Monday, August 26, 2013

Breaking Bad Season 5, Episode 11 - Confessions


When you’re caught in a lie, you have two choices – confess or dig the hole deeper. If you choose the former, you suffer the indignity not just of having your poor decisions exposed, but being called to account for your sins. If you choose the latter, you may get away with it, but will either make yourself dizzy trying to keep track of the lies or manipulate anyone and everyone to keep from being exposed. And so it is that Walter White has distilled the discovery of *his* big lie down to the most basic human instinct – survival.

It is unsurprising that the descent from mild mannered chemistry teacher to Southwest regional meth lord would involve some fibbing, but the shell game Walt constantly played to stay one step ahead of his wife, his brother-in-law, his partner, Gus Fring, and everyone else in service of his secret life has evaporated. The cruel irony of these final episodes is that Walt is no longer a master criminal. Having earned a stack of money that could not be spent in ten lifetimes, he was one copy of Leaves of Grass away from a clean start. Instead, when Hank ignores his admonition to “tread lightly,” Walt throws a Hail Mary – a video “confession” fingering Hank as the criminal mastermind with just enough of a patina of believability (the $177,000 in medical bills, the shoot out with the Salamanca twins, etc.) that could torpedo any chance Hank would have at surviving the inevitable fallout that will result from admitting to the brass that Heisenberg was under his nose the entire time.

But if Hank is a bull that Walt is deftly sidestepping, Jesse is an emotional kamikaze about to detonate on Negra Arroyo Lane. That Jesse Pinkman would end up being the moral center of Breaking Bad is surprising to say the least, but his arc from small town hoodrat to psychologically tortured multi-millionaire has been fascinating to watch. The surrogate son who long ago stopped believing what “dad” told him finally explodes and acknowledges what was always implied but never admitted – it was Walt the whole time – poisoning Brock, trying to manipulate Jesse into killing Gus, getting rid of Mike (who, in his own odd way, tried to actually be a surrogate father to Jesse), rationalizing all the dead bodies left in their wake, and, as a final indignity, explaining to Jesse that going into the criminal version of “witness protection” was about a new start (even, perhaps, a family) and not about saving Walt’s skin. As a final indignity, that ricin cigarette Jesse has been faithfully transferring from pack to pack is spirited away, you know, just in case.

And like so much else that has occurred on this show, people simply can’t leave well enough alone. While Confessions centered on Walt’s gamesmanship with Hank and Jesse, looming ominously are Todd, his neo-Nazi band of brothers and a tank of methylamine they are spiriting back across the state border into New Mexico after expressing their dissatisfaction with the quality of “blue” being produced by their partners. The trains coming down the track from various directions draw closer and closer because the decisions everyone makes compound previous bad choices. If the first rule of holes is to stop digging, no one here got that message. It was not enough for Walt to prey on Jesse’s emotions and convince him to leave town, he had to strip away a small piece of his dignity as well. Hank, compelled to investigate his brother-in-law, spits nails in the White family’s direction and Marie attempts subterfuge in an effort to pry Flynn away from his parents, but the result is predictable and always the same – the confrontation escalates, the stakes get higher and the possibility that anyone survives the inevitable cataclysm grow smaller and smaller.

11 comments:

  1. You said, "It was not enough for Walt to prey on Jesse’s emotions and convince him to leave town, he had to strip away a small piece of his dignity as well." Just curious, what did you mean by this?

    I had a little trouble following the path Jesse took from realizing Huell lifted his bag of weed to Walter poison Brock. I've read a couple of explanations but they all seem to be a big stretch. Wondering what your take is on that? How does Jesse go from, "hey where's my weed?" to frantically dousing Walter's house with gasoline?

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  2. Others have pointed out that Huell lifted the ricin cigarette at a previous meeting between Saul and Jesse. If so, I missed that, but it makes sense, as Walt had the ricin when he met Lydia in "Gliding Over All" at the end of the "first half" of Season 5.

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  3. It wasn't confirmed that Huell stole the ricin cigarette, to aid Walt in making it look like maybe Gus Fring had poisoned Brock, by making Jesse think Gus stole the ricin and used it, until this episode when Jesse confronted Saul.

    As one of the writers at the AV Club suggested, Jesse has probably been thinking about that possibility and others for some time, wondering how it was that Walt "found" the (fake) ricin cigarette so easily at Jesse's house when he was frantically looking for it.

    I hadn't considered it until reading this review, but I wonder if Walt needs that machine gun we saw him buy at Denny's in the season premiere to deal with Todd's neo-Nazi buddies. They are, after all, moving in on Walt's old territory without his permission. And now Todd is running off at the mouth about the great train robbery that Drew Sharp died to ensure remained secret; and not only that, but Todd named "Mr. White" in his telling. A lot of rules are being broken, and we know how territorial, competitive, and unforgiving Walt can be. Maybe it's a stretch, but why else are we seeing so much of this crew if they and Walt are to remain in separate spheres?

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    1. I like the machine-gun-for-Todd theory. Perhaps the ricin is not to kill anyone but himself. Maybe Walt wants to go out "heroically?" The Jesse scenes are just awful (in a good way) to watch. Aaron Paul owns that role. SO good.

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  4. My latest prediction (of which I reserve the right to withdraw when it becomes ridiculous) is that Todd kills Walt. His baby-faced politeness amidst the crazy uncle crew makes me nervous and suspicious.

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    1. Todd IS creepy - you know, Mr. White, I know you're busy with retirement and all. Wait, what? I think the poster above who suggested the machine gun is for Todd and his evil band may be on point, especially if they somehow force Walt back into the business.

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  5. There are a lot of endings I could live with--and maybe the most courageous one for the writers to foist upon us would be for Walt to go to prison, especially if he lost his money to the DEA--but dying at the hands of Todd is not one of them. It may be fitting, though, considering he let Todd get away with the Drew Sharp murder and continued to trust him when he probably shouldn't have, in part because of his underestimation of him. Walt's amorality and superiority complex may catch up to him in that way.

    Question for anyone who'd like to answer: do you still sympathize with Walt and root for him? Or have you concluded that he's just too evil to support at this point?

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    1. I think Gilligan et al are doing everything they can to strip ANY morality from Walt, talking away ANY idea that people should "root" for him. It's not so much that I want to see Walt get his just desserts, it's that there is nothing left to identify with - he is purely about saving his skin and doing anything/everything to protect himself. It gets progressively more desperate, uglier and transparent. A man who refuses to accept the consequences of his actions. I always go back to Jesse's observation in "Problem Dog" about "what if you do stuff and nothing happens." It's existential, and, dare I say, Kafka-esque (yo).

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    2. My own feelings about Walt are somewhat complicated. Since we started off with a protagonist who had little time to live, having that in the back of my head all along has given me a sense that, even if he never spends a night in jail or is killed by someone he wronged, his punishment is coming. In some ways, he's already been paying a great price for his many wrongful acts, considering all of the sacrifices he's made and the damage he's done to his relationships.

      That being the case, and because I tend to wind up with a touch of Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to the main character in a work of fiction even if he is a villain, I have a hard time rooting against Walt. Watching Mike's guys get murdered in jail gave me a real sense of revulsion, and I wonder how I would feel about Walt watching the latest episodes if there had not been a year-long break after that, because I certainly found myself buying into Gilligan's portrait of Walt as irredeemable at that time.

      All in all, what it comes down to is I know Walt has to pay, and he deserves to, but I can't help but be impressed by the various ploys he comes up with, most recently his "confession." So I find myself, to some extent, rooting for it not to end, if nothing else, which we know is futile, of course. We know this won't end well for Walt, but my overriding desire is that it not turn out to all have been for naught. Too many people have suffered, both the dead and living--most prominent in my mind is Hank--for Walt to leave his family penniless and torn apart in his wake. Will Walt, the hard-working, underpaid nice guy we met in Season One, have turned into this irredeemable monster for nothing?

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  6. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I find myself still rooting for Walt.

    I've been listening to the Inside Breaking Bad podcast where Kelly Dixon (editor), Vince Gilligan and various guests (cast members, writers, directors) talk about the making of the episode and the interpretation of the story (as much as they can). It's so good, I highly recommend it if you aren't already listening.

    But I felt validated in my ignorance this week when Kelly Dixon, who edited "Confessions" said they were concerned when they put together the Jesse/cigarette/gas-dousing scenes that the way they edited it might confuse people (yes! confused me!). But then they said they were glad because they haven't heard about anyone being confused...note to self, send Kelly Dixon an email....

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  7. Also, re: how the series ends, I can totally see Walter going to prison and it all ends with him in the jail cell with his bald head and scary expression.

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