Breaking Bad: Season 5, Episode 9 - Guns at Dawn

Heisenberg was Here: Walt takes in the destruction wrought by Heisenberg

In 2009, I sat down one evening to watch Breaking Bad, a show then finishing up its second-season. All I knew was that it was on AMC, and like Showtime’s Weeds, told the story of an unlikely middle-class character that gets involved in the drug business because of money problems. Another thing I knew was that it starred Malcolm’s dad from Malcolm in the Middle (Bryan Cranston). Like many of premium cable’s shows over the last decade, I was hooked after one episode. After a marathon session of the entire season followed by the first half of the second season the following evening, I was caught up with the rest of fans, anticipating the next episode and what would happen  to partners-in-crime, Walter White and Jesse Pinkman.

As much as I loved Weeds, this show is something entirely different and rises to places that show played with but never actually went.  Similar to Weeds, Breaking Bad uses humor regularly to lighten the show’s darker elements. Initially, the absurdity of a socially awkward, somewhat bumbling high school chemistry teacher partnering up with a drug-dealing, gangster wannabe and his former student to cook meth provides many of the shows plotlines, often to humorous effect. Despite the smiles and laughs, the viewer knows this is dangerous territory to be treading. We always knew we were relatively safe in the world of Weeds with its beautiful, white woman playing in the world of pot dealing (even though later seasons did successfully raise the stakes the higher she reached on the food chain, the show never tried to be what it wasn’t) Walter White’s new universe centers around a drug whose involvement brings with it far more dangerous repercussions, definitely from the effects of use and arguably more deadly and shady characters involved in its production and distribution.

We’ve always had a suspicion that this story wouldn’t end well. Walter White gradually transformed from protagonist to antagonist during the course of the show’s four and a half seasons. This metamorphosis has been scripted brilliantly. The show hasn’t hid it from us. It’s been in plain view. Walt’s beginning moral argument for making money to provide his family because of his terminal cancer diagnosis gives us just enough of a grey area to justify accompanying him on his journey. At each step along the way, that area has grown darker and darker until eventually you realize you’re sitting in a pitch black room and the hero you’ve rooted for is now the villain. Most of the time, the character was walking a fine line between the two and then becoming both at once. We’re not used to experiencing this in our stories. Sure, we’ve become accustomed and now enjoy cheering on the anti-hero. The current goldmine of quality TV shows on premium channel owes much to this trope. Shows like Weeds, The Sopranos, The Wire, and Deadwood, just to name a few, have explored this character deftly. What we haven’t experienced is anything quite like this. At the end of the last episode before the mid-season break, Walt has seemingly left the business and promises his wife Skyler that he’s done with it. There’s something that rings hollow here, not because we don’t necessarily believe he’ll keep his word (although there’s nothing to make us think he will), it’s that we’ve stopped caring for this character and hoping he succeeds. It doesn’t seem right to like and cheer on the person that could do the things he’s done and gone to the places he’s went. And now what? Just dust off and continue on? No. We lost Walt somehwhere along the way and need this to play out now. We missed the point we could get off the train, and although the last stretch has nearly no chance of being pretty, our eyes are open and we need to see. There was always a sense of hoping and ultimately knowing that Nancy Botwin would get out of the dangerous and often hilarious situations she got herself into on Weeds. We no longer have that empathy for Walter White. Let the chips fall where they may.

With only eight episodes to go, season five’s second-half opener, “Blood Money,” picks up directly after the first-half’s finale. “Blood Money” explores the consequences of gaining from wrongful or criminal deeds, whether that is Skyler not turning Walt in because of the effects it would have on her family, Jesse going along with Walt down the rabbit hole, or Walt himself, escalating things to a point where there can be no peaceful resolution among many other vile things. There is also something else that saturates the entire episode and all of the show’s remaining characters: a sense of staying in one place too long and not knowing it until too late.

Even as a viewer I had this feeling during the episode’s first minutes. The show opens in a style similar to the way the airplane crash was shown to us throughout season two. That season had several episodes open with the aftermath of the crash without telling you what it was you were seeing. One was left with a host of theories as to what it was building to but not fully revealed until the season’s finale. This season’s first episode showed a future version of Walter White obtaining a car with guns and supplies in the trunk and eating breakfast at a diner. It’s slowly shown that it is his birthday, and the shape his bacon is placed in by a stone-faced Walt lets you know that it is his 51^st birthday. We know this because he does the same thing in the series’ first episode for his 50^th surrounded by his family. What has happened up to this point is left to the imagination. We are not shown future Walt again until this episode. He returns to his home, a place we’ve become accustomed to seeing and feel comfortable in. Now it is boarded up and weeds grow high in the yard around it. “No trespassing” signs are on the erected fence around the property and and on the gate at the end of the drive. The backyard pool, now drained, has become a miniature skate park to some of the neighborhood youth. Walt takes a crowbar from out of his car’s trunk, the same one from the season opener, which is filled with what looks like enough supplies to fully equip a team of Navy SEALS on a covert mission. After breaking the padlock on the front door, we see what has become of his old home. Doors look as if they have been broken down, possibly from a police raid, no furniture remains, and light falls in beams through the boarded up windows illuminating the dust that’s built up. He hears and then looks out onto the skateboarders before going over to an electrical outlet. Taking out a screwdriver, he begins to remove its cover plate. Then we flash to opening credits. The familiar periodic table and smoke from burning methamphetamine, accompanied by the show’s theme music, always made me excited. It was one of those feelings you get when viewing the opening moments of a show you love and can’t wait to see what happens next. This time, however, I had a feeling of unease, almost dread. There was a finality here that often isn’t felt even with a series’ final episode. It was as if I’d been here too long. The journey with Walter White was over and I was now with Heisenberg.

Everyone and everything now feel as if they’ve stayed too long at the party and don’t quite know how to say their goodbyes and make an exit. Jesse, who I’ve long felt was the true protagonist of the show and as close to a hero as we’re going to get, is practically swimming in it. The camera follows him from one place to the next, dragging two oversized duffle-bags filled with five million dollars. As his friends and former drug runners get high in his living room, now dark and looking like it could be a den for urban squatters and drug addicts, one of them tells about the script he once wrote for Star Trek. The same story could’ve been told by these two likable misfits in an earlier season and it would’ve had a completely different feel and provoked a different reaction. Here though, while the story is still hilarious, it doesn’t give any joy. The camera frames Jesse in the center of these two, sitting with a hundred-yard stare. This is a kid that has been here too long, seen and done too many things, and now it’s time to leave. The problem is that he can’t leave. The death of the kid in the desert guaranteed that, and he’s haunted by the memory and the part he played in it. All of these early Jesse scenes are dimly lit and everything looks old and worn. When he goes to give the money to Saul, the reception area looks like it could be the waiting room at the world’s oldest funeral home. The music playing is even a tinny sounding recording of Battle Hymn of the Republic. Even Saul’s office is darker than usual, and the middle-aged cleaning lady he’s obviously just had sex with is not played for humorous effect. The time with Saul and his laughable persona has played out. Is it just me, or does the Constitution painted on the walls of Saul’s office look larger and more prominent? It’s also as if the only light in the room fell on that writing like a spotlight.

While the child’s death haunts Jesse, it’s the death of Mike that has completely broken him. When Walt visits to try to reason with him about giving  the money to Mike’s granddaughter and the dead boy’s parents, he tries to convince Jesse that he hasn’t offed Mike and that he’s alive and well, spinning lies without effort and off the cuff, something that has worked on Jesse in the past. This time Jesse ain’t buying it, and neither are we. We don’t even spend a good deal of time with him trying to delude his former partner and protege. It all has an air of being done too many times. When Walt ends the conversation with “I need you to believe this, Jesse,” we don’t even pretend anymore that it's because Walt can't deal with Jesse feeling badly about him. It is simply because he doesn’t want to have to do what he sees as the obvious and inevitable alternative: killing Jesse. As Jesse lies back to Walt, facing away from him, tears wet his eyes. He knows he’s stayed too long with Walt and what the price has been. Mike was the father  figure he had wanted his whole life, one that the early-Walt hinted at becoming. When Walt says “there’s nothing left to do but try to live decently,” we know it’s true except for the “live decently” part.

The brief appearance by Lydia, nervous, former associate of Walt, would previously have brought some light-hearted fun. The unlikely business-woman was always just on the cusp of being unbelievable as someone in her position because of her neurotic and paranoid nature, but it never completely crossed that line. It allowed for another colorful  and fun(if somewhat two-dimensional) character to be put in place to fill out Heisenberg's empire building dreams. It also added a touch of humor the show does so well. By now, though, her presence only emphasizes the sense of finality. There is nothing funny in her usual nervous tics and playing with sunglasses. It just underlines the time for building things is over. It helps set the stage for the final act, which will likely involve tearing everything down. The question is how far that destruction will reach and who will be caught in the inevitable falling debris.

Walt finally realizes that Hank has found and taken his copy of Leaves of Grass with the inscription from Gale. In the middle of the night, he goes outside in his robe and slippers. It’s at this point, with the realization coming to him, and all of the characters in place, we finally begin to pick up and move toward that inevitable destruction. It’s a scene we’re familiar with. Walt stands and you can almost see the wheels spinning in his brain, running through possibility after possibility, various scenarios, calculating odds and outcomes. Once this was the moment where Walter White would desperately come to a decision about a way to get out of a situation that seemed impossible to avoid. His eyebrows would arch, and his head would slowly turn to the side. This however is something different. We aren’t seeing a plan form for miraculous escape by characters we’ve grown to love. We are watching Heisenberg realize his enemy has found him and there is nothing but cold-blooded calculation etched into his face.

I was surprised at how soon the confrontation between Hank and Walt occurs, when Walt asks about the GPS tracking device found on his car and earlier used by the two of them to track Gus. I’m happy that it’s happened this early though, as it provides less time to be filled with build-up and more for the fireworks to fill up the sky. There is a moment before the confrontation when Walt is walking away from Hank and toward his car. He stops and stares forward briefly, deciding whether to play a final gambit. He looks pained and nervous about the decision. I think this is the last time we see Walter White, and it’s a brief and final farewell from the character we cared for and cheered as he slowly dug a deep, dark hole for himself and everyone around him. As Hank makes the ultimatum about what is to be done, Walt throws away the mask entirely, and Heisenberg responds with his own statement followed by a threat that frightens even the veteran DEA officer. We’re left with Breaking Bad’s version of a standoff between gunslingers, two arch-enemies finally meeting face to face on a dusty street after foiling each other time and again, revolvers at the ready. Who pulls and shoots first?