(S02E13) Cause and effect, random selection, grief, life and death... "My father is my hero, he's just decent." Breaking Bad covered all that and more in the season finale, setting up Walter White's life after successful surgery that bought him more time. The question was this when the end credits rolled, what will that life be for the New Mexico science teacher after all that's come before?
Anyone out there who thinks they know is lying because only creator Vince Gilligan has a handle on what's been going on and what's to come. What we do know after watching the season finale is this: Breaking Bad is as good as any other drama currently on television, and that includes Lost, Mad Men, House, 24 and the other potential Emmy nominees for Outstanding Drama Series.
Was everything that happened in the finale's final moments divine retribution perhaps? Karma? Random selection? The randomness of all it mirrors the meeting at the bar between Walter and Don. Could their meeting be as arbitrary as Walt's house being struck by falling airplane wreckage? And what were the chances that the air traffic controller responsible for the collision was a grief-riddled Don who should have never been allowed back to work?
But there was also the idea of cause and effect going on. If Jane doesn't die – because Walter did nothing to save her -- does Don make the mistakes that lead to the crash? One thing relates to the other, just like Walt's cancer is the cause of his becoming a meth man.
Amazingly, Gilligan leaves us hanging. It's maddening, but it's also brilliant. All the foreshadowing all season long, those scenes of the post-crash White home with the guys in the haz-mat suits, had us anticipating that Walt was responsible for the apparent violence at the house. We know that there are body bags involved, but logic suggests that it won't be Walt in one of them. And it can't be Sky or Flynn or anybody connected to Walter. It'll more likely be two passengers whose bodies land on Walter's property along with the pink teddy bear. The glasses, though, have to be Walt's.
In the previous episode, Sky asked Walter if he was learning about elephants when he was watching TV. Well, you know the old saying, "elephants never forget"? Sky never forgot that Walter didn't have an answer to her question about the second cell phone. Before the surgery, when she asked if had brought his phone along, he answered with the mutter, "Which one?" In that moment, Sky realized that Walter had never stopped lying to her. That utterance became the catalyst for her to walk out on Walt, taking with Holly and Flynn with her. She waited till he was well enough to take care of himself, and then Sky lowered the boom. Her indictment was sharp as a knife and Walter had no response and no way to keep her from leaving. It would seem that that decision probably saved her life and Holly's as well.
At Hank's office, the DEA remained on the trail of Heisenberg. How ironic that he put the collection jar for Walter's cancer surgery in the office in time for the business leaders, including Gus, to see his face. It's like Walter is hiding in plain sight, which is also reminiscent of Walter hiding the money behind the installation in the laundry room. However, will Gus remain a silent partner in Heisenberg's operation now that he knows how exposed Walter really is?
Saul once again was the key to Walter's salvation. After processing Jane's death, Walt anticipated Jesse's call and was ready to respond thanks to Saul's fixer, Mike. Jonathan Banks played Mike, a "cleaner," like Harvey Keitel's character in Pulp Fiction. He seemed like a former cop because he not only knew how to purge the crime scene, and thus protect Walt from being implicated in a forensic way (finger prints, fibers, DNA evidence), but later he took tracked down Jesse in the shooting gallery.
It was significant that Walter was compelled to go into that den of drugs and depravity to get Jesse out, even though their partnership was practically dissolved when he delivered the money last week. Clearly, if Walt were a stone cold killer, and not a "decent" man -- like Flynn boasted on the TV news -- would he have bothered to save Jesse? If he'd have left Jesse there and not placed him at Serenity to get clean and sober, he might have been rid of his loser partner forever. But he couldn't do it.
Walter's psyche is split between his pragmatic, criminal intellect and his humanity. Also, whether he likes it or not, Walter has an emotional tie to Jesse. They share a bond, strained as it is, that's as strong as blood. It's not one-sided either, because the way Jesse hung onto Walter was like a drowning man clinging to a lifeline. Jesse's family wasn't there. It was Jesse's partner.
Now we wait. Next season is a long way off. Too long to learn Walter's fate, but what choice do we have. Finally, the quality of the performances by Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, Bob Odenkirk, Anna Gunn and the rest of the cast must be recognized. In front of the camera and behind it, Breaking Bad has delivered a stellar season.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
5-31-2009 @ 11:38PM
Jimmy said...
> Breaking Bad has delivered a stellar season.
Agreed. Breaking Bad's second season was better than Mad Men's, making it the best show on TV.
Until the deus ex machina, that is. My gut reaction is that I don't like it, but I'll give Vince Gilligan the benefit of the doubt. It's going to be a long wait for Season Three ...
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6-01-2009 @ 12:15AM
b carroll said...
"Until the deus ex machina, that is"
but it wasn't - for that to be the case, the crash would have had to come out of the blue (no pun intended). yet it didn't - it was clearly the last link in a chain of events that were trigged by walt's actions, all the way back to his initial decision to cook. methinks walk will eventually learn of this and come to know the crash was essentially his fault.
6-01-2009 @ 12:51AM
Chet said...
I don't know if it's deus ex machina, but it does feel like a cheat. Whether it's a brilliant cheat or a cheap trick remains to be seen.
6-01-2009 @ 9:41AM
Jimmy said...
After sleeping on it, I like the plane collision even less.
Last week, I thought Walt and Don meeting at the bar was heavy-handed. The crash is 100 times worse -- it smacks of desperation ... kind of like frogs falling from the sky in Magnolia.
The passing of seven weeks was troublesome too. Yes, it works for Walt's recovery, but it's hard to believe Skyler didn't confront him sooner -- and that Don missed that much work. Air traffic controllers must have a great leave policy!
That said, Breaking Bad is incredible TV, and I can't wait for next season. I'm most anxious to see what role Gus will play and what becomes of Jesse.
6-01-2009 @ 12:37AM
shamon said...
Really good tv now where mad men .
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6-01-2009 @ 1:04AM
Cody said...
I'd like to see more Giancarlo Esposito next season. I want to know why the owner of a multi-franchise Chicken shack would be in the meth business. There's a ton of story in that character, and I'm really hoping they get a chance to tell it.
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6-01-2009 @ 2:36AM
JD said...
I find it more likely that somebody in the meth/whatever other drug business later got into multiple chicken restaurant franchises as an outlet for laundering his dirty money....
6-01-2009 @ 2:13AM
Randomman said...
I've been particularly impressed with John de Lancie's performance on the show. I always remembered him in Star Trek as "Q," one of the most silly characters on the show and was somewhat suprised to see him here.
But he's done such a wonderful job portraying Jane's dad on Breaking Bad. Despite the fact that his daughter repeatedly relapsed into drugs he kept trying to save her. And the scene where he goes to her house to find her dead actually had me welling up. And that mesmerizing scene where he was in the control room and you suddenly realize what he's doing was jaw dropping. This has been a great season.
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6-01-2009 @ 2:27AM
Midnight13 said...
This second season of "Breaking Bad" was utterly brilliant. There were no clothes whatsoever to indicate what lead up to that stuffed animal in the pool. All we knew was there was so disaster. This impending sense of dread for the principal characters hanged over us the entire season. "Breaking Bad" is always giving us the results first and the course of events. Always revealing the outcome and leaving us to piece together how it all comes about. Walt is a domino essentially, when he falls every one else is coming down with him. So far we see how this affects people he barely knows. The drug dealer on the street who gets shot, Jane's overdose. Its far to early if all this will eventually come back to get at his family and himself. Like many I tend to think the worst and often find things don't take such a direct path.
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6-01-2009 @ 7:47AM
Phil said...
The only bother I had about the ending was this: Would Jane's father be permitted to return to work without some kind of examination? I know nothing about Air Traffic controllers but it is a little scary thinking that they are operating with any kind of painful or otherwise distraction. Also has anyone examined the Heisenberg connection? After all Werner Heisenberg, the physicist who came up with the "Uncertainty Principle" in Quantum Physics initially was a pariah in Nazi Germany in the thirties but then was accepted by the Third Reich, leading may to speculate his Nazi sympathies . . .(explored in the play Copenhagen). Why didn't Gilligan use a famous Chemist instead of a controversial Mathematician/physicist? I also think that "Heisenberg" in the end will snare Walt. . .
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6-01-2009 @ 11:07AM
robert said...
i wonder if the fact that Heisenberg died of cancer had anything to do with the choice for his alias?
6-01-2009 @ 8:22AM
tpp said...
The body bags are the two hitman Gus the chicken man will send to Walt's house to take him out. He can't risk the exposure or thinks he's working with the DEA and will try and kill Walt.
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6-01-2009 @ 9:15AM
matthew said...
Actually, Gilligan has said in an interview that it is safe to assume the bodies are from the plane, and that he believes Gus was not surprised by Walt being related to a DEA agent, since he must be very careful to have gotten to where he is.
6-01-2009 @ 9:57AM
donnay said...
wow, according to this latimes blog, the writers have been cockteasing us all season
well played....well played indeed.
"More name games? Sure. I was going back through this season after watching the finale and noticed that the first episode was titled “Seven Thirty-Seven.” Walt made up a goal of raising $737,000 for his family before he died in that episode, figuring that’s what they would need to cover all costs. Looking back on it now, though, the foreshadowing was there, but I never initially saw it. Turns out another blogger -- Alan Sepinwall of the New Jersey Star-Ledger -- also picked up on this after watching the finale, and in a Q&A, Gilligan revealed to him even more: “If you look at the names of all the episodes," Gilligan said, "in particular the episodes that have the strange black and white teaser, they spell out a hidden message.”
That message: Seven Thirty-Seven Down Over ABQ."
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6-05-2009 @ 9:07PM
DONB said...
Brilliant Performance...To think that a few years ago we were watching Bryan Cranston do the funnies in Malcom....I am so glad this show is picking up traction....it is amazing TV...
My big questions:
What is Gus going to do with the Info @ Hand.?
Was Walt really going to tell Skyler the truth or was he just going to defecate a whole new bunch of falsities?
Is she really gone? because if show it changes the dynamics of his character...? ( at least some what) ?
How will Walt take it when he finds out that the MID AIR collision was part of his doing.....?
Juicy stuff......Please dont make us wait as long as you did last season.....
Come on Vince make one of those quick turnaround like Survivor (ps: I know its reality tv)
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6-01-2009 @ 1:46PM
Scott said...
Wow. Breaking Bad in undeniably the best show on Television. Every episode is exquisitely and masterfully crafted, and yet the whole is somehow still greater than the sum of its parts. By the way - kudos to Allison Waldman at TV Squad for a really perfect recap, here. This is the best TV Squad episode review I've read thus far. Great job.
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6-01-2009 @ 2:07PM
Joe said...
What a great season. Every episode just seemed to get better and better. I did think the pay off for the black and white crime scenes we've been seeing all season long were kind of a let down. I liked the tie in with Jane's Dad, and I guess no one could have predicted what really happened. I read some wild speculation, but nothing like what happened.
http://www.joeonthetube.com
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6-01-2009 @ 4:18PM
R-Bro said...
Much as I loved the entire season, the whole plane-crash thing seemed like a serious cop-out. Just too much coincidence at work from a show that has always seemed very real. Still a monster fan, though. :)
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6-01-2009 @ 5:15PM
Buckeye Mike said...
Has anybody thought of what happened to the money that was stashed in the house after the mid air collision? Maybe the money was discovered by the FAA? Got to think about that one
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6-01-2009 @ 5:57PM
LordPaul said...
I thought that money had been laundered through the charity (& Walt took the money for Jesse which was taken by the cleaner)