Breaking Bad 4.03 Open House Review

*Light Spoilers* 

Every actor who finds themselves in the Emmy race for lead in a drama series this year should be very thankful that their frequent competitor Bryan Cranston is not alongside them. Because the amount of emotion and presence he puts forth in the cold open of Open House is more than most actors put forth in an entire season—including sweeps week.
To see him go from pride to remorse to grim acceptance all while drinking a cup of coffee, albeit one from the late lab assistant Gale’s special brewing apparatus, served as a master’s class in the craft of subtlety boiling over into pure fury.  Walt even gets his own spectacular Kill Bill-esque theme as he walks into the lab to prep for the day’s cook, (implications of Kill Gus perhaps in that particular music?) Pair those elements together and you have one hell of a start even before he memorably flips off the brand-new motion-activated security cameras.

This week, Skylar and Saul come to the forefront as the narrative focus switches from the war between Heisenberg and Gus back to the practicalities of disguising the substantial cash flow from Walt’s business venture. It would have been so easy for the creative forces behind Breaking Bad to decide that when Skylar became more involved in the business of Walt that her usual morals and ideals would be set aside. Smartly, they recognize that Skylar would handle her business in a very different manner. Watching her and Saul’s back and forth about ways in which to deal with getting Bogdan to sell them the car wash was highly entertaining. Instead of going all thug about it as I’m sure Walter would if his mind wasn’t on other things at this time, Skylar treats Bogdan like a misbehaving child. She’s entering the criminal fold with all of the skills picked up from years of motherhood, and it’s great to see Saul get frustrated with her unwillingness to be more deviant or violent to get the job done. I wonder if at any time during this conversation, Walt had a sting of what he used to be like himself. There were days that brains won out over brawn in the name of problem-solving—those days are now long gone it would seem as I’m pretty sure Walt still has a .38 special bullet with Gus’ name on it.

But the really great thing here is that her completely non-violent means of acquiring the car wash actually work. We’ve been seeing for years how clever Skylar is when it comes to things like figures and ordinances and money itself. So for her to be able to use her talents in this way finally gives her a reason to be involved in the larger story of the show without just being a nagging presence in Walt’s life. It also means that she’s directly in the danger zone the deeper she becomes involved with them thus giving Walter more of a reason to toe the line as truly his family has taken another step toward being a real liability. I’m curious to see what the future trio of Walt, Skylar, and Saul will bring to the series as a whole.

Note that I didn’t mention Jesse anywhere in there. That’s because he’s far too busy with continuing his descent into complete self-apathy and self-destruction. If you thought that watching Jesse have an emotional breakdown by himself last week was too intimate to watch without turning away, you probably weren’t a fan of a jump cut to one of the most revolting scenes I’ve seen on TV. His former home went from party central of last week to a den of iniquity filled with hardcore drug users, prostitutes, and other dregs of society that are defacing the walls and stealing his appliances. How low does one have to be to not give a shit his toaster oven is gone, those things are so useful! Seeing what had become of something he fought so hard for (his aunt’s house) is a genuinely painful reminder of how absolutely nothing holds any meaning for him right now—how dead he feels inside.

And that’s just it, Jesse doesn’t give a shit about anything or anyone right now. And he has no one around that he’ll reach out to so they can pull him out of this self-made hole. Oh wait, it wasn’t a self-made hole. Walt coerced him into murdering Gale, and now Walt doesn’t want to have to face the consequences of what it’s done to Jesse’s fragile addict’s psyche. There was a time as recently as just before Gale’s death that it felt like it really was Jesse and Walt against the world. But the scene with the repeated line exchange of ‘anything I should know about?’ said it all as the rift between the two men has never seemed clearer than in that moment—Walt’s off fighting a war with everyone else while Jesse is losing the war against himself. And I’m pretty sure things are going to worse for both men and their working relationship before it could ever even get at all better.

Elsewhere on the Hank and Marie show, Marie’s back to her wacky Kleptomaniac ways from seasons past. Look, it’s fine and all that it gave something for Dean Norris and Betsy Brandt to do by having Marie’s need to be away from the sad reality her life has become, and Hank’s subsequent embarrassment at his wife for getting caught doing it be a thing. And I’m fully aware that the show is giving us another consequence of Walt’s actions since it was the hunt for the elusive blue meth’s creator that ultimately put Hank into that hospital bed in the first place. But other than that, it just didn’t really fit in with anything else in the episode. You can have segments that are very well-written and well-acted in a show but if they don’t go with the overall flow then there really isn’t much of a point to them. Except, that because Marie got caught it brought Hank’s buddy from the police force back into the picture, and eventually Gale’s lab notes right on Hank’s lap. Now, we’re talking. Hopefully this season, Hank will get off of his ass and begin anew his hunt for his own personal Walter White whale.  (Too much?)