Series 4, Episode 11 and Episode 12
“Crawl Space” and “End Times”

This rambling article is a look at, and celebration of, the antepenultimate and penultimate episodes of Breaking Bad Season 4 with a eye on what they tell us could happen in the season finale and beyond.

“Crawl Space” was like any other episode of Breaking Bad, which is to say it was brilliant. However, it earned its kudos in a different way. For the first two-thirds, it was Breaking Bad as we know it. There was the conclusion to the Cartel massacre with all our guys surviving thanks to Fring’s fastidious preparation. Not only did he set up a field hospital but staffed it with a medical team fluent in our guys’ medical histories, from lifestyles to blood types, and included the blood. There was also some Coen Brothers-esque escapades as Ted went from greedy business man to dead idiot by tripping on his rug while running from  two goons who weren’t even chasing him. Still, that rug, it really tied the room together, did it not?

These scenes were  hugely different in tone but that’s to be expected in Breaking Bad. What made the last part of the show so exciting, so terrifying and so different was the sudden acceleration in pace.

In the course of fourteen minutes screen time the following happened: Walter White cooked a batch of crystal meth in his superlab. Walt realised Jesse, his former partner was also using the lab to cook meth, and rightly concluded he was no longer of use to the organisation. Walt begged Jesse for help and was denied it when Jesse repeated back to Walt the vicious and heartless words he had recently said to him. Walt was then kidnapped. Walt was taken to the desert and he was sacked by his boss, Gus. Gus told Walt that if he caused any trouble, Walt and his family (infant daughter included) would be killed. Gus also told him that Hank, his DEA agent brother-in-law, was going to be “dealt with.” Walt then drove back to Albuquerque, visited Saul, his crooked lawyer and obtained the phone number for a man who would help them start new lives. Walt also instructed Saul to call in an anonymous tip to the DEA, warning of the hit that Gus was going to put out on Hank, and thus knowingly invited Gus to carry out the murderous threat on his family. Walt then returned home to find that the majority of his earnings were gone, which meant he and his family’s only chance of escaping was gone, and to top it off, the money had been taken by his wife and given to Ted, the man she cheated on him with.

He was doing his day job and then he, and everyone he loves,  stood a very good chance of imminent death. Fourteen minutes.

These plotlines were building all season, all series really, and now they were spent. The questions had answers. Would the emergency escape plan that was mentioned ever be used? Would Jesse side with Gus against Walt? And the biggest question of all, how would it end between Gus and Walt?

When Walter had Gale murdered, it seemed inevitable that Gus would try to kill Walt. But likewise, it seemed unlikely that Walt could live without Gus being dead. Someone had to go and as Walt’s the star of ‘Breaking Bad’, it wasn’t going to be him that would die, was it? Then somewhere around the middle of Season 4, Gus started becoming a much more sympathetic character. First off, he gave Jesse the respect that we hoped Walt would give him. Sure, Gus was being hugely manipulative, but we couldn’t deny he saved Jesse from the destructive, nihilistic guilt that Gale’s murder had instilled in him. Second, we had a Gustavo Fring: Super Villain origin story in which we saw Gus witness the senseless execution of his friend, Max by Don Eladio’s cartel. Gus paid for and supported Max to get his doctorate and now he was dead and it was all for nothing. Who can forget the terror on Gus’ face? This man knowingly walked into sniper fire and now here he looked like he was going to cry in his lovely little brown suit. Finally, we witnessed Gus enact his twenty-years-in-the-making revenge on Don Eladio and his gang. Who amongst us wasn’t in awe of Gus at that point? What a champ!

And so, for almost eleven episodes, rather than build up the animosity between Gus and Walt for an end of series reckoning, the show relegated the beef to a background hum, everyone got on with other stuff, and the audience got to see a nicer side of Gus. Gilligan and co. made him likable. They spent screen time fleshing out the character. Why do this for a dead man walking? Could all this mean a resolution to the conflict that didn’t mean death? ‘Fraid not.

The moment Gus said “infahnt dorta!” in his death threat to Walt, I’m sure images of Victor’s throat flooded our collective memory. That’s who we’re dealing with. The other stuff, ‘Crawl Space’ puts that into a proper context. Whether or not Gus survives, we are in no longer in any doubt about who he is.

‘End Times’ builds on this. What we learn here is that Gus has been using Jesse all this time, not only as a way to get a loyal first class meth cook but as a way to finish Walt off. Here Gus activated his ‘Manchurian candidate’ in one of the most convoluted ways imaginable: Walt created the ricin poison for Jesse to use on Gus, who knew about it through covert surveillance, then secretly had it stolen from Jesse and given to Brock, predicting Jesse would notice it was missing and think Walt, who, to Jesse’s knowledge, was the only other person to know about it, had used it on the child to get back at him. Gus is, and this might be the first accurate use of this phrase, an evil genius.

The last scene of ‘End Times’ sees Walt trying to kill Gus with a car bomb, however Gus’s whiskers twitch before he gets to the car and leaves on foot. As Walt says earlier in the episode “[Gus is] always ten steps ahead.” Walt having Gus as a nemesis is no accident. Gus can now be defined by his ruthlessness and intellect. What other character could this describe? Yep, Heisenberg! On one level Season 4 is about Walt trying to survive Gus but more importantly, it’s about Walt figuring out who he is and what he wants.  Is he Walt, the guy who loves his son, who gets satisfaction from nurturing Jesse, who can get caught up in the beauty of chemistry in an almost spiritual way? Or is he Heisenberg, unwielding, remorseless, a man with an iron will who can turn his ferocious mind to criminality just as easily as he can science?

Predictions and Expectations of Breaking Bad Season 4 Finale.

‘End Times’ left the story wide open. Plot-wise it could go almost anywhere. If I were to make guesses, I’d soon run out of steam as I got overwhelmed with unknowns…

Walt blows the car any way. He knows the ABQ DEA are on a state of high alert because of the hit out on Hank. He knows Hank suspects Fring but can’t find proof. Walt detonates the bomb on Gus’ car so Hank’s suspicions are taken seriously, and therefore Gus will be jammed up with police attention. This may also be perceived by the DEA as being connected to the hit on Hank and so the police protection might continue a little longer and thus keep his family secure. After that, who knows? Mike returns from the Mexican Shed Hospital and…?

It’s easier to think about the future of Breaking Bad in terms of its themes and characters.

This battle with Gus will be total chess game. This battle will not be ended by the likes of Ted’s deus ex machina rug. Walt’s intellectual ability/pride will be put to the test. Even if he vanquishes Gus, it may not be a happy ending for Walt.

Skyler is currently pacing around Hank and Marie’s, bumming cigarettes off armed security, and finally coming to realise that not only is Walt’s criminality a lot more dangerous than he made out, but that he has put every member of the family in mortal danger. Will Skyler stay complicit, does she have a choice?

For Walt, his smackdown from Jesse and Jesse’s skill in the lab, may humble him. As we saw when he was stoned on painkillers and booze, Walt genuinely cares for Jesse. Were Jesse a stranger, Walt may get threatened and nasty. But his affection for Jesse may see Walt transfer some of his ample pride on to his protégé.

Walt’s pride means he’s not one to talk with others about his hopes and fears. That is, unless he’s been beaten senseless by his surrogate son and is stoned on painkillers and booze in front of his actual son. At that point, we hear he is terrified of seeming helpless and pathetic. This was how he remembers his own father who died of a debilitating illness. Perhaps Walter Jr.’s acceptance of his tears will give Walt the confidence the open up a little more.

Gus. He lives. Or dies. Breaking Bad has never been a show to drag things out. Similarly, I can’t see Gus going off somewhere to live to fight another day. I think the character would cast a shadow over everything that would keep the audience’s mindset in that battle. Gus waited 20 years and established a drug empire to get Don Eladio. Now he’s minted he could surely hire someone to kill Walter and everyone else. So one way or another I think there will be a final resolution to this sooner rather than later.

Beyond Season 4

During its run, Breaking Bad has taken great pleasure in snatching away justifications for Walt’s actions. The cancer came and went. Money used to be an issue, it was needed to keep his family going in the event of his death. They became millionaires a while ago and now they own a successful car wash business. Walt was teacher and cooked meth on the side, now he’s a straight up criminal. Walter is a man inclined towards self-delusion but he’s continually running out of places to hide. All this considered, I think Walter’s outing as a drug producer could happen long before the show wraps. Who would Walt be if he’s family knew he made drugs. sold drugs, made bombs, killed people? Would the pride that he takes in those achievements still have value?

 

 

My reaction to the Lost finale seems to be similar to nearly everyone else’s: Really enjoyed it, too emotional to care about all the unresolved mysteries –and glad about that (at least, for now).

However, there was one moment in ‘The End’ when it was as if I’d been run over in my wheelchair or teamed up with a maternity specialist to trick a vending machine. In that moment, I saw it all. I saw how Lost was going to end. I saw what the message of the show was. I suddenly understood what The Light was, why Jacob needed to protect it, and why Smokey wanted it extinguished. It was as if I was a fried chicken tycoon kissing a mental patient on the beach. And this was the moment: After Desmond pulls the plug out of The Island, Jack punches the Locke-Dressed Monster in the face and he bleeds. Smokey has become mortal.

Don’t you see? The Light was not keeping the Earth alive, it was sustaining divinity! The Light went out but no one died. All that happened was that Smokey became human. The Light, therefore, is simply a manifestation of people’s belief in the divine.

It’s just like The Bible says, and I’m paraphrasing: “In the beginning God created the Earth. It was dark so he put on the lights.” Note: The Earth was made in the dark. This explains Norwich. Anyway, God’s Earth begins with The Light and now Lost continues the metaphor and writes the final chapter in which humans switch off The Light and take full responsibility for themselves.

Freewill at last, freewill at last, fuck Jacob Almighty and his, “I’m a terrific fellow and so I’m giving you a choice: one of you four people has to commit to centuries, maybe an eternity, of guarding this Island, or else everyone everywhere will die forever.” What sort of a choice is that?

Jacob wanted The Light to survive because it was the source of his godly powers and Smokey wanted The Light extinguished because it stole his humanity. It also explains why the audience’s relationship to Jacob went from one of enchanted mystery to questioning the direction of his moral compass all the way to dismissive contempt as we learnt that he chose to maintain a loving relationship with the woman who he knew murdered his mother all because she said everyone else in the world was bad. That’s a spectacular dereliction of thought. Thou Island’s holy and blessed protector is a fucking idiot. In your face, deities!

Why did Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, with unblinking conviction, knowingly entice millions of people all over the world with all sorts of cryptic happenings and assurances of revelations, only to renege on it all? So they could say that, like the Bible, like the Koran, like all other religious texts, Lost is at best an epic parable for how humans should live their lives and at worse a story which makes no sense whatsoever should logical thought be applied to it. Lost is ultimately an audacious and courageous critique of religious narratives that made its point by demagoguery, by using its tantalising mysteries and promises of answers to take its audience through a process of indoctrination.

This paradigm shift also goes someway to making sense of Lost’s constant, contradictory use of the terms “good” and “bad”. No one is ever purely one or the other. These terms are transient, elusive, and at worst, their simplistic use leads to thoughtless judgements rather than understanding or forgiveness. Yet, we, the Lost audience accepted the idea that there might be definitively “good” people and “bad” people despite everyone all around often and openly lying, betraying, beating and even killing each other.

And why were certain characters named after great scientists or philosophers? Because those historical figures exemplify man striving to better understand the world and themselves rather than abdicate humanity’s unique gift of intellectual thought.

The point of the characters’ journeys was to empower them to change their ways, to reject the flaws that defined them and fulfil their potential. And to do that they had to understand that they alone controlled their lives and no one else was going to save them.

So Lost is the story of humanity’s progression. The Island was the location where Man confronted Gods, and where faith is finally redirected back to ourselves to give us the power to make the most of our lives and each other.

Except it wasn’t. I just thought it was for a few moments. Then dead people realised they were dead people and went to Heaven. Oh well.

I’ve said it before, House improves vastly when it ditches its formula. This penultimate episode of season 6 kicks off with House sitting down for a therapy session with Dr. Nolan* –remember him? He’s the shrink that treated House in the feature length season premiere in which our diagnostic diva was an in-patient at Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital.

*Good to see Andre Braugher again after his brilliant turn in the first season of Men of a Certain Age. If you haven’t seen it, go watch it. Now.

Since then House has been making small efforts towards happiness. However, this episode sees House’s angry, self-destructive behaviour return only he doesn’t know why. Hugh Laurie does fine work here, pulling off the difficult task of allowing the ultra-proud House to admit he needs help without turning him into a desperate fool. And so he and Dr. Nolan talk through House’s week and trying to figure out what’s going wrong with the genius doc. It all goes a bit Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as House and Dr. Nolan, a.k.a. The Ghost of Psyche Past inhabit the locations of these memories and discuss them retrospectively as they happen around them.

“Baggage” is also reminiscent of The West Wing episode, “Noël”, in which Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman talks to a councillor about his erratic behaviour. Much like House, Josh is invited to talk about his week and, with help, comes to recognise the heightened meaning certain people and events have for him. Once these triggers are understood for what they are, control is restored.

Done right, it’s a compelling way to tell a story. The best stories are character driven. This narrative technique puts one person front and centre and invites the audience to join them in a journey towards enlightenment. Also, viewers will naturally be reading the show: interpreting actions, assigning motives, deciphering relationships etc. Aside from all the clever metatextual shenanigans, by having the characters investigate themselves in the same way as the audience might, our automatic response to the drama is promoted and we become much more active viewers, who are asked to question how and why they/we apply meaning -much like therapy itself.

So this is a good episode. I know I keep saying this but House needs to mix it up more often. Why does the end of every act have to be the guest star having “unexpected” medical emergency? Focus on character, and by that I mean House, Wilson and Cuddy. Not Chase or Thirteen or Foreman. Foreman’s as well-rounded as Picasso’s cutlery drawer. Let the character of House be the puzzle to be solved, not the guest star’s freaky ailment.

Earlier in the season there was a Wilson-centric episode of House. In this day in the life of Wilson we saw how the even-tempered oncologist’s acute compassion makes him a better doctor. But we also got to see House working from the outside. And it was funny. As always the crippled misanthrope’s life-saving techniques ranged from the counter-intuitive to the ridiculous but it was the self-absorbed arrogance and urgency of the team in which the comedy lay. The rest of the hospital didn’t care all that much and it suggested that House’s unpopularity might not be because he’s a miserable manipulative arsehole, but because he and his team run around like self-important bigheads.

It was a good episode and not just because we saw House from a new angle or because Wilson is an effortlessly likable character, it was good because the formulaic storytelling was suspended for a week. One of House’s biggest flaws has always been its narrow narrative framework. Right from the beginning a formula was established and it has rarely deviated from it…

Cold open: Some people are doing something. One person is slightly exerted, another seemingly healthy person goes to help. The healthy person’s ears suddenly flash in rainbow colours while the soundtrack shrieks louder and louder until the credits. The credits: A beautiful mix of artistic anatomical drawings and, er, a rowing boat? The rest of the episode: Team House brainstorm possible illnesses while the crippled genius dishes out invasive personal insults in between dismissing and belittling his staff’s suggestions. The scene ends when a suggestion cannot be easily refuted. They run tests, they try some medicine, it makes the patient’s belly button fart pink bubbles and the soundtrack starts shrieking again (repeat two to five times). More whiteboard, more insults. Cuddy says no to something. Wilson offers up some modest insight into House’s personality. At minute 38 of 42, House looks momentarily earnest, mumbles something cryptic, cures the patient and ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ by The Rolling Stones, cue end credits.

Boring. It always has been. The character of House alone makes the show work. Without exception, the apprentices are one-dimensional and often tedious, and Wilson and Cuddy don’t usually have enough screen time per episode to matter very much. But tonight Cuddy had her own episode and it was Exhibit C in the case for changing House’s format.

Exhibit A was the season 6 opener: a two-hour episode set entirely outside Princeton-Plainsboro and, with the exception of House, an entire new cast of characters. (See, I told you House carries the show.) The eponymous doc was a patient in a mental hospital no less. Without his ability to heal he had to adapt, we saw a new House. Exhibit B was Wilson’s episode and to a lesser degree we also got a new take on House. Exhibit C, brought very little new, even with regard to Cuddy. The cold open was a montage of Cuddy getting up at 5am to do exercise before sorting her baby out before work. It was meant to be a brutally effective depiction of what modern women must do to maintain career and family simultaneously but it was a piss-poor cliché of a doctor who thinks it’s appropriate to practice medicine with her boobies bursting out. But there was one element that had value in relation to the series as a whole; we got to understand why Cuddy enables House. Cuddy was renegotiating the hospital’s contract with a greedy insurance firm and in the battle we saw her righteous self-belief, her moral imperative to do good rather than compromise in resigned pragmatism. Cuddy is more like House than we realised.

What One Flew Over the Cripple’s Nest, Wilson’s World and Cuddyvision demonstrate is that House needs a new format and that it can survive and even thrive on such changes if the writing is good enough. If it remains the same the show will merely be a lame doc session.

I watched about six episodes of Season 7. Jack was in Washington defending torture on C-SPAN then Tony Almeida showed up and it turned out, not dead! However, he’s a bad guy! Except he wasn’t! He was a good guy pretending to be a bad guy. He’d been working undercover with Bill Buchanan who managing his own private CTU and dressing like he’s about to give the keynote at Macworld. Anyway, everyone shouted “The C.I.P. device! The C.I.P. device!” for six hours so I gave up and dug out my old VHS copies of Desmond’s to remind myself why I like TV in the first place.

One year later Season 8 begins, to which I say: There’s an old African saying, if you sit on a rotten tree-stump to eat paw-paw, your bum will get wet as well as your mouth.

Wikipedia says that Season 7 ended with Jack getting the human form of Mad Cow Disease and being saved by his estranged daughter’s stem cells. (Poor Elisha Cuthbert, back again to pay the bills. If only you were a decent actor, you could be banging Everybody Loves Raymond like Nina) Oh, and Tony was a bad guy all along. Except in seasons 1 to 5.

Season 8: Jack’s on a sofa with his granddaughter in New York. “You don’t look like a granddad,” says the little twerp. Fifteen minutes later David Aceveda, the cocksucking captain from The Shield knocks for the big twerp and says, “my mates are going to kill President Alan Queidajad before he signs the peace accord that will destroy all naughtiness throughout all mankind, give me immunisation or else.” Jack hardly bothers with his “I’m too old for this shit” routine and calls up all new CTU. They’ve got computers in glass tables now but they’re rubbish because you can’t play 2-player Pacman on them. Chloe’s working there. She’s especially cranky, probably because a sore neck from staring into her desk. Jack has to take Captain Cocksuck to a helipad five blocks away so CTU can collect him. In the end Horace Goodspeed bazookas the chopper and kills Shieldface.

Same as it ever was. See you for Season 9. That is, unless the Dharma Initiative have branched out to political assassinations…

Mark-Paul Gosselaar, better known as Zack Morris from Saved By The Bell, plays a scruffy public defender who cares so much about his clients that he cries before the court case begins. Why wait for injustice? Who needs a dramatic climax for an excuse to sob? Not lawyer Jerry Kellerman. So here at last we have a protagonist we can root for: a trampy little cry baby.

At first I thought the tears were a joke, that this Manhattan legal drama was actually a comedy. But no, they’re serious. The overbearing soundtrack tries to browbeat viewers into emotional submission -CRY! EMPATHISE! -but the intrusiveness of it makes the show seem like a parody. You’ll start out like a visitor in an art gallery, cackling just in case it’s all a clever joke, but soon you’ll be silent in disbelief at just how clichéd and earnest these twerps are.

Jane Kaczmarek, a.k.a. Malcolm Indamidel’s mother, is billed as “Crazy” Judge Kessler who holds up proceedings to water her plants. But if only her antics were always this benign. Episode One sees her sentence a man to seven years jailtime for carrying a Swiss Army Knife. Then a gay man kisses her neck and she lets him off. And here was me thinking that by “crazy” they meant eccentric. She’s fucking crackers. Mentally ill, irrational, and certainly not fit to preside over legal matters. Neither is Tiny Tears, if you can’t dress yourself and find yourself crying all the time for no reason you should be under psychiatric care.

Raising the Bar and Mark-Paul Gosselaar’s character and performance is so bad that former Saved By The Bell colleague Dustin ‘Screech’ Diamond -a man who filmed himself drawing a mustache with his shit-caked knob on a girl’s face and then leaked the tape to get publicity -seems more likable, more dignified and less embarrassing. And who would have thought that Steven Bochco, the man who brought you Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, and Hooperman could be capable of something so completely irredeemable? Most disheartening is the news that this pilot got 7.7 millon viewers, a record for basic cable. This means it’ll take that much longer before it’s cancelled. Now who’s sobbing?