Breaking Bad

Season 5 Episode 6

"Buyout"

Finally an episode where I didn't quite believe everything.  One was Jesse's child-like behavior at the stressful dinner table with Walt and Skyler, and 2 was the rampage that came out of Mike with the gun.

There was a bit of over-the-top in this episode, and that's unusual to say for this show, since it's so over-the-top anyway, but what I mean here is that the characters were out of character for once.  I don't think that the directing is losing its direction, but I do believe that the pressure is on because the plot is boiling down to fewer and fewer options.  That's the way it goes with stories, they boil down to an ending you know.

Jesse completely reverts to a juvenile state when he finds himself at Walt's home, and by weight of Walt's authority gets pressed into a dinner that he did not want to have with Skyler.  My favorite shot of the show is the 3-shot of them at the table, Jesse directly in the center trying to make light conversation about the beans, Skyler getting drunk and not touching her dinner, and Walt making his usual show of force, he not touching his dinner either.  It was a good comical moment.  But I just didn't buy it.  I believe it must have some future purpose, or character-deepening purpose.  I can see how the scene might simply drive the marriage plot deeper, the distance between them.  I can see how it might also feed the already billowed Walter ego.  I can even see how it advances Jesse's position further into the "son" role by having him there.  What I didn't agree with here (how I would have written it differently) was the level of Jesse's maturity not matching where he actually is in life, or in his knowledge of what he knows about "Mr. White".  He acted more like a Brandon Mayhew than the Jesse that came up with the brilliant idea of how to heist a train.

And Mike does not get bent out of shape and run into a room and point a gun at someone's head.  He's normally like the Mike that went to the house of one of the "boys" and hung a doll from the door knocker while he slipped around and into the back.  Out of character.  I thought it was kind of thrown at us that way to make the scene more tense, and a good way to end the episode.   Didn't buy this either.

Seeing as how the season has already been produced and shot and we're just waiting for the whole thing to unfold anyway,  the ending is inevitable.  I'm going to go bold now and say how I think this whole Shakespearian tragedy will unfold and end.  Jesse will kill Walt.  No, I'm not kidding.  He has to.  Jesse is his substitute son now, or the surrogate older brother for Flynn.  The love relationship between them is solid, until Jesse finds out all about everything that Walt has done.  I believe he will.  At every turn Walt has completely stabbed Jesse in the back, and gotten away with it.  But there are only so many times that a man can kill or nearly kill his best friends' friends, and it will come back to you.  Just ask MacBeth.

Jesse stands over and against Walt in so many ways, one wonders how many times they can be drawn back together and Walt still succeed in persuading him.  The lines were clearly drawn alright, as the blog http://calitreview.com/29597 points out.  Jesse could not have made it more clear.  "As I recall Mr. White, at one time all you needed was about 750,000, and it was for your son and your family.  Now what is it?  Why can't you be happy with 5 million?  What could possibly be wrong with 5 million dollars?"

Walt then proceeds to detail exactly why it's never really been just about the family, that faux excuse that has led him to confess that his real plight is a huge sense of underachievement, failure, which so many men cannot abide.

I have to say this: If the depth of the final verdict of this man, Mr. White, is not equivalent to the distance that he has travelled down the road of perdition, and the level of pain he has inflicted whilst blazing his head-long trail, then I will be among the disappointed.  Although I, for some odd reason, most likely as the rest of us, "love" Mr. White, somehow no matter what he has done, I will not confuse my sense of identity and emotional closeness with him with that of injustice or the need for closure in his case.  Something less than the chair, or the alternative of being all alone with his millions and not being able to spend them...or dead...may be an ending that the authors have in mind, but to me would be unsatisfactory.

Steven Marks

Breaking Bad

Season 5 Episode 5

"Dead Freight"

If you see some people around work today and ask them if they watched any TV last night, you may note that they may bow their heads, or look away, or shrug, or they may find some vague expletive to mumble.  They might also simply say, "Yep, did."  And then quietly walk away.  Some may even get teared up and stiffen their lips.  If you find this is true, then you're surely talking to people who watched last night's episode #5 of Breaking Bad's 5th season, named "Dead Freight".   All the others were watching the failed and sad Olympic closing ceremony with lame old rock stars and bad audio.  

There will be no spoilers here, which means basically I can't say much about this episode.  Besides which I was left speechless anyway.

I have watched this show season in and out, and know every nook and cranny of it, but not once did an episode make me completely break down and cry at the end.  I seriously asked myself if I could continue watching the show next week.  I'm sorry, I'll give that much away.  

Proceed with caution - not for the faint of heart.

I will say this on the other side of the coin, this was the episode I believe all fans were waiting to see this season.  I thought maybe the show was going to break down and become just so much suspenseful soap opera, and psychological drama.  Not true.  This week was action packed, and plenty of the old cinematic magic was back with tricky shots, and gutsy twists.  Nice job…but the ending…God help us.  Grandparents: adult children viewer discretion is a must.

Agitatus

Breaking Bad 

Season 5 Episode 3
"Fifty-One"

Breaking Bad has taken us through some of the more twisted and torturous nights and days of the soul that televised productions have ever seen, and we come back for more, because the game is not ended.  MacBeth has not stabbed himself.  He is not yet muttering about being or not being, or talking to skulls.  Walter White is still babbling on over his terrified wife’s shoulder about how good life is, and about birthday parties, even after liquifying at least 2 adversarial relationships into a barrel, running over 2 other competitors, wasting an old man in a wheelchair whilst taking out his nemesis, watching and doing nothing as a girl who was sleeping drowns in her own vomit, gives the go ahead for the 2nd hand shooting of a partner who would not probably have hurt a flea and who made excellent coffee, and if that was not enough, harvested Lilly of the Valley, and not for the fragrance.

In all of the seasonal episodes, it’s been Brian Cranston who has gotten the credit.  However, in this season, I’m tempted to say the acting power on the screen is being equally shared.  Anna Gunn, who plays Walter’s wife, Skyler White, has swung the pendulum back the other way, and the emotional outburst in the last episode in their bedroom left me speechless.  It was a desperate plea, a known factor, yes, long expected, yet somehow Skyler White hits a note that was surprising as it was painful to hear.  It was like some kind of necessary evil that we knew was coming, yet it still hurts when it hit.  “Waiting for the cancer to return.”  This is a horrifying, yet expected statement, made at the end of a rope that has been unravelling now for 4 years (less than a year, TV time, we are reminded).
  

There is no way that I can now sympathize with the main character’s plight.  You always like Walter.  He is a great underdog, a real hard case with some kind of strange alchemy that keeps us rooting him on, even through the badness and temperature that we take of him is red hot and flaming with an overwhelming desire to win at all costs.  But now that the trail of tears is past, it would seem, and “life is good” is supposed to be the new normal, Walter putting his underwear back in his drawer, purchasing new cars for himself and his son, having DEA relative #1 over for the low-key birthday….now that all that seems to gloss over the rugged past, we see the reality breaking its way out from behind the curtain, and it comes via the wife, the morally troubled and helpless female half.  Great acting.  Oscar should be looking her way this year.