Breaking Bad 5.08
Sep. 4th, 2012 06:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakOr, as I call it, Return of the Fly. In which we go into hiatus with the mother of all cliffhangers.
Seriously, I downright cheered when the episode opened with said insect, and not just because season 3's The Fly is one of my favourite episodes. Asfrenchani wrote back then, flies double for the Furies, courtesy of Sartre and the Greeks. Back then, Walter spent an insomniac episode chasing after a fly in vain, and when finally slipping into sleep told Jesse he, Walt, had missed his perfect time to die (after Holly's birth, before talking to Jane's father). He also came the closest he ever got to confessing and showing repentance over a death (Jane's). Those days are gone, but the fly is still there, and Walt is left in an odd state of daze, emptiness and sharpened routine by Mike's death. When he's not ordering prison massacres, he's getting distracted by and contemplating ghastly hotel paintings. Or flies.
I loved the scene with Lydia, whose parallels with Walt I mentioned before, and who of course immediately deduced from his request of the nine names that a) Mike must be dead, and b) Walt intends to kill her, too, as a loose end once he has the names. (As we see by him later putting the ricin away, she's right.) So she comes up with the perfect reason to assure her continued survival, which is the way Walt did it with the kingpins of days past: offer a professional advantage and create a situation where she's indispensable as the person providing said advantage. Which leads to the Czechs now getting poisoned with the blue stuff, too, and the money dropping in in a montage whicn was a bit too long for my taste, but I suppose the point that three months pass had to be made.
Anyway: while on the one hand, Walt is getting his meth empire, on the other, those insects which no longer drive him to squash them but which he can't help but notice won't go away. The scene with Hank directly after the prison killings was fantastic. Hank's own dazedness and shock, the utter disgust in which he talks about pursuing monsters, and Walt's reaction shot to the word "monster". He's been competing with Hank in his mind for the position of top male in the family for eons, but he also consistently saw and sees his brother-in-law as "a good man" (as Walt says to Gus Fring about Hank mid s3 when trying to plead for Hank's life), and if he once felt galled Hank saw Gale, not him as the "genius" Heisenberg and at other times smug about fooling him, at this moment he feels neither. What does he feel? Hard to say. But presumably part of what drives him to his decision later.
Unknown to Walt, Marie (again with the best of intentions) highlights to Skyler that her temporary solution of having her children at Hank's and Marie's is coming to an end. Skyler's next move is a rare non-hostile and matter of fact moment in the current White marriage: showing Walt that room full of money, more than could ever by laundered or spent on two lifetimes, and asking him when it will be enough (with the implication that if he does stop, she'll take the children back in the house; it's a good thing Walt doesn't know Marie is not leaving her much of a choice there). And the third step is Walt's routine cat scan. We're not told the cancer is back. For all we know, it might not yet be. But given the direct visual call-back to the metal surface in the bath room which Walt damaged all the way back in s2 when he was told his cancer had gone into remission so he would no longer see his reflection on it immediately after this scan now, and given Walt's look at it, I definitely got that impression.
So Walt does the one thing we didn't expect him anymore to do: he quits. It makes sense. Because what is his alternative? His two marriages/partnerships were broken down, with neither partner talking to him anymore (though Skyler was physically present, it only emphasized emotionally, she wasn't; I'll get to the two Jesse scenes separately), the children were gone, the adrenaline kick and challenge to beat the impossible odds was over (Todd the soulless minion does what he's told, Lydia does deliver the money from Europe as promised, there are no more rivals or bosses to fear) - what's he going to do for his final months, contemplate wall paintings and money? So he gives Skyler what she wants, and in return gets the family reunited. But the thing about Furies is that they are relentless. During the happy family on the sunshine by the pool scene, we're all on the edge of our seats, I imagine, waiting for the proverbial penny to drop. And drop it finally does, in the bathroom, on the toilet, no less, as Hank finally realizes his brother-in-law is Heisenberg.
We've seen Walt hold the Whitman volume with Gale's dedication at the start of the season (I think it was when he was moving his stuff back to the house, though I could be wrong there); thus its existence in the White household was fairly established. Was it too much of a coincidence for Hank to come across it? At the moment, I'm inclined to say no, not least because of the s4 backstory where it was eating up Walt from the inside that Hank could consider Gale as Heisenberg; there always was a part of him who wanted to be appreciated by Hank, who is perhaps the one man alive whom Walt respects, as a criminal mastermind, and keeping the Gale momento around despite it being incriminating evidence is no more perverse than going into a rant about why Gale must have copied the meth notes and couldn't have been the genius creating the stuff. Not that Walt consciously wants to get caught, but with those urges in his subconscious, it's plausible.
Speaking of evidence. I'll have to rewatch the second Jesse scene, because the ending confused me for a moment where I went from assuming that the money Walt had dropped at Jesse's doorstep was Jesse's previously withheld share to wondering whether it was actually Mike's money and Mike's bag and Mike's gun (which Walt had killed Mike with) as Walt's way of telling Jesse Mike was dead after all to thinking the gun was Jesse's (I must have blinked at the wrong moment) because he had thought Walt had come to kill him through that entire scene.
Anyway, said scene, after Walt's scan, was another reason to believe the cancer is back. And incredibly sad. Because Walt is sincere in that he doesn't believe anymore he can lure Jesse back into the business, and all the awkward talk about the RV (i.e. ye olde s1 and s2 days when their emotional bond was forged) is an attempt to say he cares and an attempt to say goodbye. And it's not that Jesse is completely unresponsive, but he also, like Hank (who doesn't know it yet), regards Walt as a monster now, capable of anything, and if something of the affection he had for Walt is still there, which I think it is, it's overlaid with stark fear. Walt ruined this relationship as surely as he did his marriage.
(The earlier scene between them, at the beginning of the episode, with Walt closing the garage door on Jesse, reminded me of nothing as much as the ending of The Godfather, Kay realising Michael lied to her and that her husband is a monster while the door gets closed in her face.)
Incidentally, given Jesse is still in town three months later instead of having left to start somewhere else anew once he quit, I would say his subconscious urge of wanting to be caught is definitely there.
Speculation: Walt's new business partners aren't going to be thrilled about this quitting idea, especially since I doubt Todd already can reproduce Walt's formula at the same level. Not least for the Doylist reason that the show needs to keep Jesse involved in the story without making him regress to falling for Walt's manipulations and returning to business again. If Todd can produce the blue meth on his own, nobody needs Jesse, but if he can't, then those enterprising gents and/or Lydia have a reason to kidnap Jesse as a Walt replacement. This will also give them the liberty of going after Walt himself as a loose end, especially if/when they find out he's now a D.E.A. suspect. (Because I don't think Walt only has the DEA to fight in the flash forward that opens the season.)
What will Hank do after his Eureka moment? Search for alternate explanations first and discard them, is my guess. Then assume, as Skyler did for a while, that Walt was pressured/in over his head/somehow blackmailed, and discard that possibility as well when thinking of all those dead kingpins, Gus especially, and the prison massacre. Then he'll have the dilemma of whether to do his duty, which will also destroy his own career for good (and given the money for his therapy was drug money, might even make him a fellow suspect), or allow a multiple murderer to remain free. Oh, Hank.
...and now we'll have to wait for 2013. A curse on hiati!
Seriously, I downright cheered when the episode opened with said insect, and not just because season 3's The Fly is one of my favourite episodes. As
frenchani wrote back then, flies double for the Furies, courtesy of Sartre and the Greeks. Back then, Walter spent an insomniac episode chasing after a fly in vain, and when finally slipping into sleep told Jesse he, Walt, had missed his perfect time to die (after Holly's birth, before talking to Jane's father). He also came the closest he ever got to confessing and showing repentance over a death (Jane's). Those days are gone, but the fly is still there, and Walt is left in an odd state of daze, emptiness and sharpened routine by Mike's death. When he's not ordering prison massacres, he's getting distracted by and contemplating ghastly hotel paintings. Or flies. I loved the scene with Lydia, whose parallels with Walt I mentioned before, and who of course immediately deduced from his request of the nine names that a) Mike must be dead, and b) Walt intends to kill her, too, as a loose end once he has the names. (As we see by him later putting the ricin away, she's right.) So she comes up with the perfect reason to assure her continued survival, which is the way Walt did it with the kingpins of days past: offer a professional advantage and create a situation where she's indispensable as the person providing said advantage. Which leads to the Czechs now getting poisoned with the blue stuff, too, and the money dropping in in a montage whicn was a bit too long for my taste, but I suppose the point that three months pass had to be made.
Anyway: while on the one hand, Walt is getting his meth empire, on the other, those insects which no longer drive him to squash them but which he can't help but notice won't go away. The scene with Hank directly after the prison killings was fantastic. Hank's own dazedness and shock, the utter disgust in which he talks about pursuing monsters, and Walt's reaction shot to the word "monster". He's been competing with Hank in his mind for the position of top male in the family for eons, but he also consistently saw and sees his brother-in-law as "a good man" (as Walt says to Gus Fring about Hank mid s3 when trying to plead for Hank's life), and if he once felt galled Hank saw Gale, not him as the "genius" Heisenberg and at other times smug about fooling him, at this moment he feels neither. What does he feel? Hard to say. But presumably part of what drives him to his decision later.
Unknown to Walt, Marie (again with the best of intentions) highlights to Skyler that her temporary solution of having her children at Hank's and Marie's is coming to an end. Skyler's next move is a rare non-hostile and matter of fact moment in the current White marriage: showing Walt that room full of money, more than could ever by laundered or spent on two lifetimes, and asking him when it will be enough (with the implication that if he does stop, she'll take the children back in the house; it's a good thing Walt doesn't know Marie is not leaving her much of a choice there). And the third step is Walt's routine cat scan. We're not told the cancer is back. For all we know, it might not yet be. But given the direct visual call-back to the metal surface in the bath room which Walt damaged all the way back in s2 when he was told his cancer had gone into remission so he would no longer see his reflection on it immediately after this scan now, and given Walt's look at it, I definitely got that impression.
So Walt does the one thing we didn't expect him anymore to do: he quits. It makes sense. Because what is his alternative? His two marriages/partnerships were broken down, with neither partner talking to him anymore (though Skyler was physically present, it only emphasized emotionally, she wasn't; I'll get to the two Jesse scenes separately), the children were gone, the adrenaline kick and challenge to beat the impossible odds was over (Todd the soulless minion does what he's told, Lydia does deliver the money from Europe as promised, there are no more rivals or bosses to fear) - what's he going to do for his final months, contemplate wall paintings and money? So he gives Skyler what she wants, and in return gets the family reunited. But the thing about Furies is that they are relentless. During the happy family on the sunshine by the pool scene, we're all on the edge of our seats, I imagine, waiting for the proverbial penny to drop. And drop it finally does, in the bathroom, on the toilet, no less, as Hank finally realizes his brother-in-law is Heisenberg.
We've seen Walt hold the Whitman volume with Gale's dedication at the start of the season (I think it was when he was moving his stuff back to the house, though I could be wrong there); thus its existence in the White household was fairly established. Was it too much of a coincidence for Hank to come across it? At the moment, I'm inclined to say no, not least because of the s4 backstory where it was eating up Walt from the inside that Hank could consider Gale as Heisenberg; there always was a part of him who wanted to be appreciated by Hank, who is perhaps the one man alive whom Walt respects, as a criminal mastermind, and keeping the Gale momento around despite it being incriminating evidence is no more perverse than going into a rant about why Gale must have copied the meth notes and couldn't have been the genius creating the stuff. Not that Walt consciously wants to get caught, but with those urges in his subconscious, it's plausible.
Speaking of evidence. I'll have to rewatch the second Jesse scene, because the ending confused me for a moment where I went from assuming that the money Walt had dropped at Jesse's doorstep was Jesse's previously withheld share to wondering whether it was actually Mike's money and Mike's bag and Mike's gun (which Walt had killed Mike with) as Walt's way of telling Jesse Mike was dead after all to thinking the gun was Jesse's (I must have blinked at the wrong moment) because he had thought Walt had come to kill him through that entire scene.
Anyway, said scene, after Walt's scan, was another reason to believe the cancer is back. And incredibly sad. Because Walt is sincere in that he doesn't believe anymore he can lure Jesse back into the business, and all the awkward talk about the RV (i.e. ye olde s1 and s2 days when their emotional bond was forged) is an attempt to say he cares and an attempt to say goodbye. And it's not that Jesse is completely unresponsive, but he also, like Hank (who doesn't know it yet), regards Walt as a monster now, capable of anything, and if something of the affection he had for Walt is still there, which I think it is, it's overlaid with stark fear. Walt ruined this relationship as surely as he did his marriage.
(The earlier scene between them, at the beginning of the episode, with Walt closing the garage door on Jesse, reminded me of nothing as much as the ending of The Godfather, Kay realising Michael lied to her and that her husband is a monster while the door gets closed in her face.)
Incidentally, given Jesse is still in town three months later instead of having left to start somewhere else anew once he quit, I would say his subconscious urge of wanting to be caught is definitely there.
Speculation: Walt's new business partners aren't going to be thrilled about this quitting idea, especially since I doubt Todd already can reproduce Walt's formula at the same level. Not least for the Doylist reason that the show needs to keep Jesse involved in the story without making him regress to falling for Walt's manipulations and returning to business again. If Todd can produce the blue meth on his own, nobody needs Jesse, but if he can't, then those enterprising gents and/or Lydia have a reason to kidnap Jesse as a Walt replacement. This will also give them the liberty of going after Walt himself as a loose end, especially if/when they find out he's now a D.E.A. suspect. (Because I don't think Walt only has the DEA to fight in the flash forward that opens the season.)
What will Hank do after his Eureka moment? Search for alternate explanations first and discard them, is my guess. Then assume, as Skyler did for a while, that Walt was pressured/in over his head/somehow blackmailed, and discard that possibility as well when thinking of all those dead kingpins, Gus especially, and the prison massacre. Then he'll have the dilemma of whether to do his duty, which will also destroy his own career for good (and given the money for his therapy was drug money, might even make him a fellow suspect), or allow a multiple murderer to remain free. Oh, Hank.
...and now we'll have to wait for 2013. A curse on hiati!
