Monsters of Television

“It’s like you’re eating a scab.”

“Buyout” is not an exciting episode, but you don’t always need excitement. I’ve long maintained, across many posts here, that pacing is important, and episodes don’t always need to be white-knuckled, everything and the kitchen sink of whatever a series’s particular genre is. Breaking Bad often plays that, setting up intricate chess games between Walter and antagonistic forces, but it also knows when to take a step back and breathe, and “Buyout” is all about breathing a bit. Once you use an electrical cord to burn through your restraints, I mean.

And when Breaking Bad breathes, you tend to get episodes like this, as characters try to deal with the fallout of a particularly harrowing experience. I like that the show does this on a regular basis, and after Todd kills a kid in an effort to make sure there are no witnesses and to try and break out of his hum-drum life of robbery and killing insects, it’s kind of needed. But “Buyout” also makes gestures to answer some lingering motivational questions as Walter’s desire to keep the operation going comes under a sort of scrutiny.

I think a lot of people were kind of lukewarm on Walter’s little speech about Gray Matter, and that he refuses to sell his share of the meth business because he sees it as repeating a past mistake. It is on the nose, as it is a character telling us why, exactly, they’re doing something. It’s the world’s worst thing you can do in storytelling, having their characters explain themselves. However, I was really okay with it for a couple of reasons. The first, and most basic reason, is that it’s a nice remind about Gray Matter and how that, among all other of life’s indignities (however real, imagined, or important), is still weighing on Walter. We haven’t seen or heard much from Gray Matter, and so to have it come back like this is, for me, the show coming full circle a bit in its last season. (Remember that “Gray Matter,” the episode, comes on the heels of Crazy 8’s death (not immediately after, but just an episode behind, and right before “Crazy Handful of Nothin'” in season 1).)

 But the other reason I like it is that it just adds to Walter’s mania. On Twitter this morning, I likened Walter’s various explanations for why he’s cooking meth (to pay for cancer bills, because he’s in massive debt, to build an empire, because he once walked away from massive amounts of money) to Iago in Othello, a character routinely noted for his lack of clear motivations. Now this may or may not be completely apt comparison since so much of Walter’s behavior, at least to us, is clearly based on pride, but I tend to agree with Jaime Weinman (who, disclosure, was agreeing with me about the Iago comparison) that Walter may not know his on motivations, or even care what they are at this point. He just knows he wants to do this, he will find any rationalization that keeps his allies near him (as his entire speech to Jesse is intended to achieve), and whatever that rationalization is at that moment, that’s what his motivation is for continuing to cook.

It says more about what Walter believes the person wants or needs to hear about who he is (a man providing to his family for Skyler, a man in debt to Saul and Mike, a kingpin to Jesse), than it does about why Walter thinks he’s doing this. This has been a constant thing for Walter as he shifts through identities and roles in his life, play-acting the husband, the teacher, the cancer patient (his “fugue state”). And he rattles off motivation, I think it’s safe to say that Walter still doesn’t know who the hell he is, and that’s the man we saw celebrating his 53rd birthday at Denny’s, alone, with a very big gun.

So while that speech may not have worked for folks, the dinner scene immediately following it likely did. It’s the most Aaron Paul we’ve gotten all season (at least it feels like it anyway), and it’s pure gold. Jesse’s trapped in a situation that he totally doesn’t understand, and tries his damnedest to make sense of it. His rambling about the delicious green beans and the perilous promises of frozen lasagnas, reminded me of a kid caught in the middle of a fight between his parents. Indeed, it’s been a long road, but Walter’s surrogate son (I don’t even like calling Jesse that any longer, to be honest, because he’s not; he’s just another pawn) has finally sat down at the White table, with Skyler, and shared a meal. And it’s every bit as awful as I think we knew it would be.

The rest of the episode is very much place-setting feeling as we meet Declan, the man who would buy the trio’s meth business, and will likely play an important part over the two remaining episodes of the summer (if not into next summer). But we’ll hold off on discussing that until we see how things go next week.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• I didn’t even talk about Todd, but he was put off screen so quickly that I kind of forgot about him by the end of the episode. Along those lines, I loved the routineness of the cold open. No need to mention the acid. The plastic barrel. That’s all we need to know.
• Some folks found the train to be too much, but I (oddly) found Walter burning off the zip tie cuffs to be just a bit too contrived. I’m really weird.
• I love that Saul and Mike get a restraining order against the DEA. I mean, it’s just brilliant.
• Jesse + dead kid = crazy guilt plots. I like that we sidestepped that to Jesse just wanting to take action to get out. I like that. And it kept the plot moving a bit, too.