Breaking Bad 5.04.
Aug. 6th, 2012 07:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakThis show is so awesome.
It really has it all: great scripts, fabulous actors, and splendid visual storytelling. So incredibly cinematic. The sequence alone where we have Walt in the foreground, monologuing to Hank and Marie about his first chemo treatment week and what a fabulous support Skyler was, milking the sympathy from them (knowing they know what he told Marie)... while in the background we have Skyler quietly entering the pool, step by step, until she's surrounded by blue (blue like Walt's meth, blue like ice, blue like quiet, just for a moment). Incidentally, I didn't catch whether at the last moment it was Walt or Hank who jumped in to pull her out?
Anyway. As great as the sequence was, it was only a prelude to what the episode and all the previous ones have been leading up to; the moment when Skyler finally breaks her silence and tells Walt just what is on her mind. And that scene was epic. Preceded, again, by a little gem of character interaction between Walt, Hank and Marie as Walt realises Skyler's strategy, that entering the pool had not been a breakdown (as her outburst at the car wash had been), but a calculated (and in its small step way successful) move to make Hank and Marie take the kids away for a short time.
The show always toyed with paralleling or contrasting Walt's two "partnerships", the one with Jesse and the one with Skyler (and usually if one was doing relatively well the other one was not), but in this episode, which in show time is exactly a year after the pilot (and a year before this, Jesse was only a half forgotten former student to Walt), this became main text instead of subtext, with Walt making the point in dialogue. Previously I've said where Skyler was in terms of Walt's previous development (i.e. later s1 Walt = 5.1 Skyler, so to speak), but this episode makes me compare 5.04 Skyler to Jesse in 4.1, when he tells Walt (after one of Walt's "mustn't blame yourself, look forward etc." speeches when Walt picks him up from the detox clinic that he knows who he is, and he's the bad guy. But Jesse is still quite young (though far more mature than he used to be) and needy of affection and approval. Skyler doesn't buy into Walt's "mustn't blame yourself" rationalizations, either ("there is blood on my hands" and "I've been compromised" being Skyler speak for "I'm the bad guy" - or I should say, it is White speak, because it's a direct call back to Walt's "everything's been compromised from The Fly, which was probably the last episode when Walt still showed enough awareness to know what he did can't be excused away and is unforgivable), but she's more than two decades older than Jesse, and both more trapped by and less emotionally dependent on Walt than he is. The biggest hold Walt has over Skyler is that she's still shying away from destroying the image Junior has of his father. The biggest hold Skyler has over Walt - the reason why he can't deal with her as he dealt with his outside enemies - is that he still wants her to admit she's wrong, he's right, and that she loves him again. You know, I thought that Skyler's devastating blow of telling Walt she's waiting for the cancer to come back would have finished this, but no. The next time we see the Whites again, Walt shows her Jesse's gift and tells her Jesse wanted him dead, too, and now loves him again, and so will she.
....
I mean. Walter White/Denial is one epic OTP. Also, if he loves you, he loves you, and if he's destroying everything you hold dear in life in order to keep you he'll keep on loving you. The reason why this is awesome storytelling instead of bad romance is that the show doesn't imply Walt is a romantic hero for feeling this way. And that, paradoxically, makes me feel a bit for Walt even though I'm now starting to embrace my theory from the last episode review even more and hope Skyler will be the one to kill him with Chekov's ricin tablet. It would be such perfect karmic justice. And as I said last time, the only way I can see for the show to end without Hank's and Marie's lives ruined as well if it happens before Walt is outed as Heisenberg to the world. It would be a way for Skyler to remain free - as Walt told Jesse repeatedly, ricin if you don't look for it won't be detected, and Walt's state of health means nobody will be surprised by a sudden death - but actually I think that, again like Jesse (this time in the dog story episode), she wants to be punished.
Sidenote: one reason why I love Skyler White: in her big verbal showdown with Walt, she refuses to buy his rationalizations for himself, yes, but she also refuses to buy his rationalizations for her own actions, and she doesn't put he blame on him for those actions, she blames herself. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a grown up acknowledging responsibility. So very rare in fiction and real life.
Meanwhile, in the meth business: obviously Mike is right about Lydia having planted the tracker (which means her nervousness was at least partly an act for Jesse's benefit, though I think like many successful people, Lydia acts with the emotional truth), and it reminds me of Walt's slightly over the top twitchiness in the scene where Jesse comes into his house thinking Walt poisoned Brock by ricin. Note that she's nervous in her previous scene (sans intended witness) as well, but far more low scale, not in a way the D.E.A. can spot, and before she has her melt down she carefully lowers the shades and muffles her scream in a pillow. Jesse going out of his way with not wanting to kill her reminded me he hasn't killed a woman before - by direct force. Let's not forget Jesse contributed to the ruin and death of a lot of women (and men, and children) by producing and selling meth. Incidentally, whenever I see Laura Fraser my first thought is still "Henriette!" which is weird since I didn't even like her Henriette (from RTD's Casanova) that much. Anyway, I noticed that Jesse in his scene with Lydia mentions he flew 900 miles (or something like that) from New Mexico, which means Lydia lives and works that far away. Hm. I'm lousy at American geography. But. How far away from New Mexico is wherever Walt is in the season teaser scene?
Lastly: Lydia is older than Jane and Andrea, but like them, she's dark haired and attractive, like Andrea, she has a child, and like Walt and Jane, she's manipulative. Also presumably Mike isn't exaggarating if he says that she "deserves death as much as any man I ever met" (which, let's not forget, includes Walt, currently still heading Mike's Least Favourite People list, and the late unmourned Gus Fring). In conclusion, she's totally Jesse's type.
It really has it all: great scripts, fabulous actors, and splendid visual storytelling. So incredibly cinematic. The sequence alone where we have Walt in the foreground, monologuing to Hank and Marie about his first chemo treatment week and what a fabulous support Skyler was, milking the sympathy from them (knowing they know what he told Marie)... while in the background we have Skyler quietly entering the pool, step by step, until she's surrounded by blue (blue like Walt's meth, blue like ice, blue like quiet, just for a moment). Incidentally, I didn't catch whether at the last moment it was Walt or Hank who jumped in to pull her out?
Anyway. As great as the sequence was, it was only a prelude to what the episode and all the previous ones have been leading up to; the moment when Skyler finally breaks her silence and tells Walt just what is on her mind. And that scene was epic. Preceded, again, by a little gem of character interaction between Walt, Hank and Marie as Walt realises Skyler's strategy, that entering the pool had not been a breakdown (as her outburst at the car wash had been), but a calculated (and in its small step way successful) move to make Hank and Marie take the kids away for a short time.
The show always toyed with paralleling or contrasting Walt's two "partnerships", the one with Jesse and the one with Skyler (and usually if one was doing relatively well the other one was not), but in this episode, which in show time is exactly a year after the pilot (and a year before this, Jesse was only a half forgotten former student to Walt), this became main text instead of subtext, with Walt making the point in dialogue. Previously I've said where Skyler was in terms of Walt's previous development (i.e. later s1 Walt = 5.1 Skyler, so to speak), but this episode makes me compare 5.04 Skyler to Jesse in 4.1, when he tells Walt (after one of Walt's "mustn't blame yourself, look forward etc." speeches when Walt picks him up from the detox clinic that he knows who he is, and he's the bad guy. But Jesse is still quite young (though far more mature than he used to be) and needy of affection and approval. Skyler doesn't buy into Walt's "mustn't blame yourself" rationalizations, either ("there is blood on my hands" and "I've been compromised" being Skyler speak for "I'm the bad guy" - or I should say, it is White speak, because it's a direct call back to Walt's "everything's been compromised from The Fly, which was probably the last episode when Walt still showed enough awareness to know what he did can't be excused away and is unforgivable), but she's more than two decades older than Jesse, and both more trapped by and less emotionally dependent on Walt than he is. The biggest hold Walt has over Skyler is that she's still shying away from destroying the image Junior has of his father. The biggest hold Skyler has over Walt - the reason why he can't deal with her as he dealt with his outside enemies - is that he still wants her to admit she's wrong, he's right, and that she loves him again. You know, I thought that Skyler's devastating blow of telling Walt she's waiting for the cancer to come back would have finished this, but no. The next time we see the Whites again, Walt shows her Jesse's gift and tells her Jesse wanted him dead, too, and now loves him again, and so will she.
....
I mean. Walter White/Denial is one epic OTP. Also, if he loves you, he loves you, and if he's destroying everything you hold dear in life in order to keep you he'll keep on loving you. The reason why this is awesome storytelling instead of bad romance is that the show doesn't imply Walt is a romantic hero for feeling this way. And that, paradoxically, makes me feel a bit for Walt even though I'm now starting to embrace my theory from the last episode review even more and hope Skyler will be the one to kill him with Chekov's ricin tablet. It would be such perfect karmic justice. And as I said last time, the only way I can see for the show to end without Hank's and Marie's lives ruined as well if it happens before Walt is outed as Heisenberg to the world. It would be a way for Skyler to remain free - as Walt told Jesse repeatedly, ricin if you don't look for it won't be detected, and Walt's state of health means nobody will be surprised by a sudden death - but actually I think that, again like Jesse (this time in the dog story episode), she wants to be punished.
Sidenote: one reason why I love Skyler White: in her big verbal showdown with Walt, she refuses to buy his rationalizations for himself, yes, but she also refuses to buy his rationalizations for her own actions, and she doesn't put he blame on him for those actions, she blames herself. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a grown up acknowledging responsibility. So very rare in fiction and real life.
Meanwhile, in the meth business: obviously Mike is right about Lydia having planted the tracker (which means her nervousness was at least partly an act for Jesse's benefit, though I think like many successful people, Lydia acts with the emotional truth), and it reminds me of Walt's slightly over the top twitchiness in the scene where Jesse comes into his house thinking Walt poisoned Brock by ricin. Note that she's nervous in her previous scene (sans intended witness) as well, but far more low scale, not in a way the D.E.A. can spot, and before she has her melt down she carefully lowers the shades and muffles her scream in a pillow. Jesse going out of his way with not wanting to kill her reminded me he hasn't killed a woman before - by direct force. Let's not forget Jesse contributed to the ruin and death of a lot of women (and men, and children) by producing and selling meth. Incidentally, whenever I see Laura Fraser my first thought is still "Henriette!" which is weird since I didn't even like her Henriette (from RTD's Casanova) that much. Anyway, I noticed that Jesse in his scene with Lydia mentions he flew 900 miles (or something like that) from New Mexico, which means Lydia lives and works that far away. Hm. I'm lousy at American geography. But. How far away from New Mexico is wherever Walt is in the season teaser scene?
Lastly: Lydia is older than Jane and Andrea, but like them, she's dark haired and attractive, like Andrea, she has a child, and like Walt and Jane, she's manipulative. Also presumably Mike isn't exaggarating if he says that she "deserves death as much as any man I ever met" (which, let's not forget, includes Walt, currently still heading Mike's Least Favourite People list, and the late unmourned Gus Fring). In conclusion, she's totally Jesse's type.
