Even when Mike ties him to radiator in order to make sure that Walt doesn’t run off with the methylamine, Walt manages to escape and somehow secure the all important chemical elsewhere, having come up with a supposed plan which we will be kept in the dark about until next week. The only thing Walt tells us about the plan is that “everybody wins” and Mike is guaranteed his money.
As I’ve said before, Breaking Bad has always been great at delivering truly amazing scenes around a dinner table, where the tension between the characters is so palpable that an audience response is to simply laugh it off.
Walt asks Jesse over to the house to talk business, where they are interrupted by Skyler. The two haven’t had a face-to-face since the first season and so much has gone on behind closed doors between the two that there exists a hatred emanating from Skyler. For her this is the person that led her husband to be the man she once loved but now can’t stand the sight of.
So, the natural thing would be for Walt to invite Jesse to dinner, which he does. The following scene, which lasts for around two minutes but feels like a lifetime, sees Jesse attempting to engage Skyler in small talk while he eats and she continually drinks wine. It’s a fantastic scene, again a showcase for Anna Gunn, who is relegated again to not saying very much at all but says so much more with her actions and body language. The framing is totally unoriginal, recalling the infamous dinnertime sequences in American Beauty, but the contortion of that family dynamic here is fascinating.
Jesse has now essentially become a surrogate son to Walt. He is someone that Walt has nurtured, (through constant manipulation,) into being a very forthright and mature man with a moral compass. He only stays through a sense of duty he thinks he owes to Walt. Unaware of how much damage his new father has caused, Jesse seeks to protect Walt’s interests and do right by him, even if it means sitting down to a meal.
For Skyler, the replacement of Jesse at the dinner table when it should be her teenage son is more frustrating, and only causing further heartbreak, it’s now deliberately hinting that she cannot take much more of this.
We have only ten episodes of Breaking Bad left and I have no idea at all where Vince Gilligan and his troop are taking us. I’m not sure I want to know though. This show continues to surprise and that’s one of its best attributes, I’d rather be kept in the dark.
The end is near, folks, the end is near.
