Outside of the scene in “One Minute” (S3E7) where Walt admits the quality of Jesse’s meth—when he had essentially no choice but to do so—Walt has never complimented Jesse as well as Gus does when he casually tells him, “I like to think I see things in people.” Perhaps the irony of the situation is that Gus seems to see a genuinely useful worker in Jesse. Gus understands that Jesse does have value beyond being a convenient pawn in his plan to manipulate Walt. Jesse is obviously not as tough or efficient as Mike, but he proves himself valuable by showing how having someone on the payroll who speaks tweaker1 can come in handy.
Walt doesn’t see Jesse’s value, or any other big picture issues. He’s too much of a narcissist to think about how other people may feel, or how his actions will affect them. He pays female workers from the laundromat to clean up the super lab, just assuming it’s a different way to flip the bird at the men behind the surveillance camera. He never for a second imagines what Gus might do to any civilians who saw the inside of that place. If anything, he should be relieved that all Tyrus plans to do is put them on a bus.
Nor does he see the unfair position he insists on putting Skyler in with their son, or even the more practical issues that come with buying him such a conspicuous new car. He briefly seems to recognize his actions when he defends Skyler’s response, saying to Walter Jr., “What is going on with me is not about some disease. It’s about choices. Choices I have made. Choices I stand by.” But even though his tone on the surface is one of self-awareness and humility in that moment, his words are not dissimilar to the ones he uses to gloat to Skyler that he is “the one who knocks.” In both instances, Walt is trying to make clear that he’s not the side character in his own life, but the protagonist whose choices dictate his life, and the lives of those around him.
Not long after Skyler flees the house with Holly in tow, Walt has to go to the car wash to take the keys from Bogdan, who still thinks of Walt as the weak, pathetic man he seemed like in the series premiere and thus sees fit to lecture him on what it takes to be a good boss, solely as a final exercise in humiliating his former employee. But Bogdan makes the same mistake Skyler did in underestimating Walt, and Walt manages to turn their “as is” deal around on Bogdan, keeping Bogdan’s framed first dollar bill in a clever but extremely petty dominance move. Walt doesn’t even want the damn thing, as exemplified by the fact that he uses it to buy a soda as soon as Bogdan is gone. He just wants to deprive Bogdan of something in the same way he felt that Bogdan repeatedly deprived him of his dignity.
And yet that lecture about being a boss—and the similar lesson Gus once gave to Walt over dinner—is ironic in more ways than one. Walt clearly already thinks of himself as a boss, and relishes all the dominance such a position confers. This episode shows, in his scenes with Skyler and with Jesse, that Walt is incapable of really being a partner. We might see him as too myopic, abrasive, and plain arrogant to get along with Skyler and Jesse, but it is exactly those qualities that Walt treasures in himself, and in Heisenberg. Perhaps the darkest irony of all is that it is Walt’s worst qualities that make him one hell of a crime lord—and the protagonist of his own story.
1 The scene with the meth-head gives Michael Slovis (and his substitute director of photography Nelson Cragg) the opportunity to show off with another Breaking Bad signature shot, this time from the POV of the shovel Jesse is carrying.
SEASON 4 / EPISODE 7
“Problem Dog”
Written and directed by Peter Gould
Lucky Cigarette
“Only maybe you got it for the wrong guy.” —Mike
“Problem Dog” is the midway point of season four, and an episode that finds various characters caught halfway between one world and another. Time and again, they’re asked to choose whether they’re in or they’re out. Some choose right away, some choose before changing their minds, and some act like there’s no choice at all.
The man most obviously caught in the middle is Jesse. On one side is Walt: his teacher, his mentor, and the man who has repeatedly saved his life, but always after making that life immeasurably worse. On the other side are Mike and Gus: two men he barely knows, who only a month ago wanted him dead, who lied to his face and allowed Andrea’s brother to be killed, but who have also showered him with praise and responsibility in a way that Walt never has. They’ve clearly gained Jesse’s trust, and he theirs, in recent days; even a man as competent and confident as Mike wouldn’t hand a loaded gun to someone he doesn’t have faith in.
At first, Jesse chooses Walt, who finally figures out a more effective (if blatant and patronizing) way to talk to his partner. In turn, Jesse comes up with a clever way to hide the ricin inside a cigarette pack, and is handed as perfect an opportunity as he is likely to ever have to kill the Chicken Man. Then Jesse changes his mind; not only does he not kill Gus,1 but he lies to Walt about the whole thing. It’s still unclear which side Jesse is on—or if even he knows.
That’s not the only decision Jesse can’t quite make. He opens the episode reliving Gale’s murder via a first-person shooter game, making him realize just how much he’s still struggling with the aftermath of what he did. Eventually, he goes back to his old twelve-step group, but note that the counselor has to ask him whether he’s coming in or not, and that Jesse lingers a bit before deciding. At the group, Jesse decides to tell a thinly disguised version of the story (substituting the eponymous problem dog for Gale), plainly hoping for something. Does he want counsel? Condemnation? Absolution? He doesn’t really know, and in frustration lashes out at everyone in the meeting while hiding behind his “I’m the bad guy” facade by announcing the real reason he used to come to the meetings. He doesn’t feel any better, but he does make other people feel worse. For Jesse, that may be better than feeling nothing at all.
Skyler also has a moment of doubt when she finally realizes the incredible amount of money she’s going to have to launder. Walt again offers her a chance to back out, though on some level it’s not an offer she’s even able to take; once they bought the car wash, Skyler became complicit in Walt’s crime. She has no ability to turn back now. She can’t even bring herself to say anything in response, and simply resumes putting the stacks of cash into the safe.
Gus, meanwhile, thinks he’s making an offer to the cartel’s representative, but as far as the cartel is concerned, there is no negotiation. Instead, they are offering Gus a simple binary choice, one to which we are not yet privy. Is it, similar to the offer Skyler receives, an in-or-out issue, in which he’s essentially being told to join or die? Or are they interested in something other than money—like, perhaps, the services of a genius chemist, who once upon a time was headed south of the border under Tuco’s watch?
But who is, perhaps surprisingly, the one person not fearing any kind of uncertainty about where he stands and what he should do? That would be Hank Schrader, DEA.
Hank goes to Gus’s restaurant with Walter Jr. on what at first seems like an innocuous reconnaissance mission, but turns out to be something much more elaborate. The show so cleverly misdirects us with Gus tempting Walter Jr. with the offer of a job—a position that could give him even more leverage over his most troublesome employee—that Hank’s plot to obtain Gus’s fingerprints comes as a wonderful surprise. Hank then returns to the DEA offices in style, complete with a masterful presentation about Gale, Gus, blue meth, air cleaners, vegan bread, and all the rest. The little shrug he offers at the end of his recitation is perfect, because Hank knows he nailed it, and now doesn’t even need to gloat.
Certainty can be dangerous in this world, though. Hank is closer than ever to Heisenberg’s true identity, but he would have been much better off playing with his minerals, unsure of what to do next.
1 Not that any viewer should have expected Jesse to do it, since by this point in the series we all understand that no Walter White murder plot ever goes as planned.
SEASON 4 / EPISODE 8
“Hermanos”
Written by Sam C
atlin & George Mastras
Directed by Johan Renck
Blood Is Thicker
“This is what comes of blood for blood, Hector.” —Gus
Early in “Hermanos,” Hank asks Gus if Gustavo Fring is, in fact, his real name, and we’re reminded of just how little we actually know about the Chicken Man. Who is this extremely efficient, almost robotic businessman? Why does he act with such brutal cunning? Why was he so willing to take the reckless Walter under his wing? And what, exactly, is his relationship with the cartel? By the end of “Hermanos,” we have the answer to many of these questions, helped in part by our glimpse of a younger Gus who has not yet learned to keep his emotions under such tight control.
What is most interesting to me about this flashback is just how much young Gus and his “brother” Max evoke Walt and Jesse from the beginning of the series.
It’s not an exact, one-to-one parallel, but in both cases you have two partners, one of whom is something of a mentor to the other. One is a brilliant chemist,1 but both are in over their heads in trying to break into the drug game, charging forward with only the foolish conviction that their superior product will be so appealing that it will allow them to stay bloodless in a very bloody business.
In Walt and Jesse’s case, they survived their initial encounter with Emilio and Krazy-8, but only just. Max wasn’t so lucky, and Gus apparently only survived because of the mysterious past in Chile he lived under another name.
For the first time, we see Gustavo Fring break, wailing and whimpering while lying there and staring at his good friend as his blood drains into Don Eladio’s pool.2 Even without the jump back to the present, where time and poor health have now made Tio Hector as helpless and full of fury as Gus was lying by the pool, it’s not hard to draw a straight line from that moment to the man Gus has become: one who is not only smart, but cold, calculating, and, if need be, utterly ruthless.
He has, in other words, become exactly the kind of man that Walter White fancies himself to be when he tells his fellow cancer patient that his philosophy is “Never give up control. Live life on your own terms.”
Walt has not yet been quite able to pull that off, though, whether due to his circumstances or to his own weaknesses. Gus, on the other hand, has. He has an enormous empire. He arranged for Juan Bolsa (the other man at the table with Tio and Don Eladio, played by Javier Grajeda) to be killed during the raid in “I See You” (S3E8), and while he can’t physically damage Tio any more than his stroke already did, he can surely twist the emotional knife by relaying how he planned for Marco and Leonel to be killed.
Despite Gus’s display of cruelty toward Tio, the Chicken Man’s origin story comes not at a moment when he’s at the unassailable peak of his evil powers, but when he seems vulnerable, even frantic.
The interrogation scene with Hank, ASAC Merkert (Michael Shamus Wiles), Gomez, and Tim Roberts (Nigel Gibbs) is one of the first times we’ve ever seen Gus in a setting where he has absolutely no control and is at a complete disadvantage. He improvises well and fools everyone but Hank, but when he gets into the elevator afterward there’s an expression on his face we haven’t seen before, one that shows how little he likes it when a situation arises that he couldn’t foresee. It is an expression of deep, unsettled fear, and it does not look good on him.
The camera pushes in on Gus in that moment, just as it does to Walt at the end of the scene at Jesse’s house, after Walt has a similarly unforeseen revelation about Jesse’s loyalty. The ground on which Walt stands has never been as firm as it seemed to be for Gus, but each man teeters on a precipice now. Walt feels completely alone, convinced Jesse has turned on him and will eventually start plotting with Gus and Mike to kill him. And Gus is caught between a rock (the cartel) and a hard place (Hank’s investigation, which has come at his most vulnerable possible time), with a high chance of acid rain (Walt) at any moment.
Gus and Pinochet
If the specifics of Walt’s departure from Gray Matter were the biggest piece of Breaking Bad backstory never explained on the series itself, the matter of what Gus used to do in Chile—and why, as a result, Don Eladio declines to kill him, even when he has Max taken out—is a strong second. And as with Gray Matter, the Breaking Bad writers discussed things in much more detail than was ever presented on the show.
Here are “Hermanos” writers Sam Catlin and George Mastras to explain:
Catlin: “Eladio spares Gus out of consideration for his reputation as a powerfully connected secret policeman in Pinochet’s Chile. Maybe Eladio had dealings with other Chileans he didn’t wish to alienate, but he wasn’t specifically forbidden to kill him. He spared him out of respect for his reputation. I think we may have talked about the Pinochet regime falling, so that Gus has to head north on the run, and that the only thing that would scare Gus Fring would be to get sent back to Chile to suffer at the hands of the people he made suffer. Like Eichmann in Jerusalem. Something like that. Gus’s journey had him land in this part of Mexico that Don Eladio did business in.”
Mastras: “First, regardless of the turf violation, Eladio respects Gus. Gus showed significant cleverness in manipulating Don Eladio into the meeting—and it shows initiative and business savvy and guts. And, as Sam says (and as suggested in the dialogue), Don Eladio did his homework on Gus and knows that Gus was a ‘boss’ or ‘strongman’ in Chile.
“In our minds, Gus had been military or secret police (thus the meticulous folding of his clothes, punctuality, etc.) under the Pinochet dictatorship—a feared/respected man (we discussed an interrogator/torturer, given Gus’s ability to manipulate people and to deceive). Gus (in my mind, anyway) might have gotten his start in drugs while in the Chilean Army—for instance, one possibility, with the black cocaine program Pinochet had his army develop [a special cocaine that could be smuggled without detection, developed by the Chilean army under Pinochet’s orders and sold as a method to finance the regime.] This would certainly explain why a drug cartel leader like Eladio would know of Gus (as opposed to any other high level military guy). Given Eladio’s respect for Gus, Don Eladio is inclined to let Gus live, so long as someone dies (Max) so he can save face in front of his men.
“Second, and probably most importantly (because ‘respect’ is not enough to spare Gus), what Gus is offering, business-wise, lands with Don Eladio. Eladio is indeed interested in learning more about methamphetamine manufacture (a drug he can manufacture in Mexico and thus not have to pay the Columbians a lion’s share, giving Eladio a leg up on the drug of the future and a competitive advantage over competing cartels). And so Gus is potentially very useful to Don Eladio. He keeps him around and gets what he can out of him. Though, instead of the ‘partnership’ Gus proposes, the murder of Max (and sparing of Gus) makes it absolutely clear: Don Eladio is resetting the relationship in traditional cartel structure, where Don Eladio is the boss and Gus is the employee. And if the employee ever dares to step out of line or disrespect him again, Don Eladio won’t be so gracious next time to Gus. Just like anyone else in the cartel hierarchy, Eladio can kill him any time he wants (so he believes).”
More Than Just Hermanos?
Also setting fan theories flying: the exact nature of Gus and Max’s relationship. The two come across as very close, and Hector treats them with the kind of contempt he might reserve for people he considers lesser than himself. Is it possible that they were partners in more than a professional sense?
“My view is that Max is one of those people that Gus just wanted to take care of as probably a brother or even a son,” suggests Giancarlo Esposito. “That’s how I feel. I love the fact that it’s left unsaid, that you don’t really know if they were lovers or not. In my take of it, I think they were really just close human beings, because I believe Gus saw something in him. He took Max off the streets and gave him an education, and he saw someone who had great desire. How often do you see someone who is homeless or struggling, but still has a dream? Gus related to that and gave him a gift, and so I think th
at’s what was … if he were a lover it becomes—it’s not as clean, not as pure, or as selfless. And I feel like Gus in that way is selfless. He’s not trying to take advantage of this kid. Not even for the business. He’s trying to give him a life, and he is very discerning. He picked out Max because Max had desire and so to put a relationship in the middle is less selfless.”
As the title suggests, the episode also concerns itself with partners close enough to feel like kin. Gus’s dies in front of him in the 1980s. Walt’s appears to have betrayed him today. And Hank’s still works for the DEA, but Hank himself is so determined to go rogue and is still so weakened from being shot that he has to turn Walter White into his partner. Though Hank and Walt are the closest pair this episode gets to actual hermanos, they are by no means the pair with the most affection for each other; Hank clearly still thinks of Walt as a spineless intellectual (regardless of any respect he might begrudgingly give his alleged card-counting abilities), and Walt only agrees to join up with Hank because he knows to keep his enemies close.
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