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.