For the past four seasons of Breaking Bad the two leads, Walter White
(Bryan Cranston) and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), have cooked mountainous
amounts of meth, found themselves in the most dangerous situations, and been
continually a stone’s throw away from being caught. There have now been five
episodes aired of Season Five and many may be wondering how the show is
continuing after the adrenaline-fuelled fourth season. Beware; spoilers follow from here on in...
Season Four was perhaps the most
thrilling of all seasons so far. It included a villain so smart and devious
that bets on his demise were never confident ones. Even when Gustavo Fring’s
semi-skeletal body walked out of an explosion, there was a brief moment where
you thought, “oh no, he made it”. Obviously that was not the case and the
“chicken man” finally met his match with Walt’s chemical bomb triggered at the
bell-flicking fingers of his old nemesis, Hector Salamanca. In the last 40 minutes
of Season Four, nails were chewed off and seat edges were firmly sat on. There
was no better way to end the show than Walt’s gruff statement, “It’s over. I
won”. The announcement of a fifth series came as a shock to many, though with
expected elation. Confusion was expected, however, as Walt and Jesse parted ways
at the end of Season Four as they had both metaphorically and literally burned
their bridges toward their lab.
The show’s creator Vince Gilligan
is not a foolish man and any queries that flooded the forums of various web
pages over the next steps in the story were clearly scrutinised by the man
himself. Unlike something like Lost,
Gilligan knows where he’s taking the programme. This is made apparent by the
start of the fifth season with a flash forward to Walt on his 52nd
birthday, eating alone in a diner, with a head of hair and a scruffy beard. We
have come to expect this type of chronology for Breaking Bad and the first image of Season One and Two were of
things to come (in narrative terms); it always made for great TV, looking
forward to that moment and wondering how it may come about. We wait with pure
excitement as to why Gilligan’s Mr. White is out on his birthday shopping for a
huge gun.
Returning to the present, we
start off with some exposition that links the past season’s events to the
current day. Hank is still surveying the ashen interior of the old lab when he
comes across the camera that stalked Walt and Jesse throughout their time in
the lab. For the memory of said CCTV he locates Fring’s laptop – this everyday
item becoming the focus of episode one. Walt’s plan to tie up all loose ends of
Fring’s death means retrieving, or destroying, that laptop. The Italian Job-style ploy involves buying
a huge magnet, driving it into the police lot and turning its dial up to 11 to
yank the computer up against the evidence room wall, thus completely destroying
it. He finds help from Jesse and Mike, who has now returned from hospital and,
perhaps unconvincingly, teamed up with Walt and Jesse.
Meanwhile, Skyler and Saul are
worrying about financial and judicial issues which are not as interesting as they
have been in the past few seasons, but still highlight the genius writing that
interconnects these stories so meticulously. Saul is bullied by Walt about
getting back into business and, in a frightening finale to the episode, you see
Skyler facing a similar issue with Walt clearly putting on a new mask to
pretend that they’re one happy family. Walt caressing Skyler is quite
harrowing; she stands there frightened at her husband’s ability to take
complete control and adjust any aspect of his indefinite personality to suit.
Episode Two begins with a
Germanic man taste-tasting a range of sauces. We can gather that this Mr
Schuler is some way connected to Gus due to the fast-food condiments. His later
suicide validates that thought all the more, with the police and Mike turning
their attention to the co-conspirator. The ghost of Gus still lives on
throughout the world of Breaking Bad
and carries through to Walt and Jesse searching for the poisoned cigarette that
Jesse believed Walt used to kill Broc (Jesse’s girlfriend’s son). Upon
recovering it/finding where Walt cunningly placed it Jesse breaks down in
tears, apologising for almost killing Walt over the matter. Long ago, Jesse’s
character was to be axed yet Gilligan and co kept him on due to Paul’s acting.
With Paul nervously weeping over his “mistake” it proves that the creators did
right by having Aaron Paul as an integral part of the show.
The masterminds behind the show’s
choice of character and casting are never undermined and the increasingly
important figure of Mike (superbly played by Jonathan Banks) serves to
illuminate the point further. His cool approach to killing and organised crime
is, like Walt’s Machiavellian mind-set, devilishly intriguing and entertaining.
Up till now in the show, Mike has ran errands for Gus and helped Walt and Jesse
out on occasion. After Schuler’s death and the assassinations of other Fring
associates, Mike needs to work hard on not having any information leaked; in
completing this task he has to spend a lot of money and so asks one of
Schuler’s known acquaintances whether there is still Methylamine available.
When the woman answers “Maybe”, Mike realises that there is still a chance to
make some money. What is more, with DEA breathing down his neck and seizing his
assets, he must embrace the White-Pinkman alliance and get to work with them.
This brings us nicely to Episode
Three - the one where they get back to work. Gilligan inventive as ever, has the
idea of setting up the lab ingeniously brought about. Saul is working hard
under Walt’s demands to find a place for them to cook safely to which he brings
them to various venues. The last and deciding place is a rundown warehouse that
acts as a home for their equipment – the cooking is to be done in
currently-fumigated houses. Every time a house is need of a bug-bomb, and fully
tented for safety, the pair will carry out their cook, turn on the poison and
leave no trace behind. Seeing the now-classic cooking montage brings a smile to
your face instantly; Mr. White and Jesse back doing what they do best is a
truly great sight to see. Their pay at the end whittles down to a few thousand,
which an irritated Walt takes up with Mike. The pay has to be separated to all
of Mike’s men doing what they need to do to keep things under wraps but it’s
something Walt cannot rest easy on. The episode ends with Walt and Jesse
discussing the cut and Jesse is thinking more optimistically with the “no
owners” having to watch them. Walt, on the other hand, wonders how with all the
“liberties” Victor (one of Gus’s henchmen) took that led to his death, how he
and Jesse did not suffer the same fate. Certainly, by the end with Gus they
were close to joining Victor but perhaps some of the positive outweighed the
negative with Gus’ operation. In any case, Walt’s head is clearly devoted to
the idea of business tactics and it cements the notion that Season Five will be
just as cleverly crafted as the past four seasons.
By Piers McCarthy
By Piers McCarthy
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