WRITER: Moira Walley-Beckett[SPOILERS] A marvellous episode just before mid-season, "Mas" ("more") clearly marks a turning point for Breaking Bad, as so much happens to progress the White's troubled marriage, as well as Walt's (Bryan Cranston) relationship with Jesse (Aaron Paul) and Gus (Giancarlo Esposita). In a series that rarely flounders, this was a real highlight in terms of plot progression and character moments...
DIRECTOR: Johan Renck
GUEST CAST: Charles Baker, Christopher Cousins, Julie Dretzen, Mary Sue Evans, Carole Gutierrez, Steven Michael Quezada & Rodney Rush
To the present, and Skyler's (Anna Gunn) enjoying the luxuries of Ted's (Christopher Cousins) heated bathroom floor, but it’s clear she's focusing on little things and isn't as happy as she's pretending. In a telling moment later in the episode, she's quick to lay a towel on the bathroom floor to stand on, signifying that her apparent bliss with Ted isn't the utopia she wants. Ted's world is warm and inviting, but she's burning her feet. Basically, Skyler still loves Walt, and this episode found her trying to find a way to forgive him. After a phone call from her sister Marie (Betsy Brandt), who's worried about Hank's (Dean Norris) mental state, it became clear that both women are married to husbands who have changed because they faced death. That, on top of mulling over Walt's excuse for cooking meth (to provide for his family), soon causes Skyler to rethink her position. And despite he fact her lawyer wants her to leave the house, or risk becoming an accessory after the fact regarding a bag of cash she finds in Walt's cupboard, it seems Skyler's perhaps willing to put the past behind her and try to rescue their marriage...
But it's too late. Walt's starting to get the message loud and clear, over uncomfortable silences at dinner, and the fact his wife's blatantly sleeping with another man. After going to see Gus about the fact he was given half of Jesse's drug money as an obvious ploy to get him cooking again, Walt's eventually persuaded to go back into business with the drug lord. Gus succeeds in convincing him to rejoin his enterprise because he senses Walt's pride in his work ("the chemistry must be respected") and appeals to his science nerdiness by showing him a secret "super-lab" under a laundry business he owns; a state-of-the-art subterranean facility that's undetectable thanks to filtered air and has a plausible reason for so many chemical purchases onsite.
It's effectively a dreamland for someone like Walt, hence the ethereal musical cue when he clapped eye on it for the first time -- a whimsical, fairytale-like ditty, not unlike the same music used to accompany a scene where Walt holds his baby daughter Holly, stressing the point that the super-lab holds equal sway with Walt's emotions. Gus' final punch was to appeal to Walt's sense of a paternal responsibility to his family, even if his wife and kids don't agree with how he goes about it ("a man provides... and he does it even when he's not appreciated, or respected, or even loved".)
Hank's storyline continued with some interesting moments. Having given up his opportunity to leave for big things in El Paso, he's thrown himself into his investigation of Heisenberg and is busy tracking down all the RV's that match the description of the one caught on the ATM machine's camera last week. He's not having much luck yet, and wife Marie's starting to get worried about her husband's mental state. There's a great scene with Marie imploring Hank to unburden himself by talking to her, from the other side of a shower curtain as he washed himself after a hard day's work. A literal barrier between them. It's such a shame Hank's too proud to lower his defences and talk through his PTSD with Marie, or a counsellor, but his sense of masculinity just doesn't bend that far. How long until he snaps?
On top of that, Hank had to deal with the fact his best friend and partner Gomez (Steven Michael Quezada) has been given his El Paso promotion instead, meaning Hank had to pull himself together at work and pretend he was happy for Gomez -- while secretly furious that he's so cowardly to have accepted the transfer himself, and, perhaps, a little upset he can't give Gomez some words of advice without opening up about his own brief experience and fears. The best he can do is give him a statue of Jesus Malverde, the patron saint of drug dealers. It'll be interesting to see if Gomez suffers the same kind of trauma as Hank did in El Paso, or will he prove himself more able to cope with the horrors there?
Finally, Jesse was outraged that half his money was given to Walt, suspecting Walt was complicit in this arrangement, so he called a meeting with Saul (Bob Odenkirk) to reach an agreement: he'll cook the meth and give Walt 10% of his takings, as a show of goodwill because he came up with the formula. Instead, to his surprise, Walt hands back the money Gus' henchman threw him at the intersection, but only because he lets it be known he's decided to join forces with Gus fulltime. So now, Walt's calling the shots and advises Jesse not to keep using his formula or face the consequences ("I'm in, you're out.") Saul's quick to jump onto Walt, accepting a measly 5% fee for laundering the $3 million he expects to make in three months (that's $150,000), and Jesse's frustration at being ousted from the setup finds him breaking Walt's windscreen with a concrete block -- the second time that's happened to Walt this year.
Perhaps the saddest thing about this episode was seeing Skyler return home from Ted's, probably ready to start repairing her marriage with Walt -- after coming to understand why he did what he did, and noticing how he is with their baby, only to find Walt's cleared out and signed her divorce papers. Walt's entire life is a series of tragic missed opportunities, bad timing and poor decisions, so it was only fitting he'd decide to end his marriage and embrace meth-cooking at the exact moment his wife wants to salvage things.
Overall, "Mas" was a fantastic instalment of this excellent series. I loved seeing the show make a hard 180-turn and there's still so much richness to explore in each character and how they're dealing with their lives. I was particularly struck by a few blossoming similarities between Hank and Jesse now; both stuck on the fringes of their professions, watching someone who was close to them take their careers to the next level and leave them behind.
Anyway, great episode, what did you think?
18 APRIL 2010: AMC, 10/9c
