Breaking Bad – “Thirty-Eight Snub”

As Dana Scully might say, “There are hits and there are misses. And then there are misses.” You have to feel sorry for Walt. Just a little bit. There are times when he’s got things so completely figured out. He makes a plan and sees it through. The drug dealers. Gale. Then there are times like tonight, where he buys a gun, puts on his Heisenberg hat and, well, can’t get anything right.

You can’t fault him for trying, though. What he told Jesse at the end of last week’s premiere is exactly the truth. They’ve bought themselves some time, but eventually Gus will kill them. So Walt has to make his move first. I love how methodical he is. When Lawson (played by Deadwood’s Jim Beaver) tells him that he may want to practice that draw, Walt does exactly that, setting two chairs across from each other and drawing again and again until he’s got it right. But later, when Walt expects to see Gus in the lab, he instead gets Mike, who tells him that he’ll never see Gus again. Not sure what it was about that line, but it gave me goosebumps. Maybe it’s what we heard underneath it. The sound of a door slamming shut and Walt and Jesse being left out in the cold. Whatever it is, Walt figures his time is even shorter than he originally thought, so he goes to Gus’ house to do what he has to there. Instead, he gets Mike again, calling him on his cell phone and telling him to go home.

So if Gus won’t come to him and he can’t go to Gus, Walt has no other choice but to get Mike on his side. After watching Victor get his throat cut right in front of him, Mike’s got to figure that he’s got just as much to lose as anyone else. Maybe he’ll be Gus’ next object lesson and end up dead and stuffed inside a barrel. A very real possibility, which makes his response to Walt’s proposition — that he get him in a room with Gus — all the more confusing. Maybe it was fear causing him to lash out, to punch Walt in the face and kick him in the stomach. Fear that, if he was tailing Walt, there may be someone tailing him. Maybe it’s a fear of Walt causing him to keep his distance. If things can never be the same between Walt and Gus, can they ever be the same between Walt and Mike? And certainly Mike recognizes a certain reckless streak beginning to show itself in Walt. And if Mike doesn’t then we should. Last season Walt got caught up in the grind of his separation from Skyler and his work with Gus. Now, Walt’s Walt, but you see Heisenberg sitting just below the surface. And he’s not going away the way he did in season 3. In light of that, Mike may consider walling himself off from everyone around him — as far as his co-workers are concerned — his best option.

I’m still trying to figure out where Jesse’s headed in all of this. At the end of last week’s episode, he seemed like he was almost relieved, like he had recovered from the shock of what he had done to Gale, maybe recognized the necessity of the act, had maybe come to an uneasy truce with it, at least. This week, he seems to be doing everything he can to keep from confronting it. He gets Pete and Badger over and goes all House Party on them. Booze, drugs, girls, whatever it takes to keep the party going. And when things finally fizzle out, he’s left alone in his house with his expensive sound system, and it’s all he can do to just keep from breaking down.

I was a little surprised by what we saw of Hank and Marie’s situation this week. When all we saw in “Box Cutter” was the two of them alone, it seemed like Hank had retreated into his me-against-the-world pissy mood. He didn’t want to be around people. He didn’t want to work his therapy. He just wanted to surf eBay and spend money on rocks minerals. But this week we actually saw him smiling. He’s making progress! He’s excited! He high-fives his nurse! But when Marie jumps in, tries getting a piece of the action, Hank boxes her out. When she complains about his late night shenanigans keeping her up, he tells her she’s welcome to sleep somewhere else. It’s like it’s not so much the world he wants nothing to do with, but his wife. Being bedridden, they’re spending all their time together. So maybe Hank sees her as some walking, talking representation of his accident. Whatever the case, bless her for being so tight-lipped. Eventually there’s going to be a fight that’ll be a lot of fun to watch. Or it could be incredibly painful and split them up. That would be considerably less fun.

We talk a lot about Walt and Jesse and the path they’re going down. How much darker they’re characters are becoming. But we shouldn’t forget Skyler, who’s slowly moving deeper into Walt’s business, and all by herself, at that. This week, she makes an offer on Bogdan’s car wash, who’s insulted that Walt would send “his woman” to do his dirty work for him. Insulted also that after trashing his air fresheners and grabbing himself before walking out on the job, he’d try to buy him out. If Walt wants the car wash, the price is 20 million dollars. I’m interested to see how they skirt that one. The rest of the show is skewing darker, so I don’t see why it shouldn’t here, too. Walt’s got some experience now, and if he really wants that car wash, I imagine he can do a lot more than throw air fresheners around and grab himself.

Breaking Bad – “Box Cutter”

Dark! Oppressive! We’re all going to die! These are just a few of the things that ran through my head while watching the season premiere of Breaking Bad, which has finally returned after a THIRTEEN MONTH HIATUS. I imagine that after having waited similar amounts of time for new seasons of Lost and Battlestar Galactica, I’ll wake up one day to find all my friends and family dead, my youth and vitality gone, and wonder what exactly I did with my life. But I digress…

When it became clear to Mike and Victor that Walt was planning on killing Gale, Walt’s only explanation was, “Your boss is gonna need me.” While it set up a few of the plot threads we’ll be exploring this season, “Box Cutter” really spent its time answering that one question. Does Gus need Walt? Well, for the time being, it looks like he does. Although Gus keeping them around is a very calculated risk. The facts are these: First, Walt kills the two drug dealers Gus explicitly told him to leave alone. Now, he kills Gale. Where does it stop? Does it stop? Walt tells Gus that he’d do it all over again, that if the choice was between him and Gale, Gale would lose every time. So we’ve got Walt, the proverbial Rick James, with his muddy boots kicking the s**t out of Gus’ (who, yes, is Charlie Murphy in this scenario) couch, and yelling, “F**k ‘yo couch, nigga!” Gus has no choice but to bring the hammer down, which he does in the most unexpected way possible, by slitting Victor’s throat with the episode’s titular box cutter. And, holy hell, how far we have come from the dad from Malcolm in the Middle running around the desert in his underwear.

Let’s take a moment to look at that. The scene with Gus clocks in at ten minutes. Yes, ten minutes doesn’t sound that long. But in a cable drama that runs an average of 45 minutes, that’s almost a fourth of your show. And that’s a testament to how much Breaking Bad has grown in a relatively short amount of time. It’s a show that knows itself so completely, knows its strengths and what to do to keep its audience on the hook. And the whole thing couldn’t have come off any better. I  mean, one minute these guys are cleaning up a dead body and the next they’re eating breakfast in matching white jeans and Kenny Rogers t-shirts! It’s effing brilliant!

The premiere set a few things up that I might normally feel a bit iffy with, but again, this is Breaking Bad, and I have no choice but to trust the show. First is the trajectory Gale’s murder has set Jesse on. For the first half of the episode, he’s in a complete stupor. Almost as if what he’s done has left him unable to function. He doesn’t snap out of it until Victor bites it and after that he seems completely at peace. Like he tells Walt, at least they know where they stand with Gus now. I’ve always enjoyed the dynamic between Walt and Jesse, especially when they’re working together. When you look back at the show, they haven’t had too many chances to do that. Whether it was Jesse’s drug use, or Jane’s death, there’s been plenty keeping the two out of each other’s good graces, so I’ll be interested to see how this season treats their relationship. Conflict breeds drama blah blah blah, can’t we all just be friends? Next is Hank. Watching him bidding on rocks minerals while ignoring his physical therapy and being pissed off at Marie made me flash back to fat Lee on Battlestar. Apollo was a character the show never really knew what to do with, so you had him in different roles from season to season. I’m hoping we don’t see the same fate befall Hank. I can only hope these minerals will eventually lead back to his search for Heisenberg.

So where are we now? Walt and Jesse have been put on notice. But, as we’ve learned — as Gale’s learned — Walt and Jesse are wiley, and do crazy shit when backed into a corner. I laughed when Mike asked if they were sure hydochloric acid would get rid of Victor’s body and Jesse shot back with, “Trust us.” These are guys who were doing bad things long before Gale showed up. But then there was still the we-do-what-we-have-to-to-survive argument, which is simultaneously still there and thrown completely out the window. Yes, if they hadn’t of gone after Gale, they’d probably both be dead by now. But these two could have cut and run and long time ago. They’ve both got the money to set up far, far away. But they didn’t. They’re the bad guys now. Maybe a degree or two less bad than Gus, but bad nonetheless. There’s nothing left to do but accept it and go out for pancakes. In matching Kenny Rogers t-shirts, of course.