Recap:
Walt meets Todd, who was tasked with taking the cars from Mike and Walt’s altercation to Old Joe and getting them crushed; getting rid of Mike’s body is the next task. Before they can, Jesse arrives, asking Walt if Mike got out safely and what they should do about the nine guys in jail. Since Jesse is out, though, Walt refuses to divulge information, since he’s now “the only vote left” and will handle it how he pleases.
Hank visits one of Mike’s men in prison and his lawyer, where they attempt to negotiate a deal for the inmate to talk. With so many men and Dan the lawyer willing to talk, though, Hank believes the DEA has plenty of leverage and doesn’t have to deal with any inmate who drives a hard bargain.
Walt meets with Lydia in a diner to get the list of Mike’s men. Lydia, however, refuses to give it to him, because she knows once she does, she’ll be a loose end and he’ll probably kill her. Walt refutes this, since he obviously wouldn’t murder her immediately in the restaurant, but Lydia knows he was only protecting her from Mike and deduces that Mike is no longer a factor. Lydia suggests shipping his product to the Czech Republic since there’s a huge demand for meth there, and she’s able to help him because her job involves controlling overseas shipping. She and Gus were working to build this side of the empire, too, before Walt killed him. Walt agrees on it, and after she leaves, we see that Walt did have the Ricin and was originally planning to kill Lydia after all.
Walt meets with Todd’s uncle and his group to discuss the best ways to kill Mike’s men in prison. Walt commands them to coordinate it so all the men are killed within two minutes of each other; the group doesn’t think they can logically do it, but Walt makes that the only stipulation. The strike happens, and the men are all brutally murdered in two minutes.
Hank comes home, where Walt is visiting Holly, and the two have a drink. Hank is distraught over the inmate killings, and reminisces about an old summer job he had marking trees, wondering why he didn’t stick with that instead of having a career that had him deal with “complete monsters.”
As we see in a montage over the next couple of months, the business runs incredibly smoothly, and Walt makes more and more money without any issues. And as the days go by, he becomes increasingly bored and restless.
After a visit at Marie’s with the kids, Skyler and Marie talk about how much better Skyler is doing, and Marie suggests the kids ought to move back in. Afterwards, Skyler brings Walt to a storage unit filled with the money that came in, and reveals that she stopped counting it because it was too much too fast. She simply has no earthly idea how much money they have, except that it’s more money than they could spend in ten lifetimes.
After passing another scan for his cancer, Walt seees the paper towel dispenser he punched after going into remission in season 2’s”4 Days Out.” He stops by Jesse’s house; Jesse uneasy about Walt being there, and is planning to move after hearing about Walt did to the inmates. Walt reminisces a bit about their old RV, and after he leaves, Jesse discovers the $5 million Walt left on his doorstep. Jesse collapses after seeing it, and throws down the gun he had picked up and hidden when Walt got there.
Walt returns home and tells Skyler he’s officially out. With the nightmare apparently over, the kids return home and they have a pleasant lunch with the family. Hank goes into the bathroom, and after sitting on the toilet, he starts flipping through the books in their bathroom to read. He picks up “Leaves and Grass” by Walt Whitman, and realizes it’s the same book with the note from Gail to the mysterious “WW.” Hank flashes back to his discussion with Walt about the book in season 4’s “Bullet Points,” when he noticed that Walter had the same initials, and the truth finally hits him.
Review:
Frankly, there isn’t too much that actually went on in this episode. The only two stories we get are Walt’s slow loss of passion as things get complacent, and then the brief lead-up to Hank’s revelation. This works in the episode’s favor, though, almost in a metaphysical way. Every previous season finale has granted us some kind of shake-up, so it was no question that this mid-season/end-of-the-year finale would go the same route. Aside from a couple of strong scenes that I’ll touch on, very little really happens here until the last few moments of the episode, what with the extensive montage sequences taking up so much time. But the tension is there, only because we, as experienced Breaking Bad viewers, know something will happen by the end of it. Every quiet moment was unsettling, especially as the minutes ticked closer to the end. By the time the family was having a happy gathering by the pool, waiting for what was going to happen was unbearable, even without having any obvious indication in-universe that something was going to happen.
I don’t want to say it was just “meta,” because that word gets thrown around all too often these days, but it definitely uses the television medium to is strength. It’s a creative way to fashion the knowledge of consistent, long-term viewership to make the episode feel more exciting than it is, without necessarily affecting the quality of the actual episode or story. It all works without that added layer, but the tension from our foresight makes it better to watch.
One thing Breaking Bad does better than most shows is balancing the insertion of foreshadowing and details to set-up future developments without being too obvious about it, or at least letting us forget before it comes up again. I was displeased with the previous episode because the major events didn’t feel like it had the satisfying amount of subtle set-up previous plots did, but it’s in full-force here. We briefly saw the Walt Whitman book this season in “Hazard Pay” to remind us Walt had it, but it didn’t receive any fanfare. And then we saw it in this episode during Walt’s first shower, again without little more than a glance. But it’s enough to establish that it’s a factor, and lo and behold, it (and Walt’s ego not being afraid to keep it out in the open) is responsible for blowing everything wide open.
But that was still only a factor—the reason it all hit Hank it once was likely because of his current state. Well, not where he was physically (though I’ve definitely had some of my best ideas in the bathroom) but mentally and emotionally. The set-up for this scene came during his state of distress after the death of the twelve men, an absolute loss. His statement about chasing monsters at first seemed like a way to bring a mirror to Walt’s simultaneous “loss of passion,” but it sets up his revelation nicely. At this low point, Hank is no longer in that pumped-up and focused DEA state that he’s been in throughout the show. And while his drive helped him throughout the last four seasons, it also meant he had blinders on to keep his personal life from distracting him from his job. His sudden change in perspective has the blinders taken off now, which means he can finally connect the dots—the Walt Whitman book was just the catalyst. We can finally see the full purpose of this season and how it was tied together, too; the creation of Walt’s empire brought in the importance of Mike’s men, which dovetailed into their murder, which fueled Hank’s revelation. There’s also a beautiful irony in Walt’s empire-building being the reason he’s finally getting caught; his rise to the top is going to cause his greatest downfall.
While those final minutes are what people will talk about until next summer, the rest of the episode had strong moments, too. The deaths of the men in prison achieved a new level of violence for the show. Sure, we got Gus’s face blown off last year, but the sheer, unadulterated brutality of the stabbings was unrelenting, not to mention the guy getting burned to death. But even while that montage was disturbing, it was surprisingly overshadowed by the extended montage of Walt’s business running smoothly, thanks to creative uses of transitions and a song so fitting it’s a wonder that it exists. I’m not always a fan of film school-y transitions, but these were really fun.
We didn’t see much of the supporting cast since this episode was so heavily Walt-centric, but Skyler’s and Jesse’s brief scenes were strong. It’s surprising that Walt would get to a point where he isn’t keeping track of every cent of his money, but that could be attributed to his draining passion. Either way, Skyler’s tune changing from “I hate you and please die” to “Dude, seriously, look at all this money” hit the nail on the head for what this episode is about. Walt wasn’t in it for anything other than the excitement and pride that he can do as well as his former Grey Matter partners. Now that everything’s complacent and he has a gigantic symbol of how great and successful he is sitting in a storage unit, there really isn’t a reason to keep on cooking. It sucks that this is pretty much exactly what Jesse had been trying to tell him all season, but at least he’s finally getting it.
Jesse, of course, had surprisingly little to do, but his tense scene with Walt made up for it. Admittedly, trying to fool the audience into thinking Walt might be killing Jesse (as the ominous music as Jesse unzipped the bag proposed) didn’t really work, but it did help us sympathize with Jesse’s fear of his former teacher. Their conversation about the old RV from the early seasons was a nice touch, too.
Not much went on, like I said, but there was still loads to talk about—evidence of a strong, well-plotted episode. Structurally, it wasn’t too exciting, but it didn’t need to be. We got our payoff from what turned out to be a season’s worth of build-up, and we’ve left our characters in high-stakes and high-emotion positions, and most of them don’t even know it. And finally, after four and a half seasons, we’ve finally hit the plot development we’ve been waiting for since the very first episode. In 2013, we’re going to hit the ground running.
Some stray tidbits:
- I’m ashamed to say as the owner of an English degree that I didn’t connect the dots between “Gliding Over All” being a Walt Whitman poem until someone pointed it out to me. So to those of you astute enough to pick up on that (and even predict the ending because of it), I applaud you.
- Did anyone else get flashbacks to “Fly” because of that opening shot?
- Latest update on the Todd Enigma: He’s now leaning back towards complete sociopath, given his reaction to Mike’s body.
- I’m in total agreement that Lydia is written to be an annoying character, but the main reason I like her so much is because of how well she uses her paranoia to make her incredibly insightful.
- Bob Odenkirk didn’t really have much to do this season—he didn’t even have any lines this week—which is a shame. Hopefully we’ll see more of him before the series ends.
- There’s plenty of talk about how well Breaking Bad utilizes silence, and that’s completely true. But even still, the occasional music choices on the show, especially for the montages, are always spot-on.
- “Whacking Bin Laden wasn’t this complicated.”
