Monsters of Television

“Give me a break. You guys were going to murder me. I thought you guys were professionals.”

After Lydia mentioned the train tanker of methylamine, my first thought was, “AMC must’ve wanted a train episode to coincide with the premiere of Hell On Wheels.”

My second thought was, “There was a train whistle at the end of the cold open. I wonder if that’s connected. Man, I really hope the kid stays away.”

Dammit.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it because it’s true and displays the depths of my affection: I. Love. Heist. Plots. So I was rather delighted when Lydia suggested that Walter and his crew rob a freight train. Like Mike, however, I was really skeptical of anyone robbing a train this day in age and doing it without getting caught or without killing someone. It’s pretty much impossible, really, even if there are only two guys on the train. It made the heist that Jesse developed, siphoning off the tanker and then filling it with water to mask the loss, all the more clever.

And it hits all those notes of careful timing, an unforeseen complication (damn that guy with the giant truck and grill!), and, in the end, just barely getting away with it by the skin of their teeth. And it’s what this show does well, has always done well: We end up rooting for the sociopath who is keeping his wife hostage steal nearly 10,000 gallons of the chemical that he needs to keep his business/nascent empire going. It suckers us into that vortex of rooting for Walter after spending much of this season giving us the reasons why we shouldn’t root for him. Hell, even in this episode, we watch him expertly manipulate Hank so he can bug the office and the computer. He’s loathsome.

So it was oddly…refreshing (in the least positive way possible) that the series got back to its strength. And then it just did what this season has done: Made us remember that we’re rooting for horrible horrible HORRIBLE people. Let me copy and paste from my notes:

• Jesse and Todd scramble to replace everything before the train gets moving again….Jesse lays on the track and Todd jumps off
• “YEAH BITCH!”
• AND THERE’S THE KID FROM THE OPENING, WHO WAVES, CONFUSED LOOKING. Todd waves back.
• ….AND TODD JUST UPS AND SHOOTS THE KID. HOLY SHIT.

Exactly.

The episode thrills us and then is all, “Remember that you’re cheering on people who make meth and were moments away from killing an innocent woman due to paranoia. Don’t forget that.”

I don’t know what Todd’s motivation is for killing that kid, I suspect it’s a desire to fit in and get away from being an exterminator and small-time house robber, but I know that we’ve hit the tipping point for the rest of the season. Jesse does not like when people mess with kids, and is not going to sit still for this. Given that he’s been the mediating influence when his fathers fight, I can only imagine how much this will tear apart the delicate triumvirate that has been created. I suspect things may hinge on where Mike falls on killing a kid (I can’t imagine he’ll be thrilled either). But it’s difficult to deny Walter’s single-mindedness about this new enterprise. “Nothing stops this train,” he said last week (Oooh boy…), and that may mean that even killing a perfectly innocent kid just out joyriding on his dirtbike doesn’t register as that much of a thing. I mean, really, the could just dump the kid’s body in the hole the plastic bins and call it a day.

Todd’s random, sudden act of violence also brings full circle a lot of the anxieties that rankled Walter’s previous employers. Much like Lydia’s erratic and desperate behavior (I love her more and more each appearance; “Asshole!”), Todd’s shooting of the kid is the move of a rank amateur, and Walter and Jesse know something about being amateurs that tend to cause unpredictable things to people in position of power. It’s what caught Tucco off-guard and it’s what stalled Gus from working with Walter so long. And while I take no pleasure in the death of a child, there’s a certain sense of fulfillment in seeing these two get a taste of their own behavior.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• “Everyone sounds like Meryl Streep with a gun to their heads.”
• “Like Jesse James?” Man. Do you guys want me to research Jesse James or something?
• “Out burying bodies?” “Robbing a train.” GODDAMMIT, SHOW. (Also: Love how casually that exchange was delivered by them both.)