The Little Things –  All of the big and small indicators that the current status quo cannot hold; Lydia’s mismatched shoes, the unraveling thread on the porkpie, the ticking clock on the watch (recalling the time bomb Mike characterized Walt as), the blood from the head shaving, the way the White house seems to get darker and darker in each successive scene.   The look on Hank’s face in the background when Marie wonders “You don’t hand-mash?”  The way the pool is lit up to look like a batch of the blue meth that Skyler is literally drowning in.  How Walt’s entry to the pool is obscured by her billowing dress, so his grabbing her is like the sudden appearance of a movie monster.