Classic Coke

In my post for last week’s episode, “Buyout,” I concocted a theory that Walt’s plan (“everybody wins”) would have something to do with creating some kind of fake or ersatz meth. It was based on a few small clues: Hank’s comparison of Miracle Whip and mayonnaise, a news report about a kelp-based caviar knock-off, and Jesse’s comment about “truth in advertising, yo.” Well, it turns out I was part right, which is pretty good for a show as unpredictable as “Breaking Bad.”

See, it wasn’t Walt making the knock-off, it was Declan, the big-time meth dealer the guys met with. Declan and his crew have been aping Walt’s product for some time. They switched to a P2P cook and even started using blue food coloring to make their customers think they had the real deal. But in reality, they were only getting a product that was 70 percent pure, nothing compared to Walter’s 99.1 percent. “It’s grade school tee-ball versus the New York Yankees,” Walt explains, “yours is some tepid off-brand cola. What I’m making is classic Coke.” Incredulous, Declan replies that all he has to do is kill Walt right there, and poof, no more competition, no more Coke. It’s only Walt asking if he “really wants to live in a world without Coca-cola” that stops him. Originally, Declan wanted to buy all that methylamine to put Heisenberg out of business. Instead, he ended up buying major stock.

All this is directly related to another revelation from last week’s episode, that Walt’s motivations are not quite so noble as they once were. He is no longer the guy who got a bad rap his whole life, up to and including getting lung cancer, struggling to obtain some sort of safety net for his family ($737,000 to be exact). That is, assuming he ever was. Nowadays it’s about being Heisenberg, “the best meth cook in America.” It’s about the “empire business,” and proving to everyone that looked down at him that he really is superior.

This notion was given further credence when Jesse showed up to get his share of the money. Prior to that point, Walt had simply brushed Jesse aside each time he brought up that he, like Mike, would be getting out of the meth business. When it comes down to it, and Jesse (finally) sticks to his guns, Walt is entirely unable to understand why he would want to quit. “Being the best at something is a rare thing,” Walt says, “You don’t just toss something like that away.” But Jesse doesn’t care about being the best, or all the money he stands to make. He even walks away from the $5 million he’s owed, and still it simply does not register with Walt that anyone could not care about the things that motivate him. Heisenberg is always calm and collected because things always go his way. For him, “it’s all there, black and white, clear as crystal.“ He’s an emotionless meth-making machine. But as Jesse turns his back, Heisenberg’s robotic calm evaporates, only instead of printing error messages and beeping “does not compute,” he screams “If you leave you get nothing! [You lose! Good day sir!]”

When Todd becomes Walt’s new cooking partner, it’s clear that all is not well in the Kingdom of Heisenberg. However, Todd’s willingness to learn (studying his notes during a break) and refusing to discuss his cut of the money until he’s earned it pleases Walt. At the very least he’s got someone with similar ambitions, and who’s already proven that he will do whatever is necessary to succeed (like, you know, shooting an innocent child). “I don’t need you to be Antoine Lavoisier,” Walt says, “What I do need is your full attention. Listen and apply yourself.” Of course, Todd was never going to get a reference to an 18th century scientist (“the father of modern chemistry”), which just goes to show that Walt’s words weren’t meant to reassure anyone but himself.

The End of Ehrmantraut

I’ll say it again, this entire season (and series) has been about the transformation of mild-mannered Walter White into criminal mastermind Heisenberg. There’s just one problem with this scenario though: the first episode of the season showed what appeared to be a subdued Walter returning from exile in New Hampshire to buy an M60 in a Denny’s. Heisenberg’s little “say my name” tirade was his apex, his ”high-water mark.” Killing Mike was the first move in the opposite direction, “the place where the wave broke and rolled back.”

When Walt tells Jesse that no one else needs to get hurt because they are now in control of their business, Jesse responds with “You keep saying that and it’s bullshit every time.” And how correct he was. Almost directly after letting those words drip out of his mouth, Walter up and kills Mike essentially for hurting his feelings. Walter has left more than a couple bodies in his wake as he rose to the top, but this is the first one that was entirely without purpose. Walt’s decision to kill Mike was made based on pure emotion, the exact pride and ego Mike had just finished scolding him about.

Just after firing the killing shot, Walt had a look on his face that we haven’t seen in a while. It was one of fear, of surprise. It represented a lack of understanding. For the first time in a while, things didn’t go exactly according to Heisenberg’s plans. After working so hard for so long to be “in control,” he couldn’t even control himself. Walt follows Mike down to the river, and immediately recognizes that the whole thing could have been avoided, as he could have gotten the names of Mike’s “guys” from Lydia. Mike responds, “shut the fuck up and let me die in peace.” A badass ending for a badass character.

The fact is Walt can still get the names from Lydia, and he will, based on the sneak peek into next week’s episode, the last of the summer. To save himself, Walt needs to do something about the guys in jail, and I’d be willing to bet Todd’s “prison connections” are going to come back into play.

Watch the cast and crew go inside “Say My Name” below and follow the writer on Twitter @NateKreichman.

The Aftermath: Bikes, Bodies, and Hydrofluoric Acid

Alright, we’ve got to talk about the cold open, again. Everything about it was fantastic: the near complete lack of dialogue paired with that ominous music, the methodical way Walter, Todd, and Mike, go about decomposing the bike (and the body), all of it. But that’s not really what I want to discuss.

Rather, let’s think about what it says about the quality of the show and the way it has shaped the thinking of its viewers that we don’t need dialogue explaining what’s going on. This week’s “Story Sync” tells us that the young boy’s body is the fifth dissolved in hydrofluoric acid thus far. The first time Walt and Jesse did it, after Walt strangled Krazy-8 way back in the first season, they spent nearly a whole episode weighing their options and ultimately completing their task. At that point, killing and disposing of a human being was still something of a big deal for Walter, and as a result, the viewer. Now, not so much. The guys weren’t so adept at the task back then either, recall Jesse making the mistake of putting aside the plastic bins because he had a perfectly good bathtub. We all know how that ended.

Now, in much the same way the gang (minus Jesse) efficiently and meticulously go about the process of permanent evidence disposal, almost as if it’s routine, we watch them fully expecting and understanding their actions. There is no need for explanation. The fact is at this point, it is routine. That is just what they have to do. They know it, so we know it. They have no qualms with it, so neither do we.

Moving on. When Todd attempts to justify his actions, he says, “It was him or us, and I chose us.” The line was eerily and intentionally reminiscent of what Walt said to justify killing Gale: “When it comes down to you and me versus him… it’s gonna be him.”

Walter, Mike, and Jesse then vote on what to do with Todd. For perhaps the first time ever, Walt and Mike agree on something, and it’s Jesse who’s left out in the cold. It’s decided that the man who will now be forever known as “Ricky Hitler” will be kept close, because they don’t want to pour acid over yet another body nor pay him off and hope he keeps everything to himself. That’s probably a good decision given that when Todd gets in his car, we see he’s held onto a creepy souvenir.

At first, I couldn’t figure out the significance of showing Todd looking at the tarantula in the jar. My first thought was it was meant to show that despite his seemingly nonchalant attitude, Todd really does feel sorry for killing the boy. Perhaps that is part of it, but a show like “Breaking Bad” doesn’t waste a single moment of screen time, and Todd already voiced what I believed to be genuine regret (not necessarily for the murder itself, but for being put in that unfortunate but necessary position). Then it hit me. In a missing person investigation, one of the first things the authorities will do is collect the boy’s prints (likely from his home), so they have something to work with. The old jar o’ spider has the victim’s prints as well as Todd’s, and maybe even another member of the crew as well. That’s my guess anyway. There’s a reason for using a method of complete destruction of any and all evidence. But this time it wasn’t allmthe evidence, and that’s got to have some kind of significance later on.

There is no Walter White. There is only Heisenberg.

This whole season, well, the whole series really, has been about the transformation of “mild-mannered” Walter White into the meth kingpin Heisenberg. This week, we got another piece of a puzzle we didn’t even know we were building, or a glimpse into the psyche of what really drives Walter White.

When Jesse comes to his home, Walter tells him (and us) a bit about his past at Grey Matter. It seems he took a $5000 buyout from the company he named and co-founded, which is now worth “billions, with a b.” Walter now checks Grey Matter’s stock value weekly, still haunted by the decision he made to “sell his childrens’ birthright.”

Part of what made us root for Walter in the beginning was the feeling that despite all the horrible things he was doing, it was for a good cause, or at least out of self-preservation. He was a good man who got a bad rap. Then he got cancer, and as Jesse points out, he wanted to cook meth in order to secure $737,000, which would set up his family for life.

But this new information puts things in a different light and helps explain why Walt tries “so hard to not make five million dollars.” As well his describing that amount as “nothing” and “pennies on the dollar.” And, of course, why he works with an almost animal instinct to burn off his handcuff, steal the methylamine, and calmly tell Mike that everybody can win, you know, with a gun to his head.

At the very least, Heisenberg is no longer working for the well-being of his family, and it puts into question if Walter White ever was. This is a man driven primarily by arrogance and jealousy. Where before he could hide it, it has now consumed every facet of his life. As he tells Jesse at the dinner table, his children are gone and his wife is counting down the days until his cancer returns, “This business is all I have let now. And you want to take it away from me.”

By taking the Grey Matter buyout, Walter gave up the opportunity to prove to the world what he’s known all along: that he’s just plain better than the rest of us. In the pilot, Walt saw the tremendous amount of money to be made by cooking meth during the news report on Hank’s bust. With his introduction to Gus Fring, he saw just how far one can go in the meth business, and learned some lessons about how to get there. There’s no way Walter will take the buyout, to make that same mistake twice. While it seems Mike has forgotten his own advice about “half measures” (how many times has he had a gun to Walt’s head now?), Walt has not. He’s going to make himself forget Grey Matter ever existed. He’s going to make all the money there is to be made. But I believe he has simply come too far. All the money in the world wouldn’t satisfy Heisenberg, and that’s why he’ll go out with the bang that was hinted at in this season’s first scene.

A Few Extra Bits:

I can’t say I’m certain what Walt’s plan is going to be. How can everybody win? He’ll cook by himself and then pay off his partners? But they want their money and they want out. Now. There’s no time for such things. Based on some small hints in this episode, listed below, I’m thinking the plan might have something to do with putting out fake blue meth.

-Over the wire, Mike overhears Hank going about his new responsibilities at the DEA. One of his conversations is about the difference between mayonnaise and its imitation, Miracle Whip.

-The TV report just prior to the one about the boy Todd shot was about a caviar knock-off made of kelp.

-Jesse’s lines about frozen lasagna during the (hilariously uncomfortable) dinner scene. The food never looks like it does on the box. “It’s like yo, whatever happened to truth in advertising?”

One last thing: after that news report, Walt tells Jesse that he’s lost sleep over the boy’s death and tells Jesse to go home, saying he will finish the cook on his own. When Jesse returns downstairs Walt is whistling a startlingly upbeat tune, and you can almost see the gears in Jesse’s head start turning. Walt doesn’t care about the dead child. What else has he lied about? Maybe his mind even goes back to his original (and ultimately correct) suspicions that Walt poisoned Brock. Then there’s the imagery, standing outside of the tent listening to Walt whistle, Jesse is quite literally on the outside looking in.

Watch the cast and crew go inside “Buyout” below and follow the writer on Twitter @NateKreichman.

The Cold Open

The cold open for “Dead Freight,” the latest episode of “Breaking Bad,” was a strange one at first glance. It showed a young boy riding a dirt bike through the desert before stopping to scoop a tarantula into a glass jar. Then bam! All of a sudden, well, that was it. At first glance. It was a surprising and seemingly dull way to begin an episode that had been the subject of a great deal of hype, including Aaron Paul (who plays Jesse) tweeting that “On tonight’s episode of Breaking Bad shit gets crazy.”

Of course, by now we all know that “dull” opening set up the first real “whoa” moment of the show’s fifth and final season, but we’ll get to that later. For now, let’s consider that just before cutting to the title sequence, a train whistle could be heard in the background, foreshadowing the arrival of the episode’s all-important locomotive. Not to mention that the scene included point of view shots of the dirt bike’s handlebars, later echoed by similar shots of the oncoming train just prior to the robbery (like the one seen above). That’s just damn good directing. And how crazy is it that “Breaking Bad” has so warped my mind that as soon as I saw that innocent child I was positive he would die or be the victim of some horrible fate? I know I’m not alone in that.

Say What You Will Mike, Walt (and Jesse) Might Just be Jesse James

When the commercial break ended, the first scene of the episode showed Walt strolling into DEA headquarters, ostensibly to discuss his marital troubles with Hank. Of course, the truth is that the man we knew as Walter White (you know, this guy) is all but dead. The criminal mastermind Heisenberg is now occupying his body, and it was he who took a page out of Gus Fring’s playbook by walking into the office of the very man hell-bent on finding him out.

Mike may not be giving Heisenberg enough credit. Walt knew that if he shed a few fake tears, Hank would duck out to avoid the perceived awkwardness of a man displaying outward emotion. As soon as he’s out of the room, Walt’s pushing wires into Hank’s computer. Then, in another moment of foreshadowing, he’s still struggling to plant a bug behind a photograph as Hank’s walking through the doorway, completing the task just in time to make it look as if he’s studying the picture—a symbol of Hank’s “perfect” marriage—and yearning for better days with his own wife. Heisenberg is a man who refuses to let the unforeseen hiccups of reality disturb his perfectly thought out plans, whether that means planting the bug in the nick of time or refusing to stop the train robbery before he gets exactly the 1,000 gallons he set out to obtain. Ah yes, the 1,000 gallons of methylamine, that whole train robbery thing, let’s talk about that.

We’ve heard the name Jesse James thrown around more than a few times this season. So when our favorite meth-making trio make the decision to rob a train, it’s almost expected. Almost. I mean, of course that’s what Heisenberg would do. After all, he fancies himself quite the criminal mastermind. He’s Don Vito, Jesse James, and a Nobel-level chemist all wrapped into one. He’s invincible, or so he thinks. Last week, he made it clear that nothing would stop the train that is their production and distribution of methamphetamine, and this week, we found out that meant not even literally stopping a train.

But this time, it’s one Jesse Pinkman who perfects the plan for the Great Train Robbery of the 21st century. Jesse might be the only one who’s thinking clearly at this point, and he’s the closest thing to a moral center “Breaking Bad” has left. He’s got more cash than he knows what to do with, while Mike needs the money to keep flowing so he can pay off his “guys” and maybe even have a few dollars left for his beloved granddaughter. And Walt, as we find out in the promo for next week’s episode, is “in the empire business.”

Mike insists that there are only two kind of heists: “those where the guys get away with it, and those that leave witnesses.” Not wanting to kill two innocent men, he suggests switching back to cooking with pseudophedrine. Walt shuts that plan, and though he doesn’t come out and say it, we already know he isn’t afraid to sacrifice a life or seven. It’s Jesse who finds a way for them to have their cake and eat it too.

The plan is this: take just one of the 24 thousand gallons of methylamine in the train’s tank and replace it with a slightly smaller amount of water (because it’s heavier). No one at the train depot will be any the wiser, because the weight will be the same. When the folks at Madrigal do eventually notice the chemical is diluted by 4 percent, they’ll blame their Chinese suppliers. The prospect of the train having been robbed will never even cross their minds. As Todd points out “you guys thought of everything.”

It all goes almost perfectly. There’s just one problem that couldn’t possibly have been planned for, a nice man with a pick-up truck rolling up and offering to bump the truck they’ve got blocking the tracks out of the way. As mentioned, Walt refuses to let something as fickle as reality interfere with his plans, so Jesse ends up lying below the tracks as the train passes overhead, and Todd is forced to jump off as it moves. It’s all very close, but the team pulls it off and Jesse lets out a triumphant “yeah, bitch.”

Everything’s perfect. That is, until the Chekov’s Gun that is the boy from the cold open reappears, and Todd well, Todd follows orders. Recall what Jesse said when he explained the plan, “Boosting methylamine from a train is like a major rap. The point is no one other than us can ever know that this robbery went down. Nobody. You got it?” Todd responds in the affirmative, and when Walt asks if he’s sure, Todd responds “Yes sir.” And let’s not forget Mike’s orders when the insect guys first got involved in the meth game, speak only when spoken to and say only “yes sir” or ” no sir.” It seems Todd’s something of an upstart. He’s the guy who noticed and shut off the nanny cam the first time Walt and Jesse cooked inside a fumigated house. When that kid showed up, he probably thought he’d get a pat on the back for his quick thinking. That won’t be the case.

Children have always been Jesse’s biggest weak spot. He freaked out when Gus had kids involved in street level dealing. He freaked out when he figured out that Walt poisoned Brock, although Walt convinced him otherwise, because “everybody sounds like Meryl Streep with a gun to their head.” And now, Todd’s gone and shot an innocent child who just so happened to witness the gang celebrating a successful robbery. Oh, and it’s no coincidence that innocent child bore a striking resemblance to Jesse’s younger brother.

Since Mike decided he wanted in on the new enterprise, he and Walt have been at odds. That whole time, Jesse’s been caught in the middle, trying (and usually succeeding) to get his two father figures to coexist. Now they’ve got blood on their hands—a child’s blood. Next week, Walt and Mike will keep arguing, they’ll all try to figure out what to do about Todd (and the body), and Jesse’s likely to have another one of his breakdowns, which is unfortunate given that up to this point he’s been the most composed member of the team. As Aaron Paul says in the “Inside the Episode” clip below, “next episode, shit hits the fan.”

I can’t wait.

Watch the cast and crew go inside “Dead Freight” below and follow the writer on Twitter @NateKreichman.