Cablevision - Breaking Bad, Season 5, Episode 15
Why is it that quality television is only quality television if it makes you feel gut-wrenchingly shitty? Like that feeling you get in your stomach when you have nothing else to throw-up, but your body still wants you to? Breaking Bad makes me realise why people must watch The Big Bang Theory.
OK, so it’s not quite that bad.
However BB’s penultimate episode sure was just as un-funny as The Big Bang Theory. This week everyone was trapped in their own little prison, but apart from Saul, no one has a foolproof escape plan.
The guy from Jackie Brown is setting Saul up with a new Nebraskan identity, but for now he’ll have to hang out with his roomie Walter White! They’re just like Chandler and Joey, but with more resentment / contempt for the law / blood on their hands! Walt is fairly preoccupied with finding a hit man for Jack, the ruiner of his “life’s work” but Saul reckons that staying with his family would be the best course of action. “Duh, the fake phone call absolved Skyler of all guilt!” says Walt to Saul (and the audience). “Well, that was very clever!” says Saul to Walt (and the audience). But hey man, if Mike couldn’t manage getting dirty money to his family, how can Walt?
Saul isn’t convinced by Walt’s “Let’s kill the Nazis together!” plan and as he refuses to join, the Heisenberg part of Walt’s brain kicks in. The part that tells people he’s the one who knocks and decides to poison 10-year-olds. He backs Saul into a corner, threatens him, and then sinks to the ground coughing – looks like that pesky cancer is finally overwhelming his murderous righteousness. Saul is all “it’s over” and really, he’s gotta be one of the few that has defied Heisenberg and lived to tell the tale.
When actually, the guy who has turned out to be the most supremely terrifying character on Breaking Bad is that dead-eyed fuck, Todd. That cold, obedient sociopath who seems all the creepier for his niceties. Seeing that guy standing over baby Holly’s crib, stroking Skyler on the shoulder saying, “I really don’t want to come back” was one of the creepiest scenes of the series. That is until he met up with Lydia at the teahouse and purred, “We make a good team. It’s mutually good”. Who is she to turn down 92% after all? Then he wipes lint of her jacket just as easily as he would sink a bullet in Drew Sharp’s gut.
While the Nazis are sinking tinnies, discussing Lydia’s “wood chipper coochie” and laughing out loud at Jesse’s confession video, Jesse is using a paper clip to escape! And stand on toilet buckets and reach the bars of his cage! And run to the barbed wire fence! But of course he is caught, because we’re not allowed to feel happy ever again.
And then of course, Todd goes to Andrea’s house. And of course he shoots her in the back of the head. And of course he says, “Just so you know, this isn’t personal”. And of course Jesse has to watch, and the scene goes for too long and it feels like we’re made to watch him cry for too long and – OH MY GOD, WHY DO WE WATCH THIS SHOW?
Meanwhile, Walt is playing reindeer games in the snowy mountains of New Hampshire. His hut is without phone reception, internet or Dustin Hoffman movies that people actually like. “This is just the spot for a man to rest up an think about things,” says Jackie Brown, but for a man who wants to forget it’s pretty much a prison. So Walt fills his pockets with wads of cash, puts on his (literal) Heisenberg hat and marches to the gate. Until he freaks out and mutters “Tomorrow…” to himself.
All of a sudden its months (?) later and Walt has given up on passing that gate. Mr. Vacuum is his only source of information – Skyler moved out of his house (!), it’s surrounded by a gate (!!), kids have been treating it as a tourist attraction (!!!) – and company. Trying to administer himself DIY chemo and begging someone to hang out with for $10,000 kind of spells the death of Heisenberg.
But funnily enough it’s this weakness and vulnerability, him being too thin to wear his wedding ring and resolving to send his family some money, that reignites Walt’s desire for revenge. After a failed appeasement to Walt Jr. that “things happened… that I never intended” ends in his only son basically asking him to die, already, of course Elliott and Gretchen are on TV describing their donation to drug abuse centers. And when they tell Charlie Rose that notorious criminal Walter White’s involvement in their company “begins and ends” with the company’s name, of course that’s a much more enticing reason than family to return to Albuquerque and take out his frustrations on some Nazis. Because when your rich, ex-girlfriend says, “The sweet, brilliant man we once knew is gone”, that’s license to do whatever you want. Right?
Pass the Ben and Jerry’s, I want to eat my feelings.
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