It’s all been leading up to the final episode of Breaking Bad this year and after the grim final moments of last week’s penultimate episode everyone wants to know will any more bodies fall before the ending credits? Jesse’s on the outs of the organization and the prison issue still has to be dealt with so what is Walter White going to do now? Well he’s going to expand the business of course after he ties up a few loose ends with his most recent endeavor.
Plot-wise surprisingly little happens for a season finale. We get to see the aftermath of Mike’s murder hinted at being handled in the trademark Breaking Bad way: destroy the vehicle, put the body in a barrel, and never speak of it again. But we also witness something that will go on to have repercussions that no doubt lead to Walt’s situation in the flash-forward cold open from this year’s premiere. It’s the final scene of this episode, however, that’s worth waiting for as it’s been such a long time coming. But let’s take a look at how the key moments played out first.
“Should we deal with this other thing now?”
Opening the episode with the shot of Walt staring at a fly perched on the desk lamp of the trio’s former offices definitely brought back memories of season three episode (and a personal all-time favorite of mine) ‘Fly’. In that episode, Walt dealt with a pest threatening to contaminate their batch. But more than that it came to symbolize the idea of things Walter can’t control always being around no matter what steps he takes. It was even alluded to thanks to a story from Jesse about his aunt’s final days that it could be a sign of cancer coming back–messing with one’s mind to create nuisances that aren’t there for the mind to fixate on. So when we see Walt staring at a fly after he just killed Mike it makes his wonder if he’s having some sort of regret for ‘dealing with the pest’ of someone who constantly disrespected Walt and the way he handled business. But knowing what we do about Walt’s capacity for guilt right now it’s more than likely his ego was just mourning his own mistake that led to Mike’s death more so than the death itself when Todd comes in after getting back from Joe’s junkyard.
Todd and Walt prepare to handle Mike’s body when Jesse shows up to see how things went. Walt scoffs at his interest and only assures him that Mike is gone before closing the door down on Jesse again–shutting him out. We won’t see Jesse again until later on in the episode as we mainly stick with Walt throughout the hour as he schemes to secure his future but he’s finally starting to learn how heavy the crown really is and he makes a big decision about his future in the meth business.
“Learn to take yes for an answer”
Lydia meets with Walt and they arrange a deal after initial misgivings over the status of Lydia’s own safety following Mike’s death. She gives him the list of men he needs to eliminate in prison and she makes a deal with him to take his product global. Lydia explains the marketplace for meth in the Czech Republic and assures him that it’s the deal of a lifetime considering the size of the customer base and the shoddy product they’ve had so far. Walt agrees and they shake hands before Lydia leaves the restaurant. It’s revealed right after that Walt had brought along the poison he hid in his house earlier in the season just in case–she was right to be so concerned about giving the names up. Thankfully for her, this new deal guaranteed that Walt would need to keep her around to manage the international shipping concerns.
“I think it’s time I met your uncle”
With the names obtained it’s up to Walt to deal with the issue of the nine (now ten including Mike’s lawyer) men in prison. There are some viewers who thought that the train job earlier this season pushed the limits of this show’s plausibility. But to me, it was this incredibly coordinated symphony of death Todd’s uncle and his white supremacist crew manage to pull off. They eliminate their targets within a two-minute window at three separate prisons–they show every single brutal death as well. This could go down to be one of the bloodier seasons of Breaking Bad in terms of on-screen kills. It was a good thing he acted when he did as Hank was nearing making a deal with at least one of the men in custody to give up any new information on Fring’s enterprise. Don’t worry Hank, things happen for a reason.
Crystal blue persuasion
Hank is clearly devastated by the loss of his big Heisenberg lead when he arrives home. Walt’s there visiting Holly and the two sit down and have a drink together. Hank tells this story about a summer job he had marking trees for a lumber crew and the scene bleeds from Walt sitting on the couch in Hank’s house to getting ready to cook with Todd. And so it goes, we see get to see the process over and over again from cooking, shipping, and payday. It’s also some of the finest editing and scene composition this show has ever attempted as one scene starts and becomes part of the next so wonderfully–a mechanism of filmmaking that reflects the well-oiled machine Walt’s built with his new business. Again and again Walt goes through the motions and the money just keeps flooding in as Lydia promised but we can tell there’s a loss of passion in it for Walt. It’s comparable to the days he spent at the car wash albeit far more lucrative. Basically, he’s stuck in a daily job again even if he is the boss now.
“I want my life back”
Later on we see Skyler at Hank and Marie’s house and she looks happier than we’ve seen her this entire season. Marie explains to Skyler that maybe it’s time to have the kids come home and truly reunite their family. Instantly the smile vanishes from her face at the suggestion but she uses this as a way to reach out to Walt. When Skyler comes home she finds Walt staring absently at the swimming pool by himself. She encourages him to take a drive with her out to a storage unit where, it turns out, she’s been storing all the money that’s come in from this new endeavor working with Lydia. In the montage scene it became clear that Walt is going through the motions so much that he’s losing his passion for the job. He may be the boss but he may as well be running a car wash or anything other normal profession–an intelligent man like Walter White feeds on chaos and problem solving more now than ever. So he actually seems to listen to Skyler when she explains that this is just an unwieldy sum of money, and he needs to step away because there’s just no mountain left for him to climb.
“I saw a Bounder the other day”
It’s not a season finale without a trip to a clinic and another scan we’re not given the results of just like last year. Again, we’re left wondering if his cancer is back as suddenly Walt shows up at Jesse’s place acting very strange. So not the Heisenberg A-hole that Jesse last dealt with as this is a Walt more like the man he was when they first started out. At least on the surface when Jesse and he reminisce about their old times together in that crappy RV starting out in the business. There’s tension between them, but there’s also that indescribable feeling of having shared such an unusual experience together. It’s almost like they’re war veterans as these men have been through so much together and only they know what it was like.
But at the same time there is so much rightful distrust between the two men now for them to ever spend time together for long without one of them having to conceal a weapon on their person. When Walt left we saw Jesse had a gun on him the whole time just in case which was a smart move on his part since this is after the three-month jump–after Jesse found out from Saul about Mike. We leave Jesse this season alone in his empty house with a large duffel bag of cash that Walt brought him. He breaks down in anguish, but he’s alive so he’ll likely still figure into the last season next year. I love Jesse Pinkman but it’s getting harder to feel for him when he just refuses to leave the situation when he can and he had a lot of time to do so this episode.
W.W.
Walt arrives home and claims to Skyler that he’s out. More time passes and it’s summertime in New Mexico. The whole gang is gathered at Walt’s house including the kids and things are as normal as they possibly can be. Things between Skyler and Walt seem to have improved even as the scene carries an a this show. Any number of scenarios could have happened but what we got was Hank excusing himself to go to the bathroom. It’s apparently going to take a bit so he decides to find some reading material in order to pass the time more comfortably. Some of you may have seen it earlier in the episode during Walt’s first shower scene but there it was: the Walt Whitman book signed by Gale Boetticher to the mysterious W.W. Suddenly, it all clicks and Hank now knows.
We’ll see next year how this revelation impacts the current surface calm in Walt’s world. Remember, the flash-forward at the beginning of season five revealed it to be about a year later and now a good chunk of the time in-between has passed in this episode alone. Hank’s currently a disgrace at work and this is the thing he needs to finally…finally bring Heisenberg down for good. Brother-in-law or not, and we get to witness the hunt for Walter White that we knew was inevitable.
I’m pretty sure that Saul told Jesse about the death of the nine guys, and not of Mike’s death. I doubt Saul even knows about that. Walt didn’t seem too eager to talk to anyone else about it, not Todd or even Lydia.
Not the season finale. More comparable to a mid-season break. It was already announced that season 5 has 16 episodes and would be taking a break halfway through. You’d think someone who writes the recaps on the show for a TV site would know something so important. Never overestimate TVO writers.