Breaking Bad 5x08 - Gliding Over All
I watched the finale as soon as we got home from Dragon*Con and I'm still thinking about it, as well as the season* overall.
I was at a dinner party the other night and we got to talking about the show, and a woman declared how much she hated Skyler White. I agree Skyler's a hard character to like on her own -- if she were a real person we would never be friends -- but it's amazing that she gets no sympathy or empathy given who her husband is. But then, I understand there are still a lot of people on Walter's side, so I dunno.
12_12_12 a while ago posted some fantastic meta which breaks down how Skyler is an "emasculating" kind of woman, someone whose need to control and be in charge of all things -- particularly her marriage, household, kids, and Walter's cancer treatment -- implicates some deep cultural protectiveness we feel about masculinity and male pride. I'd previously described the show as a critical and frequently damning look at frustrated manhood, the aspirations and self-images of white "middle American" men, the culturally ingrained need to dominate rivals and provide for and protect one's family (both the marriage-and-children kind and the kind formed by one's actions). But I never drew the end of that line to Skyler. It's like viewers can't help themselves feeling (even if not thinking it consciously): yes, Walter is a sucky human being, but dammit, why can't Skyler just let him wear the pants once in a while? And it's hard to think past that initial recoil. (Actually, the meta is way more interesting and insightful than that, and I think she's promised more to come, so watch that space.)
Anyway, given the context of all that, I'm still thinking about Skyler's arc this season.
I think this season was a bit underwhelming in that it's clearly setting up for the big last run -- I also thought the first half of season 4 was slow and then really punched it in the second half. For these past eight episodes I kept wanting Skyler to break free, to join up with Jesse, to take Walt down, to do something. But mostly she's been frightened, backed into a corner, back to her passive aggressive ways (smoking around Walt, dropping the Ted bomb at dinner with Jesse).
I'm not sure I see her coming back strong next season. How Hank and Marie react to Skyler's involvement with Heisenberg (assuming Hank puts it together that Skyler was involved, and Marie finds out) will probably direct a lot of Skyler's actions next season. So I expect more reaction from her, and not so much her taking charge on her own. And that's a significant change from the Skyler of last season.
I think it would have made for an interesting AU if she'd acknowledged her hypocrisy in breaking bad (with the Beneke bookkeeping and money laundering for Walt and taking advantage of Bodgan) then fully stepped up as Walt's business partner. But she's still a normal human being and I think seeing the horrible consequences of her actions in the person of Ted in 5x01 just took it out of her, in a way that even realizing her husband is a murderer didn't. Skyler marshaled everything she had to say that one word: "Good," in response to Ted's promises to keep quiet. But that was all she had. Unlike Walt, she can't accept being responsible for that kind of collateral damage.
And I really think that moment broke her: she's fully understood now that her husband is a monster, but she also saw the monster in herself, and I think she found that paralyzing. We've seen Jesse spin out that kind of blame and self-loathing -- for him it resulted in a drug addiction spiral and then the endless house party and then drifting closer to Gus and Mike. For Skyler it resulted in her feeling trapped, and trapping herself, in that house with Walt -- as a monster, she deserved to be there with him, and the innocent kids had to escape.
That said, I do hope the show surprises me next season, and doesn't resolve Skyler's story in a way that's so bleak. But it's a pessimistic hope.
Re: Walt, bleakness is totally appropriate there. I'm sure there's a lot of story that could have been told about the trials and tribulations of building his great drug empire in the Czech Republic with Lydia and Landry Todd, but I'm happy it was condensed into a montage ("Crystal Blue Persuasion," hah!) which felt empty and soulless and long and drudging. Because it would have been, without his family and without Jesse.
That last scene with Jesse was so tense and painful, the two of them reminiscing awkwardly, Walter trying to briefly re-connect across the gap of everything that had divided them -- and all the while Jesse's suspicious and afraid, ready to pull his gun in self-defense, just in case.
Overall though the last episode had some less than tense moments which contributed to the feeling that the season hasn't been up to much (I mean, compared to itself). I think the episode with the train heist and Todd shooting the kid was the high point. So in terms of action and holy shit! moments, the season felt downhill from there. Even the Godfather-prison-killing montage felt oddly lacking, and like, 10 or 11 people died bloody gory deaths. IDK.
But then the final scene with HANK. OMG. I've seen criticism and disbelief that Walter would be so careless as to leave the book lying around, but (a) of course the Great Heisenberg would be that arrogant and complacent, and (b) it was at least hidden under a magazine, so whatever. Anyway, I can hardly wait for the fall-out next season, because it's just gotta be nuclear. And of course Hank being good police is one of my favorite things about the show, so watching him build the case (and I hope that is what he decides to do, rather than let Walter paralyze him into self-recrimination and shame) should be excellent.
[*] I do presently consider this Season 5 and next year will be Season 6 -- if you shut down production, go on months of break, and then re-start it for episodes which will air a year later, it's two separate seasons. (Plus, Aaron Paul agrees with me.) But once the show ends, we may all come to think of them as a single season.
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comments at its original location at http://hesychasm.dreamwidth.org/254427.html. Please comment there or here.
I was at a dinner party the other night and we got to talking about the show, and a woman declared how much she hated Skyler White. I agree Skyler's a hard character to like on her own -- if she were a real person we would never be friends -- but it's amazing that she gets no sympathy or empathy given who her husband is. But then, I understand there are still a lot of people on Walter's side, so I dunno.
12_12_12 a while ago posted some fantastic meta which breaks down how Skyler is an "emasculating" kind of woman, someone whose need to control and be in charge of all things -- particularly her marriage, household, kids, and Walter's cancer treatment -- implicates some deep cultural protectiveness we feel about masculinity and male pride. I'd previously described the show as a critical and frequently damning look at frustrated manhood, the aspirations and self-images of white "middle American" men, the culturally ingrained need to dominate rivals and provide for and protect one's family (both the marriage-and-children kind and the kind formed by one's actions). But I never drew the end of that line to Skyler. It's like viewers can't help themselves feeling (even if not thinking it consciously): yes, Walter is a sucky human being, but dammit, why can't Skyler just let him wear the pants once in a while? And it's hard to think past that initial recoil. (Actually, the meta is way more interesting and insightful than that, and I think she's promised more to come, so watch that space.)
Anyway, given the context of all that, I'm still thinking about Skyler's arc this season.
I think this season was a bit underwhelming in that it's clearly setting up for the big last run -- I also thought the first half of season 4 was slow and then really punched it in the second half. For these past eight episodes I kept wanting Skyler to break free, to join up with Jesse, to take Walt down, to do something. But mostly she's been frightened, backed into a corner, back to her passive aggressive ways (smoking around Walt, dropping the Ted bomb at dinner with Jesse).
I'm not sure I see her coming back strong next season. How Hank and Marie react to Skyler's involvement with Heisenberg (assuming Hank puts it together that Skyler was involved, and Marie finds out) will probably direct a lot of Skyler's actions next season. So I expect more reaction from her, and not so much her taking charge on her own. And that's a significant change from the Skyler of last season.
I think it would have made for an interesting AU if she'd acknowledged her hypocrisy in breaking bad (with the Beneke bookkeeping and money laundering for Walt and taking advantage of Bodgan) then fully stepped up as Walt's business partner. But she's still a normal human being and I think seeing the horrible consequences of her actions in the person of Ted in 5x01 just took it out of her, in a way that even realizing her husband is a murderer didn't. Skyler marshaled everything she had to say that one word: "Good," in response to Ted's promises to keep quiet. But that was all she had. Unlike Walt, she can't accept being responsible for that kind of collateral damage.
And I really think that moment broke her: she's fully understood now that her husband is a monster, but she also saw the monster in herself, and I think she found that paralyzing. We've seen Jesse spin out that kind of blame and self-loathing -- for him it resulted in a drug addiction spiral and then the endless house party and then drifting closer to Gus and Mike. For Skyler it resulted in her feeling trapped, and trapping herself, in that house with Walt -- as a monster, she deserved to be there with him, and the innocent kids had to escape.
That said, I do hope the show surprises me next season, and doesn't resolve Skyler's story in a way that's so bleak. But it's a pessimistic hope.
Re: Walt, bleakness is totally appropriate there. I'm sure there's a lot of story that could have been told about the trials and tribulations of building his great drug empire in the Czech Republic with Lydia and Landry Todd, but I'm happy it was condensed into a montage ("Crystal Blue Persuasion," hah!) which felt empty and soulless and long and drudging. Because it would have been, without his family and without Jesse.
That last scene with Jesse was so tense and painful, the two of them reminiscing awkwardly, Walter trying to briefly re-connect across the gap of everything that had divided them -- and all the while Jesse's suspicious and afraid, ready to pull his gun in self-defense, just in case.
Overall though the last episode had some less than tense moments which contributed to the feeling that the season hasn't been up to much (I mean, compared to itself). I think the episode with the train heist and Todd shooting the kid was the high point. So in terms of action and holy shit! moments, the season felt downhill from there. Even the Godfather-prison-killing montage felt oddly lacking, and like, 10 or 11 people died bloody gory deaths. IDK.
But then the final scene with HANK. OMG. I've seen criticism and disbelief that Walter would be so careless as to leave the book lying around, but (a) of course the Great Heisenberg would be that arrogant and complacent, and (b) it was at least hidden under a magazine, so whatever. Anyway, I can hardly wait for the fall-out next season, because it's just gotta be nuclear. And of course Hank being good police is one of my favorite things about the show, so watching him build the case (and I hope that is what he decides to do, rather than let Walter paralyze him into self-recrimination and shame) should be excellent.
[*] I do presently consider this Season 5 and next year will be Season 6 -- if you shut down production, go on months of break, and then re-start it for episodes which will air a year later, it's two separate seasons. (Plus, Aaron Paul agrees with me.) But once the show ends, we may all come to think of them as a single season.
This post has
comments at its original location at http://hesychasm.dreamwidth.org/254427.html. Please comment there or here.