Breaking Bad 5.15: Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick
Your nerves, and Walt’s molars, get ground to shreds as Heisenberg prepares to explode.
Warning: this is a recap of Breaking Bad‘s most recent episode, ‘Granite State’. That means spoilers.
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Last week’s episode was a violently tremulous aftershock, propelled by the sickening thud of Hank’s life, interrupted. Next week’s finale promises gunfire and mass death. But ‘Granite State’, the penultimate episode of the Television Event Of The Year, was more mortar than brick: one long, ragged inhale before a final hour scream.
As Walt dropped Holly off at the firehouse last week, we peeked at the firemen playing chess, one shifting the White king into a defensive position. The correlation between that and Heisenberg’s cop-tapped confession was an easy one to spot. I’ve compared Breaking Bad to a number of games, and recently reviewers and recappers have been dusting off the Shakespeare SparkNotes to make Breaking Bard allusions any which way they can. The simple mechanics of applying any old gamey analogy to Breaking Bad — Mousetrap, Top Trumps, Chess, Monopoly, heck… Twister, Pass the Pigs, Headache – anything that might have caused rainy-day tears at home — must have something to do with the pre-determination that has guided the show, especially these last few episodes. The same applies to the foreknown consequences of the Shakespearean tragedy. We knew where we were headed from the beginning (Scarface), and we knew where we’d end up this season (machine gun in the trunk, poison in the pocket). So you would have to assume that what we tuned in for was the journey, not the destination. And the journey has been less fun then a holiday with the Griswolds.
The best television, like the best of any art, stretches us as we consume. Twin Peaks asked audiences to accept the surreal. The Wire wanted you to root for a whole city every week. If The Sopranos’ achievement was showing you why you should care about a monster, then Breaking Bad ups the ante, asking the viewer why they ever would. Why do you care about Walt? Why do you care about Jesse? …Well?
BREAKING BAD: WALT
A trapped Walter White is a sad thing to see. Relocated to a cabin in the woods, Walt has no time to absorb the frost-covered beauty of his surroundings, so busily a-schemin’ revenge is he. Walt has miles to go before he sleeps, and some ad hoc chemotherapy to boot. Finally, after building a serial killer installation/hamster nest out of Heisenberg news clippings, Walt summons the strength to try and post some cash to his kids. Walt Jr. tells him to get fucked. Walt Snr. buys a drink.
“There are times when you have nothing left in your life but a burning desire to reek havoc on all that exists in the world. For a revengeful time, make it a Santori time.”
There should be few vicarious pleasures in watching a shallow and arrogant man achieve. So why do we care about Walt? And why do we allow him so much leash as he runs himself ragged with ill behaviour?
That handy little TV clip — playing as Walt settles into his prison-holding-cell future — flicks the final switch from id to ego, and releases the beast. Walt’s line to walk has always been what’s good for his family, and what’s good for him. His whole story may just boil down to getting those two ideas horribly confused. With his family gone (though probably in need of some protection), what’s good for this goose is still legacy, even if that hasn’t translated to the pile of dough he always wanted it to be.
Was Gretchen right in her TV interview? Is there nothing of Walter left behind? This final transformation — with a full head of scruff — may be less Heisenberg than the dome-topped and Van-Dyked visage we’ve grown accustomed to. Is big-plans Heisenberg still an option for Walt? Is Walt even interested in Heisenberg anymore? There’s nothing intricately clever about a giant gun. His hagged cough would point to some other manifestation lurching towards a show-down: a cancerous tin soldier wound up on its own twisted momentum. How big of a stain is Walt going to have to make to leave a satisfactory mark on the map?
BREAKING GOOD: VACUUM REPAIR GUY
One of the early pleasures of Breaking Bad was the contrast between the suburban hyper-hokeyness of the Whites’ life with the sketchy nonchalance of the criminal world that Walt drifted into. Picking up the mantle of gruff competence we’ve seen before on the show (see: the always adept Mike, and Jim Beaver’s calm and careful gun dealer) is the Vacuum Repair Guy. Best gag of the episode? He actually runs a Vacuum Repair company.
“Your hoover bill included $8,760 in gas money and black market chemo set -up? Okay, someone’s sent you the wrong receipt there.”
Played by perpetual blue collar, no-nonsense mensch Robert Forster, Vacuum Repair Guy trudges through each scene like a man who has seen too much and kept it quiet. It’s another reminder of how badly Walt bungled his do-over, his second shot at making something out of his life. The motto of these old men in the game might be some thing like, ‘If you want to succeed in crime, make few explosions’. Would Walt have been able to settle into this grizzled groove had he not rocketed to glory so quickly? Is the Heisenberg burn-out that we’ve witnessed simply an analogy to the dangers of teenaged stardom? Can I really work a Miley Cyrus reference into this recap?
BREAKING EVEN: JESSE
So it appears Todd’s caught himself a new tarantula. Jesse scrapes at the edges of his cage in this episode, crafting escape strategies out of paperclips and blankets in a style that would make Mr. White proud. It’s a sad and sorry second last outing for Jesse. Does he deserve this fate? Jesse begun the show as a kid cobbling together hip hop cliché, floundering in the shallow end of criminality. What I guess we found out is that he’s not a strong swimmer.
Pinkman can jump. Sorry.
And can we point out how lucky it is that Todd stuck that photo up with a nice new paperclip? I can never find one at home in my desk, let alone in my dirty meth lab dungeon. Let’s just send Jesse and Brock to Nebraska alongside Saul, please? The three of them running a Cinnabon feels exactly like the sitcom we need after these weeks of addictive terror.
BREAKING OUT: TODD AND LYDIA
And while we’re rescheduling the television season, how about the will-they-won’t-they couple of the year? Are these two ready for prime time or what? With all the chemistry of a soulless robot and a dying fish, here’s hoping it works out for these crazy kids as they take on the Alberquerque drug trade and probably kill Skyler while they’re at it! (Please don’t kill Skyler.)
“You had me at ordering the worst sounding beverage that’s ever existed.”
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NEXT WEEK ON BREAKING BAD
The end.
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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.