Walter White Wednesday 28

We're wrapping up Season 5A now, with only one more episode to go.  In many ways, this season has been darker than previous ones, but the darkness is personal.  There's no big drug kingpin pushing Walt around, no homicidal Cousins sitting quietly with deaths-head boots - there's just Walt with no one to stop him.  Don't be fooled - from this, the terror springs.

This week's title - "Say My Name" - indicates Walt's desire to cement his identity as Heisenberg, his version of Billy Badass.  In the cold open, he brokers a deal with Gus' Phoenix counterpart and wins.  Not only does Walt now have access to Declan's distribution network, Declan will be moving the blue meth (not the trash he's been making with food coloring to fool the public.  Honestly, what's needed here is regulation in packaging).  Walt compares his 99.1% pure product to Classic Coke and Declan's 70-ish% pure meth to some off-brand cola.  Declan threatens to just kill Walt there in the desert and Walt coolly responds, "Do you really want to live in a world without Coca-Cola?"  Now THERE's some product placement!

Anyway, Declan backs down - he's a businessman, and there's heavy coin to be made here.  Walt doesn't get that and instead thinks he's won, missing the point that his "win" only lasts as long as his usefulness outweighs his liabilities.  But Walt doesn't understand, or care, about that and revels in the moment, demanding that Declan "say my name."  There's a certain sexual undertone here - when Walt tosses the bag of blue to the desert sand, I thought of a john flipping a $20 onto the dresser.  "Who's your daddy, baby?"

I suppose we should let Walt enjoy that, as it's the last thing that goes right for him for the rest of "Say My Name."  His children are gone from the house, his wife can barely stand to be in the same room with him (long gone are the pot roasts for dinner - it's strictly microwave-in-a-box now), his distribution network is out of the business (and when Mike's out, he's well and truly out), and Jesse has made a decision that Walt can't shake him from.

Yay, Jesse, by the way.  Walt tries it all - bullying, wheedling, guilt - and the tactics just aren't working anymore.  Jesse wants out and if he has to walk away from a cool $5 million, well, by God, that's what he's going to do to get clear of Heisenberg's riptide.  The weight of the sins on Jesse's soul have finally anchored it to his conscience. So Walt brings in another young, eager-to-please lab assistant - Todd the Child-Killer.  (By the way, the horn-heavy song "Goin' Down" that plays over this cook scene is by The Monkees.  That just made me smile.)

The DEA finally gets to Mike, not through a jail rat, but through the lawyer Mike's using to deliver the payoffs to Gus' men.  Mike had prepared for the need to disappear and Walt delivers his "go bag" to him.  When Mike does what the viewer has been wanting to do for many, many episodes and calls Walt out on his greed and ego wrecking an established "good thing," Walt has a tantrum.  With a handgun.

So no one else is going to die now that Walt's in control, huh?

Season 5A wraps up next week.  We know that Walt wants the names of the "Fring Nine" who could possibly turn on him and that he can get them from Lydia. Is Walt willing to pay for a killing spree as part of the cost of doing business?  Is the "breaking bad" that began in Season 1 complete, in which case cancer would be a sunny park compared to the sheer emptiness that looms inside Walt now?  And what about Jesse?  Who knows far too much and has cut all ties with Heisenberg, who owes him five million dollars?

Stay tuned.  I know I will.

Walter White Wednesday 27

BE WARNED THAT SPOILERS ABOUND FOR "BUYOUT"!!

So Walt thinks of himself as being in the "empire business" and he sees the meth enterprise as being some sort of "see, I told you so" to Gretchen and Elliott who took Walt's ideas and kicked him out of Gray Matter all those many years ago. Only we know from Gretchen's uncomfortable conversation with Walt (really, is there any other kind of conversation with Walt in the last year?) that his version of events and hers are vastly different.  And referring to his letting Gretchen and Elliott buy the "birthright" of his children?  I'd be careful about throwing around Old Testament concepts when you just got finished dissolving a kid's dirt bike, among other things.  Note:  that lingering shot of the child's upturned hand in the mound of dirt in the dump truck is going to haunt me.

On the other hand (bad pun there), Walt seems perfectly okay with it.  Yes, it's a shame, so sorry it happened, don't want to have to deal with that again, but well . . . business.  Jesse is clearly having a hard time dealing with his part in the murder of a child and Walt claims he's been losing sleep over it, too, so Jesse - hey, rough couple of days, partner, go on home and I'll finish up here.  Then he starts whistling.

I think that's when Jesse makes his decision.

So Walt is faced with the breakup of the band - Mike is sick of the DEA tails and he's found a buyer for the methylamine, but Declan also wants the blue off the street, so the whole thousand gallons needs to be part of the deal.  (Declan - what's an Irishman doing in the Southwest?  Oh, right - the desert is a place with no memory.  Declan's built up quite a nice meth empire one state over in Phoenix and he has designs on expansion.)  Jesse, Mike, and Walt each stand to clear $5 million from the deal and have the ability to walk away.  Jesse's happy, Mike's happy - but there's Walt.

Walt's come a long way from just wanting enough cash (which he once estimated at $737K) to leave his family secure. He's not in it for his family - who's fractured beyond repair anyway.  That excuse just won't fly anymore, and Walt's really not even bothering.  Skyler can barely stand to be in the same room with him (Marie's spilling of the beans guaranteed that) and the kids are off at Marie's.  Walt has no allies and his wounded pride and greed are swelling him up like a puffer fish.  It's not about family and it's just barely about the money.  What's driving Walt right now is a desire for power and a desire to be feared.  he's a long way from the nebbishy chem teacher of Season 1.  And while I don't think Walt's as clever as he thinks he is, I have to give him badass points for his Mission: Impossible style escape from being zip-tied to the radiator.  As Jesse might say, "Yeah - science!"  See, Walt's got a plan.  And regular viewers know how much joy that usually brings.

Two episodes left in Season 5A.  I don't see this turning out well.  Especially since Mensa-reject Todd kept the spider jar.  You know, the one that has the kid's fingerprints all over it.

Could you please pass the domestic discomfort?

Also note to self:  Never accept a last-minute invitation to dinner at the White house.  What an uncomfortable dinner and what great comedic chops Aaron Paul has!  Did you notice that the ex-junkie is the one gulping ice water while the two supposed grown-ups are swilling liquor and guzzling wine from a glass the size of a colander?  The icy disdain at that table was enough to make me squirm, but I was enjoying watching Jesse try to bring the conversation around to the neighborhood of normal too much to not watch it.  Breaking Bad has always done a masterful job of mixing comedy with probing the darkness of the human soul and this scene in "Buyout" has that light touch that makes it possible to watch a show that so often goes so dark.

Walter White Wednesday 26

. . . which is the one where the game changes.  Irrevocably.  If you haven't already seen this week's episode of Breaking Bad, which is entitled "Dead Freight," please - please - stop right here.  "Dead Freight" is a masterpiece of storytelling and the shock of it deserves to be seen unspoiled.

A freight train is key to this episode and we hear the long, low whistle of the train in the cold open, long before we see it.  American folk music is littered with lyrics about lonesome train whistles.  In the songs, trains move through empty country, taking people from one place to another, where (hopefully) they'll find contentment, be reunited with loved ones, forget about that girl back home, or whatever.  Train whistles are promises that we can always be somewhere else.  Walt can relate to wanting to be somewhere (and someone) else, but what's a kid on a dirt bike have to do with any of this?  The kid's just out in the scrubland, tearing up trackless territory on the aforementioned dirt bike, stopping to gently pick up a tarantula and stuff it into a jar.  Remember that desert spider - they look dangerous, but actually tarantulas are quite timid. Sort of like kids on dirt bikes.

Turns out that Nervous Nellie, sorry Lydia, actually didn't plant the tracking device on the barrel of methylamine - the DEA in Houston did, and they did a sloppy job of it.  With that supply line cut off, a frantic Lydia (Jesse doesn't want to kill her, but he's in the minority - Walter and Mike both see her as a growing liability) offers a wackadoodle plan.  Pull a train job and boost an "ocean" of the necessary precursor for large-scale pure meth-making.  Walt loves this plan - it's big and bold and really pretty hare-brained - and he doesn't, under any circumstances he can conceive of, want to go back to cooking trash meth with pseudo.  Mike points out that there are two kinds of heists - the ones where the guys get away with it and the ones where there are witnesses.  Mike will kill - we know that - but he would prefer not to get involved in schemes that make killing a necessary component.  So it's Jesse who comes up with a way to avoid killing the train crew.  Note that Jesse does not want blood on his hands.  Surely there's a way to cook hundreds of pounds of meth on a regular basis without getting violent!  Oh, Jesse.

So the crew goes into action.  Crazy stuff here - in addition to the Duke City Three, others are brought in from Vamanos Pest.  How big a circle of secret-keepers is Mike willing to risk?  A single weak link can bring them all down.  The problem is, no matter how well you plan, your strategy can't cover all the variables in a plan with this many variables.  A Good Samaritan shows up to push the diversionary truck off the tracks.    Walt won't stop until his thousand gallons are siphoned off.  And a kid on a dirt bike happens along this madness in the desert.  "The ones where the guys get away with it and the ones where there are witnesses."

Kid on dirt bike or spider in jar?

As Breaking Bad has illustrated time and again, deserts are places to forget.  Blood on the sand can be covered up in a few minutes.  But what's done is well and truly done - and I don't think Jesse will be able to forget.  Walt has been reassuring Skyler that their family is safe - that their children are safe.

But no one else's children are safe from Walt.

Wow.

Walter White Wednesday 23

After the whizbang start of Season 5A with last week's "Live Free or Die," this week's "Madrigal" slows down a bit.  Gilligan understands that we need to start unpacking how Walt got from eradicating two major players at the end of Season 4 to sitting alone in a Denny's on his 52nd birthday at the beginning of 5A, so he starts giving us bits of the journey this week.  Don't let the slower pace fool you - there's a lot going on here.

First - the title.  We knew that "Madrigal"*  was some sort of shell company that Gus funneled money through - possibly to do some "laundry," but also to buy the industrial lab equipment used in the large-scale meth business that Walt and Jesse have been running for Gus.  Seems that at least some of the Madrigal black-turtleneck crew knew something of the inner workings of the laundry business, too.  At least one of them isn't talking (zap!) and the question becomes who knows what and how much?  These are questions that Hank very much wants answers to.  I think a penny dropped for Hank this week as his on-his-way-out boss related the tale of Gus coming over to the house to grill sea bass while his son shucked corn for the feast.  Look under your nose.  See who's hiding in plain sight.

Uh-oh.

We also meet a new player in "Madrigal."  Lydia's a nervous sort and she sees people as loose ends to be tied up - or shot to death.  Mike doesn't want to have anything to do with Walt (who he refers to as a "time bomb" - a comment that's more true than he knows), but the DEA found and froze the offshore accounts - indirectly through Walt's utter inability to know when enough is enough - and there's no money.  So Mike gets Lydia onboard to get the necessary methylamine to start cooking again and a three-way partnership is formed between Mike, Walt, and Jesse, albeit a reluctant one.

Last thing.  Jesse breaks down at the thought that he nearly killed Walt over what he thought was Walt's attempt to poison Brock with the missing ricin.  Shoulders shaking, voice strained, he sobs and sobs and my heart breaks a little bit more.  For Walt did poison Brock - remember the potted lily-of-the-valley Walt dumps in his trunk? Walt has hidden the ricin vial and created a dummy vial filled with salt which he then helps Jesse "find" to prove his innocence.  Seeing Walt comfort his crying partner points up the fact that this Walt is thoroughly despicable as well as being truly dangerous.  Walt's willing to go to any length - any - to keep Jesse close and dependent and the "no rough stuff type deal" Walt has been shed like an outgrown snakeskin.  Jesse's no saint, but at least his eyes haven't gone dead.  


It's not going to go smooth, is it?


Let me also bring to your attention my co-author's blog, which is now featuring "Meth Monday" as a companion to these "Walter White Wednesday" posts.  Check it out - we find different things in each episode, so the two blogs are good to read together.

*A "madrigal" is also vocal music composition dating from the Renaissance era.  Most usually, a madrigal contains from three to six voices.  It'll be interesting to see how many "voices" play a sizable part in telling the "Madrigal" story.

Walter White Wednesday 22

WOW!  You saw the first episode of Season 5A* by now - or I certainly hope you have, because I plan to talk about it in this post.  So if you haven't seen "Live Free or Die," just stop reading right now.  There will be spoilers, you have been warned and I simply cannot abide whiners.

Let's start with the title, which is the state motto of New Hampshire.  In the cold open, Walt presents a New Hampshire driver's license to get the "birthday discount" (after all, as the chatty Denny's waitress puts it, "free is free")' and his car has NH plates.  We're probably all glad to see the Aztec go, but NH is a long way from NM, so something very strange has happened since the end of Season 4.

"Live Free or Die" starts with a cold open that looks further into the future than we've been taken before.  I suspect Gilligan will take his time getting us back to this point on the circle, but he starts with an open that left me with my jaw dropped. As Walt breaks his bacon into pieces and spells out "52" on the plate, we've come full circle from the pilot episode in which Sky decorates his plate with veggie bacon (truly an unholy thing; little wonder Walt broke bad eating that sort of non-food) for what is Walt's 50th birthday.  Walt has hair, so time has clearly passed.  And this version of Walt has plans.  Plans that involve our favorite thoughtful dealer in unlicensed firearms.

What the hell has happened?

By the end of the episode (I'm not going to spoil too much here, but there are a couple of biggies coming up), we learn a couple of truly disturbing things.  Maybe Walt actually IS the Danger, the One Who Knocks ("OWK," my term).  Certainly Jesse, Saul, and even Mike (yay, Mike's back!) seem to view him with a newfound caution.  Skyler's out and out scared of him, and Sky's becoming a scary being in her own right.  Just ask Ted.  Yeah.  Ted.

The storm clouds are gathering, children.  And the rain falls on the righteous and the wicked alike.

So much more will come for Season 5A, but I'm actually blogging this as I travel home from Vancouver, which hosted the 5th Biennial Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses.  Travel has not been without glitches and I won't be home and over jet lag before this needs to be posted, so I tapped this out from 38,000 feet in the air and am posting it before I collapse from jet lag.  That's how much you matter to me.  We (my co-author was there in Vancouver with me) actually had a makeshift viewing party Sunday night, which was great fun as we introduced a number of friends to the show.  What an episode to start on!

*just to be clear, "Season 5A" refers to the eight eps that will air in the summer/fall of 2012.  The remaining ones airing in 2013 will be referred to here as "Season 5B," since Vince Gilligan talks about all these episodes as "Season 5."