Breaking Bad Review: Leaves of Grass

Wow, just wow. What a great ending to a great season for Breaking Bad. I’m so depressed we need to wait a year to find out what’s going on. Here are some thoughts about this week’s episode:

1. The Czech Republic idea from Lydia sounded like a terrible idea. I thought it might be a set up since Lydia seemed like she wanted to get out of the meth game. Once again I was wrong, I guess she really needed the money and I definitely didn’t see that coming.

2. In regards to the ricin, it did come back into play as I predicted, even though Walt never used it. It also makes sense that he would try to kill Lydia once she gave him the names, just another loose end to tie up – she was totally right in her suspicion. But the fact that they spent time showing Walt putting it back in the wall means that they will definitely be showing it again.

3. I don’t know why I’m still shocked when Walt does something incredibly ballsy in the face of intimidation. I should have learned my lesson with the whole “Say my name” scene last week, but I still couldn’t believe he stood up to those nazi skinhead guys who he knew were stone cold killers. “It can be done, its just whether you are the guy to do it,” was such a great line. Walt is the freaking man.

4. Playing jazz music during the murder montage was a very strange choice – it was music you would usually hear if someone was walking through a park or something. Also, the crazy amount of stabs that killed each prisoner was absolutely crazy. I’m not sure if this was what Vince Gilligan was thinking but this definitely felt like an homage to the Godfather for me. Michael Corleone kills the heads of all the five families at once. He does this because if one or a few of the heads was killed and the others found out, they would take measures to protect themselves or go into hiding. This was Walt’s same motivation here. If one or a few of the prisoners was killed, the other ones would make deals in prison or with the police to protect themselves. That’s why Walt was so insistent on having it done all at once. Genius plan Walt, pure genius.

5. I really liked the long montage of Walt cooking, making the handoffs with Lydia and getting filthy rich – even though it was one of the longest montages I’ve ever seen on TV. And although there are other factors that made Walt decide to throw in the towel, which I will talk about in a minute, I feel like once he had this whole system worked out and it was going smoothly for a while it started to feel like a job for him, like any other job. He started to think about where this was going. What is the end game? I have my empire, now what do I do?

6. I know I mentioned this a few weeks ago, but Skyler, your plan for keeping the kids at Hank and Maries was terrible. How long did you think that would last? Way to think things through.

7. When Skyler said, “I want my kids back, I want my life back…how big does this pile have to be?,” that was really the turning point for Walt. He had started to have his doubts about where this road would lead him and Skyler gave him the answer: nowhere. I also think that her reaching out to him after all he’s done and pleading for her life back finally got through to him. Someone online calculated how much money was in that pile and it was around $60 million dollars. That’s definitely enough to retire a few times over.

8. So is the cancer back? I think the fist size mark in the paper towel dispenser is telling us that it is. This must be the final straw to make Walt get out of the game. He wants to make things right before he dies, that’s why he’s quitting, and that’s why he went over to Jesse’s to reminisce and give him the money he earned. There’s a great picture I found of Walt on the MRI table in this episode and it mirrors an exact shot from the pilot episode of the series:

9. Jesse definitely thought Walt was there to kill him, and that they might have a shootout. I think we were all surprised to see Walt be so nice to Jesse, talking about all their old times together. I also think Jesse thought that bag was going to be filled with body parts or something, that’s why he was so freaked out while opening it. I have no idea what kind of role Jesse is going to play in the last eight episodes.

So this brings us to the scene everyone is talking about. Just to be clear so there’s no confusion, the message written on the book said, “To my other favorite W.W. It’s an honor working with you. Fondly, G.B.” This was a present Gale gave to Walt when he was training Gale how to cook. The book is by Walt Whitman, which is why he says my other favorite W.W., and of course the G.B. at the bottom stands for Gale Boetticher. Hank being a smart guy, having known who Gale was, and having asked Walt who W.W. was realizes that it could possibly be Walt.  So the Internet is rampant with theories about how this will go down, and I’m not sure which one to buy into.

What I do know is that if Hank arrests Walt, he will destroy his career and family. The DEA will realize that he trusted Walt, gave him access to the DEA office, let him in on case information over the years since he was a trusted family member, and he will lose his job. Marie and Skyler will not understand why Hank had to turn Walt in and they will never talk to him again. So either way it will not end well for Hank.

Also, there is a lot of talk that Hank might kill himself which I could totally see happening. When they served the arrest warrant for Mike, there was a black and white movie on talking about a cop getting shot. Also, when he got Walt coffee when Walt removed the bugs from his office, he made a gesture shooting himself in the head. Both of these are strong messages that support Hank killing himself. But then again, it could just be a diversion. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. See you in a year!!!