Funnily enough, though, while he and I clearly built a bit of a bond as a result of his conversation with myself and my daughter, we’d never actually met until earlier this month, when he attended the Television Critics Association Awards with some of his fellow “Breaking Bad” cast and crew members. I was giddy when I spotted him at the event, and I strolled over and said, “You and I have never met, but you’ve chatted with my daughter…”
His jaw dropped, and he said, “Son of a bitch.” Then a smile appeared on his face, he stuck out his hand, and he said, “How are you, brother? And how’s that little girl of yours doing? Oh, man, it is so good to finally meet you. Is your wife here? I need to say ‘hello’ to her, too!”
Yep. Jonathan Banks is awesome. Indeed, he’s so awesome that, although I couldn’t imagine he wouldn’t be up for doing a quick interview in the wake of Mike’s storyline coming to a conclusion on “Breaking Bad,” I still felt obliged to go through the proper channels to chat with him. As such, I sent a formal request to his manager, even as I admitted, “I realize there’s a pretty strong chance that he’s just going to say, ‘Well, if he knows how to get in touch with me, then tell him to get in touch with me, for chrissakes, but even so.”
Within 24 hours, I had a direct email from Mr. Banks, simply saying, “Call anytime.” And when I asked if he had a preferred time, explaining that I’d have an empty house from 8:30 AM EST onward because of my wife and daughter heading out to get their hair done, he said to call him at 8:30 AM EST…which was a little surprising, given that I knew he lived in California, but damned if he didn’t answer the phone right away.
SPOILER WARNING: This post will appear every Monday following a new episode of “Breaking Bad.” It is intended to be read after seeing the show’s latest installment as a source of recap and analysis. As such, all aspects and events that have occurred up to and including the episode discussed are fair game.
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.
SPOILER WARNING: This post will appear every Monday following a new episode of “Breaking Bad.” It is intended to be read after seeing the show’s latest installment as a source of recap and analysis. As such, all aspects and events that have occurred up to and including the episode discussed are fair game.
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.
SPOILER WARNING: This post will appear every Monday following a new episode of “Breaking Bad.” It is intended to be read after seeing the show’s latest installment as a source of recap and analysis. As such, all aspects and events that have occurred up to and including the episode discussed are fair game.
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.
SPOILER WARNING: This post will appear every Monday following a new episode of “Breaking Bad.” It is intended to be read after seeing the show’s latest installment as a source of recap and analysis. As such, all aspects and events that have occurred up to and including the episode discussed are fair game.
King Heisenberg
Gus Fring is dead and there’s a new sheriff in town, the one and only Heisenberg. But as Mike told Walt, “just because you shot Jesse James, doesn’t make you Jesse James.” This message doesn’t seem to have reached Walt however, and he’s bought into the Heisenberg myth perhaps more than anyone else.
This week’s episode began with Walter getting his Pontiac Aztek, the same dinky used car he’s been driving since the pilot, back from the shop. Very quickly however, he decides to sell the car for a mere $50 before buying a muscle car for himself and then one to match for his son. This decision serves as an “up yours” to a number of people. The first and most important being Skyler. We all remember way back when Walt tried to buy his son’s love with a pretty new Dodge Challenger. Skyler quickly put an end to that. The Challenger was returned for something safer and more sensible and Walt was forced to get his “silent” revenge by doing donuts in a parking lot before blowing the car to pieces (which he made reference to in this episode, well the donuts anyway). Nowadays, Skyler can’t keep Walt out of her bed, or their house, let alone tell him what he can and can’t do with his money.
Secondly, Walt was telling Gustavo Fring to shove it up his very dead you know where. It’s clear that Walt is sick of the carefully maintained upstanding citizen routine that characterized Gus’s reign. Walt is in charge now and he wants to make sure everyone knows it, even his neighbors or anyone who happens to walk past his driveway.
Remember another thing Mike said about Walt, that “he’s a ticking time bomb, and I don’t want to be around for the bang.” How did this episode end again? With that new Rolex Jesse bought Walt going tick…tick…tick…
Episode 4: The Skypire strikes backs
Last week’s episode was about Walt’s cold war with Mike, the competition for head honcho in their little business venture. This week, Walt’s got a new enemy, one that’s closer and more intimate than he ever expected—Skyler. Her actions last week amounted to being uncomfortably numb, looking dazed and confused, completely unable to handle what’s going on around her. Things changed in “Fifty One” as Skyler began to fight back against her controlling, manipulative husband in what small ways she can manage.
Things began much as they did last week. Skyler sat silent at the dinner table, saying nothing about the new cars. Next, we saw her tying floss tightly around her finger, which is either foreshadowing her hanging herself, being strangled, or strangling someone. That or it’s an enormous red herring. Skyler’s last move that was in any way reminiscent of what we’ve seen from her so far this season was quietly asking Walt what he thought about sending Walter Jr. to boarding school to put him in a “new environment.” Big bad Heisenberg quickly shut that notion down.
It’s at Walt’s birthday party that Skyler changes up her plan, recognizing that she will not be able to beat Walt at his own game. If she wants to get the kids out of the house, she’s got to play into the “I’m the victim” image that her husband has created. As Walt describes (and perhaps embellishes) a story about his struggle with cancer, Skyler walks into the pool. It’s the one thing she can think of that will both give her a moment of silence, a break from Walt’s endless plays at martyrdom, and make it clear to Hank and Marie that their home is not a safe environment for the children. Wearing a bright blue skirt she slowly walks to the deep end of the family’s bright blue pool—a symbol of Walt’s product and her descent into the chaos that it creates. Skyler finally recognizes that without telling the truth, which she cannot do given her own part in the criminal empire, the fact that it’s Walt who endangers the children will never be revealed. Instead, she will have to take the blame by making her mental struggles and the uncertain state of their marriage (seemingly as a consequence of her actions) the reason the kids need to be somewhere else.
After Hank and Marie leave and the decision is made that the kids will stay with them for a while, Walt and Skyler begin the conversation that makes Walt positive that his wife is now his biggest obstacle. Stalking around the bedroom, Walt decimates each and every argument Skyler puts forward. In his mind, he’s the kingpin who beat Gustavo Fring, there’s no chance in hell that he’ll be undone by someone as devoid of “power” as Skyler. She tries to hurt herself, he’ll have her committed. She makes it look like Walt beat her, he’ll tell the police about her involvement in Ted Benake’s tax schemes. “What’s the plan,” Walt screams, before Skyler finally admits surrender. She has no plan, no power, but she “will count every minute that the kids are out of the house as a victory.” All she can do is wait. For what exactly? “For the cancer to come back.” Later, Walt returns from a cook to find Skyler chain smoking. Is she succumbing to the one vice that helps calms her nerves, or is she passively-aggressively trying to bring Walt’s cancer back? Even after everything that Walt has done, that was a cold reminder that even if no one else can stop him, his own body just might, and that his home, the one place that he’s tried to make safe no matter what, is now where his greatest enemy resides.
Keep in mind that Walt’s original justification for getting into the meth business was so that he could leave some money behind for his family. At least that’s what he claimed. I believe it’s more accurate that the ever-prideful Walt wanted his family to hold him in high esteem, to love him more than anything from beyond the grave. To accomplish his goal, he set out to buy that love. He wanted Jr. to remember his Dad as the guy who bought him an awesome muscle car. He wanted his daughter to know that he made sure her college education was paid for almost 20 years before she started filling out applications. And he wanted Skyler to be able to live comfortably for the rest of her days. When Skyler tries to take away his children and alter the way they see him, it is the one thing he cannot abide. At the end of the episode, he shows Skyler the watch Jesse bought him, and explains that the man who gave it to him had a gun to his head not too long ago, but “He changed his mind about me, Skyler, and so will you.”
Watch the cast and crew go inside “Fifty One” below and follow the writer on Twitter @NateKreichman.
