Walt won on Breaking Bad, but glory is fleeting
Turns out Breaking Bad is an inadvertent argument for Obamacare.
Consider: If affordable health care had been available to Walter White (played by Bryan Cranston) when Breaking Bad began, this struggling high school chemistry teacher might not have felt driven to cook and sell crystal meth to avert financial ruin for his family after his terminal lung cancer was diagnosed.
On the other hand, there would have been no Breaking Bad. This would have deprived viewers of arguably TV’s most twisted, bleakly funny and just plain addictive series ever.
Sunday on AMC, Breaking Bad returns for a run of eight episodes that paves the way to a final eight airing next year. By this point in its fast-evolving narrative, the formerly milquetoast teacher has morphed into a triumphant drug lord in tumultuous cahoots with his one-time slacker pupil, Jesse Pinkman (played by Aaron Paul).
Last season ended with Walt assassinating Gus Fring, the reigning meth distributor in Albuquerque. Sunday’s episode picks up with the same phone call Walt placed to his wife, Skyler, moments after the monstrous Fring was blown up in the Season 4 finale.
“It’s over,” Walt tells her. “We’re safe.” Long pause. “Was this you?” Skyler asks him, the question catching in her throat. “What happened?”
“I won,” Walt growls with satisfaction.
Thinking about that scene – and how it stuns Skyler – makes Anna Gunn, who portrays her, laugh.
“At that moment, a hammer comes down,” says Gunn, voicing what goes through Skyler’s mind: “We can never come back. This is a corner we can never unturn. If Walt was involved with this guy Fring and had something to do with his death: Omigod, we’re in trouble!”
Just one of many hitches to Walt’s victory dance: The drug enforcement agents (including his own brother-in-law) are hot on the trail of the mysterious Heisenberg, Walt’s drug-lord alter ego.
By now, Walt and Jesse seem beyond any hope of ultimate redemption. The suspense of Breaking Bad now dwells in what manner of dread comeuppance they will suffer in the end.
In the meantime, no character remains so trapped, so caught between ordinary life and the underworld, as Skyler.
Initially, Skyler knew nothing of Walt’s involvement in the drug trade. Then, with her shocked discovery of what he was up to, she plotted to run away or turn Walt in to the cops.
But then she began her slide down the slippery slope. Applying her background in accounting, she hatched a scheme to take Walt’s drug money and (in a demonstration of the show’s mordant humour) launder it by buying a car wash.
A by-the-book drama would then have transformed her into an all-in Bonnie to her husband’s Clyde. Instead, even now as his partner in crime, she remains on the margins of his depravity.
“From the beginning, she has laboured under limited information,” Gunn says. “And she still doesn’t know how deep Walt is into this thing. But she knows this man is not just in it for the money anymore, that there’s something much bigger and deeper and
“Skyler was never a shrinking violet: She’s a strong woman, a very pragmatic person.”
Breaking Bad star Anna Gunn
darker drawing him in.”
If Skyler’s state of limbo is nightmarish for this wife and mother of two, it’s a dream for Gunn to portray. Before Breaking Bad, she was best known as Martha Bullock on Deadwood. She also guested on series including NYPD Blue, Six Feet Under and Seinfeld. Now she’s part of a splendid ensemble that includes Dean Norris, Betsy Brandt, R.J. Mitte, Bob Odenkirk and Jonathan Banks, and pairs her with the extraordinary Cranston.
Skyler’s contradictions give Gunn lots to work with, she says.
“Skyler was never a shrinking violet: She’s a strong woman, a very pragmatic person,” Gunn notes. “She knows she’s in it deep, so she’s got to keep going. But, poor thing, she still thinks, ‘I can launder enough money to provide for the rest of our lives and put the kids through college, and then we can get out.’ I think she keeps praying and hoping for an end date.”
Of course, the only operative end date is next year’s series conclusion, which at the moment presumably exists only in the mind of creator Vince Gilligan.
“I don’t think Vince means the show to be a morality tale,” says Gunn. “But certainly it is an exploration of people’s morality, and the things they choose to do, and the reasons they come up with for doing them.”
And where will those choices finally leave Skyler and the rest?
“All I know is, the show never does anything expected,” says Gunn, speaking for fans as well as herself. “That’s all I know.”