Breaking Bad 5.05
About how many shows can you say, when they're doing a heist episode, oh, that was one of the low key ones?
But really, until the very last moment I thought, okay, it's a good avarage and has action suspense plus it fulfills the arc function of introducing Lydia to Walt and letting him bug Hank's computer, but compared to how brilliant the last episode was, it almost feels like a filler by comparison. And then we got the punch line. Which wasn't what I had expected it to me. What I had expected was that Walt or possibly Mike would kill the enterprising duo of helpers they had to use as they were witnesses, and also because as soon as Jesse had hit on the solution of how to rob methalmine in a bloodless way the way Jesse's life goes and the ethos of this show which immediately punctures any ideas of harmless crime required that someone die. (And it couldn't be Lydia, since she will appear in more episodes, and not Mike, because it's too early in the season for that.) I had utterly forgotten about the boy from the teaser. More fool me. Because yes.
Jesse's soft spot for children, his need to protect them, has been central to his self image and to his feelings and believes; it was what motivated his attempted assassination of Gus' thugs in late s3 and what Walt used to turn him against Gus via framing Gus for Brock in late s4. (Mind you, I think in order to believe he'd never harm a child Jesse is practising ongoing denial - unless directly confronted with his customers and their kid(s) as we was in s2's Peekabo - about the fact he's in a business that harms children as well as adults, but everyone lies to themselves in greater or smaller measure on this show.) Skyler in her one scene this episode tells Walt that there's no way he can believably tell her her children won't get in the line of fire again, and thus they won't be back at the house. Lydia makes Walt swear by the life of his children (after mentioning hers). So: a child as the latest sacrifice to Walt's (and Jesse's, and Mike's) continuing life of crime and greed to make money via meth was set up as tragedy demands.
Now I'm really on the edge of my seat on how Jesse will deal with this. Yes, it was secondary-character-from-the-left who did the actual shooting, so he could tell himself Walt wouldn't have given the order/would have done it, or Mike, and that he himself is innocent, but Jesse, the above mentioned blind spot aside, is actually more the accepting culpability guy, and what it comes down to is that this child would still be alive if Walt and Jesse had quit the drug business instead of returning to it after Gus went down.
frenchani theorized ages ago what it would take for Jesse to follow up on a suggestion he made several seasons ago - come clean to the Feds. Maybe this could trigger such a development?
If so, he needs to tell Hank he's bugged first. That was a smooth if dastardly move of Walt's, and he continued his Operation Make Skyler Look Bad In Front of Her Only Possible Allies while he was at it. Said operation is probably also why he appears to give in to Skyler's "keep the kids at Hank's and Marie's and I will cooperate" ultimatum. My guess is he expects Hank will soon condemm Skyler and return the children to Walt anyway. Which is possible, but then again, I think we might have gotten some foreshadowing here with Hank and baby Holly and Hank's playful "not giving you back".
Lydia saves her neck by a) actually being innocent of planting the tracking device (to the suprise of everyone, including the audience) and b) coming up with an alternate source of methalmine that requires her alive and cooperating. Now where did we have a character thinking on their feet to convince powerful gangsters about to kill them before, who is when backed against their wall very convincing and creative but otherwise prone to unfortunate outbursts of temper and twitchy habits? I think that was Walter White, recent high school teacher, when dealing with Tuco.
The heist itself was slickly executed and fun to watch in the way such things are (and I bet the production team had fun doing a train robbery story), but also predictable, down to something going wrong at the last minute (the good Samaritan was another person I expected to die as the punchline, and then, he, too, escaped). Of course, such a robbery can only be executed, no pun intended, once, so when they'll have to come up with a different source once this stolen methalmine is used up. If, that is, at that point meth will still produced instead of the triggery partnership of White, Pinkman & Ermahntraut already being in the process of explosion.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/811863.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
But really, until the very last moment I thought, okay, it's a good avarage and has action suspense plus it fulfills the arc function of introducing Lydia to Walt and letting him bug Hank's computer, but compared to how brilliant the last episode was, it almost feels like a filler by comparison. And then we got the punch line. Which wasn't what I had expected it to me. What I had expected was that Walt or possibly Mike would kill the enterprising duo of helpers they had to use as they were witnesses, and also because as soon as Jesse had hit on the solution of how to rob methalmine in a bloodless way the way Jesse's life goes and the ethos of this show which immediately punctures any ideas of harmless crime required that someone die. (And it couldn't be Lydia, since she will appear in more episodes, and not Mike, because it's too early in the season for that.) I had utterly forgotten about the boy from the teaser. More fool me. Because yes.
Jesse's soft spot for children, his need to protect them, has been central to his self image and to his feelings and believes; it was what motivated his attempted assassination of Gus' thugs in late s3 and what Walt used to turn him against Gus via framing Gus for Brock in late s4. (Mind you, I think in order to believe he'd never harm a child Jesse is practising ongoing denial - unless directly confronted with his customers and their kid(s) as we was in s2's Peekabo - about the fact he's in a business that harms children as well as adults, but everyone lies to themselves in greater or smaller measure on this show.) Skyler in her one scene this episode tells Walt that there's no way he can believably tell her her children won't get in the line of fire again, and thus they won't be back at the house. Lydia makes Walt swear by the life of his children (after mentioning hers). So: a child as the latest sacrifice to Walt's (and Jesse's, and Mike's) continuing life of crime and greed to make money via meth was set up as tragedy demands.
Now I'm really on the edge of my seat on how Jesse will deal with this. Yes, it was secondary-character-from-the-left who did the actual shooting, so he could tell himself Walt wouldn't have given the order/would have done it, or Mike, and that he himself is innocent, but Jesse, the above mentioned blind spot aside, is actually more the accepting culpability guy, and what it comes down to is that this child would still be alive if Walt and Jesse had quit the drug business instead of returning to it after Gus went down.
frenchani theorized ages ago what it would take for Jesse to follow up on a suggestion he made several seasons ago - come clean to the Feds. Maybe this could trigger such a development?
If so, he needs to tell Hank he's bugged first. That was a smooth if dastardly move of Walt's, and he continued his Operation Make Skyler Look Bad In Front of Her Only Possible Allies while he was at it. Said operation is probably also why he appears to give in to Skyler's "keep the kids at Hank's and Marie's and I will cooperate" ultimatum. My guess is he expects Hank will soon condemm Skyler and return the children to Walt anyway. Which is possible, but then again, I think we might have gotten some foreshadowing here with Hank and baby Holly and Hank's playful "not giving you back".
Lydia saves her neck by a) actually being innocent of planting the tracking device (to the suprise of everyone, including the audience) and b) coming up with an alternate source of methalmine that requires her alive and cooperating. Now where did we have a character thinking on their feet to convince powerful gangsters about to kill them before, who is when backed against their wall very convincing and creative but otherwise prone to unfortunate outbursts of temper and twitchy habits? I think that was Walter White, recent high school teacher, when dealing with Tuco.
The heist itself was slickly executed and fun to watch in the way such things are (and I bet the production team had fun doing a train robbery story), but also predictable, down to something going wrong at the last minute (the good Samaritan was another person I expected to die as the punchline, and then, he, too, escaped). Of course, such a robbery can only be executed, no pun intended, once, so when they'll have to come up with a different source once this stolen methalmine is used up. If, that is, at that point meth will still produced instead of the triggery partnership of White, Pinkman & Ermahntraut already being in the process of explosion.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/811863.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.