1 Played by Gail Gilligan, Vince Gilligan’s mother!
2 Technically, we spend the first half of “Full Measure” (S3E13) unaware that Jesse is still in town and working in concert with Walt to turn the tables on Gus and Mike, but that’s a much smaller reveal in terms of what it means for Walt’s character development.
3 This is perhaps the part of the plan that would have benefited most from letting the audience watch in real time, because Huell, to this point, has been presented as a bumbling, snoring clown, and not in any way someone skilled enough to make such a swap without Jesse noticing. If you slow down the frisking scene in “End Times” (S4E12), you can make out Huell doing it—in particular, that he stuffs something (the pack with the ricin cigarette in it) into his own pocket as Saul comes out to greet Jesse—though it seems beyond the capabilities of the man we’ve been watching since the start of the season. But as the figure of Walter White has shown us, looks can be deceiving.
4 A final round of applause—or, perhaps, a few more dings of the bell—for Mark Margolis, who (outside of a few flashbacks) was tasked with building a character without benefit of speech, full movement of his body, or even any change of expression outside of his eyes—and who, within those limitations, crafted one of the most unforgettable figures of this entire series. The mix of grief (at all that Gus and Walt have cost him) and glee (at the revenge he is about to enact on this man he has always viewed as beneath him) on his face as he prepares to trigger the bomb is astonishing.
5 Precision to the last, and the best goodbye Gilligan could have given Giancarlo Esposito after the two had made Gus into the series’ greatest villain (other than Walt himself). A Gus who perishes instantly in the explosion still goes out in memorable fashion. But the Gus who staggers out of the room, framed in a way where we for a moment wonder if he has improbably survived all of this—if he really is the Terminator—before we see the extent of the damage and come to understand that he is so concerned about appearances that he uses his last moment to subtly correct his tie, makes it a death for the ages.
SEASON 5 / EPISODE 1
“Live Free or Die”
Written by Vince Gilligan
Directed by Michael Slovis
The Mysterious Mr. Lambert
“We’re done when I say we’re done.” —Walt
Breaking Bad has made an art of the unsettling season-opening scene—Walt taping his confession in the pilot, the charred teddy bear floating in the pool in season two, the Cousins crawling to the shrine in season three, Gale seemingly alive and well in season four—so it’s not a surprise that the final season1 should open in such disorienting territory.
We’re at a Denny’s in Albuquerque, sure, but a lot of time has passed since we last left our protagonist. Walt is celebrating his fifty-second birthday (having turned fifty in the pilot, and with his fifty-first still to come in the present narrative), and not only does he look very different, but he’s also using a fake name2 and is claiming to be from New Hampshire.
He looks much more tired than he has for quite some time, he’s taking medicine again (suggesting the cancer has returned), and acting paranoid enough that even as he talks to the waitress, he is focusing his attention largely on who’s coming through the restaurant door. Things in his life have become so dire that he meets up with his gun-dealing pal Lawson because he apparently needs a machine gun to solve the problem.
There’s obviously no messing around here. With this teaser, Gilligan primes the audience to spend their remaining time wondering how exactly Walt is going to get from Point A to Point B, making it difficult for us to entirely enjoy Walt’s present-day exploits because we know this frightening destination is on the horizon.
“Live Free Or Die” does a very interesting thing following this prologue (or epilogue?): rather than trying to ramp up the insanity in the aftermath of Walt and Tio Salamanca blowing Gus’s face off, it’s a relatively low-key (emphasis on “relatively”) installment of the series. It has the same kind of structure we saw so often in the first few seasons: Walt and Jesse are presented with a seemingly impossible problem, and they have to find a way to solve it.
Even though Gus has been killed and Jesse has been brought back into the fold, there’s still the matter of the security camera footage to deal with.3 No detail is forgotten by Walt and Jesse because in Breaking Bad, the minutiae counts. The data on Gus’s laptop poses yet another trap for Walt to escape, this time with some reluctant help from Mike, the return of Old Joe (the scrapyard manager who disposed of the RV back in “Sunset” [S3E6], played by Larry Hankin), and one of Jesse’s occasional moments of intuitive genius.4 It’s a vintage Breaking Bad caper, executed splendidly by a creative team that has spent years perfecting the art.
This episode’s return to a more traditional structure works perfectly on a few levels. First, trying to sustain the frenzied pitch of “End Times” (S4E12) and “Face Off” (S4E13) would have been a terrible idea. There are few television sins more tiring than a show that tries to do nothing but top its own outrageousness.
Moreover, we need to see a familiar story, because the man at the center of it has become so alien to us. This is Walter White in the flush of victory. He has outsmarted, out-fought, and often just out-willed all who threatened him. This is a Walter White who has come to believe—for understandable reasons—his own press. Gone is the schoolteacher who can never quite believe that he’s doing these things, and who maybe dreams of a way out. In his place is someone who openly enjoys every bit of this criminal act, not least the iron grip he has on everyone in his inner circle.
It doesn’t matter that Skyler admits to being terrified of him,5 or that Saul clearly feels the same way, or that Mike is only working with them out of a shared circumstance,6 or that the rekindling of Walt and Jesse’s partnership was born out of Walt’s despicable lie and the near-murder of a little boy. If anything, several scenes (particularly in Saul’s office) suggest Walt’s pleasure is actually contingent on his oppressive control of the people around him. Walt needs people to fear, and be dependent on, the great and terrible Heisenberg. Otherwise, he doesn’t feel alive.
Walt has always had a monstrous ego, but in the past, his actions have been constrained by circumstance. But nothing seems to be able to stop him now. Gus is dead and the DEA is on the trail of his whole operation. As far as Walt can see, there’s no competition left, no worthy adversary to fell. They say that when Alexander the Great saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for he had no more worlds to conquer. But when Walter White sees the same, he celebrates.
The only consolation for the incredibly disconcerting new status quo is that we know Walt isn’t going to stay unchallenged for long. This show has never worked that way, and the prologue only reinforces that logic, showing us a Walt who’s no longer King of the Mountain and who has been reduced to doing something crazy simply to feel like he exists. Even without the larger scope of the prologue, we know that unexpected complications will arise for our present-day protagonists as soon as the magnet caper inadvertently tips off the cops to some of Gus’s hidden Cayman bank accounts.
There was a very slim chance the series could have concluded with “Face Off,” since there was a protracted contract negotiation between AMC and Sony after season four. Walt telling Skyler that he “won” could have been a fitting ending for the series, as it fulfilled Gilligan’s Mr.-Chips-to-Scarface promise, but it would have been a dark ending, and one that left many loose ends untied. “Live Free or Die” makes clear that the show’s real ending will be even darker, while also serving to once again distinguish Walter White from so many TV protagonists that came before him. Usually, when the main character of a show achieves some sort of victory, it’s cause for the audience to celebrate. Walt, though, won by such loathsome means that the flash-for-ward to a much humbler, more desperate Walt is almost a relief. Who would want to believe that the smug SOB relishing his successful heist is going to win again?
1 That thes
e final sixteen episodes are referred to as one season is more about deals with the cast and crew (since TV contracts tend to include raises for each new season) than about how they were aired (with a year’s gap between the first eight episodes and the second) or produced (with a long production hiatus in between).
2 Lambert, which happens to be Skyler’s maiden name.
3 If it seems a bit sloppy that Gus stored recordings of what went on in the super lab in a computer (even a heavily encrypted one) that he kept in his legitimate place of business, it was already established last season that he did so. This ensures that the predicament in which Walt currently finds himself doesn’t come entirely out of the blue.
4 Jesse’s exclamation of “Yeah, bitch! MAGNETS!” hilariously evokes his similar cries of “YEAH, SCIENCE!” from season one. Jesse’s former status as the show’s comic relief is also alluded to in the scene where he pitches the idea and is initially ignored, which wrings laughs out of Walt’s assumption that all of Jesse’s suggestions are dumb, even if they are perfectly logical (like they are here).
5 Anna Gunn is outstanding throughout this episode, as she makes clear that Skyler is more afraid of her husband than ever (and also more inextricably tied to him). The look on her face as Walt whispers “I forgive you” makes me shudder. She’s even better in that chilling scene in Ted Beneke’s hospital room, where the paralyzed Ted has lost everything, and yet is still so petrified of what Skyler’s associates could do to him that he pledges his silence. Skyler is horrified by what’s happened to Ted, and filled with self-loathing for her role in making it happen, but she has to play the part of a powerful manipulator and she does it, even if she hates herself more for doing it.
6 Jonathan Banks always brings just the right note of paternal disappointment to Mike’s interactions with Jesse, here on full display as he realizes Jesse has somehow been suckered back into Walt’s web. The way he says, “Ah, Jesse,” is filled with as much affection as it is frustration.
SEASON 5 / EPISODE 2
“Madrigal”
Written by Vince Gilligan
Directed by Michelle MacLaren
Tick, Tick, Tick
“You are a time bomb, tick-tick-ticking, and I have no intention of being around for the boom.” —Mike
The machine gun flash-forward from “Live Free or Die” gives season five license to begin more slowly than season four did. We know dire things are on the horizon, so the series can move more gingerly through this post-Gus period, and “Madrigal” returns to one of the show’s favorite subjects: cleaning up messes. This particular disaster comes courtesy of Walter White, who destroyed a business that, as he gloated to Skyler last season, was big enough to be listed on the NASDAQ. We don’t quite realize just how big this business was, however, until Hank’s hunch about the air filter in Gale’s apartment takes the DEA investigation to the German headquarters of Madrigal Electromotive. Meanwhile, Walt and Jesse want to keep cooking meth, but with the super lab torched and Gus dead, they’re in need of a whole new infrastructure. There are many more choppy waters to navigate: Walt has to resolve the matter of the missing ricin cigarette to Jesse’s satisfaction,1 while Mike and his “guys” must deal with the all the trouble the magnet stunt caused them—particularly once Madrigal executive Lydia2 turns up in Albuquerque, desperate to erase any connection between Gus’s operation and herself.
Throughout “Madrigal,” we see characters being forced by the aftermath of Walt’s actions into doing things they don’t want to do. Herr Schuler, for example, knows what the presence of law enforcement officials studying a photo of him and Gus in his office has to mean. Rather than suffer the humiliation and the judgment of his peers, he goes out on his own terms, committing suicide (somewhat ironically) with a defibrillator. We can also assume from her manner that Lydia has no desire to come off like a nervous wreck, embarrassing herself in her attempts to play spy with Mike at the diner, then being again mortified when she realizes she underestimated just how capable Mike is.
Mike gets to show off his considerable skills, first when he gets the better of Hank and Gomez in an interview, then again when he takes out Lydia’s would-be assassin, Chris, quietly and efficiently. He doesn’t even let Chris get more than a few words into his attempt to plead for his life—and yet, in a gesture that shows Mike’s innate kindness and the deep affection he has for his guys, even for one who tried to kill him, Mike first stops to ask Chris if he’s ready to die. Mike is so obviously tired of all of these games, and the enormous amount of weariness and gravitas that Jonathan Banks carries in his performance ensures that Mike always remains undeniably human, no matter how many men he kills.
Mike didn’t think he would wind up being one of these desperate people. He had his money set aside in the Caymans for his granddaughter, and he knew his guys wouldn’t roll over on him. If he trusted Walter White not to do something incredibly dangerous, he very well might walk away from the meth business and go into some low-risk PI and security work to keep himself busy and pay the bills. But the cops’ discovery of Gus’s secrets behind that picture frame dramatically narrows his options. Perhaps Lydia’s loud refusal to be a question mark for the rest of her daughter’s life (a daughter close in age to Mike’s granddaughter) gives him pause because it speaks to his situation. Yet it also heralds Mike’s own point of no return, the moment when he realizes that he’s stuck between Walt and a woman who appears to be almost as much of a wild card. He knows this will all go wrong, but he has no other choice.
Though Walt, too, is forced to face the repercussions of a post-Gus world, he’s the only member of the cleanup crew who seems entirely comfortable with his position. He feels like he won, like he’s unstoppable, like he’s ready, willing, and able to scoop gold from the streets. He doesn’t know the actual reasons behind Mike’s change of heart, but for Walt, that phone call is yet another confirmation that what Walter White wants, Walter White gets.
So, too, is the repulsive moment at the end of the episode where Walt turns his attentions to a wife who is terrified and disgusted by his very existence, never mind the feel of his body next to her in bed or the touch of his lips on her skin as he assures her, “You know, it gets easier. I promise you that it does.” We know this is true for him, given the contrast between the Walt who felt great shame for sexually abusing his wife back in “Seven Thirty-Seven” (S2E1) and the one here who wouldn’t even believe that he’s abusing her if you tried to tell him.
Hank, in the meantime, is enjoying his own moment of triumph, doggedly pursuing his case. Though not everything feels as victorious as Hank would like, since we watch him as his boss describes his friendship with Gus Fring (which costs ASAC Merkert his job) by saying, “He was somebody else completely. Right in front of me. Right under my nose.”
That scene closes with a long, lingering look at Hank’s face. Time and again throughout the series, we’ve waited for Hank to put the pieces together and realize that his ostensibly geeky brother-in-law isn’t as hapless he seems. Because he knew Walt before the cancer, before Krazy-8 and Tuco and Jane and Gus, before he was Heisenberg, it’s understandable that the thought might never have occurred to him. Yet when Hank hears his boss unwittingly lay out his own current situation, his subconscious can’t help but dwelling on some of the pieces that haven’t quite fit in the story Walt has told about his life over the past year. Maybe, like us at the end of season four, Hank is beginning to realize he doesn’t know Walt as well as he thought. And maybe, like us, sooner or later Hank is going to see who and what has been right in front of him, right under his nose this whole time.
1 “Madrigal” moves through the business with Chekhov’s Ricin so quickly that at first it’s not clear that Walt has hidden the real vial behind an electrical socket in his house and has rigged up a fake one for Jesse to “find” in his Roomba, to give his partner peace of mind. The scene of Jesse coming across the ricin cigarette is particularly tough to watch, because Jesse spends much of the hour b
eating himself up for a mistake that we know he never made. Finding the cigarette seems to confirm his worst insecurities about his own irresponsibility and the effects of his actions. But the scene does provide a telling contrast between the moral value of the two men: Jesse is devastated that he could have hurt Brock accidentally; Walt doesn’t care that he did hurt Brock intentionally.
2 Actress Laura Fraser’s American accent is a bit sketchy—particularly in a role in which she could have easily played Scottish, since Madrigal is an international conglomerate—but her performance as a whole is so unsettling that it doesn’t much matter.
SEASON 5 / EPISODE 3
“Hazard Pay”
Written by Peter Gould
Directed by Adam Bernstein
A Well-Oiled Machine
“Yes, he handles the business. And I handle him.” —Walt
“Hazard Pay” reminds us that, though four years have passed for the viewers watching in real time, slightly less than a full year has passed for the characters since Walt turned fifty, got diagnosed with lung cancer, and began embracing his inner Heisenberg. That compressed time-line doesn’t feel particularly surprising, though, because the series is so slow and deliberate in its movements, so conscientious, that no step is skipped, no detail ignored. The audience must bear witness to and understand every last how and why of Walt’s metamorphosis.
It’s ironic that this reminder—in the form of Marie pushing Skyler to throw Walt a fifty-first birthday celebration—comes in an episode like “Hazard Pay,” where the show’s trademark Tortuga-style pacing is abandoned in favor of a narrative clip that races us through huge new developments in the lives of our two protagonists. While the show has certainly laid enough track by this stage to earn the right to move faster, this episode only succeeds in fits and starts, working much more often when it focuses on the professional end of things.
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