First, he takes baby Holly, partially as a means to emotionally devastate Skyler (in much the same way he feels she has emotionally devastated him), but also in the hopes that with this baby he can have a fresh start. Holly has to love him, he thinks, because she is young, and innocent, and blank – perhaps in her eyes, he can forge a new image for himself. But all Holly can say, as he tries to engage with her after changing her diaper, is “Mama,” over and over again, an unambiguous reminder of how Walt’s criminal choices made him utterly absent in his precious child’s life.
There is no future for him there, either. So Walt decides to return Holly, but only after chewing out Skyler over the phone in what must surely stand as one of the single most difficult, piercing Breaking Bad scenes of all time. The writing throughout the sequence is expertly vicious – “This is what comes of your disrespect”; “You were never grateful for anything I did for this family”; “You mark my words, Skyler. Tow the line, or you will wind up just like Hank” – as is Bryan Cranston’s unbelievably layered, nuanced performance, but what I find most fascinating and painful about it all is how utterly lost Walt seems throughout it. This may not be a character I have felt sympathetic towards in many seasons, but the man we see on that phone call is even more unrecognizable from the protagonist of the pilot than the figure who stood idly by and watched Jane perish, or poisoned a child to gain Jesse’s support, or got in league with neo-Nazis to order the murders of ten men in two minutes. Walt has done many evil, despicable, irredeemable things over the course of Breaking Bad, but no matter our opinion of him, he never viewed himself as the bad guy. On the phone with Skyler, though, he embraces his role as villain, and pushes his wickedness as far as it will go, because the evil in his heart is all he has left. He spent the majority of “Ozymandias” running from the horror he saw in himself after witnessing Hank’s death, but by the time of that climactic conversation, he cannot run any farther. This is who he is. This is what he has become. And so he embraces it, and enhances it, and spews every ounce of vitriol at the woman who was once the love his life, crying as he does it because he so despises what he has become. (*)
And in a strange, conflicted, extremely complex way, I found myself caring more for Walter White in that moment than I have since the show’s first or second seasons. Evil, and the knowledge that one has committed it, must be an inconceivably heavy, unendurably lonely weight to carry. I want to hate Walter White. I still want him to get his comeuppance, and I certainly never wish to see anybody else hurt by his actions. But for that most fleeting of moments, as Walter cried and screamed and hurled insults as Skyler(**), I felt genuinely, sincerely sorry for this broken shell of a man. He could have been so much more than this. He was so much more than this, once upon a time, even if he was only a bored but loving father and husband.
(*) UPDATE: As several commenters have pointed out, Walt is also seemingly trying to make the police believe Skyler is innocent in all of this during that scene. I honestly wasn’t thinking that way when I watched the episode, and I still believe there are elements of genuine malice in the sheer amount of vitriol he spews at Skyler during that monologue – placating the police could probably be done in about a third as much time – but this does seem to be the pervading reading of the scene online, so I do want to acknowledge it here. For the record, you folks are probably correct, now that I think about it some more. But I still think a lot of what I wrote above applies, even if Walt is playing the part to do his wife a small mercy.
(**) Who, for the record, I feel much, much worse for under these circumstances than I do Walt. I just want to make sure we are clear than that. Skyler is the infinitely more sympathetic figure here.
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