MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, SUFFER SUPERPIG, SUFFER

I am a burnt out high school chemistry teacher with a methead/pothead/heroin addict assistant. Let's sell 32 pounds of meth to a buisnessman who probably has a cartel of thousands to back him up. Should get paid in full guise!!!!11xd

At first I thought the bag was full of stacks of tens. Fail.

"Face Off" is the title of the last episode of the season. Face Off. I get it.

Damn Facebook already inadvertently revealed that Mike dies, and now I want to see how that works out.

What do you all think of Walt poisoning Brock? Is it justified by the circumstances? I lean towards a yes, although it does irk me that he's so willing to manipulate Jesse. His wife and family, I can get on board with, but for some reason, I have a special sympathy for Jesse. You all?

Season 1, Jesse looks out for his little brother. Season 2, he saves the kid from those junkies. Seasons 3, he is outraged at Gus having the fat guy's killer killed- season 4, he almost kills Walt for poisoning Brock, and now in season 5, he is clearly the most upset at Todd killing that kid after the train heist.

TRACING WALT’S CORRUPTION

Walter White, at the start of the show, is a fundamentally ‘good’ person, although his goodness has brought him no happiness. He’s seen his old friends succeed on what he believes to be his work, and he himself is a high school teacher confronting a generation of students with such a fervent distaste for learning that in season 3, one student tries to exploit an airline disaster to improve his grades. The premise of the series is of a good man becoming a bad man, and the karma that kicks in because of that transformation.

So how did Walt become the monster he is in 2012? Theoretically, it began with his venture into meth cooking- inspired by a local news report about a meth lab busted with about 700,000 dollars confiscated and the discovery of a cancer diagnosis that is initially described as inoperable. He meets Jesse Pinkman, a junkie whose only ambition is to party and scrape out as meaningless an existence as possible. Together, they begin a small-scale meth cooking operation, and attempt to gain the good favor of a distributor named ‘Krazy-8.’ However, the dealer’s cousin suspects Jesse of being a rat, leading to an unpleasant confrontation between Walt and the two drug pushers. They are the first victims, though not necessarily innocent, of Walt’s decisions. One of the two remains alive for another couple episodes- and Walt is tasked with offing him while Jesse handles the cleanup for the other one. At this early point in the show, Walter is still very much an empathetic man. Krazy-8’s pleas to be released are met with a caring, ‘You’ll have to convince me first.’ At first, Krazy-8’s stories succeed at getting Walt to let him go. Those familiar with the show know why Walt ultimately didn’t, so I won’t bother rehashing it here. What matters is that after this incident, Walt gave up cooking meth for the first time. He’s reaching back towards the light. But a birthday party for one of his college buddies wherein the much more successful friend offers to pay for Walt’s cancer treatments stabs at the inferiority complex that’s made Walt miserable for most of his adult life. Initially refusing to get treatment out of pride, he decides instead to return to his illicit business to pay for treatment. This firmly establishes the show’s ethos- Walt has crossed a line, and there is no going back for him.

On his initial return to cooking, Mr. White is overcome with ambition- the money Jesse makes selling sixteenths at a time isn’t enough to pay for the chemotherapy. He pushes Jesse to contact the distributor who replaced Krazy-8. Enter Tuco, a psychotic drug pusher who beats anyone who shows even the slightest bit of what he considers disrespect- namely Jesse on his first meeting with him, simply for being in the meth marketplace competing with him. Because of this episode, Jesse sternly refuses to deal with him, but Walt unapologetically leads them into a business relationship anyway. When Tuco kidnaps Walt and Jesse out of paranoia, Walt’s corruption takes another step forward. He and Jesse have decided that for their safety, their business partner needs to go. But when the time comes to do the deed, Walt doesn’t mention their safety- he tells Tuco that ‘You’re a psychotic killer who deserves to die.’ He suddenly holds the power to judge who is worthy of living. He then feigns a ‘fugue state’ as a means of getting home from the center of nowhere Tuco’d taken him.

It’s a long time before Walt’s evil grows ever more apparent. Jane Margolis has relapsed into her heroin addiction, and has convinced Jesse to blackmail Mr. White for the half a million dollars they feel belongs to Jesse. Followers of the show know the details of the circumstance, so I won’t rehash it here. It’s never explicitly stated whether it was revenge for the blackmail, or because he felt it was best for Jesse, but either way, his arrogance in determining life and death makes Jane his next victim (Jesse’s fat friend whose name I can never remember, I consider a victim of the same level of corruption that led Walt to deal with Tuco in the first place- namely his ambition), an action, or lack of, that has the largest consequences of any other instance in the show, from a disinterested view, anyway. Jane’s father learns of her death the day he comes to take her back to rehab- his profession later revealed to be an air traffic controller. His grief over Jane’s death overtakes him, and he makes a mistake that results in the collision of two massive air planes, throwing debris and burned body parts all over Albuquerque. This season uses the image of the burned pink teddy bear to symbolize Walt’s guilt- half the bear’s face and one of its eyes is missing.

Enter season 3. After the airline crash, Walt again tries to leave the meth business. The guilt he feels for the damage to his family life, let alone all those strangers’ deaths he was indirectly responsible for, has overtaken him. And yet, Gus Fring tempts him back into the business with the superlab he’s prepared with the help of super-nerd libertarian meth cook Gale Boetticher. Walt can still be seen as somewhat human, when under the influence of sleeping pills, he admits to Jesse that he feels incredibly guilty about what happened to Jane, although he fortunately manages to escape implicating himself as the cause. Nothing ethically profound occurs until Walt learns that because he helped Jesse off two of Gus’ street peddlers who’d been using children for labor- which leads Gus to plan to kill Walter once Gale can master the formula for Walt’s blue meth. At this point, out of sheer self-interest, Walt becomes willing to kill those that he knows do not deserve to die. However, because he gets tied up with Mike and Victor, he tells Jesse to ‘do it’ to Gale. What the fourth season mostly consists of is the battle between Gus and Walt. After observing what Gus really is as the Chilean coldly slits his henchman’s throat simply for being seen at the crime scene, Walt comes to realize the Machiavellian extremes he’ll have to take to keep his life. The next step in the advancement of Walt’s corruption is his use of the Lily of the Valley to poison a small child, as a means of convincing Jesse to help him kill Gus. Walt is now manipulating the emotions of his own partner, coldly and without empathy for the pain he is causing.

To me, the last step the show has taken to cement Walter as an evil fuck was to have him kill Mike in ‘Say My Name.’ His ego has been blown up to undue proportions since his victory over Gus. So much that, when Mike informs of him of his own sociopathic narcissism, Walt shoots Mike. Now, he is the same as Tuco, the same as the Salamanca Cousins, the same as Gus. At the end of the 2012 season finale, Walt retires again from the meth business, but not for any ethical reasons this time. It’s now because he feels he’s accomplished his goal- he doesn’t need to cook anymore because no one can challenge him. He is no longer a good person in any sense of the word. And what makes him evil isn’t that he manufactures a deadly drug, it’s that he involves without consent, everyone around him, to terrible effect. Walter is evil because he makes decisions that damage hundreds of people while thinking that he alone bears the burden of his choices.
GUSTAVO FRING

My favorite character in the show has easily been the ruthlessly pragmatic antagonist Gustavo Fring. His past is mysterious, but similarly to Walter, he appears to be very upstanding and good-natured due to his relationship with a man only called ‘Max’ in the show (this view might be compromised by the vague possibility of an involvement with Augusto Pinochet’s regime, but since it’s not solidified, I think my view adds an important artistic element to the show), and much like Walt, sudden events turn him cold- the Mexican drug cartel, who is only interested in cocaine and wants nothing of Max and Gus’ meth in the 80s, kills Max unflinchingly. Gus survives because of his shady past- the cartel leader’s knowledge of ‘who he really is.’ This leads Fring to pursue one thing and one thing only for the rest of his life- revenge against the cartel, and especially Hector Salamanca, the man who shot Max, wheelchair-bound, incontinent and mute as of the narrative’s beginning.

Gus spends 20 years building a distribution network based around his fast food chain Los Pollos Hermanos, which launders his money, and carries his product. He adds to his public image through philanthropy, including contributing to the DEA and conversing directly with customers in his chicken restaurants. He is so cautious that he initially refuses to deal with Walt because Jesse was high on meth when they came to meet him for the first time. Throughout almost all of the third season, Gus’ image to the viewer is maintained as a professional businessman who happens to deal with the most dangerous narcotic in existence. It isn’t until he murders his henchman Victor for the simple ‘crime’ of being seen at Gale’s apartment after the murder that the viewer gets a good feel (though the show hinted at it before) for Gus’ dark side. His desire for revenge weaves in and out of Walter’s own career- he convinces Tuco’s cousins to kill Hank, and then proceeds to call Hank through a voice modifier to warn him of the attack. The fight between them leaves the DEA agent paralyzed all the way until the fifth season. On learning of the two men’s deaths, Gus travels to the retirement home where Hector is now staying since Tuco’s death. These meetings become a recurring event throughout Gus’ time on the show- where Gus informs the old man of the death of an associate or family member, and asks of him calmly and coldly, “Look at me, Hector,” solely because he wants to see the pain in Hector’s eyes.

Ironically, these meetings with Hector, and Gus’ desire for revenge are ultimately his undoing. When Gus is wrongly informed of Hector talking with the DEA, his pride takes over his wisdom. In criminal circles, the one thing you do not do is rat. It’s a line even Gus himself does not cross. Walt exploits this, to get Gus into a room with Hector, whom he has convinced to suicide bomb Gus as a final act of revenge. The explosion leaves Gus with half a face, and one eye missing. It’s an image that is symbolic on more than one level. For one, it looks like a realistic, human version of the pink teddy bear from season 2. Second, it represents the truth of Gus- outwardly a professional businessman, inwardly, a crooked, cold-blooded murderer and ruthless drug kingpin. And lastly, it represents the fundamental theory of morality the show puts forth- that the most evil people were at one point, good, and that the most upstanding ethical person on the planet has the capacity for great evil, provided they cross that line.

WHERE IT GOES FROM HERE

What 'Gliding Over All' surprised me with was the way it ended. Walt's out of the business, and he's happy? Well, the flash forward at the beginning of the first episode of the fifth season definitely establishes that it won't last too much longer. But the real cliffhanger is the final minute and a half before the credits- Hank finds Gale's copy of Leaves of Grass, firmly setting things up for everything about Walt's contentment to unravel. In order to even guess what happens next, we have to look at Hank as a character, because Hank’s reaction to the disturbing discovery is what the ending will inevitably rely on.

Hank is deeply attached to his family- but he's also a firm believer in the ethics of his work as a DEA agent. What has to happen to Hank is an inner conflict between his devotion to kin and his guiding moral principles. This conflict allows room for two fundamentally different courses for the show to follow.

What if Hank puts family first? Then he either aids Walt or offers some deal (as Skyler did with the divorce in season 3) for silence. In doing so, Hank becomes another casualty of Walt's decision to become a bad person. Walt's individual self-corruption has, despite the best intentions, corrupted all those around him as well, even his Drug Enforcement Agency brother in law. I don't know how a Hank who has turned to the proverbial dark side would act.

What if Hank puts his ethics and work first? Then he questions Walt about the book, and begins a new venture to gather evidence on Walt. This leaves open the possibility of Walt's purchase of an M16 on his 52nd birthday (roughly nine months from the show's current chronological location) being to defend himself from the DEA or, fuck forbid, the federal government, obviously in vain. Even if that isn't the case, Walt and Hank are definitely bitter enemies down this path, and one of them dies. It would speak volumes to Walt's corruption if he killed his own brother-in-law.

Either way, the moral of Breaking Bad is unquestionably that your decisions have consequences outside of yourself. Walt only turned to the dark side to secure his family for after he died. And yet, he’s made a murderer out of Jesse, a fraud and money launderer out of Skyler, and no matter what comes of the inevitable inner conflict in Hank, a victim of Walt’s decisions regardless. Vince Gilligan has described the basis of the show being that he can’t picture “Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot or pick your poison…” dying ‘unpunished.’ Somehow Walt is going to have to pay for all his victims’ suffering. That’s the last mistake this show has the chance to make, before I, at least, laud it as the single best thing to happen to television.