This post is a day later coming than the prior seven, and while you
might assume that the holiday has something to do with that, the truth
of the matter is that the mid-season finale left me supremely
conflicted. I’ve spent the last two days wrestling with this question,
and still remain undecided: would a nice wet plop over the executive
producer credit have been a perfectly hilarious capper, or the stupidest
fucking thing anyone could ever have done, anywhere ever? Leave a
comment below or a post in the message board thread to weigh in.
Our cold open this week focuses on the clean up from Mike’s murder,
and despite actually seeing it happen last week, it was somehow more
upsetting for me to see the barrel for the old man’s body be laid out.
I don’t know why, as I’m not usually sentimental about mortal remains
and have no opinion as to whether my own are buried or burned or
reanimated with voodoo to help Andrew McCarthy’s grandson find buried
treasure. It not just me who seemed more taken aback by the aftermath
than the actual event (like most fans, I had Mike at the top of the dead
pool), though. Walt looks drained of the exhilaration he felt after he
“won” with Gus, and even exhibits what seems to be actual regret.
Which fits with my reading that Walt has been disappointed not to have a
Fring to scheme against this year, and found that as much as he tried
to push Mike into that antagonistic role, it just wasn’t the same this
time around. Like that other great tragic hero of our age, Charlie
Sheen, he’s found that winning all the time is a good way to find
yourself fucking up good things just because you want to see what
happens.
Speaking of things being too easy to maintain Walt’s interest, the
mass murder of the 10 guys goes off without a hitch. Walt throwing in
with neo-nazis to pull it off is, if not a new low per se, certainly a
new type of low for the character. But, after spending about 3
minutes extracting the names from Lydia (who drops a new, ready-to-roll
international distribution system in his lap while she’s at it, yawn),
planning the deed itself can barely hold his attention. He seems to
put on the figurative Heisenberg hat only briefly at the motel, almost
as an afterthought. The show is obviously operating in a completely
different gear these days when you look at how disposing of two bodies
was a two episode ordeal back in season one and now a complex web of ten
assassinations across three prisons within a two minute window is
planned in one scene and carried out in one (stunningly executed,
exceedingly brutal) montage.
All of this is leading to Walt’s momentous but again surprisingly
easy-to-accomplish decision to quit the business in the last third of
the episode. This fits with the decompression of the show that has been
my biggest reservation about this season. With no dire need for the
money or outside influence enforcing a cooking quota, the gang’s
adventures have been interesting and darkly funny as per usual, but
really, if they needed to spend 3 months planning the train heist, there
was nothing stopping them from doing so. Along with no longer needing
to hide anything from Skyler, who was at least technically exhibiting
all the symptoms of rigor mortis for the last 5 episodes, this led to a
noticeable downshift in intensity for a show that had always
distinguished itself as having the tightest screws on television. Along
with the sidelining of important characters like Saul, and especially
Jesse, these are the reasons why despite some great stuff in these last
couple, this 8 episodes has been the weakest stretch of the series in my
opinion. Not actually weak, mind you, just not quite strong enough to
edge out Game Of Thrones as the best thing on TV this year.
But let’s get back to the good stuff. The most interesting thing
about this episode is how it is almost structured as a mock-series
finale, in some alternate universe where the show could end with Walt
retiring voluntarily and dying in peace. There are callbacks galore,
and in fact, let’s just stop and list some of them: Walt fixates on a
fly again, as well as a familiar painting and a paper towel dispenser
he’d previously accosted, he and Jesse reminiscence about their RV, the
most extensive meth-cooking montage since “Four Days Out” and all the
familiar imagery that comes with that, shots of Walt in the shower and
laid out on a medical slab coming out of the EKG or whatever machine
that are almost exact recreations of things we’ve seen before, mention
of Horace Shapiro, Junkyard Attorney getting rid of another
incriminating car, multiple time-lapse shots of suns rising/setting, a
signature ricin pump-fake (a move that has come to occupy the same space
in BB’s arsenal as the skyhook did in Kareem’s), and of course, Leaves of Grass. We’ll get back to Leave Of Grass.
For an episode that spans a larger amount of time than most entire
seasons and features the biggest power play by our hero yet, this was
surprisingly quiet and almost contemplative. As I mentioned before, the
mass murder plays out almost as an afterthought to getting rid of Mike,
and Walt is not racked with nerves before or flush with triumph
afterward. He plans and pulls off this operation that the nazi notes is
more complicated than offing Bin Laden, mid-episode, and then
essentially plays out his ride into the sunset, reuniting his family,
making things “right” with Jesse, and extract himself from a massive
international criminal operation with tens of millions of dollars and
seemingly not a peep from his co-conspirators. Okay, it seems like his
cancer is out of remission, as it must be eventually, but for the most
part it’s all coming up Millhouse for Mr. White. He’s even enjoying a
quiet dinner around the pool with the entire family again, a prospect
which seemed completely out of the question just a few episodes ago.
And then Hank takes a dump.
I love this so much. And not just because watching bald middle-aged
men quietly excrete is sort of my “thing”. I just find it soothing in a
completely non-sexual way, and Dr. Schleisser says that as long as they
know they’re being filmed no one is getting hurt, so maybe you’re the
one who is perverted for thinking it was something dirty, huh Mr.
Judgmental? But I digress. A lot of people, including myself at some points,
speculated that (toilet setting aside) this would be exactly how we
would enter the mid-season break, but that doesn’t make me any less
delighted that they went there with time to actually explore how this
changes the basic fabric of the series, and that the thread that
unravels the biggest secret on the show goes back to dear, departed Gale
Boeticher’s guilelessness.
How will Hank react? Will he begin his own covert investigation to
confirm his suspicions? Will he confide what he knows to Marie, or
Gomez? Or will he confront Walt more or less immediately?
I’m preparing myself for the first option, as it would maintain
something closer to the show’s prior status quo, albeit with Hank now
hiding a secret from Walter in their interactions. But I’m hoping he
comes directly to Walt, as I could see him spinning a lie that he cooked
one or two batches to try to leave his family some cash, and then paint
Fring and Mike as the big villains that forced him to keep up the
production with threats to his family. It could be just plausible
enough to make Hank not want to torpedo his career by turning him in,
which could lead to his reluctantly helping Walt when the
Phoenix/neo-nazi/Madrigal folks come looking to pull him back into the
trade. That would be an entirely new dynamic, and one I would love to
see. And that might be the most impressive feat of these 8 episodes; as
much as I found the individual entries less compelling than their
predecessors, I never got any less eager to see what comes next.
It’s going to be a long year before we fade back in on Hank sitting
on the toilet, that’s for sure. I don’t have a real clear impression
of how many people actually read these things; I have gotten a handful
of comments that have been uniformly positive, which is gratifying for
sure. Anyhow, I hope
everyone comes back for season 6B, and if not, thanks for reading, hope to see you next year, and may you maintain at least a 96% purity in all of your endeavors.
Estimated Profits: + $62000 + multiple millions from
all the deals in the montage. It looks like Walt has finally got
himself securely in the black from all the blue he’s dealing. And he
only had to murder 22 people and indirectly kill about 200 others to do
it!
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 – “It can be done exactly how I want it. The only question is, are you the man to do it?”
Best Lie – “I used to love camping.” I don’t know
why, but I just feel like Walt has never been an outdoorsman, and this
is just the first thing that came to him to fill the silence.
Official Walter Jr. Breakfast Count: 15. The kid
has been absent from several episodes now, to no one I know’s
consternation. People may loathe Skyler, but no one even cares about
Flynn.
We Are Done, Professionally – Jesse actually stays
out, even after getting a nostalgic visit from Mr. White. Good for you,
Jesse. You are going to suffer so damn much in the final 8 episodes,
but still.
It’s The Little Things – Son of Fly! Lydia getting
hung up on Walt ordering coffee to make their meet “play better”.
Todd’s quick “Okay!” when Walt says he doesn’t want to talk about Mike’s
body. How the bag Todd drops on the scale at the beginning of the meth
montage tumbles off (suggesting just a little bit of ineptitude that
might try Walt’s patience working with Not-Jesse but not overplaying
it). Skyler mentioning that her laundering operation has essentially
been reduced to spraying a giant pile of bills for silverfish. The way I
can’t shake the feeling that Walt was disappointed not to be able to
poison Lydia, not because she is an unacceptable loose end, but because
he’s thinking “Jesus, I’m never going to get rid of this stuff!”
Random Retrospective Thoughts On Season 5A: I never
came around on Lydia, so having her be such a big supporting character
does not sit great with me, particularly when it comes at such a steep
cost to Saul’s screentime. Jesse and Skyler (outside of her showcase
episode) were also really marginalized compared to prior years, although
I suppose I appreciate the attempts to make Jesse feel important to the
proceedings by having him come up with the ideas for the two big
heists. This tips things in favor of Mike, who needed the added
characterization as his story wound to a close, and Walt, who is as
focal here as he has been since the first season.
This makes a similar sort of sense, as the show is his story and it
is also winding down, and because the issues he’s facing here are not
quite as accessible or primally motivating as finding out you have a
terminal disease or feeling poor and powerless. Not to go on an
economic tangent here, but most of us feel so far from the top right now
that we probably need to be walked through getting there and not
feeling particularly interested being there anymore in order to
understand it. But still, to have the character retake the spotlight at
a point in his journey where I find him the least interesting and
sympathetic does not make for the most gripping of episodes. Really,
what this underscores for me is what a brilliant move that opening
flash-forward was, as without it I think I would’ve been much more
critical of the show feeling aimless in this stretch, idling around with
Walt in triumph, with less to hide and fear than ever before while
other established characters languish on the sidelines. But with that
destination in sight, the sight of Heisenberg ascendant takes on a
different, more purposeful flavor. What might have seemed like
pandering to the crowd that wanted Walt to be Scarface from season 1,
episode 2 is instead recognizable as sowing the seeds for what looks to
be a long, ugly fall.
