As Walt and Jesse look to rebuild their business and realign their personal relationships in the wake of Gus’s death and their new deal with Mike, the partners make the kind of progress in a single hour that they once needed a season and a half to accomplish. To be fair, they’ve been through enough trial and error in this business that this sped-up narrative feels not only plausible, but almost overdue. The zippy pace of the episode underscores the fact that two men have finally gotten their act together; Walt and Jesse know how to cook, and they know where they have to do it to avoid risk. Saul and Mike’s combined contacts give them a better introduction to Albuquerque’s on-the-ground criminal world than they ever had before,1 getting them access to Vamonos Pest and the thieves2 who work there in short order. The anonymity and ever-rotating set-up of fumigation work gives them a perfect cover and a more versatile business model for the entire operation.
It’s a pleasure watching things hum along smoothly for once, and to see everyone do what they do best—especially Mike, who channels the drill instructor from Full Metal Jacket (or perhaps Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross) as he lays down the law for their new employees. Look under the surface of this apparent harmony, however, and you’ll find constant, roiling tension. Mike is one of the few people in Walter White’s life with no illusions about who the man is and the awful things he’s capable of doing, and Walt is acutely aware of this, though he smugly (and perhaps foolishly) insists he can control his new partner. Mike had a pretty good thing going with Gus, and Walt literally blew it up. Walt destroyed the Los Pollos Hermanos distribution network, eliminated the retirement money Mike was counting on to keep his incarcerated “guys” from making deals with law enforcement, and otherwise made the business much harder than it needed to be. It’s understandable that Mike resents the hell out of this new situation, while Walt resents having to work with a man who doesn’t show proper deference to his genius.
The other person who’s able to truly fathom Walt’s monstrousness is even closer to home—literally. Skyler has to come to grips with Walt’s executive decision to resurrect their marriage, move home, and in all respects act like things are back to normal—just because he can. Once, when she knew less about Heisenberg, Skyler had the power to fight against this man’s presence in her home and life; now, she is absolutely petrified of him, forced to walk on eggshells when he’s around and turn all her pent-up frustration and rage on Marie when her sister brings up the subject of his birthday. The appalling fear Skyler lives with is ugly, harrowing stuff, and the abuse Walt inflicts on her is as affecting as it is because of how closely the show has followed the complete disintegration of Walt and Skyler’s relationship.
Walt also continues to inflict emotional and psychological abuse on Jesse, though Jesse doesn’t yet realize it. Walt’s ability to manipulate his pupil works because we’ve also tracked all the ebbs and flows of their partnership and the power dynamic that lies at the core of it. Perversely, Walt’s lie about poisoning Brock has brought the two men much closer of late—just as Walt intended. Walt needs Jesse’s vote to keep Mike from gaining too much leverage, and he knows just how to flatter and impress Mr. Pinkman in order to maintain his dominance.
The in-between moments that Vince Gilligan was so concerned with at the start of the series have paid off tenfold because of that early emphasis, but the flip side of the principle is that when the show ignores them, the missing pieces stand out even more. Because the show skipped over the crucial details of how Walt actually delivered the poison, for example, it becomes distracting (albeit incredibly unsettling) when he’s in the same room with Brock, who has no real reaction to his presence. Or consider the fact that Jesse and Andrea go through an entire reconciliation and second breakup within the span of a single episode, with so much pertinent information being jettisoned or occurring off-camera. Not only that, but we don’t even get to see any follow-up to how Andrea feels about Jesse telling Brock’s doctors about ricin poisoning. His concern obviously turned out to be unfounded, but when a man has an incredibly specific theory about what’s wrong with your son that he delivers in the most frantic manner possible, odds are he knows much more than he previously led you to believe.
Still, the dawning of the Vamonos Pest age of the meth-cooking business is told in a crisp and entertaining fashion, even if it’s underpinned with a perpetual sense of foreboding. We once might have rooted for things to go Walt and Jesse’s way, but now it’s cause for deep dread. As if to make explicit that constant sense of unease, Walt watches the cinematic inspiration for the television show on which he stars, in the scene where he and Walter Jr. enjoy an evening of the Pacino Scarface. It’s here that Walt asks the question that seems to be hanging over the rest of the series: “Everyone dies in this movie, don’t they?”3
1 The new status quo unfortunately knocks Badger and Skinny Pete several rungs down the hierarchical ladder, but they at least get to buy the roadie cases that will be used to transport the meth gear from house to house, in a scene that gives actor Charles Baker a chance to show off his classical piano skills. Who knew Skinny Pete could flawlessly play C.P.E. Bach’s “Solfeggietto” on a keyboard?
2 One of these goons is Todd, played by Friday Night Lights alum Jesse Plemons. Plemons once got mixed up in a murder plotline on that show that never really fit, but he’ll feel much more at home on Breaking Bad.
3 This was an improvisation by Bryan Cranston, too good not to use, even if the writers had no idea at this stage how many of their main characters would survive the end of the series.
SEASON 5 / EPISODE 4
“Fifty-One”
Written by Sam Catlin
Directed by Rian Johnson
Sink or Swim
“He changed his mind about me, Skyler. And so will you.” —Walt
Breaking Bad began as Walter White was turning fifty, and season five began with him turning fifty-two. There’s a birthday in between, and “Fifty-One” uses that occasion to look back over the past year in show time (which, in a comedic meta touch, feels longer than that to Marie) and see who Walter White used to be, what he’s been through, what he’s done, and what he’s become.
Or maybe a better way to put that is that we’re reflecting on Walter White’s fiftieth birthday while Heisenberg is celebrating his fifty-first.
Walt used to put on the Heisenberg hat as camouflage, only wearing it in his work life to hide his civilian identity. When he finds it inside the repaired Aztek, he dons it not as a disguise, but as an accessory. Walter White is now a man who would wear this hat—one that used to symbolize his discomfort with criminal life—in broad daylight, in front of his son, his trusted mechanic Benny, or anyone who knows his real name. Walt has, for all intents and purposes, merged completely with the man who used to be his alter ego. Walter White drove an Aztek; Heisenberg drives a muscle car.
“Fifty-One” doesn’t bother with flashbacks, but there are enough visual and dialogue references to past events—to the hat, the car, the veggie bacon,1 the huge surprise party Walt didn’t want (as compared to the tiny birthday dinner that disappoints Heisenberg here because he feels entitled to something grander), his early struggles with cancer—to make us very aware of his journey, and how close we are to the end of it.
Now he’s a man convinced he can control everyone in his life, and he isn’t shy about showing it. He boasts to Skyler that his new watch came from a man who once wanted him dead, and who now considers him a friend. Tellingly, he omits the fact that he manipulated and hustled Jesse into feeling both emotions—but Skyler has arrived at her fear and hatred of her husband with eyes wide open.
At that dinner party on the back patio, Walt launches into a mesmerizing, uncomfortable speech (rivaling the one he gave at the school assembly in the season three premiere) in which he talks about all the times he thought he was done for, “But then someone, or something, would come through for me.” Marie and Hank think he’s talking about the cancer; Skyler and the audience know W
alt’s thinking back on his many brushes with a much more violent death. That others—Hank in particular, who suffered from PTSD after shooting Tuco, was nearly murdered by the Cousins, and then went through grueling physical therapy to be able to walk again—suffered greatly in the process of Walt’s salvation doesn’t even occur to him. He just keeps talking and talking and talking … until Marie notices what he can’t—both literally, because his back is turned to the action, and figuratively, because he’s deluded himself about the effect his actions are having on his wife—and he has to dive into the pool to pull Skyler out of it.
Skyler in the pool is among the most beautiful but horrifying images the show has ever presented to us. You don’t think she’s going to drown, but as her skirt billows and the light refracted through the water creates a halo around her, you realize (with some surprise) that she looks far more at peace than she has in quite some time. She floats there serenely until Walt pops into frame for a few brief seconds before the scene ends—a shot that’s reminiscent, in a way, of how Spielberg filmed the shark in Jaws. Though Skyler is not entirely without guilt in this situation (a fact she readily admits to Walt in a later scene), her husband is a monster she’s trying to escape; it makes sense that she would be framed as his unsuspecting victim, and he as her nightmarish predator.
That later discussion between the two of them not only emphasizes the darkness at the core of the White marriage, but also evokes many earlier scenes in the series, in which Walt almost gleefully tore apart some thin plan Jesse had proposed. But there is, unsurprisingly yet painfully, a vicious nastiness to Walt’s cross-examination of Skyler that was only occasionally there when he did the same to Jesse. Walt is at times capable of seeing Jesse as a partner worthy of respect, but he has long since ceased to view Skyler as anything but an obstacle and a receptacle for the contempt he can’t unload upon his enemies and allies at work. Convinced that the children are in no danger because of him, he attacks and attacks and attacks, until finally Skyler reveals her ultimate plan is simply to wait.
Wait for what?
“For the cancer to come back.”
Skyler’s only real escape from this comes as a result of her husband dying a painful, if natural, death.
We have evidence that her prediction isn’t even far off the mark. The fifty-two-year-old Walt we see in “Live Free or Die” (S5E1) is coughing and taking pills of some kind. Sure, it could be misdirection, but sadly we all know how cancer works, and how rare it is for someone with an advanced type like Walt’s to stay in remission forever.
To celebrate the birthday, Jesse buys his partner a very nice wristwatch, an old-school gift for an old-school man. At episode’s end, Walt places the watch on his nightstand and we listen to it tick-tick-ticking, sounding very much like a time bomb—maybe even like the one Mike said Walt resembled a few episodes ago. For Walt, the watch is a symbol of his power; for us, its only counting down the time Walt has between this moment of sadistic control and hubris and the day when he’ll be sitting in a Denny’s, waiting for someone to hand him a machine gun.
1 Note how dismayed Walter Jr.—aka The One Who Eats Breakfast—looks when Skyler scoops the bacon off his plate and gives it to Walt.
SEASON 5 / EPISODE 5
“Dead Freight”
Written and directed by George Mastras
Another Boy on a Bike
“The point is, no one, other than us, can ever know that this robbery went down. Nobody. Got it?” —Jesse
“Yeah, absolutely.” —Todd
“Are you sure?” —Walt
“Yes, sir.” —Todd
For much of its running time, “Dead Freight” is as light and breezy as it seems possible for Breaking Bad to get, especially at this late, apocalyptic stage of the action. Though there’s some tension early on as the guys debate what to do with (or to) Lydia, and the usual frostiness between Walt and Skyler, the episode’s practically Breaking Bad’s version of a romp.
Even more than “Live Free or Die” (S5E1), it’s a good old-fashioned caper story—a train robbery, for goodness sake, on a show that’s always delighted in its Western roots. Once again, Walt and Jesse are faced with a seemingly hopeless conundrum—at least a hopeless one if they want to avoid killing the two engineers—and once again, they figure out a way to solve it through brainpower. Longtime Breaking Bad writer George Mastras must have felt like a kid in a candy store when he got this as his first directing assignment. Cue gorgeous, Western-tinged cinematography (including Walt in his Heisenberg hat looking every bit like a cowboy villain as he stands on the train tracks). Cue fun set-up montages. Cue a tense but not disquieting heist sequence. Cue Jesse, Walt, and Todd gleefully celebrating, with Jesse only seconds away from letting off another “YEAH, SCIENCE!”
Cue Todd putting a bullet into young dirt bike rider Drew Sharp (Samuel Webb), who had the poor fortune to be in the worst possible place at the worst possible time.
No, that’s not fun at all, and at this late stage of the series, that’s the point.
For a series with a reasonably high body count, Breaking Bad has always treated murder with the utmost gravity. Walt and Jesse tried for a very long time to avoid killing anyone who wasn’t a direct threat to them; look at all the hoops they jumped through in “Better Call Saul” (S2E8) just to keep from murdering Badger, when that would be the obvious solution for any other drug crew. (This was mainly to protect Jesse’s friend, but also at a stage where Walt was trying to convince himself he wasn’t a killer.) They’ve tried to rationalize their work, to separate themselves from the users of their product (and when Jesse couldn’t, like in “Peekaboo” [S2E6], he at least made himself feel better by knowing the cops and social services would step in to right some of his wrongs). They make drugs, but they do not make a habit of killing people, and when people have died—even if they were in some way tied to the drug game like Combo, Andrea’s little brother Tomás, Gale, or even Jane—it hasn’t been forgotten. Death and murder have (often) given Walt pause, and (always) emotionally wrecked Jesse.
And because of those characters’ involvement in the drug and criminal worlds, our two protagonists could usually justify or rationalize those deaths. But Drew Sharp? He was just a little kid with horrible luck—much like Brock, who could have died because his mother happened to be dating Heisenberg’s partner—and he’s dead, in part because Walt and Jesse made it abundantly clear to Todd that there could be no witnesses to this particular crime.
Walt and Jesse can act like they’re some morally superior class of criminal, but crime is crime. When you tell a professional thief like Todd, who’s made it clear he’s trying to impress you, that no one can know about this robbery, what do you expect to happen if a kid on a dirt bike tools up? Jesse tries to stop Todd at the last minute, but their new associate has already been primed to pull that trigger—and does it without any of the guilt or shame we’ve seen at various times on the faces of Walt and Jesse when they’ve killed far less innocent people than the boy.
The murder doesn’t particularly threaten the current Walt/Jesse/Mike business model. As Walt said in the previous episode—before he knew how darkly ironic those words would sound—“Nothing stops this train. Nothing.” But every now and then, Walt and Jesse have to have their illusions about their chosen profession shattered, and though the kid is someone they don’t know (and whom we only met briefly in a seemingly out-of-place pre-credits sequence where he’s hunting for spiders), he’s still a kid. You don’t shrug that off lightly. You may go right back to cooking meth and divvying up the cash, but you don’t get to pretend you’re anything other than what you are.
As the partners stare slack-jawed at the boy whom Todd has just murdered on their behalf, it’s hard not to think of the exchange Jesse and Walt have at the start of season three:
“You either run from things, or you face them, Mr. White.”
“And what exactly does that mean?”
“I learned it in rehab. It’s all a
bout accepting who you really are. I accept who I am.”
“And who are you?”
“I’m the bad guy.”
SEASON 5 / EPISODE 6
“Buyout”
Written by Gennifer Hutchison
Directed by Colin Bucksey
Hydrofluoric Acid and Methylamine
“Jesse, you asked me if I was in the meth business or the money business. Neither. I’m in the empire business.” —Walt
After a couple of episodes in a row where Breaking Bad has been in peak form, “Buyout” feels a bit more muddled. There are incredible individual components—the pre-credits sequence, Walt’s improvised blowtorch, another awkward meal at the White house—but they don’t entirely work together. It’s the first episode of the season to feel like a victim of the eight-episode split season structure, because all of the parts are necessary to the narrative but perhaps shouldn’t have been stuffed into the same episode.
It feels like we move much too quickly from the utter despair of the corpse disposal sequence in the teaser to Mike and Jesse’s decision to cash out and retire, and then from there to the uncomfortable comedy of Jesse trying to make small talk in the middle of the cold war between Walt and Skyler. The stories flow from each other—Mike and Jesse’s decision, for instance, springs directly from the realization that they no longer want to be in a business where they bear witness to things like Drew Sharp’s murder—but everything occurs so rapidly that none of the emotions really have time to breathe in the wake of that incredible opening scene.
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