Oh God, the tension!
One year has passed since Hank made the grand W.W. connection on the toilet but that one year seemed to last forever. With normal shows we get teaser trailers, then a big trailer to keep the fans excited but Breaking Bad is such a cultural phenomena that they didn’t have to release any trailers because they knew that people would be excited regardless. I watched the marathon of the previous 8 episodes on AMC before the premiere and in the bottom right corner they had a ticker, counting down until the new episode premiered. That was the slowest and fastest ticker I’ve ever seen. Fast because the episodes kept me distracted and slow because my whole week was building up to this. And when the final 30 seconds started ticking away my heart just started pounding and then I heard the words “It all starts now!”
The opening scene was classic Breaking Bad where they show you the future with no back story and leave you with a “what the f***?” thought. You see rapid fire shots of kids skateboarding in an abandoned backyard pool. After about 30 seconds you realize that this is the Walter’s pool. The surrounding area looks unkempt, the windows are boarded up and there’s spray paint on the sides of the house. That’s when Walt rolls up in a car that is anything but a Bentley. Like the first scene of 501, he is grizzly and looks like he just got back from Vietnam. His house is abandoned, with a tall fence around it. The other houses on the street are in perfect condition. He pops the trunk and you see the machine gun he purchased in California. Does he reach for it? No, he simply grabs a crow-bar and breaks into his house. The whole house is torn up, dusty, empty but in huge yellow spray painted letters is the name Heisenberg written on the wall. The only item of value in this dump is a vile of ricen that Walt previously taped to the back of an electrical outlet. When he gets what he came for he goes back out to his car and finally the tension is broken with some ‘playful’ comedy. His neighbor Carol stands petrified with a bag of groceries in her arm looking like she is looking at the devil himself. This moment scared me because I totally thought that Walt was going to kill her. Instead he just says “Hello Carol.” Then she drops her bag of groceries and the end begins!
This beginning scene raised so many questions that I am so scared to find out the answers to. Here are the questions I had. How much time has passed? Where are Skyler and the kids? How well known is Heisenberg if it’s spray painted on the wall? Why is Carol so scared of Walt? What is Walt going to do with that huge gun and ammo that he bought in California?
In previous interviews leading up to this season, the creator of the show Vince Gilligan said that we would be seeing Walt as the villain this season and I think that this episode (509) will be the last time we regard Walt as “the good guy.” When him and his DEA brother Hank have that wild west stare down in the garage (video above), two things are clear, Hank is grounded in his theory that Walt=Heisenberg and Walt will do whatever it takes to not get caught. We’ve seen Walt let someone die, he’s killed people and he has poisoned a child. I think if it came down to it he would kill Hank to avoid being arrested.
Now on to Jesse. Jesse can’t live with the things he has done or is responsible for so he decides to take his ‘blood soaked’ $5 million and just give it away. He tries to give it to Mike’s granddaughter and the family of the boy that Todd killed in the desert but Saul prevents that from happening because that would do more harm than good. I loved the scene when Walt returns Jesse’s money because Jesse knows that Walt killed Mike. He’s been with Walt from the first time he broke bad and has seen his powers of manipulation so I think that Jesse’s mission this season will be to essentially clear his conscious and make amends in any way that he can and he started in this episode by going all Robin Hood and chucking out stacks of money like newspapers to random houses.
After that meeting though I think that Jesse’s time with Walt is officially done. Jesse is nothing like Walt and wants nothing to do with him so I think that he will try and distance himself as much as he can. With that being said I think at some point Jesse and Hank will reluctantly team up when they realize that they have a common enemy in Heisenberg. This will probably be the point where Walt becomes the bad guy. The scary thing is that in the beginning scene where Walt looks like a different person, he doesn’t appear to be out of his mind. You don’t know who he’s killed or what he’s been through but it’s clear that he knows what he is doing.
So look for this final season to cap off one of the best shows in TV history in dramatic fashion. I hate that I have to wait a week before the new episodes air on Sunday’s, but not knowing what to expect is half of the fun and I’ll only get this chance once.
Only 6 more days until episode 510…………………… Enjoy a scene that we’ve all been waiting for above.
