No Más

Walter has quit the meth business, but his marriage appears to be beyond repair when Skyler serves him divorce papers.

This episode serves as a soft reintroduction to the world of Breaking Bad – we re-establish our main characters and their dynamics and recap some of the most important events of the last season. How the writers accomplish this could have been improved – the diegetic news reports at the start feel a little contrived – but they can convey information in a more subtle way. A viewer who has never watched another episode can infer from Skyler’s conversation with an attorney that while she wants a divorce, she is reluctant to explain why – this creates intrigue for newcomers, while the rest of the audience gets to enjoy the dramatic irony of the situation.

Walter and Jesse share the same motivation in this story, both being consumed by feelings of guilt – this is unfortunate because their subplots are not of the same quality. Walt subconsciously blames himself for the airplane collision that took place above his house. As I said in the last review, I don’t think you can reasonably blame Walt for that event but I also think the show is poorly-equipped to discuss large-scale disasters. Breaking Bad works best when it focuses on interpersonal drama. When Skyler is manipulated by her husband, the audience can see the pain and anguish on her face; when over a hundred anonymous people die in a plane crash, it is hard to feel the same level of emotion.

Walter’s subplot feels even more amateurish when placed alongside Jesse’s, who starts the episode inside a rehab clinic. Aaron Paul gives a great performance as a man struggling to reconcile their self-loathing, anger and desire to stay drug-free. In one of my favourite scenes in the entire show, Jesse asks a counsellor1Played by Jere Burns if they ever truly hurt someone and the man recounts how he accidentally ran over his young daughter in his desperation to buy vodka. A horrified Jesse ask how the man can live with himself and the counsellor replies that he couldn’t stay sober without believing that his own life had some value. This is a mature idea and it gives the audience a new way to think about drug addiction.

The final thing we need to discuss are the mysterious men who appear in the teaser with a sketch of “Heisenberg”.2I don’t think we ever learn how they got that picture We periodically cut back to them as they travel north to the U.S. border and all their segments have a pronounced yellow tint. Slovis did this in order to make Mexico feel visually distinct from the rest of the show and while he didn’t invent this technique – see for example Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic – it has been heavily criticised in recent years. Applying a yellow filter makes a location look warmer but it also feels polluted and unhealthy because of the resulting changes to skin tones and foliage. Since this technique is usually applied to footage of non-Western countries, it can perpetuate bigoted stereotypes of how other races are “uncivilised” and “dirty”.

I also don’t care for the depiction of the two Mexican criminals.3Played by Daniel and Luis Moncada They do not utter a single word in the whole episode and while I understand that this is a homage to the films of Sergio Leone, it is the execution I take issue with. The Moncada brothers do not give nuanced or expressive performances – their only mode seems to be “stern and intimidating”. The scene where they steal clothes from a washing line felt like something out of the Terminator franchise. To be frank, I don’t think it is a good idea for our antagonists to be a pair of inhuman Mexicans who infiltrate the U.S. to attack a white man – it feels gross and irresponsible.

Odds and Ends

• The shrine in the opening teaser is dedicated to Santa Muerte, Our Lady of Holy Death. Santa Muerte will help anyone who offers devotion and as such is particularly popular with the most marginalised in society – queer people, the destitute, drug dealers. It makes sense for the Mexican criminals to visit the shrine, although the way it is presented does play into old racist fears of foreigners and their “barbaric” religions.
• Walter makes himself a sandwich and decides to remove the crusts – this is how Krazy-8 liked to eat them and it reinforces how Walt has changed since coming into contact with the criminal underworld.
• I know some of you love the scene in the gym where Walt tries to downplay the deaths of 167 airplane passengers but it doesn’t do anything for me. I find the tone weirdly comedic (the student saying he should get an A because of the crash or the principal scolding a girl for mentioning God) and I don’t think the acting is especially good either.

Caballo sin Nombre

Jesse has left rehab and decides to get his old house back. Meanwhile, Walter is full of self-pity after Skyler rejected him, leaving him unable to see his children.

This is a very slight episode of Breaking Bad – nothing much happens beyond Jesse buying a house and one of the most memed moments in the entire show. Out of curiosity, I looked up who wrote the script and…

The main thing I took from this story is how Skyler has alienated herself from the rest of her family. Throwing Walt out of the house and keeping the children from him makes perfect sense, but Skyler is unable to justify her behaviour to anyone else – obviously she doesn’t want the world to know that her husband is a drug dealer, but she doesn’t have a strategy to get people on her side beyond ultimatums and refusing to discuss the matter with Hank and Marie. Walt Jr. responds by rejecting his “Flynn” moniker and running away to be with his father. I don’t think Skyler has a lot of options available to her, but she seems naive about what it will take to restrain the kind of man Walt is becoming.

The only other thing of note is how much the threat of divorce has damaged Walter’s ego. We discussed in a previous review how Walt loves being a family man, and that theme is reinforced here. Walt is genuinely distraught when Saul visits him and laments how “I’ve lost my family. Everything that I care about.” One of the ideas the writers explore at the start of Season 3 is whether or not Walter can go back to his old life. At this point in time, Walt is torn between his drug money (something that he couldn’t bring himself to destroy in the last episode) and his need to be an admired father – unable to reconcile the two, he is full of self-pity and grief.

Personally, I think Walter could have redeemed himself – he would have to atone for the terrible things he has done, give up a lot of power and control, but he could do it. Unfortunately, that is not the path that Walter will decide to take…

Odds and Ends

• For the first two seasons, Breaking Bad used a real house – 322 16th St SW, Albuquerque – as Jesse’s residence, filming multiple scenes inside the property. When the building was sold and remodeled in 2009, the crew had to recreate the interiors on a sound stage. They explained away any discrepancies by introducing the plot point of Jesse’s parents completely renovating the house.
• It is a minor spoiler but we won’t see Jesse’s parents again.4With the exception of El Camino I don’t think that they needed to be written out of the show, but it does mean that Walt is now the sole authority figure in Jesse’s life.
• We are reintroduced to Mike, playing in a park with his granddaughter, and I don’t particularly care for this scene. I really enjoyed Mike’s gruff, no-nonsense attitude in ABQ (Series 2, Episode 13) and it feels unnecessary – not to mention a little lazy – to immediately soften his character by revealing that he has children.
• Walt throwing a pizza on the roof became a fan-favourite meme, but unfortunately some idiots decided it would be “fun” to visit Albuquerque and throw their own pizzas at the property. It got so bad that Vince Gilligan had to tell people to stop while the owners eventually erected a six-foot fence around the house.

Please use spoiler tags in the comments, as some Avocadians are watching Breaking Bad for the first time