Before we begin, let me apologize. I wanted to do a preview post before the start of season 5, but the real world intervened this weekend and I spent most of it taking care of our sick dog. So here I am on Monday night, the dog is sedated, and I've seen the new episode twice already. I'm ready to rock, but first, a wag of the finger.
A wag of the finger to Netflix's streaming service, which made available season 4 a mere 7 hours before the season 5 premiere, making it mathematically impossible for me to watch the entire season before last night. If Netflix wants to focus mainly on TV shows and let their movie selection wither on the vine, the least they should do is to do TV right. That means putting the old season up in time for people to get caught up. I guess you shouldn't expect much for 8 bucks a month.
The poster above was released last week, and it seemed vaguely spoilerish at the time. There was a bit of discussion about the possibility that the object in the foreground was the hatch leading to some underground bunker at the junkyard where Walt and Jesse would get back to cooking. Someone said it reminded them of the Hatch that John Locke found on the Island. I noticed that, too, and right away noticed Walt's resemblance to Locke. Imagine my surprise when I discovered this episode was all about magnets. Let's put a pin in that one for now.
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| Flash-forward Walt |
If the story of this episode is Walt cleaning up his mess from last season, the theme of the episode is how Walt's relationships are changing now that he has taken such a clear step to the dark side. He asserts his dominance over Mike, Saul, and Skyler here. The only reason he doesn't have to put Jesse in his place is that Jesse knows now that he is the apprentice. Vince Gilligan, in doing press for season 5, said that Jesse's arc for this half-season will be reinvestment, and we can see that here. He gets between Mike's gun and Walt, and later he tries to convince Mike to listen to Walt's plan. There's a level of trust that Jesse has in Walt, and it will be interesting over time to see that develop. One of the Bald Move guys said, and I agree, that Walt and Jesse will not survive another falling out. Next time they find themselves at odds, the stakes will be high; Walt has to pay the piper for Jane and Brock and Jesse's savage beating at Hank's hands. It seems too easy to predict that Jesse will kill Walt; I'd like to think that Gilligan can give us a little more surprise than that. It would be really interesting if Jesse were to turn state's evidence on Walt.
Where was I? Yes, Dominance. Walt demands Mike's faith that the magnet worked based only on his saying so. There was something about the way that was filmed, with Mike and Jesse in the front seat and Walt in back. It leaves no doubt that Walt is the boss. Saul explains the Beneke situation to Walt and tries to walk away. Walt refuses: "We're done when I say we're done."
Poor Skyler. I used to hate Skyler, because she was always up Walt's ass about something, but I also respected her. She was a fiercely loyal mother and wife who was never afraid to speak her mind. In the first 3 seasons, she had the upper hand in the marriage. Walt was keeping a pretty big secret from her, and she knew it. Her anger was righteous, and she threw Walt out on his ass when she finally was able to prove her nagging suspicions.
All that has changed now. Walt is back at home, and the first thing we hear Skyler say this season is that she's afraid of her husband. Later, after Walt finds out about the money she gave to Ted (of I.F.T. fame) he holds her tight and whispers "I forgive you." This is probably the worst face we've seen on Walt yet. Saying "I forgive you" to someone who hasn't asked for forgiveness is pretty awful. It completely disregards any reason Skyler may have had for doing what she did, and it presumes without discussion that she was totally in the wrong. You could argue that Skyler had no choice but to give Ted the money, you could argue that she was protecting her family in the same way that Walt had always done, but Walt doesn't want to hear any of it. Skyler giving money to a man with whom she cheated on Walt is an affront to Walt's manhood and he takes it as such. That he chooses to be benevolent and offer forgiveness is no less dismissive or controlling than if he had beat her for it.
We don't see much of Hank in this one, but there is a beautifully shot scene of Hank and Gomie exploring the burned-out superlab. This episode was directed by Michael Slovis, who is the director of photography on the series. He's the guy responsible for a lot of the innovative camera work that defines the look of Breaking Bad, and we got some nice stuff here. The cars-playing-chicken wide angle shot was neat, but the best one was when Hank was looking around the lab. At one point, we see a POV from about a foot in front of Hank's knees looking up. The camera tracks a semi-circle around Hank as he stands in tableau looking up. It's not only that it looks cool, it's that they used a neat shot to move the story along. It's a cue that Hank's found something important: the video camera Gus installed in the superlab when he realized he could no longer trust Walt.
We only see Hank in one more scene, at Gus's office at Los Pollos Hermanos, when the APD takes custody of the laptop with surveillance footage of the whole operation. Hank has kind of a faraway look in his eye. It could be that the most recent threat on his life brought back unpleasant memories of El Paso and his run-in with the Twins. We've seen Hank moody and on the verge of breaking before, but I don't think that's it. Hank has good instincts, and he may already suspect that Walt is Heisenberg. Remember when Tony Soprano had that dream where Big Pussy was a fish on display at the market and told him that he was an FBI informant? Tony's unconscious mind had put the pieces together and had to break through to his conscious mind despite Tony not wanting to believe it was true. I think that's where Hank is now. He's got all the pieces, and if he ever decides to ask Walt about his relationship with Jesse, it's game over. Another game over scenario, which I would love to see happen, is Walter Jr. casually mentioning to Hank that Walt called him Jesse once. As soon as Hank loses the blinders, it's game over.
So let's talk about the magnet. First off, this episode's focus on magnetism and the flash-forward scene made me think that Vince Gilligan must have watched a few episodes of Lost during the hiatus. Even the theme of leadership so prevalent in Lost is present here, as we see Walt seize control of all of his people and assert his position.
Right, the magnet. I like a lot of how it was executed. The scene with Mike and Walt arguing in the foreground while Jesse keeps repeating "magnet" while out of focus in the background was a really neat piece of visual storytelling, and the look on the faces of the two older men, a kind of mutual amazement that Jesse actually had a viable idea, was a good bit of comedy. The junkyard guy is hilarious too: "Why would anyone wanna put a metal ring through the end of his prick?"
The heist was pretty well-done. It was tense but funny, and I liked how Jesse's triumphant attitude rubbed up against Mike's surliness. I'm not so sure that Mike was wrong to be worried about the truck. How many of those giant magnets are there in the city? And what happens when Hank remembers that it was a guy at a junkyard who kept him from busting Pinkman and taking the RV? All Hank has to do is go to the junkyard and ask to see the guy's giant magnet, and it's game over.
Notice a theme here? Game over. Hank finds out about Walt? Game over. Jesse finds out about Jane and Brock? Game over. Ted tells the police about Sklyer's involvement? Game over. Walt bought a giant machine gun and is planning on using it in town? There's not a lot to go on there, but doesn't it feel like game over? There's a real sense of finality to this first episode; they want us to know the last act has begun and the house lights will be coming up practically before you can blink.
A few tidbits:
- Mike feeding chickens in his bathrobe? Awesome. This is a great supporting character.
- Apparently the final shot of last season, in which the camera tells you that Walt poisoned the kid, was too ambiguous for some. There was enough debate about what it meant that Gilligan felt he needed to confirm it for us in the scene with Saul and Walt. I thought it was unnecessary; Gilligan said then and now that it wasn't meant to be ambiguous. I wonder if viewers didn't get it or didn't believe it because they couldn't accept that their protagonist would stoop so low.
- My previous spoiler about Max coming back turned out to be pretty minor: the actor was credited for appearing in a photograph among Gus's possessions. It's a little disappointing, but it would have sucked hard if it had been revealed that he never died, that he was behind Gus all along, whatever. I wanted a flashback, dammit!
- Holy shit, Beneke's alive! Did not see that one coming.
- If you get the chance, you should check out this movie called Triangle, with Melissa George. It's a thriller about some pretty people who go out one afternoon on a boat and end up on some kind of a ghost ship, and if you think you've seen this story before, you're wrong. It's really mind-bending where the story goes, and I won't ruin it for you except to say that the title "Triangle" has nothing at all to do with the Bermuda Triangle. It's more of a triangle of narratives.
- Weeds is also in its final season, and I'm digging it so far. It would be really interesting to write a post comparing and contrasting Nancy Botwin and Walter White. Their stories, at least at the beginning, are quite similar but played very differently.
Next week: "Madrigal," as in Madrigal Elektromotive, Gus's parent company. This smells like big trouble for Walt...
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