Breaking Bad - Season 5 Episode 1 - Video Recap and Review - Season Premiere
Breaking Bad has long employed the technique of the obtuse flashforward, showing us what might come without actually contextualizing what we're seeing. Think the damaged purple teddy bear of season two. Tonight's premiere utilized what appeared to be a flashforward in which Walt meets a mysterious figure in a Denny's bathroom on his 52nd birthday. A trade of money-for-keys is made, and Walt (going by the last name "Lambert") suddenly finds himself in possession of a battered old vehicle with guns and other illicit cargo in the trunk. Where this plot is leading is anyone's guess (really, who called the damaged purple teddy bear being debris from a mid-air plane collision?), but what we know in the present is that the death of drug kingpin Gustavo Fring has emboldened Walter White to a dangerous degree. Not that he didn't have enough swagger to account for five drunken Kanyes before, but to remember the tail end of the fourth season is to remember a Walt that was on the edge, desperate to the point of arranging a new life for his family safely away from Albuquerque out of fear for what Gus Fring would do to them. Having followed Walt for four seasons, I'd imagine the audience wants to believe that Walt is smarter than to let such hubris rule him. If anyone should know better, it should be Walter White, who hasn't had a safe minute since this entire enterprise began. Seriously, this is Breaking Bad, Walt! The point where you think you've “won” is arguably the point where you ought to be the most concerned. Jane certainly thought she and Jesse had it made when Walt dropped off nearly $500,000 way back in season 2. But she was choking to death on her own vomit within hours. And I bet little Brock and his mother were overjoyed to finally be out of their crappy, run-down gangland neighborhood, thanks to Jesse's monetary contributions, but all it took was a few buds from a lily of the valley plant to send their happiness crashing back down to Earth. In brief, happiness is ephemeral on this show, and peace even more fleeting.
As for “Live Free or Die,” the episode is a solid entry into the Breaking Bad premiere canon. Walt has “won,” but the specter of Gus Fring looms over the proceedings. Upon disposing of the bomb evidence and the lily of the valley plant, we find Walt (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse (Aaron Paul) confronting Mike (Gus Fring's fixer, recovering from last season's bullet wounds) to ascertain the location of Fring's surveillance footage, since the cameras in the lab have captured all sorts of incriminating evidence of their cook sessions and other illicit activities. Mike, for his part, immediately wants Walt dead for what he's done in engineering Fring's murder, believing he's doomed them all. But, with Jesse's help, Walt is able to talk Mike into a crazy scheme in which they will attempt to destroy the surveillance evidence, stored on Fring's laptop, even though the laptop has already been confiscated by the police and stored in an impenetrable evidence room. Leave it to Jesse to come up with the solution: Magnets. Lots of magnets.
The three-man operation to destroy the laptop locked in the police evidence room, without ever actually entering the police headquarters, is among the more daring acts of bravado exhibited by Walt and crew. The plan involves Mike disarming the police security cameras and gateway to allow Walt and Jesse to drive a moving truck full of magnets into the lot, parking it adjacent to the wall of the evidence room. From there, they crank up the magnetic pull, and watch the evidence fly. It's a plan that, on paper, is almost too bold to work. There isn't a single reason on Earth that this plan shouldn't fail in spectacular fashion. Yet it doesn't fail. Probably because Walter White is the brains behind it. And this is why we're treated to Walt's excessive hubris throughout the episode. He's high on the enormity of what he's accomplished in eliminating Gus Fring. He has delusions of invincibility, he feels immune to Hank's investigative efforts, above the condemnations of Skylar, and in complete control over his relationship with Saul Goodman, his lawyer, to whom he declares “We're done when I say we're done,” in a particularly chilling sequence. What's so galling about this is how so little of Walt's ingenuity comes from Walt himself. Yes, he's an outrageously clever guy, and Lord only knows what he'd be capable of if he put any of his considerable intellectual gifts towards maybe not making drugs. But so much of what he accomplishes is dependent upon the involvement of others. He wouldn't have been able to kill Gus Fring without Tio Salamanca and his willingness to die just for the opportunity to take Fring with him. He couldn't have poisoned innocent little Brock without the help of Saul Goodman and his cronies. (Hell, I can't think of many things he could have accomplished without the help of Saul Goodman, who seems to be a Swiss Army Lawyer with a solution for everything). He certainly couldn't have pulled off the risky magnet plan without the help of Jesse and Mike. In short, Walt is becoming the worst kind of kingpin (and he IS becoming a kingpin – it's been his arc every bit as much as the fact of his gradual moral compromise), the kind that doesn't acknowledge that while you might become the king on your own, nobody remains the king without help, or the right connections.
Skylar, meanwhile, has just discovered what Sal's goons have inadvertently caused to happen to Ted Beneke, who was being strong-armed to pay the IRS his back-taxes to keep the government from looking into Skylar's book-cooking crimes. We, in turn, learn that he's not dead after all. He's broken his neck. Or, at least, his spine is damaged to the point of requiring a halo to set it in place, and though he swears he won't speak a word of any of Skylar's possible involvement in his injury to the police, it seems too easy to consider this a closed end. Walt might “forgive” Skylar for getting involved with Ted (both financially and romantically), but with great power comes greater paranoia, and I could easily imagine Walt wanting to tie up loose ends and make certain of Ted's silence with a well-placed dose of ricin. And while that might well be a massive leap on my part, Walt's diminishing moral capacity has made it pretty easy to imagine this being a possibility. I mean, the man poisoned an innocent child! With each season, it's as though Walt has fewer inhibitions about crossing the moral event horizon.
It isn't just that Walt is desperate to protect his family. Walter White is actually buying into the myth of Heisenberg. He's created an image so daunting and implacable that he's compelled to live up to it with each indelible stroke, whether it's planting a bomb on the end of a wheelchair, burning down a lab, or using an untraceable moving truck full of magnets to destroy evidence on a hard drive locked in police headquarters. Walt is more ambitious than he's ever been, but there's a certain recklessness to that ambition. When you think you're capable of anything, you put yourself in a position to lose everything. Case in point: Walt Jr.'s gushing about how his Uncle Hank will be considered an even bigger hero now that Fring is dead. Even when Walt wins, he'll never get the proper credit from the people who matter to him. Skylar tells Walt outright that she's afraid of him, upon realization of his complicity in the death of Gus Fring. In his grander attempts at recognition, Walt might well damn himself and his family to ruin. Tonight, at least, his gambit had one unintended consequence: the magnets may have wiped out the laptop's hard drive, but they've also caused an evidenciary photo of Fring and his late friend/partner Maximilio to break and slip out of its frame, revealing a hidden note with information on a Cayman Islands bank account. What this means remains to be seen, but if the flashforward tells us anything, we know that it won't be all that good to be king, particularly if your name is Walter White.
