So many things happened in this week’s Breaking Bad season finale. Way too many to give a full recap and not tire your brain out, so here’s a quickie. Walt poisoned Brock to bring Jesse back onto his side, colludes with Saul to bring Salamanca into the fold, and concocts a scheme so ingenious and diabolically awesome that it makes anything that Gus had planned in the past look like a four-piece jigsaw puzzle. By the way Gus, you got a little something right there on your cheek.
Walt has gone from good guy to bad guy to good guy to bad guy so many times he might as well start calling himself Harvey Dent. This whole scenario played out like a mix of a champion chess match and the Rumble in the Jungle. Walt has seemed to be so weak and emasculated in the face of Gus that when his whole plot comes to fruition, it is such a shock that you almost swear the writers mashed it together for the finale.
Think back, though, to the plant. Walt sits poolside, playing pistol roulette and it keeps landing on him. He spins it one last time and where does it land? Lily of the Valley.
Gus has always seemed to have an answer to everything and a backup plan to his backup plans. Walking away from his parked car in ‘End Times‘ is a perfect example of his near ESP-like ability to avoid harm.
Yet, his undoing was the arrogance that almost anyone would have with such a power. The look in Salamanca’s eye as he hits that bell isn’t really a look, but the intensity of the gaze that makes you think you can almost see a smile on his face (which you can’t, of course).
Gus was the immovable object to Walt’s unstoppable (relentless) force. While Walt probably had been planning something like this for quite a while, I like to think that it was when Gus threatened his family that Walt solidified the plan in his head.
But what about next season? Brock is going to come to and while he may have gotten away from it so far, he’s going to get found out. What will Jesse do then? And what about Mike? Tyrus? We never actually get confirmation that Tyrus is even dead.
What worries me most, though, is what Walt is becoming. He’s not even the one who knocks anymore. Now he is the guy who sends the one who knocks.
Also, Gus may be dead, but who is to say Walt is safe from his reach? Gus strikes me as the kind who has something in place even if his end comes, kind of like how CNN has video all set to play for when the world ends.
– James Zappie
