More than almost any other drama, BREAKING BAD can create a sense of dread. The final season of THE SOPRANOS was drenched in apprehension, a constant feeling that something awful was just around the corner. This was mostly due to the show’s enormous legacy; the benchmark of modern TV, the cable drama of cable dramas, horrific things were inevitable. By my calculations, BREAKING BAD has held onto this atmosphere since Walter White ran over and shot two drug dealers in the second to last episode of season three. Since then there’s been an enormous air of apprehension, that some foe, be it Mike, Gus, the cartel or the DEA, around the next corner, waiting to punch Walt’s ticket. BREAKING BAD is, obviously, incredible viewing, but it’s stressful too; no show does tense like it.
And it’s a testament to the show’s ability to control a mood that the viewer is still rigid and nervous after Walt has silenced his foes, paid off his former business partner and quit the life. Because you just know that Gilligan and co are not going to let the series end like that; Walter doesn’t get to walk away with a life lesson and a couple of cracking anecdotes. Hank discovering the true face of his brother-in-law was inevitable. We’ve seen how talented and tenacious Hank is when it comes to his job, and how personal he takes its mishaps. The sheer shame of his brother in law running the New Mexico drug game behind his back will take Hank to a whole new level. Walt has broken bad, and taken further steps into the abyss with every passing episode. Whether or not waging war on his own family is a step he’s willing to take, we’re yet to find out. All we know is, in a little under a year, he’ll have a full head of hair and a machine gun in his trunk.
Interestingly, in the ten or so minutes before Hank finds his man, Walter behaves about as sympathetically as we’ve seen in a long while. After a mysterious MRI scan, he visits Jesse (whose lame attempt at hiding a bong suggests he has returned to getting high, as Walter predicted), and, in one of the show’s long line of twisted work colleague interactions, reminisces about old times, before leaving Jesse with his well-earned share of the meth money. That’s because Walt’s finally glimpsed the spoils of his venture (in a scene a little reminiscent of a particularly good SHIELD moment), a ludicrous pile of cash (that Skyler semi-shamefully displays, a heap of money so enormous that she’s given up even attempting to count it. Indeed, the riches are so plentiful that even Walt accepts that they might do, and a little later he tells Skyler the news: he’s out of the game (or so he says; see Other Thoughts for an opinion on that).
And if Walt’s going to go out, at least he can go out at the top of his game. His vanquishing of Mike was the final step on the ladder: Walt now has complete autonomy. “I’m the only vote left” he tells Jesse, and that’s just what he wants: Walt the dictator. And remarkably, it works. A sinister lesson we learn in this episode is that Walt as CEO of his own meth empire is an incredibly successful formula. Taking over a multinational meth distribution scheme that new business colleage Lydia cooked up with Gus Fring, Walt doubles his profits (at least) and becomes the kind of criminal he wants to be: professional, quiet, rich. Of course, this is only after he ties up what are truly his last links to the Gus Fring era; the little matter of the final ten people with the information that could put Walt and Jesse away. Walt’s commissioning of this murder is a new level of nonchalant. Parlaying with Todd’s connected Uncle, he waxes philosophical about factory-produced art, and refuses to get involved in the planning of something as trivial as perfectly choreographed mass murder. He’s even ready to murder Lydia, single mother, with the as-yet unused ricin (which in itself casts a spooky shadow over the whole show. It’s going to get used at some point).
But Walt can only escape so many insane and life threatening situations before he eventually gets stung. He defeated Gus Fring, and as such (metaphorically) thinks he absorbed his powers. He’s the guy who took down the Chicken Man; he’s Heisenberg. But Walt’s not the only guy who had Gus’ number. Hank knew what Gus was, what he was about, and there’s no saying he wouldn’t have eventually caught up to him. Now, he’s not only got a new suspect, but an oblivious one. Walt has had a fairly easy season, relatively speaking, but in the final eight episodes, he might just be up against an enemy whose will to win is greater than his own.
Other thoughts:
- In an amazing looking episode, the massacre montage truly stood out, and joins the likes of GOODFELLAS and the first two GODFATHERs in the pantheon. It’s a cliché I never get sick of, really.
- Mentioned it before, but the shadow of Walter and that machine gun can’t help but hang over every last frame of this series. That’s how you hook an audience.
- Some might find Hank’s discovery of Gale’s book a tad convenient, but Walt has some precedent of keeping bizarre keepsakes. He held onto that teddy bear’s eye for an age, and Jesse’s watch present has kept returning.
- Walt tells Skyler he’s out, but was he? I’d kind of hypothesise he wasn’t, for a number of reasons. Firstly, he’s made it clear before that money, whilst important, isn’t the main rush for him. He’s in the empire business, as he said, and going multinational seems to be a huge step in the right direction. Secondly, he’s recently acquired a new set of distributors; are they really going to be happy with him suddenly announcing he’s done? And most importantly, that MRI scan. Fiendishly deployed and then dropped, there’s no way that’s not of the utmost significance. Walt shot a pointed stare at the handdryer he bashed in a few seasons back; he did that after receiving a negative diagnosis. We also saw him popping a handful of pills in episode one’s flash forward, plus the most prominent cancer talk we’ve had in some time. Literally any way you cut it, this ride is not ending well for Walter.
- It’s not a quote, but Saul putting his feet up on the desk and generally enjoying life was a smash. Come on, more Odenkirk next time.
- Oof. What a collection of episodes.
