Monsters of Television

“It’s for defense. Defense.”

Most shows have what we in the television-snark game call a “breather” episode after a showing like Breaking Bad had last week. What Jesse ending up actually doing (I didn’t believe it until I saw the body), what Gus did in response, what showed us a normally unflappable Mike can, well, be flapped — I think we might all need an extra week to process.

But Breaking Bad is different. They don’t have typical “breather” episodes per se. This is a show dedicated to not getting too out of hand with its fantastical premise. With how far Walt and Jesse have come in the past three seasons and change, the show could easily spin out of control. So, instead, after action-heavy episodes, we get a week to see the characters try to swallow their PTSD (let’s face it: action on this this is horrifyingly traumatic) and struggle back to a stasis. Folks on this show are constantly trying to unsee what they’ve seen/done and we get to watch them suffer the consequences of their world.

So, you see, the show doesn’t really give the audience a “breather” episode like other series. It just makes a viewer suffer differently this week than s/he did last week. And I dig that about you, Breaking Bad.

While wearing a Kenny Rogers shirt and confidently eating pancakes at Denny’s, Jesse summed up their situation last week with a nonchalance that concerned me. “You’re not a killer” has been a theme pertaining to the kid for three seasons now. Anytime he’s charged with murdering someone or compelled to vigilante justice, Walt always steps in and takes care of it for him, from the very first episode forward. I was afraid Gale’s death split the last strand of humanity left in Jesse. He seemed unaffected, unburdened by the gruesome cold-blooded, horror-movie-like slaying performed in front of him, even though any other time he was even close to manslaughter he essentially cradled his knes in a corner with some substance to anaesthetise the pain of living.

After a cold opening where Walt buys his snubnose revolver (his way of dealing with the trauma is to prepare for his future), Jesse does seem different but still tries to escape the pain of his situation, at first through bass, then through glass (to the downfall of his friends), then through a bombastic party that he never wants to end, even when faced with the physical representation of a Weeknd song. It’s all distraction. In fact, now that Jesse has matured and his situation is so much more perilous, how he deals with the pain is that much complex. No longer is it about hiding and silently crying himself through the PTSD. Now it’s about drowning it in a world of excess. He has all the money in the world and pays the consequences for it. And, because of that, he can’t even enjoy it the way he’s always wanted to. Fitting for him to curl up next to his speaker to dilute the noise in his head with the music that tends to celebrate what he can’t enjoy.

Funny thing about the music in this episode: it’s everywhere. This is a show that, generally, isn’t into soundtrack, diegetic or no. Ambient noise, sure, but there are far more musical (or television) cues in this episode than usual, starting with Jesse’s solo audience to his new soundsystem, though Mike watching Saul on the television (interestingly, we watch the entire commercial with Mike), and into the nondiegetic industrial chaos in Walt’s head.

Walt and Jesse usually only have their post-rock-sounding feedback soundtrack during moments of extreme internalized emotion, whether that be hearing a diagnosis of cancer or fondly remembering a lover through her last remaining cigarette butt, but I don’t recall so many of these cues in a single episode and certainly not as organized as they are here. They happen exclusively for Walt, established when the new Watcher (to steal some Buffy lingo) arrives. At first it’s a cold, mechancial crescendo of chaotic clanging and breaking, as if the noises in the lab start to beat with his heart in different time signatures. It’s different than his usual feedback tone, more frenetic. It fades as Walt realizes the Watcher isn’t Gus and he can take his hand off the gun.

It’s used as a narrative device, though, when Walt shows up at Gus’s house. The same noise starts up, industrial and, now, out of place since it’s outside the lab. And then he puts on the Heisenberg hat. The chaos of fear starts to line up into a rhythm, driving, pounding. As Heisenberg starts to move toward the house, the soundtrack is more focused and in the signature of a march. It’s only until he gets the phone call that he’s been made that the entire soundtrack stops. Walt can neither let the fear reduce him to scared idiot nor power him into exacting revenge for his professional castration. The moment evaporates and he goes back to his car.

The details of this show are what impress me more than anything, from the perfectly-selected cold openings to little bits that allow characters to be multi-dimensional, no matter how small their roles. While this episode didn’t do a lot in terms of moving along plot (it mostly illuminated the consequences of last week), it’s still the best thing on television right now (albeit a lowered bar with the summer) and the episodes go by too quick. I need more.

Other things:

• Where the heck does Skinny Pete come up with a phrase like “fleet of foot?”
• “Learn to take yes for an answer.”
• I think they made Marie likable just in time to hurt us. Finally, I feel something for this woman and it’s cringing at her having to deal with Hank being a jackass prick. Someone needs to knock him out with one of his “minerals” (they’re friggin’ rocks).
• Other than suffering his PTSD, Jesse does still have a shred of humanity left in him and that’s the presence of a child. Show him a kid and he’ll sober up all quick-like and turn into Upstanding Jesse (you remember him — last seen talking to his dad on the lawn just before he bought his parents’ house?). Brock brings out the adult in Jesse. He has everything crashing down on him, he’s literally having a pity party for his collapsed life, and yet he still manages to offer sage advice and monetary assitance to a recovering addict single mother.
• I still hate Skyler. What part of “I’ll take care of it” did she not understand? She still thinks of Walt as someone that needs to be taken care of, that needs someone to stand up for him and handle the minutae of his life. Maybe she needs to meet Heisenberg.
• The party scene reminded me of the Spring sequence in Requiem for a Dream except that it had a style all its own and, of course, a different tone altogether. In the movie, that is when things are still hopeful. In Breaking Bad, things are about as hopeless as they can get. Jesse has just about lost any kind of control he had left in his life. Their party is a celebration; his is anything but.
• Good to see you for a second, Walt Jr.