BREAKING BAD 5.14 - "OZYMANDIAS"

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away

- “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Ozymandias” is a poem about the ashes of an empire, washed away by the inexorable, indifferent passage of time.  The Heisenpire did not need the march of ages to lay it low, but once ASAC Schrader takes a bullet to the head and the Nazis are digging up Walt’s barrels of cash, we do see the half sunk, shattered visage of its former king lying in the sand, stripped of the sneer of cold command he wore for much of the final season.  “That colossal wreck” hardly does justice to the ruin Walt leaves behind as he heads for New Hampshire.

But before we get there, we revisit better (it’s a relative term) days.  On their very first cook, Walt tells Jesse that “the reaction has begun.” This reaction, he explains, is exothermic, which means it gives off heat to the surrounding area (see: Collateral Damage section below).  And we’ve seen it play out across the streets and skies of Albuquerque until it circles back to Tohajiilee and the one-sided gunfight that closed last week’s episode.

There were a lot of theories going around the last week as to how the various players (except Gomez, nobody even entertained the possibility he might live) could walk away from this.  These theories mostly seemed to arise from the sensible observation that shows don’t leave major characters in jeopardy at the end of an episode just to kill them in the opening of the next.  That’s just not how TV works.  Except this time it did.  Gomez is already dead when the vehicles fade in after the credits.  Hank is killed after one more excruciating bout of Walt wheedling that he defiantly refuses to participate in.  Then, as if it needed underlining just how completely Walt’s best laid schemes have crumbled, he has to watch the Nazis dumping the body of the family he couldn’t protect into the hole from which they just seized his precious money, the only benefit this soul-destroying road has produced for anyone.  For some reason that bit gave me a sharper pang than the gunshot.  “Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.”  Well, we certainly have the despair part of the equation covered by the end of Act One.

Though I suppose Marie’s collection of unopened Schraderbrau is now a collector’s item

 Even Jesse’s seeming escape is revoked before the sequence ends, in a twist of the knife that feels about half a step removed from the remote control scene in Funny Games.  And then Walt sets about revoking the sympathy that offering up his money in a hopeless attempt to bargain for Hank’s life might’ve bought back from me by first exposing Jesse and insisting that the Nazi’s make good on the deal to kill him, then also signing off on Todd torturing him (in exceedingly polite fashion, no doubt) beforehand, then also revealing the truth about Jane’s death purely for spite.  The last time that shoe looked like it was going to drop, it was back in “Fly”, Rian Johnson’s (Brick, Looper) first time guest-directing for BB. I doubt that was as much of a factor as basic scheduling concerns in deciding which of these episode he’d do, but a neat bit of symmetry nonetheless.

Jesse ends up not only brutalized physically and mentally, but enslaved to cook meth for the Nazis.  Many of us were expecting this, as the machine gun and ricin have to be for something, and not centering the finale around the most developed relationship on the show would be ludicrous.  But seeing his shattered face, chained to a dog run, with the chilling photo of Brock and Andrea to keep him in line…that hurt, especially on the heels of the vicious scenes in the desert.

Gus’s tactics are starting to look cuddly in hindsight

So let’s count the Emmys that got locked up here, shall we?  The only reason I don’t think this will be Dean Norris’s submission episode is that he has a handful of other to pick from where he has more than one scene.  I’d still hazard a guess that he takes home Supporting Actor at the end of the day, though Paul has 2 more episodes to wrestle it back. This has to be Cranston’s submission as well, as he has multiple powerhouse sequences where he takes us through a wild spectrum of emotions with expert precision.  Forget the desert, where he goes from desperation to despair to coldly vengeful to hollowed, and even forget the confrontation where he ends up knife-fighting his family in the living room (and it’s not even Thanksgiving!) before leaving them for good, he would have it sewed up just for the phone call where he channels every idiot who ever liked the Skyler White Is A **** facebook page.  A performance that only gradually reveals, through expression and brief, loaded moments where he gathers himself up to press on, that whatever real anger and resentment he is venting, the primary purpose is to reiterate for the eavesdropping authorities that he had threatened Skyler to keep quiet about his criminal empire, and that by the way I built that up all by myself, me and only me, me, me.  Breaking Bad has never been a show with heavy meta elements, but this worked entirely in context while also slyly demonstrating that the narrative that Skyler has been nothing but a “stupid bitch” who held Walt back is a false one.

Speaking of Skyler, Anna Gunn also probably won her Emmy last night, between finally coming clean to Walter Jr. (Mitte also did best ever work last night, but remains thoroughly, if understandably, outclassed by the rest of the cast) and fighting off Walt with the knife.  The phone call is another instantly-iconic moment, like the ending of “Crawl Space”, where she has almost no lines but is integral to selling the power of the scene with just her shell-shocked expression, one that she has honed to the finest point in the business this deep in the run.

And even avoided her periodic bouts of Jokerface while she did it

You don’t really walk away from “Ozymandias” thinking “wow, what a great Marie episode” but Betsy Brandt is also fantastic as she whiplashes from relief and triumph to the depths of despair over the course of 3 scenes.  But if there’s one star that can compete with Cranston for thoroughly owning this episode, it’s Rian Johnson.  I’m sure Mad Men and Game Of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire will wow us with some immaculately-composed episodes throughout the next year, but there is just no way Johnson doesn’t take home the Direction award, particularly given how much the Emmy’s love to recognize movie people for “slumming it” on TV.  Johnson’s feature work has shown diminishing returns for me – Brick is an A++ masterwork, followed by the A- Brothers Bloom and solid B for Looper – but he embraces the showy style of BB with gusto, and delivers episodes that have a little more flair than average without breaking completely out of it. This was filled with flourishes like the fade in and out of vehicles at Tohajiilee, or the signature darkly comic music montage, or the speed-ramping when Skyler’s knife makes the blood on Walt’s hands literal.  But what kept me so off balance and consistently gasping in shock and horror was how he filmed things that didn’t happen. This is obviously a combination of the scripting and direction, but for simplicity’s sake I’m giving Johnson the credit.

It seems like the guiding principle was to ask “how would we construct this is X was going to happen, even though it’s not?”  So for those of us hoping against hope that Hank would live, they pause to give us a full scene of Walt begging and squirming for his life, just as he’s been able to squirm off the hook so many times before when it was him and Jesse on the chopping block.  We get several lines throughout the opening establishing that Jesse has slipped the Nazi net, before Walt exposes his hiding spot.  And we get that horrifically tense knife-fight, rife with close ups of its tip quivering dangerously in the air before various characters go diving and rolling over it.  I was moving so quickly back and forth between expecting Skyler and Walter Jr. to suddenly gasp and reveal it buried in their ribs, that I was still trying to process how it was possible no one had been killed when Walt snatched baby Holly and bolted.

“I love the name Holly. I love it so much I want to grab it and drive it off 

into a short, desperate life on the run likely to end in a police raid or shootout.”

 And all of that misdirection with things that I felt like should have happened also served to block me from seeing what I never thought would happen coming.  Of all the predictions that have been thrown out over the course of the last season, “Walt kidnaps baby Holly” is one I had never seen anywhere.  And I thought that in our 5,000+ post message board thread and 14 episodic reviews we had covered about every possible set of circumstances at some point.  Well played, Breaking Bad, you managed to stay a step ahead of us after all this time and all this obsessiveness.

“Ozymandias” plays out like the best of classical tragedy.  These rapidly unspooling disasters feel, as discussed last week, both surprising and inevitable.  And as horrible as these events are, and as much as they are all Walt’s chickens coming home to roost, what keeps me feeling a shred of sympathy for the man is that I think he is smart enough to recognize that.  Not so much that he offers up his barrels of cash to save Hank from the doom he brought down on him, or calls to try to exonerate Skyler from the doom he brought down on her.  Those are the very least he can do in those circumstances.  But that when he pauses to regard Hank and Gomez’s unmarked grave in the desert, I think he sees the bitter irony that he literally dug it himself to protect his ill-gotten fortune.  And that when he desperately tells Jr. and Skyler “I need both of you to trust me,” he understands all the reasons they can’t possibly do that are of his own making.  At least at the end, he is beginning to understand why no one ever seemed to believe his earnest contentions that a giant pile of money represented a clean slate, and freedom from the consequences of the things you’ve done in its pursuit.  Jesse wasn’t buying what he was selling back in “Problem Dog”.  Jack isn’t buying it when he’s standing over the bodies of shot-up DEA agents.  Skyler didn’t buy it when he begged her to pack a bag.  And when Saul’s Disappearer is driving him away from New Mexico and both his born and criminal identities, it doesn’t look like Walter H. White is buying it anymore.

Oh, and there is still 2 hr+ to go before things actually end for good. It’s hard to imagine things getting any worse than they do in “Ozymandias”, but then the king of kings in the poem didn’t seem to see the drop coming ahead of him either.

“WALT, COME BACK!! YOU FORGOT YOUR RICIN!!!!”

 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, Steve Gomez, Hank Schrader (Walt didn’t want the Nazis to do it, but it was a foreseeable outcome of his engaging them to commit another capital murder, so he could be charged)

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 history’s 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. Marie is widowed, and Flynn is going to have need about $11 million just for therapy bills. Jesse is brutally beaten by the Nazis and forced into meth cooking slavery for approximately 8 months.

Heisenberg Certainty Principle – “The name is ASAC Schrader. And you can go fuck yourself.” Heisenberg can’t compete in his own category this week.

Best Lie – Walt finally uses his skills at deceit for something relatively, positive, staging a vitriolic call to Skyler to remove as much of the abetting stink from her as possible.

Official Walter Jr. Breakfast Count: 15. Kid is unlikely to have an appetite for some time now.

We Are Done, Professionally – Walt not only gives the go ahead to execute Jesse in the desert, but discloses the truth about Jane out of spite. Bridges=burned, Earth=salted. I still think Walt is returning to free Jesse from captivity, but I don’t think that will buy him forgiveness.

It’s The Little Things – Jesse doing a Star Wars Kid routine in the background of Walt’s call to Skyler. The way that conversation foreshadowed the knives and telephone with which Skyler will attack Walt and take another carefully-scripted call from him by the episode’s end.  Or the way she crows about her $9 profit on the crying clown while he is embarking down the road to Hell to secure their financial future.  “Jesus, what’s with all the greed? It’s unattractive.”  The way everyone without prompting starts calling Walter Jr. “Flynn” once it’s time to tell him the truth.  That we never saw the Disappearer as anything but an anonymous minivan.

BREAKING BAD 5.13 - "TOHAJILEE"

Normally I start out these reviews with a look at the cold open, and progress in a more or less linear fashion from there.  But “Tohajiilee” is so defined by its climactic confrontation that I am going to skip over the bulk of the episode and skip right to the showdown we’ve been building towards for years.

I speak, of course, of Saul and Flynn finally coming face to face. These are the type of fireworks we’ve been waiting to see in the final season!

Okay, there was another showdown that was some time in the making, so I’m not going to spend time talking about Huell’s big showcase or how Lydia and Skyler and even Saul, who makes sure to remind Flynn that he takes teenage DUI cases, are all concerned about their branding throughout the early portions of the episode.  The episode takes a hard, clutch-less shift into a higher gear once Walt gets the photo of the money barrel and takes off for the titular Navajo reservation, and the remaining 20 minutes are heart-attack inducing.

Though I will say, never tell a man in a kevlar vest to 

have an A-1 day. He’s definitely not going to.

On the one hand, there is nothing wildly unpredictable about any of this. That Jesse and Hank would try to trap Walt by fucking with his money is a sensible approach, though quite clever in the details, and it was immediately apparent that the Nazis were going to show up anyway despite Walt cancelling his order. But Breaking Bad and titanic director Michelle MacLaren (the last time she directed an episode that was ostensibly building up to Hank’s death, she gave us “One Minute”, which climaxed with one of the most suspenseful sequences ever filmed and is for my money the single best episode of the series thus far) manage to put little twists on things to make them feel different and leave me off-balance. Seriously, someone get this woman on a feature stat – at the very least she could kick the shit out of whatever Bourne re-side-quel we’re on now.

There’s a quote about drama, apocryphally attributed to just about every major writer going back to Aristotle, that says that great drama should be both surprising and inevitable.  For my dollar, there’s no show that threads that needle as well as Breaking Bad.  It’s impossible for me to guess the next plot twist on Mad Men, but that’s because that series values digressiveness over plot momentum at every turn. It certainly doesn’t feel inevitable that [spoiler, I guess] someone would get run over by a lawn mower at a party.  Conversely, The Wire made “all the pieces matter” it’s motto, such that the tragedy at the end of each season felt wholly appropriate, as if it could not have gone down any other way, such that later in the run you could recognize the blueprint of how things were going to go down in advance.  Not that this was a flaw, as the larger point of that show was to demonstrate how the same patterns repeat themselves across different strata of society.

The Wire is basically the best acted, saddest thesis paper ever written

Likewise, The Sopranos or Game Of Thrones may have surprised me more with wild plot twists, but that’s because those were frequently designed to feel more raw and organic.  Breaking Bad wants to keep you off guard, but the basic contours of this journey have been clear from the beginning.  The title tells you that Walt is not going to redeem himself in a blaze of glory at the end, and Vince Gilligan has not been shy about telling everyone the “Mr. Chips to Scarface” progression that has driven the series from Day One.  And this final season particularly has further been designed with the flashforwards to the Bearded Future at the beginning, underlining the inevitability of Walt’s upcoming fall. The question has been: how will things fall apart, and who will the collapse take down with it?

The “how” is, as always, with every last drop of tension squeezed out of foregone conclusions. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a sequence exactly like the race out to Tohajiilee with Jesse taunting and Walt snarling back all the way.  It isn’t actually a chase, and we know at that point that there’s no direct threat to anyone’s safety, but it’s shot with the energy of an action sequence.  The way Cranston oscillates between anger, bewilderment, resignation, and desperation on that ride, then all over again once he gets there and the dominoes start falling that he was tricked, the DEA is coming, and the Nazis too…if anyone had any objection to his picking up another victory lap Emmy on his way out the door, just watch those 20 minutes again.  There’s a short list of performances where the actor inhabits the character so fully that they can clearly process such a tidal wave of conflicting emotions so clearly in such a tight window.  I will shock no one by saying this, but Cranston’s Walter White is one of those all-timers.

But it’s once Walt gets there, realizes he’s been played, that things really slow down, and get painful.  Honestly, if everything ended out there in the desert, with Jesse and Hank working together to bring down the man that has done so much to ruin both their lives at his very first cook site, that would have been a perfectly good ending for the entire series. Maybe not enough to be up there with the very best TV endings like say The Shield, but certainly not something I would complain about. But we know it doesn’t end here. We all know that the Nazis are still coming. And so we get that interminable sequence where Hank, Jesse and Gomie are luxuriating in their victory, and starting to finally exhale at what we know to be the exact wrong moment to unclench…

Of course, the last time Hank tried to unclench things also took a turn…

This is such a perfectly cruel moment to go to real time.  From the final commercial break, where Walt is giving himself up, to the shootout, there is just over 10 minutes of screentime. That is just enough time for the Nazis to semi-plausibly make it there, since they appear to be on alert and outside of town already, but it also allows for any feelings of triumph for Hank and Jesse to curdle into ever-mounting dread as the minutes tick away and Hank makes a horrifically poignant call to Marie instead of alerting federal or Reservation authorities that they are there.  And it is a bit of sadistic genius to cut out where it does.  Again, I’m struggling to think of another example of a show doing a cliffhanger like this (feel free to correct me), cutting out in media-action scene, not with the Nazis pulling up (as I was briefly convinced it would), or with the first shots ringing out (as I was subsequently convinced), but right in the middle of the firefight, before any casualties are confirmed.   Jack’s guys may have suddenly been afflicted with Stormtrooper-Aim, but I really don’t think that’s going to last when we come back next week and we find out the “who” part of the question posed a few paragraphs up.

Now, 99 times out of 100, if a show ends on a cliffhanger about whether a character lives or dies (generally right after a main character is shot), it’s a given that the answer is “lives”.  But that phone call (wherein Marie found a wad of “brains” in her kitchen!)  makes me think that this is not going to be one of them.  Well, also that the show doesn’t mind mucking with convention and only has 3 more episodes left, regardless of how this shakes out.  There’s really no plausible way that Hank or Gomie could triumph here, as they are thoroughly outgunned and outnumbered by opponents in body armor, with nowhere to run.  But I suppose we can hope against hope that Jesse manages to start up Walt’s sports car and ram through the little roadblock they have set up, giving them time to…

A fool’s hope, no doubt, but in any case we should find out in a week. Now if I could just shake the terrible suspicion that the cold open next week will just show the shootout site, with a smoking SUV and spent shells everywhere and pair of feet in a pool of blood, then skip way ahead in time, possibly to the Bearded Future…

Not even Breaking Bad could be that cruel.  Right?

Of course not, silly! And I’m going to live for ever!!!

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 history’s 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. Hank and Gomie are (presumably) gunned down in the desert by Jack and the Nazis.

Best Lie – Walt telling Andrea that Jesse is back on drugs to #flushhimout was one of his better performances. But it’s gotta go to Jesse and Hank’s elaborate ruse (complete with a fake picture of a money barrel and the former’s homemade “corpse” that would make Tom Savini proud) to get Walt to incriminate and isolate himself somewhere they can slap the cuffs on him

Official Walter Jr. Breakfast Count: 15.

We Are Done, Professionally – Huell is, it would appear, no longer in the employ of one Saul Goodman, Esq.

It’s The Little Things – Todd’s “She Blinded Me With Science” ringtone. “Fire in the hole, bitch.” Lydia sipping tea from a “These Colors Don’t Run” mug while fretting over the blue (“Aquamarine!”) coloring.  Todd’s Freddy Krueger shirt visible over Walt’s shoulder as he meets with the Nazis, underlining that he is consorting with monsters.  The ridiculous old-timey moustache on the nazi driver waiting outside Andrea’s.  Huell’s poker face.

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?”