Breaking Bad 5.9: The Final Showdown Begins

Warning: this is a recap. That means spoilers.

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And so the ending begins just as we expected: not with a bang, but with a kickflip. Oh Breaking Bad, how you delight in just filming stuff.

Here’s a game: guess how many scenes there are in this latest episode of Breaking Bad. The answer is ten. Your level of shock may rest on how much non-prestige-level television you watch, or — we might say — how seriously the television you watch takes itself. Is ten scenes a lot? No, it is not. Somewhere in its third season, Breaking Bad became both hyperactively cinematic and theatrically paced, letting conversations and confrontations simmer and stagnate on screen. We watch the characters steep in their own conflicted emissions, and we sit in the stew alongside them.

This slow-burn can work fantastically for scenes that crank up the tension – think of Hank searching for assassins in his car mirrors, or of Gus stalking around his trussed, misbehaving chemists armed with a box cutter. It’s also allowed us to tag along on remote and removed action, pecking at breadcrumb clues until we reach a final destination, reveal or twist; the death-by-defibrillator scene set in corporate Germany is just such a short film within the series. And occasionally, we’re left to sweat it out while characters breathe and think and complete all those boringly human functions that are normally edited out by television producers, for fear of remote-bound itchy trigger fingers. Breaking Bad can place you in a room with Walt and Jesse, and after seven minutes of desperate pleas and crossed-fingered assurances, you sigh in relief that no one was blown away by an explosive-rigged bong. Scenes can leave you sighing with relief, but also just plain sighing, ending without the pay-off we expect, or really any pay-off at all.

This episode was filled with both these types of scenes — the chair gripping “Come on!”, and the eye rolling “Come ooon” — and with only eight episodes left of the show, it felt a little like a death-row meal with more gristle than meat.

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BREAKING BAD: WALT

We open with a flash-forward to fugitive Walt, scruffy-headed and differently spectacled, the man on a mission we met in Season five’s cold open last year. Ignoring the kids skating in his pool, Walt tramps through his abandoned house to pick up the vial of Ricin that launched a hundred clumsy Chekov misquotes. Along the way he glances at his haggard, shattered reflection, an act Walt seems to undertake constantly – in car windows, in hospital hand dryers… (As he usually has no hair to fix, we can only assume he’s also keeping tabs on his Mr. Chips to Scarface transformation.)

From the flash-forward we learn that Walt has become a disturbing presence in his own neighbourhood, and that someone at some point scrawls ‘HEISENBERG’ on the living room wall in spray paint. Will it be Walt marking his territory? Jesse giving up the game? Is Walt Jr. going to extremes to study for the History final?

Either way, we’ll eventually know when the show catches up to these scenes, which make me feel a little like I do when peeking at the last page of a book. One last small skerrick of Walty goodness from the present – the man’s cancer is back, and, with it, maybe any fear he ever had of seriously being in danger. A man without a future can be a scary thing (is a possible rejected poster slogan from this season).
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BREAKING GOOD: HANK

I’ve long hoped for Hank to cotton on to Walt; it’s the humanist, the altruist, the Hollywood sucker in me that wants to see the good guy win. (You can read more about this in my pre-season write-up. And to the polite and articulate commenter who disagrees with the concept of Breaking Bad as morality play, I wonder how many more scenes of characters justifying their devilish behaviour in tense, extended conversational set-pieces there must be before both the show’s obsession with “morality”, and it’s general play-likeness, can be acknowledged.)

Do I wish Breaking Bad fit that classic hoary mould, a feature film starring D.E. Agent Bruce Willis tracking down his nefarious and cowardly brother-in-law, played by a typically inadequate William H. Macy? No. But boy oh boy do I love seeing a policeman crack a case, and Hank’s crime solving, chip-scoffing montage is a delight.

Also enjoyable: Hank’s cracker-jack KO of Walt. The satisfaction of a beating on Walt is helped to no end by the writing team’s apparent discovery that when Walt holds his baby daughter for any length of time, as he does in the episode’s earlier scenes, the average audience member will scream for justice to all evil-doers (especially those who we wouldn’t trust to nurture a lunk-wrench, let alone something adorable and in booties). The most interesting thing about pitting Walt and Hank against each other is that Walt’s weak spot was always his family – and now the thorn in his side and his Achilles’ heel are one and the same. Stalemate? Mutual destruction? You got me all over again, BB.
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BREAKING EVEN: JESSE

Good news viewers! Jesse picked up a cool fresh attitude in-between seasons. Smoking, drinking, relaxing, crying, vacantly staring, having panic attacks brought on by moral uncertainty — original moves, Pinkman. Keep them up. Maybe Jesse’s new multi-million dollar paper route is just the thing to turn this young man around.

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BREAKING OUT: LYDIA

Remember Lydia? She has access to chemicals and drug shipping routes in Czechoslovakia. Now that Walt’s out of the game, that sweet, sweet pure meth that all the professionals in the illegal drug industry demand is being corrupted through ineptitude. Thankfully, the show has set up Walt as an egotistical perfectionist. Unthankfully, the show has only ever set up Lydia as someone who wears sunglasses sometimes and has very specific taste in hot beverages.

This week she does sometimes wear sunglasses — will we finally get to see her order more hot water in the next episode?

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NEXT WEEK

Sometimes they’re walking, sometimes they’re still. But they’re all… BREAKING BAD.

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Matt Roden helps kids tell stories by day at the Sydney Story Factory, and by night helps adults admit to stupidity by co-running Confession Booth and TOD Talks. He is 2SER’s resident TV critic — each Tuesday morning at 8.20am — and his illustration and design work can be seen here. 

Follow his Breaking Bad recaps here.