When this episode began with Walt picking up his Aztek from the mechanic, I thought to myself that show runner Vince Gilligan likes that car just as much as Benny the mechanic does, considering all of the paces it has been through over the seasons. I also recalled Gilligan once stating in an interview that there’s a very specific reason Walt drives an Aztek and not some other car. When Walt finds his Heisenberg hat in the backseat, and decides to sell the car to Benny the mechanic for a pittance, this episode finally delivers that reason. The Aztec is a relic of Walt’s former life as a downtrodden chemistry teacher. It’s an ugly but practical car, one well-suited for a humble family man. This is not at all who Walt is anymore, and seeing the Heisenberg hat sitting in the passenger seat makes the contrast very salient for him. The Aztek is no longer fit for the person he is now (or the person he thinks he is), so he sells it for next to nothing, and leases a flashy car in its place, one more appropriate for Heisenberg. And then, in one of the funnier montage sequences the show has done, he also decides to re-up Walt Jr.’s Challenger, which Skyler had previously nixed. Walt was beholden to his wife’s wishes, but Heisenberg is not so easily cowed.
This episode continues to blur the lines between Walt's two personae, this time through the conflict between Walt and Skyler finally coming to a head in a fantastic scene that had me writing “WOW” in my notes. It's all motivated by Skyler’s concern for their kids. After leasing the cars, Walt and Walt Jr. compare cars and talk trash over dinner. At one point, Walt tells Walt Jr. he’ll teach him how to do donuts with the cars if Walt Jr. shows him some respect. Skyler listens quietly until Walt says, “Maybe I’ll teach you,” at which point alarm bells go off on Skyler’s face. Walt’s talking about donuts, but we can see that she immediately thinks of Walt Jr. following Walt into drugs, crime, and murder. It's a marvelous piece of acting by Anna Gunn, and it motivates Skyler’s insistence later in the episode on getting their kids out of the house and away from Walt, be it through boarding school or staying at Hank and Marie’s.
Later, during Walt’s birthday dinner with Hank and Marie, Skyler makes a half-hearted suicide attempt as she slowly descends into the pool in the backyard, seemingly to escape Walt’s reminiscence about how grateful he is now to be alive, given the struggles of the past year. Walt’s speech is nicely written, given that he is talking about much more than what Marie and Hank know about, but given Skyler’s terror of who Walt has become, she can’t bear to think about how her support of Walt in part led her to what Sepinwall calls the “emotional prison” she feels trapped in. Her act here is enough to get Walt to agree to have the kids stay with Hank and Marie, at least for a few days, and it also forces her to finally speak to Walt about what she’s been feeling these past three episodes.
While Hank, Walt, and Marie were talking in the dining room, I kept wondering how Walt would react to Skyler’s behavior once Hank and Marie left, especially once Marie revealed that it was Skyler’s idea for her and Hank to take the kids for a few days. Would he be angry, or would he be dismayed and confused? If he were to express confusion, it would imply that he had been ignorant of her misery beforehand. However, anger would seem to imply that he was aware of it, and that he was happy having her under his thumb. At first, Walt reacts with confusion, but as Skyler makes more and more clear how she now feels about Walt and about their kids, she summons Heisenberg.
I love the way the scene works up to her reveling her fears and continues on to their angry confrontation. At first Skyler is ambiguous about why she thinks the kids aren’t safe, and Walt assumes she fears others doing harm to them. Doubtless this fear plays a significant role in her behavior, but it pales in comparison to her fear of Walt. When Walt tries to reassure her that Gus was the danger, she somewhat sarcastically replies, “I thought you were the danger” in an allusion to the “one who knocks” speech (which also took place in their bedroom). She then implicates herself as well (she was, after all, complicit in all of this once she found out what Walt was up to), and is adamant about the kids staying out of their house. When Skyler refuses to listen to Walt’s rationalizations and denials, Heisenberg washes over Walt’s face. It’s a watershed moment, as suddenly Walt begins talking to Skyler just as he talks to Jesse, Mike, and Saul: Walt’s smugness, arrogance, and condescension all bubble up to the surface and the two virtually play chess with one another. He presses Skyler to come up with a plan for stopping the kids from returning, and then mercilessly shoots them down one by one with his countermoves. Finally, in a fit of desperation, she agrees with him that her plans are bad and that she has no options, and then reveals just how badly she wants out of this life: her only real recourse is to wait for his cancer to return and kill him.
It’s a devastating blow to Walt, and it seems to result in a stalemate; the episode concludes with a scene between the two of them the next day, where Walt’s family man demeanor has returned, and in an attempt to placate her, he asks if it’s okay that more money will be coming in soon. She says okay, but is otherwise unresponsive. Walt tries to impress upon her his belief that this will all blow over eventually by relating to her the story of how Jesse was on the verge of killing him just a short while ago, but that today gave him a watch for his birthday, concluding, “He changed his mind about me, Skyler. And so will you.” Of course, Walt’s version of the story leaves out many important details, like that it took place in their living room, and that Jesse only changed his mind about Walt because Walt manipulated him into doing so. Something tells me Skyler might be a slightly tougher mark than Jesse.
In other developments, Hank’s intuition continues to astound me, but the writers always motivate it well enough through his attention to detail. For instance, Lydia returns in this episode, as frazzled as ever, conveyed this time through her wearing mismatched shoes (as well as through a jump cut during her second phone conversation with Mike). Hank and the DEA team visits her Madrigal office to arrest the warehouse foreman, and Hank notices the mismatched shoes, which nicely motivates his somewhat halfheartedly offering her as a hypothetical suspect later in the episode. Later, he has another opportunity to display his powers of intuition in his car ride with Marie (although here he makes a much easier intuitive move than with his hunch about Lydia). Marie is behaving strangely because she’s attempting to hide what Walt told her about Skyler and Ted. Hank notices, and is able to get Marie to spill what she knows with hardly any effort. Marie would be a terrible cog in Mike’s operation, even more so than Lydia, who is practically a walking aneurysm. In an interrogation, Hank would have every secret out of Marie’s mouth in seconds flat. The car ride scene concludes somewhat humorously with Marie gesturing that she’s locked her mouth and has thrown away the key, despite already having told Hank everything.
Other thoughts:
- More wonderful use of style throughout this episode, including a shot where Walt sets down a stack of cash next to Skyler as they are preparing for bed. The cash is in focus in close-up, but framed perfectly in a mirror in the background is Skyler’s blurry face. She contemplates the cash, and as the shot continues, her clenched fists slowly descend from the top of the frame. It’s a marvelously stylish way of efficiently conveying a lot of information at once. Reminded me of diagrams from
Lessons with Eisenstein.
- Also interesting: shots of Hank and Gomez from an angle looking through the bulletin board – in the foreground of certain shots, we can see the blurred strings of the web that traces Gus’s operation.
- Huh, I guess the DEA doesn’t have Mike under surveillance yet. Hank says they’re putting a team together this episode. Doubtless this will soon pay off.
- Maybe Hank getting a promotion means that he won’t be able to hound after Heisenberg anymore.
- I like how worked up Jesse gets over the Garmin tracker on the bottom of the methylamine barrel, and how quickly Mike suspects that it’s just a ploy by Lydia. You got a lot to learn, Jesse.
- Some nice restricted narration near the end of this episode: we don’t know what Walt’s plan is regarding dealing with Lydia and keeping the methylamine coming. Walt’s vehemence in this scene is well-motivated by his run-in with Skyler. If he has to be Heisenberg with Skyler, he’s certainly not going to be Walt with Jesse and Mike.
-Apologies for the lateness of this post – my DVR failed to record the premiere of the episode.
No comments:
Post a Comment