One of the most exciting things about this season of Breaking Bad has been watching the transformation of Walter White from formidable drug lord to stooge. It would seem that the transformation is nearly complete, as is made bracingly evident in “Hermanos” in what has to be one of the best cuts the show has ever done: a straight-ahead close-up of Walt getting into his hospital gown just before he’s about to be tested (we find out later his cancer is still in remission), juxtaposed later with a shot from the same angle of Walt donning his lab gear, about to go to work in Gus’s lab. As much as he doesn’t want to admit it, Walt is owned – by his cancer, and by Gus. No matter where he goes or what he does, he’s not in control of whether he lives or dies anymore.
But “Hermanos” isn’t really about Walt. It’s about Gustavo Fring, and the bulk of the episode sets us up for exactly the type of set piece this show has always done so well – a tense, dialogue-heavy confrontation between opposing parties that may or may not end in a moment of explosive violence. This one does, and as a result we now have knowledge of part of the reason Gus is such a fastidious and seemingly unfeeling man: he’s been through a lot. A lot more, in fact, than we’ll probably ever be fully let on to. But what we do know is this: the only reason Don Eladio didn’t kill him along with his partner Max was that he knew Gus’s name from his days in Chile, which would seem to mean that he was involved in some pretty serious stuff. We don’t find out what kind of stuff, and I would be surprised if we ever do.
What this flashback to Gus’s pre-America (and, interestingly, pre-methamphetamine) days tells us is twofold: that his tensions with the cartel go much deeper than simple territory warfare, and that he knows the ins and outs of how to make a drug dealing and manufacturing partnership work better than Walt or Jesse could ever hope to. The relationship between Gus and Max, even when glimpsed for a few minutes, is obviously light years ahead of Walt’s and Jesse’s in terms of productivity and friendliness and, conceivably, this is part of the reason he has seized the opportunity to drive a wedge between Walt and Jesse: he knows a weak partnership when he sees one.
Meanwhile, back in the present, Hank takes matters into his own hands after a dead-end interrogation wherein Gus does his best to convince everyone that he would never have anything to do with drug manufacturing. Hank doesn’t buy it. Walt’s and Hank’s two once very separate worlds keep colliding in increasingly satisfying ways, and this week is no different. Operating under the false assumption that they’re headed to a rock and mineral expo, Walt discovers he’s actually driving Hank to Los Pollos Hermanos, and Hank convinces Walt to attach a low-rent tracking device (“$289 from SkyMall!”) on Gus’s Volvo. He does so, reluctantly and even after Mike pulls up next to them, and in one of the most sad, funny and tense scenes of the entire series, we see Walt as nothing more than a complete pawn. He scrambles inside the restaurant and, with the look of a tattletale child, assures Gus that he would never take such an action; Gus’s fast-food manager façade cracks as he orders Walt to “do it” anyway, and Walt cowers away. What an incredible microcosm of the entirety of season four. Walt has no power to refuse Hank, and neither does he have the resolve to allow Gus to think, even if only for a while, that he has had a hand in assisting the DEA. Pinched between his two worlds that can never collide, Walt can do nothing but obey.
He then speeds to Jesse’s house (newly redecorated) in order to convince him to move up the date of the planned assassination. The matter is dire, says Walt: “Hank catching Gus means Hank catching us.” But, as we saw during the rehab group in “Problem Dog,” trying to convince Jesse that there’s any sort of moral certainty in the world is going to be a whole lot tougher than Walt would like it to be. Jesse remains typically ambivalent about the whole situation, gets up to go to the bathroom. He leaves his phone behind, a text message is received, and Walt reads it, discovering finally that he may have truly lost his former partner. It’s hard to imagine Walt taking this lying down. Will he take out his anger on Jesse or on Gus? What will be his next move? Will he live by his spoken dictum of seizing control and finally become “the danger” he’s already professed himself to be? I can’t imagine the show will devote much more time to Walter trying to convince Jesse to stay out of bed with Mike and Gus. It seems about the time for him to take control.
The possibilities for how all of this is going to dovetail as we near the final stretch of the season are tantalizing. As the past few episodes have progressed, the magnitude to which things have gotten out of control for Walt is staggering: he used to always be two steps ahead of the game; now he’s saving face by trying to callously goad Jesse into taking revenge for the murder of Andrea’s son. He used to dictate his own terms; now he’s prisoner to a security camera. He used to take what he wanted; now he’s back to his days of haphazardly plotting lazy ricin assassinations. The concept of “full measure” seems to have gotten away from him. Sure, he can talk the talk (“I am the danger!”), but when push comes to shove, talk is all it is. He can tell his fellow cancer patient all he wants that the poor man needs to seize the life he has and take control, but Walt knows that he’s not doing any better. Maybe, at this point, what’s driving Walt isn’t even the protection of his family anymore. Maybe it’s just the need to be right. The need to be listened to again. The need to control.
Breaking Bad is now something entirely different from what it was in season one. What began in relatively stark, simple terms – save money to save the family – has morphed into a dicey moralistic cobweb in which not only the show’s main characters but also its ancillary players have become inextricably stuck. In episodes such as “Hermanos,” it has been fascinating to watch the writers relegate characters as gripping and empathetic as Walt and Jesse to the background without losing any of the inherent dramatic tension that has arisen out of their (now more apparently than ever) fatally intertwined situation. Diffusing narrative focus is one of the riskiest things a TV show can do, because it puts the onus on the writers to keep things interesting in the face of expanded stakes. It takes real balls to cut away, albeit briefly, from an interior struggle as heavily weighted with moral consequence as Walt’s (or Jesse’s, for that matter) to a seemingly out-of-nowhere flashback origin story, and to do this while retaining – and in Breaking Bad’s case, even increasing – the tension and tight-knit humanity that have been hallmarks of the show from the very beginning is nothing short of astounding. Well into its fourth season, it’s worth noting that no other show on television is able to provide viewers with such constant and comforting reminders of how it is working toward a conclusion as unpredictable as it is inevitable.
Other thoughts:
· Every episode of Breaking Bad has at least one shot that sticks with me. This time, it was the handheld tracking shot that followed Don Eladio as he approached the table, the evening sun dappling in and out of his shadowy, monolithic presence. It told us everything we needed to know about the character in just a few seconds. Haunting.
· It’s nearly impossible to get an episode these days that doesn’t give one or two characters the narrative short shrift, and this week, it was Skyler’s turn. But we still got a great little character moment when she misjudges the weight of the bills. Walt and Gus aren’t the only ones in over their heads.
· I’m not sure if we’ve ever seen Walt as terrified as he was when Mike pulled up next to him and Hank in the parking lot. Walt realizes more and more every day that the shit is going to hit the fan, one way or another, and soon. To see him practically on the verge of tears while trying to reassure Gus that he didn’t plant the wire was particularly sobering. We’re a long, long way from the ballsy, “stay out of my territory” Walt of season two.
· Saul’s recounting to young Brock of his tragically lost elementary school crush may have been the funniest and most oddly touching moment of the season so far. Bob Odenkirk is indispensible.
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