Breaking Bad: ABQ [season finale]
By fred | June 1, 2009
(S02E13) Ever since the season premiere, we have known that something bad was coming up, and that it would somehow involve a teddy bear missing an eye floating in Walter’s pool, and leave a couple of dead bodies around his house. We have been wondering all season what exactly would be happening, what would cause all this, but we knew one thing for sure : it was all due to Walter.
Whatever the direct cause of that mysterious event would be, we knew that it was only a consequence, the result of Walter’s actions over the course of this season, as he kept getting better cancer-wise, but worse in any other aspect of his life. This was all brilliantly done, all season through, to get us here with a season finale opening exactly as did the season premiere…
And it ended, over a month later, when it all actually happened. And it wasn’t the result of Walt & Jesse starting to go their separate ways and fight one another, nor was it the Cartel finally coming back at them as many thought, and it wasn’t even Gus who decided to make sure Walter was out before he would become a problem, as he was too “unstable.”
No, as it turned out it was a mid-air collision between two planes, and chances are those two dead bodies are just of random passengers from one of the planes or something. But while Walter will probably think this has nothing to do with him, that it is simply something that happened outside of his control, the fact and the matter is, it was his fault.
He made that happened, and his transformation this season into a worse person that he started to be, into a real bad guy whose original motivations – doing this for his family before cancer takes him away – simply doesn’t apply anymore, is what led to this. Walter has been eager to get his operation bigger, even when they barely made it out alive, even when they had the money, even when he was getting better, he never stopped. In fact, he pushed things the other way around, forcing Jesse to expand.
As a result of Walter’s actions and decisions, Jesse lost his grandmother’s house and found this new one, next door to Jane. Still as consequences of Walter’s actions, Jane introduced Jesse to heroin, and then Walter had Jane turn on her back before watching her die in front of his eyes without doing anything to save her. He watched her die, convincing himself it was the right thing to do, for him and for Jesse.
Little did he know that it would result in Jane’s father going back to work while he wasn’t ready for it, and getting two planes to crash over his house. But the truth is, this was a result of his action, and that ending left Walter all alone, certainly still not fully realizing how deeply he’s been hurting all those he loves. Before going into surgery, the drugs prevented Walter to filter the truth, and he “admitted” to still having two cellphones.
During the weeks that followed, Skyler made her own investigation and realized how much Walter had been lying to her face, all this time. Two cellphones was nothing, Walter never took any money from their friends, Walter never went to his mother, instead he did God knows what, something that resulted in him lying, pretending to have memory loss showing up naked in a store, all the while he was able to pay the bills to amount of money they never had before.
And while Walter was probably willing to tell her the truth, Skyler didn’t want to hear it. Now the question is, how much will she say about what she knows? She’s going to live at a DEA agent’s house, and should she mention to him how Walt lie about all that, how he was able to find such large amount of money while disappearing for days without giving any explanation for it, it wouldn’t take long until he figures it out.
But for now, they have no clue. And actually I thought it was just great that Hank was first showed holding Walter’s picture right in front of all the “wanted” posters, as that’s where it really belongs / might end up one day, but also pretty funny to see him and all the DEA agents talk about this blue meth and the mysterious “Heisenberg” - Frank being sure it isn’t Jimmy – all the while Walter’s smiling face was floating around the room, from one agent to the other.
As bad as Walter has become, he didn’t become a pure monster. He has lost all connection to his family, because every time that ring signaled a knew “donation” to Junior’s website, Walter was burning up. It was eating him to know that all this money was not coming from strangers all over the world, but the result of his hard work, of all the terrible things he’s done to get there, and that he couldn’t tell no one. And listening to his son praising him a hero, a decent man who always does the right right, on TV, Walter had a real difficult time not to show his inner demons.
He might not admit how bad he’s become, he might rationalize things he’s done and convince himself even letting Jane die was the right thing to do, considering, he still knows that that’s not the action of a hero, or even a decent man. And he’s not teaching his son to be such a great person, when he’s forcing him to drink until he gets sick.
But if things are broken with his family, Walter does care about about “other” family, about Jesse. He knows how much he has to do for all the things that happened to him, and while he probably hadn’t realized how much Jane meant to Jesse until he was crying in his arm, Walter cares about him, and is really trying to help him. After all, Jesse remains the only person Walter can be completely honest with, in all aspect of his life. Of course, one can wonder how much of that is also motivated by his intention not to stop there, but to continue and cook more and more in the future – once Jesse will be clean and back on his feet.
This episode was exactly what Breaking Bad is all about, it was about all those little moments in between the major events, the big explosions. It was also brilliant, as the show has been all season long. It its first season the show was already one of the best thing on television, and this season got even better. Breaking Bad is one of the best thing television has to offer, and I can’t wait to find out what will happen next.
What did everybody else think?
Posted in Reviews
Shows: Breaking Bad
