Breaking Bad Countdown, Season 5, Ep. 15, “Granite State”
This is a Breaking Bad episode recap by Thought Pollution writer Colin Neagle. Spoiler alert.
Before this show’s final season started and I began recapping, I wrote an essay. It was shortly after I’d re-watched the past five seasons, and I based it on a central idea I’d taken from that reevaluation. Walter White doesn’t give a shit about money, family, meth or murder. He cares about success.
I probably could have been clearer about his definition of success. For Walter, it means his accomplishments, his talents – his name. That’s what this episode proved.
Family has been the great red herring of Breaking Bad. Most recently, Walter’s over-the-phone performance seemed to embolden family as the driving force behind his behavior. It’s almost as if Vince Gilligan anticipated that this strange #teamwalt movement would misinterpret Walt’s ambitions, repeating that “it’s for his family,” as if that justifies their misplaced support for him. So he articulated through Saul Goodman – whose role as the “thinly disguised voice of reason” has been largely under-appreciated – that Walter’s phone call with Skyler was much more self-serving than it seemed.
One of the analyses (I can’t remember which) of that phone call last week pointed out how perfectly Walter divided his actual hatred from his act of heroism. He didn’t need to demand that Skyler pick up the phone so the police could trace the call. It was already being recorded on an answering machine. He wanted to scold her directly – as if it were a personal call – for ruining his name for the son, who had refused it years ago. But that part wasn’t even relevant. If he had called just to deflect culpability for all the crimes in which he had implicated Skyler, discussing the bit about Walter Jr. was just as unnecessary as calling her a “stupid bitch.” It was an opportunity to satisfy himself by making Skyler’s life only marginally easier, while also reprimanding her for doubting, accurately, that he could save her.
While some of us may have noticed that discrepancy in Walt’s heroics, Saul was the one to point out that if Walt actually wanted to take responsibility, he wouldn’t have made the call at all. He would have turned himself in. A good man doesn’t just wish you luck with dealing with his problems before he runs away from them. The Walter White who “cares about family,” the one whom Gretchen declared dead in that TV interview, would have taken his charges, and he wouldn’t have needed Saul Goodman to tell him to do it.
But, Walter had long ago melded his priorities. As I discussed last week, he saw no difference between his family’s well-being and the amount of money he made, regardless of how one affected the other. That explains both Walter’s offer of $100,000 and Walter Jr.’s incredulity at it. Walt would be dead soon, and the one person who knows where to find his money all but guaranteed him it would never make it to his family.
Walter’s success is his legacy, and ever since he got mixed up with Gus Fring, family has been little more than a euphemism for his own aspirations. Recall that Gus only convinced Walter to cook for him after asking him what his role as a man entails. “He provides for his family,” Gus explained to the man, who had already provided his family with millions of dollars. Walter knew stepping foot into that lab was the wrong decision. But that lab was so top-notch and that opportunity so fulfilling, he could point to his family and tell himself he had no other choice. Now that it’s all gone, Walter sticks to his original story. “What I do, I do for my family. My money goes to my children,” Walter told Saul, trying to fight a battle he’d already lost.
When it becomes clear that the White children’s birthright can’t possibly make it back across the country, Walter makes his desperate plea to his son. It doesn’t matter that it’s been whittled down from $80 million buried in barrels to $100,000 disguised in an Ensure box. Walter can convince himself it had always been about family, if he can get any of his ill-gotten money back to them.
That opportunity to reach his family through the mysterious Louis’ mailbox was the Hail Mary toss for Walter White, and it flopped horribly. He must have somehow known it would from the beginning, because he didn’t take long to call to the Albuquerque DEA office afterward – he even had the phone number memorized.
We’ve talked a lot about the duality of Walter and Heisenberg lately, declaring the former’s triumph over the latter – and vice versa – on several occasions. But, that sequence of events may have been the final nail in Walter’s coffin. It’s almost as if he died with the pay phone still up to his ear, only to find that his eulogy would be given publicly, by Gretchen and Elliot, who represent everything Walter could have been and once tried to be. It’s no coincidence that the man watching that interview was neither Walter White nor Heisenberg – he’s Mr. Lambert.
And, Mr. Lambert learned some interesting stuff about Walter White and Heisenberg, as he watched that interview. He learned that the legacy Walter would leave behind was tarnished, that his name was being erased from the one credit he earned rightfully. He also learned that Heisenberg still existed out there, in a way, through the bootleg blue meth that Jack and Todd had stolen from him.
We knew something would bring Walter back to Albuquerque. For a while, it seemed like it’d be a chance at redemption: unfinished business with Lydia and Todd, a last-ditch effort to save Skyler, a change of heart about Jesse, and so on. But, we hadn’t anticipated that Walter would end up with an option. He could embrace redemption by allowing the police he invited to the bar to arrest him. Or, having learned he wasn’t receiving the recognition he felt he was owed, he could set out to fulfill the goals he set when he first partnered with Jesse Pinkman – to build a legacy worth leaving behind.
There’s no chance for Walt to leave a legacy anymore. Heisenberg is his last shot.
Odds and Ends
A good friend of mine suggested that I title this “Heisenberg’s Last Waltz,” and I’m so upset that I didn’t think of it first that I’m not going to give him credit here, even though I easily could. (Suck on that, Matt Fulone.)
What a night for Todd’s relationship with Jesse – to go from sharing his ice cream and letting him see the stars to killing his love interest and forcing him to watch. (I can’t believe I just wrote the words “love interest,” but I couldn’t figure out what else to call her.)
I think this episode solidifies what I had been thinking about lately – Todd is the most interesting character on the show. That’s saying a lot, given that we got to see Gus Fring’s whole story and Mike Ehrmantraut’s caring-grandfather side. Todd’s an interesting breed of psychopath. He’s probably the one who shot Hank in the leg, and he still finds the time to tell Walt “Sorry for your loss” after Hank’s death. Then, when seeing the video in which Jesse tells federal agents that Todd was responsible for the well-known murder of a child, he grins that same “Opie-dead-eyed-piece-of-shit” grin that Jesse described, and begs his uncle not to kill him for it. He probably stopped to buy Jesse Dairy Queen after murdering his love interest (and there it is again).
All of this makes the whole Todd and Lydia storyline more baffling. Why move deeper into a love story involving supporting characters with just two episodes left? How could they possibly wrap that up, with so much else to worry about? Will he still call her “Miss Quayle,” if they somehow end up sleeping together? (God, that would be so gloriously fucking weird. And revolting.)
The only reason I could think of is that the writers needed to create a reason to keep the market for Heisenberg’s blue meth alive. Lydia has no use for the Nazis after Walter flew the coop, and the Nazis have no use for her after stealing Walt’s money. But Todd’s interest in Lydia seems a good-enough reason for them to keep Jesse around, thereby perpetuating the market for blue meth. This could in turn be reason enough for Walter to come back to Albuquerque to kill the Nazis, retake the meth business, and fulfill what he started as Heisenberg. I didn’t mean to make a prediction for how it’s going to end, but apparently I just did. WHOOPS.
That makes some sense, I guess. To be honest, I have no clue.
See you next week.