Breaking Bad: "Blood Money"

**Spoilers Below**:

There’s only so much time left before the cancerous rot kills what little is left of Walter White’s soul, along with the actual cancer that has returned to haunt him yet again. So let’s dig into the midseason premiere while there’s still a chance left. 

The flash-forwards this season put Breaking Bad into an interesting territory. They put the series on a head on collision with a puzzle, something it’s tried before in the past (the season two pink teddy bear flash forwards) with mixed consensus. Breaking Bad has never been one for mysteries in the Lost sense of the concept. People have been in the dark but the audience, for the most part, has been in on all the dirty little steps to Walt’s poisonous path forward.  I hope the show doesn’t do many, if any, flash-forwards because the show could overreach, creating an anticipation for something that can never live up to what we expect or hope it to be. Considering there’s a tremendous amount of hype and expectation behind the series as is, that may not be the best course to chart forward.

However, the flash-forwards, besides being a very delightful, enigmatic tease, serve as a context for the present events that unfold over the course of the episode post-theme. THIS is where we’re headed and clearly it does not end well. No matter how hard Walt manipulates, lies, coerces and sneaks his way out one mess after another things will catch up to him. And on some level don’t we want to see Walt get his comeuppance. May be not in the form of death, perhaps even more so in the form of judgment and a punishment that emasculates, humiliates and leaves him wishing he had died. Yes, that’s wishing on my part and we don’t know the specifics yet, but clearly something public and terrible happens. Walt wants people to say and remember his name and by series end the wider area of Albuquerque seems to know who the great and mighty Heisenberg is (presumably to Walt’s ironic displeasure). 

But speculating is a fool’s errand even though you should expect a healthy amount here over the next few weeks because what is the pleasure of television, especially serialized, if we can’t do a bit of guessing. Meanwhile, in the present day, the show gives us a sense of where all the major players are in the equation. The episode largely spends its time splitting its focus between Walt, Hank, and Jesse. Walt and Jesse are both out of the meth business but being out has taken widely different tolls on them. Hank having had his holy shit (literally) revelation about Walt is starting to piece together a case against Walt. 

And then there’s that moment at episode’s end that just begs to be mentioned so let’s clear the deck of it already. The moment the garage door starts slowly cranking down at Hank’s the goose bumps should have arisen on every arm of every person watching. Here was a show that has had a good dose of surprising twists and here was potentially its most unexpected. The series confidently blew up a plot that a lesser show would have sat on for a couple episodes. 

Bryan Cranston directed the premiere, “Blood Money”. This is the third episode Cranston has directed for the series, all three of which have been premieres. Besides the revelatory, but honestly inevitable end scene, there are number of other revelations and a number of story strands being juggled here, but the episode smoothly moves from one to the next. Breaking Bad has always been plot-heavy but it may be even more plot heavy this season (which already had a rather lengthy montage that glossed over several months of time in “Gliding Over All”) in order to get the timeline up to speed with when the flash-forwards take place.

Let’s get to the other reveals that are likely to go more undiscussed. Well, for one thing, Skylar and Walt plan to buy a new car wash. (I’m kidding of course). There’s the fact that Walt’s cancer has returned and that his family doesn’t know. But Jesse has finally wisened up to the fact that Walt is responsible for the death of Mike, and who knows what else. 

Jesse’s knowledge has led to another spiral downward as if the writers enjoy seeing Aaron Paul act miserably (which he does fantastically as always). Jesse attempts to get rid of the titular “Blood Money” first by trying to give it to Mike’s granddaughter and the family of the child killed in the train robbery during “Dead Freight”. But when that fails, due to Saul roadblocking him, Jesse starts simply throwing the money out his car window at houses. What does the money matter when you can’t stand how you got it?

Breaking Bad has always been a moral show (arguably the most moral show on television). It’s a morality play dressed up in domestic drama, crime drama, pulp adventure trappings. Walt argues to Jesse that they’re already going to hell for what they’ve done, which is the least helpful thing he could say to the bruised moral compass of the series. Jesse has the potential for redemption as he’s come to hate everything he’s become and done. Walt, on the other hand, has accepted his fate, and at times taken great pleasure in the life he’s leading. 

Walt is comfortable now. He’s freed of the burden of the drug trade (for now anyway). He’s a little more nebbish perhaps; Skylar has reasserted her dominance a little. Watching her put down Lydia is one of the greatest smackdowns the show has done and hopefully gives the Skylar Haters out there a run for their money. Though it looks as though Walt is “good” (getting out of the biz, spending time with the family, etc.) the cracks of the menace lying underneath the reformed persona shine throughout. When he lies to Jesse, it’s infuriating and insulting. And when he sneers “I would tread lightly,” to Hank, he’s saying it as Heisenberg not Walt. 

This was Breaking Bad as searing, dark, funny and thrilling as ever. And I look forward to where it may take us, M-16 and all. 

Stray Thoughts:

-In the flash-forward the neighbor drops a bag full of oranges, a long established symbol for the series that something bad is going to/just happened. (A choice lovingly stolen from The Godfather)

-Walt’s air freshener pitch to Skylar is an early, hilarious moment that tells us everything about the dynamic between Skylar and Walt.

-A moment topped perhaps only by Badger’s very funny spec script idea for Star Trek which I would totally watch.

-We finally get a montage that isn’t of meth being cooked. Here Hank piecing the case together against Walt. Every bit as evocatively shot as any other montage the show has done.

-Walt vomits in a manner all too reminiscent of Gus Fring in season four’s “Salud”.

-The Walt-Jesse scene is as painful and saddening as anything the series has done between these two characters. Walt lies, Jesse knows he’s being lied to, and part of us wants to see them mend things even though it’s all but impossible by this point.

-The pull away shot after Walt discovers the tracker is fantastic and perfectly chosen.

-I still wonder how Saul and Marie will fit into the events to come. They’re in positions where they seem somewhat secondary to the proceedings.

-Did you buy how quickly Walt recognized how Hank knew he was Heisenberg?

-I ought to have talked about Hank more above. This is in some ways Hank’s episode as he preps to take on Walt before having the conflict fall right in his lap. And Hank stays true to his beliefs in spite of the fact that Walt is family.

-Walt offering up the cancer as a counterargument is sniveling, pathetic and desperate. So it’s exactly what we’d expect of the man. 

-Who's the ricin for? One of many, many flash-forward questions.

Grade: A