With each subsequent episode, Breaking Bad is building up some impressive characterizations of its core cast as well as providing more and more satisfying moments allowing the writers, as well as the actors, to stretch themselves and strut their skills. This week’s episode, ‘Hazard Pay,’ saw Walt, Mike, and Jesse scout for new cooking locations provided by Saul, Skyler have a complete mental break in front of Marie, and Walt see the reality of what it’s like to be “The Boss.”
Following Saul, Walt, Mike, and Jesse from potential spot to potential spot would make for an extremely funny and entertaining 30-minute episode in itself. The banter, both silent and verbal, was superb and Bob Odenkirk actually shined more in that little bit of business than he has in almost any other episode in any other season. While no locations met the criteria of the crew, Walt does come up with what is one of the most genius drug making/dealing on a television show ideas I’ve ever seen: use the front of tented houses being bombed for bugs as mobile meth labs.
During their first cook, Walt and Jesse share a very father/son kind of moment, which really draws out the potential for things to not end so nicely for Jesse. His life seems to be coming together and with the death of Gus things are looking up “professionally.” Also, his issues with Walt are getting fairly ironed out. This all but guarantees something horrendously horrible happening to him at some point. Remember, Jesse wasn’t supposed to have lasted this long as a character to begin with, so his end may have just been a prolonged inevitability.
Watching Walt lose his mind as Mike divides the money amongst them then starts taking cuts was a very satisfying moment in that it showed the reality that, as Mike put it, “Just because you shot Jesse James, don’t make you Jesse James.” Walt is hitting what is akin in the drug world to being nouveau riche in that he has the business and the good, but hadn’t worked his way up building the connections that Gus used to insulate his machinations and increase his profit margin. It also doesn’t take a film/tv scholar to see that Walt having to pay a “Legacy Tax” to Gus/Mike’s old crew for keeping quiet isn’t going to sit well with him and will become a major issue down the road.
Poor, poor, mentally unstable, pushed to her breaking point Skyler. Her insistence for Marie to “shutupshutupshutup” was screaming what many, or at least myself, have been dying for someone to yell at her at some point. Just when she seems to be getting herself together, she comes out to Walt, Walt Jr., and little Holly watching Scarface together just as everyone gets riddled with bullets and Walt gives the eerily foreshadowing of everyone dying in the end.
I feel obligated to make this point again: Walt is NOT Scarface. He is NOT the character of Tony Montana and any comparison between the two is completely invalid regardless of who is giving it. However, he is enamored with the public perception of the character of Tony Montana as many people are.
Case in point: there is a scene in Scarface that has been immortalized in numerous movies and songs where Tony screams at Alejandro Sosa over the phone asking him if wants to go to war (I’ll refrain from the frequent four-letter words). This scene has been sampled in songs, and quoted to show a massive screw you don’t mess with me kind of attitude.
What is often missed is that before Tony gives his big final words, Sosa hangs the phone up and never hears Tony chastise him. That is the difference between the actual character of Tony Montana and the perceived character that Walt seems to be more and more obsessed with.
– James Zappie
