Breaking Bad: "Buried"

We’ve been here before haven’t we? Walt finds himself in some impossible corner. Hank is within spitting distance of solving some longstanding mystery. Jesse is broken down and paralyzed. Round and round the plot wheels go … but like the roundabout we find Jesse lying on at episode’s start, there’s seemingly no end to the circularity of this.

Of course that’s not entirely true. There’s much more history the show is building off of to complicate the situations characters are in. And the revelations characters are privy to could only possibly be happening this late in the show’s run. But I keep coming back to that roundabout, which we see at the start of the episode. This is the only time we see Jesse until the very end of the episode and it gives us a visual representation of where Jesse’s mind is so that when Hank stops into the interrogation room, we know exactly where this is headed. Jesse has snapped; his face is a painfully blank slate. He’s resorted to the inner childlike being that he’s always been to some extent (it’s no coincidence he end up on a playground). 

The conflict has been set for the rest of the season: Hank versus Walt. Both thinking alike turn to Skylar, but Hank gets to her first. This fits with the direction the flash forwards have implied. Walt’s demise hath cometh (tis only a matter of time). The titular “Buried” refers to Walt hiding his money so the last shreds of evidence against him are gone (stunningly shot as to be expected), but it also refers to how deeply the weight of everything that’s happened is crushing every one of the characters. When Skylar says “I can’t remember the last time I was happy,” she might as well be speaking for everyone. 

New members are being brought into the fold of this Club of Misery. Hank in a desperate gambit tells Marie about the truth of Walt. His initial efforts with Skylar get him nowhere. Skylar as always is too concerned of what will become of her family if the truth goes public. The scene between Hank and Skylar is the first of a number of fantastic scenes for Anna Gunn and those opposite her. Betsy Brandt gets some of the meatiest material she’s gotten throughout the entire series run and knocks it out. Skylar beginning to speak but failing to find the words to say is some of the finest acting Gunn has done, and Brandt’s horrified, disgusted, “Your sorry” is chilling. It would be more chilling if it weren’t for the incredibly intense standoff after where Marie attempts to leave with Skylar’s baby (for a moment I thought the baby might die in the ensuing fight). 

While it appears that Jesse is the key to Walt’s undoing, there is still the other wildcard of Lydia (and Todd as well) who offs the Phoenix distributors for failing to keep up a high quality of cook. Lydia wants Walt back in the game and Walt, as Skylar notes, just needs to lay low for a while. But whenever things get quiet on Breaking Bad, it’s never for a long time. The plot demands forward momentum; the piling on of consequences and the furthering of their reach.  

“Buried” was as deliberately plotted out as the show has ever been (picking up immediately after the events of last episode) but also had a simultaneously viscerally intense drive. Who expected Hank to go to Skylar this soon? Who expected Marie to learn this early? The show is keeping on track with its timeline but it’s still thrilling and shocking (and lots of fun) to see the series move with such confidence and pull it off with aplomb. 

Stray Thoughts:

-The way Walt and Hank are shot after the garage door opens is like an Old Western standoff.

-As great as Anna Gunn’s performance was this episode otherwise, the line reading of “Am I under arrest?” felt a little flat.

-Huell and Kuby lying on the pile of money, contemplating running away with it, is the show’s much needed black comic antidote it slips into every single episode and it worked in spades.

-“Send him on a trip to Belize”

-“It was me” - Walt comes the closest he has yet to admitting this is all his fault and accepting responsibility.

-The shell casings falling into the bunker was a nice little touch.

-We get the return of the two cops that interrogated Jesse in season four’s “Face Off”.

-I like how the show has Hank acknowledge that the moment that he tells the police that Walt is Heisenberg that it’ll be the end of his career. A well-played moment by Dean Doris in an episode that has plenty worthy of being his Emmy submission.

-It feels appropriate that Jesse would have a hand in taking down Walt. He deserves to get back at him after all that he’s been put through.
-Did anybody else cheer when Marie got in that slap? Perfect capper to that scene.

Grade: A