[SPOILERS] Was there any doubt the third season finale would be so relentlessly gripping and fascinating to watch unfold? "Full Measure" went down some interesting alleys; some of which I didn't expect, others I thought they'd avoided mid-season, and ended on a scene to leave you gnashing your teeth in frustration until season 4 rocks up...Another of this season's flashbacks opened the finale, giving us a glimpse of a younger Walt (Bryan Cranston) and pregnant Skyler (Anna Gunn) buying their first home together, planning for a rosy future with three children and no financial worries because of Walt's job at the Sandia Laboratory. "We've got nowhere to go but up," Walt assures his wife. Cut to the present-day, where suspended chemistry teacher and cancer sufferer Walt's having to explain to a local drug kingpin why he murdered two of his street dealers in a desert rendezvous. How times change.
Walt has the upper-hand with Gus (Giancarlo Esposita) because he's the only quality meth-cook in town, and production can't afford to shut-down anytime soon. Assuring Gus of his total loyalty from hereon in, and that the troublesome Jesse (Aaron Paul) is out of the picture for good, this appears to satisfy the disgruntled Gus. Naturally, nobody is telling the absolute truth here: Jesse's actually still in town, hiding out at the Laser Tag arcade Saul (Bob Odenkirk) wants to use to launder Walt's millions, and Gus has plans to let Gale (David Costabile) return as Walt's new lab partner with the express purpose of learning his meth recipe and procedures so he can takeover. Gus even went to Gale's house in person, enquiring about how fast he can replace Walt, ostensibly concerned that Walt's cancer means he won't be around for long. Of course, Walt's neck a metaphorical noose around it, ready to be lynched once he loses his uniqueness.We actually got to know three supporting characters a little better throughout this episode. World-weary "cleaner" Mike (Jonathan Banks) was shown to be a doting grandfather, amusingly using his granddaughter's helium balloons to disable power lines to a chemical supply warehouse, seconds before he raided the premises single-handed to eliminate four gunmen from the Mexican cartel who are apparently "probing for weakness" in Gus's operation. One of many beautiful sequences, if something of an extravagance to eat up some time. But who doesn't like watching Mike shoot two men with one bullet, or outmanoeuvre another with a frightened Chinese woman's shoe?
Saul also went up in my estimation, after Mike pressured him to release information about where Jesse's hiding, still intending to cut-off that loose end at Gus's behest. As unctuous and self-serving as Saul can be at times, it turns out he's actually very loyal -- feeding Mike inaccurate information to buy Walt and Jesse some time. He may not be happy that his own P.I has turned against him, but he's more willing to side with reasonable people like Walt than cosy up to the city's underworld boss. Or perhaps he just knows Walt and Jesse are easy streams of revenue, if left alone to do what they do best.
The crux of this episode came down to a terrible, life-changing decision. Walt's further down the path to blackening his soul than Jesse is, having committed murder last week, but sensing that Gus is plotting to have Gale takeover his job, Walt decides the only way to assure his safety is to make himself invaluable as a chemist. And that meant eliminating his closest competitor: quiet, modest science nerd Gale. A hit he wanted Jesse to perpetrate, seeing as he owes him his life and should return the favour likewise, but realizes he's asking too much of his partner-in-crime and resolves to do it himself if Jesse gets him Gale's home address.
This sets up the final act's teeth-clenching tension, with Walt leaving his house late at night, intending to drive over to Gale's apartment and assassinate him in cold blood, but instead being picked up by Gus's henchman Victor (Jeremiah Bitsui) and taken to the super-lab -- supposedly to repair a chemical leak, but in actuality the waiting Mike's been ordered to kill Walt so that apprentice Gale can step into a dead man's boots.
Walt's already been quite a wily character all this episode (talking himself out of immediate danger with the angry Gus, keeping Jesse safe with help from Saul), and even when backed into a corner his alter-ego Heisenberg's cooking up a plan. In offering to lure Jesse out into the open for Mike to kill him instead, Walt used the call to quickly appraise Jesse of his situation and order him to carry out the hit on Gale, before informing Mike of the gambit he's playing: if Mike kills Walt and Jesse kills Gale, Gus is left with nobody to cook meth and a calamitous gap in meth production now the cartel's beginning to sniff around. And that in turn lead to the heart-stopping tension of Jesse arriving at Gale's house, under life-or-death orders to pull the trigger on likeable Gale when he answered the door... and indeed firing the supposedly fatal shot. But did he shoot Gale dead, given the ambivalent camera position? Well, yes. Vince Gilligan has confirmed Jesse went through with the hit. So now Walt and Jesse have both "broken bad" to an extent they can't rationalize to themselves. They're murderers, plain and simple. And now they've killed a decent man just to keep themselves on the payroll of a criminal who clearly has no qualms about murdering them once they outgrow their usefulness.
Still, these are small concerns and nitpicks. My overriding feeling is that this was Breaking Bad's finest season, and easily the best drama on television so far this year. The performance are sublime (it was great to see actors other than Cranston come to the fore this year, too), the writers are capable of squeezing tension from the most unlikely of places, and the direction has been exceptional (the Cousins two-pronged attack on Hank's car, Rian Johnson's creative "Fly"). There's always room for improvement, but this episode set the stage for a fourth season of significant change. Walt's professional relationship with Gus is going to be strained (to put it mildly!), so he'll surely have to find a way to appease Gus, earn back his trust, then kill him at some point. The show appears to be headed in the direction of Walt and Jesse becoming the city's drug barons (battle-hardened by the events of this season), and I'm eager to see exactly how the writers get us there...
Asides
- I love the little touches: fastidious chemist geek Gale uses an infrared thermometer gun to measure the temperature of his tea, and he owns a telescope (a nod to his love of the poem "When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer"?) Gale also liked patter songs, Stephen King, and Marxism/Leninism.
WRITER & DIRECTOR: Vince Gilligan
GUEST CAST: Kaija Bales, Jeremiah Bitsui, Tiley Chao, David Costabile, Louis Herthum & James Ning
AIRDATE/CHANNEL: 13 JUNE 2010 - AMC, 10|9c
