Monthly Archives: July 2011

Sorry about missing last week, everyone! I’m in the process of moving so things are kind of crazy right now. On a plot level I didn’t miss that much, as we instead explored Jesse’s continuing emotional breakdown, Skyler’s attempts to buy the car wash, Hank and Marie’s dire domestic situation, and Walt’s half-brained attempt at getting to Gus.

So on to this week, directed by 30 Days of Night and Twilight (yes, really) helmer David Slade. “Open House” was a largely Walt-free episode, marginalizing him a little to focus on the people around him. Chief among them, Marie. It is nice to see Marie finally getting a juicy plotline and Betsy Brandt did a fantastic job this week. On the one hand, the stress and constant berating from Hank has pushed Marie back to her kleptomania, but at the same time her visits to the open houses were as much about finding some kind of escape from her own depressing life and pretending for a few minutes to be in any other situation but her own. It was not to last, however, as Marie got arrested and had to call Hank to bail her out (great work by Dean Norris in that scene).

Marie is not the only person trying to escape from herself, but Jesse is even more desperate and his reality is even worse. Despite what he says, even Walter can pick up on the desperation in his eyes when Jesse sees if he wants to go go-karting. His own house party has turned into a crack den and Jesse passes the time throwing money at the addicts. Wherever this is going, it is not good.

Meanwhile, Skyler became even more determined to buy the car wash, enlisting Walt’s sense of pride to help her case and pulling off a rather clever con to change the owner’s attitude (without resorting to violence or accusing him or terrorism). But, more than that, the reality of Walt’s career is really starting to sink in with her. She freaks out about his bruised eye (Walt, amusingly, claims he didn’t hit Mike back because Mike is much older), wants him to go to the police, and makes him promise to tell her the moment he finds himself in real physical danger (the time for which, of course, has long since passed). By the end, she’s focusing on making the details of the lie work (something that Marie also knew) but the question is whether Skyler can adapt to the criminal lifestyle and what she will do if she finds out just how serious Walt’s problems have become.

Jonah’s Score: 85
TUiW Grade: A

Other Stuff:

-Hank reading Gale’s notebook was interesting stuff, but mostly table-setting for future plotlines. Hank has come close to unraveling the identity of Heisenberg a couple of times, but with the show getting closer to the end, how far will he come last time. And how will his history with Gale’s killer play into this?

-Gus remains absent, but his presence is felt (just like in the first 40 minutes of “Box Cutter”). This time, it is with the camera that Walt rebels against in his own amusing, and ultimately impotent way.

-Last week saw Deadwood vet Jim Beaver as the gun salesman and this week had a couple of actors from The Shield, as the actors who play Tyrus (the replacement for Victor) and Hank’s buddy had small roles on that show.

-Bob Odenkirk, as always, totally killed it in his lone scene tonight.

At first, Walter White seemed like such a decent man. He worked as a teacher, a career that we all respect and admire. He had been married for twenty years and was active in the life of his cerebal palsy-afflicted son. He even worked part time in a degrading job at a car wash to make ends meet. He never smoked either, which made it all the more crushing when he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Walt even started cooking and selling meth with such decent intentions, to squirrel away a little money for his wife and child to have after he died. Breaking Bad is about how that one decision has corroded Walt’s soul, but it is also about how it awakened a side of him that was already there. More than anything, though, “Box Cutter” was about the impact Walt’s actions have had on everyone else around him. Skyler has started breaking bad herself, Hank is lashing out at the person who still cares about him most. Jesse has become a murderer, Saul is wracked with paranoia, and even Mike seems to realize he’s in a little over his head.

But we pick up with the person who paid the most last season for his involvement with Walt, as poor Gale returns for a curtain call. There’s a lot of stuff in this conversation with Gus that resonates in this episode and probably throughout the season but why not start with the box cutter itself? In the hands of Gale, it is a tool of creation, assembling the superlab, but when Gus grabs a hold of it, during this week’s showstopping setpiece, it becomes something much more destructive and chaotic. Instruments are only as good as the person wielding them, something that Victor didn’t understand in his attempt to make the meth himself.

However, if I had to pick one moment that resonated the most in this episode, it would be Gale’s insistence that there’s “a tremendous gulf” between 96 and 99 percent purity. When the elements are under extreme pressure, little bits of precision make an enormous difference, and this episode is filled with people sweating the details.

For example there’s Skyler, who takes the time to hide Walt’s car out of the way before Walt Jr. wakes up. She goes to Walt’s apartment to look for some sign of what he’s up to, and resorts to lying to a locksmith to break in (and she knows that the key to selling the lie is in the details, whether it is faking an illness or sticking to the purse story after getting inside. And, to really hammer home the idea of Skyler undergoing her own transformation, the show gives us the return of the teddy bear’s eye, last seen judging Walt at the end of season two.

Hank also corrects Marie for missing the details. He’s not buying rocks, but rather bidding on minerals. It is a new obsession for him, filling time between physical therapy that makes no progress and humiliating uses of a bedpan (how amazing is the way that handle is a constant presence hanging over the bed, like a constant threat). Even Saul is going inch by inch over his office looking for bugs, and making calls to Skyler from a nearby payphone. But I was a little concerned when Saul guaranteed that Walt is fine “100 percent.” Does his lack of precision here foreshadow a deadly fate for my favorite sleazy lawyer (sorry Franklin and Bash). Or am I just stretching this metaphor?

Anyway, if this episode was about precision, no one used it better than Gus. His presence hangs over every moment of the episode and it is a testament to Giancarlo Esposito that he has built up such a tremendously imposing character in Gus without ever once committing an act of violence or even getting angry on screen. He is a man of precision, and every move he makes for his entire five minutes of screen time is so deliberate; even his burst of violence is planned and timed from before he enters the room. It is frightening to see him strip out of his jacket and tie (removing the symbols of restraint and society?) and, without a word, pick up the box cutter because he already knows what he’s going to do. Walt, for his part, looks as pathetic as he did in the first episode, hoping that if can just keep saying that Gus won’t kill him maybe it will come true.

Of course he doesn’t kill Walt or Jesse. Instead, Victor is punished for own carelessness at the crime scene and for not understanding what Gale did: that Gus is paying for the best. As for Walt and Jesse, as the latter says, Gus made sure they knew that “if he can’t kill us, we’ll sure as shit wish we were dead,” leaving the body for them to clean up (and giving us a chance for a macabre callback to season one).

In a way, Gale almost works as a shadow Walt, a man who made the same choice as Walt but wasn’t willing to completely sacrifice his soul. He even talked Gus into hiring his own competition, unlike Walt’s pathological need to win. At the same time, that’s why he couldn’t survive. Walt is willing to make whatever compromise he has to make, selling his soul for his survival. Killing a couple of drug dealers who murdered a child may not be that big of a deal, but in the moral universe of Breaking Bad, there’s a price to pay for killing a relative innocent, like Gale (or Jane in season two), and retribution will come. So maybe that’s why we end with a team of detail-oriented investigators with laser scoping and other CSI tricks in Gale’s apartment. These are men and women who understand the gulf between 96 and 99 percent purity and who won’t miss a clue like Gale’s lab notes.

Jonah’s Score: 87
Episode Grade: A 

Other stuff:

-The way this episode swings from brutal, can’t-breathe drama (Gus’ moment) to bleak humor (“we should all be wearing masks” or the match from the mops to the ketchup) is a thing of beauty.

-Television is usually word-heavy medium and one of the reasons I love Breaking Bad is because it is such a visual show, but even by those standards, this episode is pretty incredible. In fact, the more powerful the character, the less the person speaks in this episode, as Gus, Mike, and Jesse all convey so much without words (while Walt’s powerlessness leads to the most speaking of anyone).

-I also loved the red color scheme, which seemed to indicate that, while Victor died, it is Walt and Jesse who now find themselves in Hell.

-I’m a little worried about Jesse’s mental state you guys.

-I can’t remember where I read this (maybe Sepinwall?) but Kenny Rogers (whose face adorned Jesse and Walt’s matching t-shirts) sang “The Gambler,” which also happens to be Walt’s latest explanation/lie for where the money is coming from (to Hank and Marie).

-Sorry that this recap is a little all over the place. My brain’s still a little melty after Pitchfork.

-It sure is good to have Breaking Bad back.