Contributor: Henry T.
Written by Moira Walley-Beckett
Directed by Michelle MacLaren
After a slew of eventful episodes, I found this midseason finale very sedate. It’s an interesting direction to cap off the half season. It reflects the mindset of Walt as he proceeds through the events of this episode. The collective cost of Mike’s death means that the onus of maintaining the “meth empire” falls solely on Walt. This wears him down and robs him of the confidence he has had since assuming the Heisenberg persona. Making meth is a job to Walt now, which is an interesting, if rather abrupt, reversal from what we’ve seen in the season premiere.
Walt wanted to get out from under Gus Fring’s rule — and he did do that — yet he is still doing the grunt work of production. Even with the new parameters of a partnership with Lydia’s network of meth addicts from Czechoslovakia. The man at the top is not supposed to do grunt work, and Walt sees the cost of that on his psyche. There is a relative peace given by the end of the episode, but a new discovery threatens all of that, and it is a solid way to go into the final eight episodes of this great series.
A few episodes after the crew got rid of Drew Sharp via a barrel, one of those barrels is for Mike. The barrels of death are so commonplace on the show now that it doesn’t even bother to show Mike’s body going into it. It’s the repetitive nature of the series, and shows what wears Walt down. It’s all part of the job now, and all of this death demonstrates how deep in it Walt really is. Tying up all of the loose ends in the business means having to deal with its more mundane aspects. I saw Lydia and Walt’s first meeting in the cafe as an interesting contrast to Gus and Walt’s first meeting in the Pollos Hermanos restaurant. Lydia eagerly convinces Walt to keep her alive with an ambitious partnership that is going to be lucrative, yet fraught with all sorts of unseen dangers.
Introducing the Czechoslovakian drug dealers could be yet another unknown element that comes back to haunt Walt. Perhaps they are one of the reasons why Walt had to buy that big gun in the premiere. This episode presents a number of possible threats where Walt would have needed that gun in the car trunk. Perhaps it’s for the associates of Todd’s uncle, the ones who somehow synchronized the murders of ten incarcerated felons in the first of two masterful montages in this episode. The logic of the murder plot doesn’t quite hold (and I found it odd for a show as meticulous as this one to basically gloss over how the guys pulled it off), but it proves to be the final loose end for Walt to deal with just as the DEA closes in.
Only, Walt isn’t truly free. Making meth has become a mundane job to Walt. He no longer has joy in what he does. Walt and Hank have a discussion about it in a scene that reveals part of the history of one of the show’s more under-developed characters. Hank should have enjoyed his job of tagging trees in college a little more. When he grows up, it gets tiring chasing criminals and encountering disappointments. It was the same with Walt and his teaching job. Now, Walt faces a far less noble enterprise and the prize at the end of the rainbow is turning out to be something he doesn’t quite like. While the meth creating montage was sublime, it also felt tedious and over-indulgent in repeating the tiresome aspect of Walt’s job.
It takes Skyler — a character who has been engaging in a cold war all season with Walt — to show him when enough is enough. The enormous stacks of money in the public storage unit (an incredible sight to behold on a show that routinely presents beautiful shots) was seemingly the final nail in the proverbial coffin. Never mind that I don’t think it’s a good idea to hide stacks of money in a public storage unit where records are kept. Or that I don’t fully believe Walt taking himself out of the game. Walt has not been trustworthy with much of what he has said or done this season and I didn’t buy him saying that he was out to Skyler one bit. His ambition and ego and greed just won’t allow him to do that. There are still dangers out there, and I think Walt is beginning to turn his blinders onto all of that. That will lead to his downfall and his place in that Denny’s for his 52nd birthday.
It’s that notion of constant danger around the corner that drives the tension to unbearable levels in that scene in the Whites’ backyard. Things are too normal, too comfortable between everyone. Junior wheeling Holly around the pool had me thinking the worst thing was going to happen. Like maybe she accidentally goes into the pool. Or that she ingests a lily of the valley to echo the end of last season. Anything could have happened. The show brilliantly subverts that expectation by keeping things on the more mundane. Hank uses the restroom and indulges in a bit of bathroom reading. There goes the biggest reveal: A gift from Gale — a man who’s been dead for more than a season — to Walt, thus implicating Walt in the entire Fring conspiracy that Hank had been working for more than a year. The wheels in Hank’s head are now turning. The man he has been so close to for years has been operating a criminal enterprise.
You could argue as to why Walt would be so stupid as to leave something like that out in the open to implicate him. You can argue that things are moving too quickly to have everything fit within the time frame established by the season premiere. To me, Mike proved rather prophetic before his death: Walt had a good thing going with working under the Fring operation. They could have made the same amount of money that Walt saw here (or more) if he had just kept his head down and worked. Perhaps he could have been made partner equal to Gus. We’ll never know now since Walt blew all of that up. Walt is going to fall, and the cost is possibly going to be more than he can bear. Hank finding the connection between Fring’s criminal enterprise and Walt means that he’ll likely lose his family. He reconciled with Jesse, but I get the sense that Jesse’s part in the story isn’t quite finished.
Todd’s uncle and his skinhead friends linger as a threat. Lydia and the Czechoslovakian network could gain more power. Walt’s cancer might possibly have returned! Any number of things could happen when the show returns next year. There is only one ending for Walt, though. He has seen the highest of highs, and his lowest point is coming. This episode was the start of that journey.
Score: 8/10
