I claim this concept as a fallacy because it undersells the capability of the human brain, which can dissociate and break off into multiple tangents, forming entirely new identities. As many memories and emotions as we can store within the confines of our mind can themselves be their own unique state of being instead of building blocks that shape us as one distinct person. So, in my estimation, every experience can be looked at on the micro level, and we could all be different people in each instance and facet of our lives as opposed to viewing it on the macro level as just a myriad of parts that make up a true identity. Just like the popular (science fictional) notion that there are an infinite number of universes, there are an infinite number of iterations of each of us.
Breaking Bad is a television show about a variety of things, the core story being about the evolution of Walter White from, as series creator and show runner Vince Gilligan put it, "Mr. Chips to Scarface". A mild-mannered chemistry teacher who receives the disheartening news of an impending death sentence from inoperable lung cancer and decides to make as much money as he can before he passes by cooking methamphetamine. The rest of the show is about the consequences of that decision and how things are always in motion, they cannot be stopped no matter how much you try or how much pride you take in your abilities.
Walt was always a genius chemist, which is why he was able to manifest the purest meth on the planet, Sky Blue, and make almost a hundred million dollars from the international sale of his product. His frustrations, before his cooking days started, were obvious in how he went about his daily routines at school, at home, and at his soon-to-be White-owned car wash. It wasn't until he received that diagnosis, however, that "he was awake" as he once explained to his future (now former) student/partner, son, and eventual enemy Jesse Pinkman. He could now live out his dream as being the one in control, "the one who knocks", if you will. He always had to sit back and wait for things to happen, for life to put him in a direction he didn't want to go, but now, with minimal time left, he could do what was necessary under the guise of building something for his family, a legacy he could call his own.
That bombshell of unspeakable news shook his foundation and opened himself up to his criminal mastermind persona Heisenberg, the meticulous and unyielding ("no half-measures") face of his new empire. So, in his personal dealings and interactions, he appeared as Walt, and while on business, he donned the Heisenberg uniform (black hat included). With each subsequent setback, truth revealed, and dead body dropped came the shifting of paradigms as the two worlds inched closer and closer until they ended up juxtaposed this season, especially with the episode last night. That proximity allowed for every aspect of Walt and Heisenberg to spill onto each other where you aren't entirely sure what version you are seeing. Walt is a polar molecule (chemistry term) that is positively charged on one side (Walter White) and negatively charged on the other side (Heisenberg). Walt did not transform into Heisenberg, it was always a part of him, and with each crack in the character came different pieces of each pole personality swirling within him. There are infinite permutations of Walter White/Heisenberg, we just weren't aware of it until last night.
"Ozymandias" was the most emotionally-wrenching gut punch I've ever endured with a work of fiction, which is why I had to write about it so as to purge some of these stresses I've been feeling since I saw it. The opening doesn't take us right back to the shoot-out the previous episode left us off at, but a flashback to Walt and Jessie's first cook on that same To'hajiilee plain a year and a half prior. Everything seemed so simple before the Krazy 8's and the Tucos and the Gus Frings got involved, they were just two underachieving guys in an RV trying to make some fat stacks yo. As liquid is bubbling inside a beaker, Walt claims that "The reaction has begun" which is the first of many, many steps on the blue-bricked road to chaos we've watched over six years. In their waiting, Walt steals himself away for a phone call to his pregnant wife to claim he is working late for Bogdon at his car wash job (that he now doesn't possess). They have a heart-felt discussion about a family weekend away, trying to settle on a name for their still womb-inhabiting little girl (Holly is the front-runner), and bringing pizza home for dinner (before Walt started viewing it with disdain and flinging it all over God's creation). Before everything, Walt and Skyler had lovely phone conversations reminiscent of the one Hank and Marie had in last week's waning moments (minus the emotional weight and gravitas mind you). Walt could lie convincingly to his wife and get away with it without sounding like a stumbling, bumbling fool, but that success wouldn't last, not by a long shot.
The RV fades out and Nazis fade in as we jump forward to the present. Hank is laid up with a bullet in his leg, and Gomie is lying on his back bullet-riddled. (RIP Steve Gomez, I'm sorry you couldn't get your own important death scene, but we won't forget you.) Uncle Jack and all his compatriots appear to be fine and dandy and ready for more blood. (Hank killed Tuco and the Twins but he couldn't hit one Nazi scumbag?) Hank can't utilize his weapon retrieval skills this time around, so now he is faced with his impending death. However, Walt removes his face buried in the back seat of Hank's car and pleads with Jack to spare Hank's life. Jack doesn't seem amenable to Walt's request for mercy, especially considering Hank and Gomez are DEA. so he cocks back and is ready to splatter ASAC Schrader's brains all over the desert. Walt then offers up his meth treasure, his $80 million lying beneath their feet in the sand. Jack strongly considers that deal, asking Hank his opinion on the matter. Walt looks at Hank, begging him to take the deal, but Hank realizes there is no walking (or limping) out of that situation, reacting with a scowl at his brother-in-law, "You're the smartest guy I've ever met, and you're too stupid to see: He made up his mind ten minutes ago." He goads Jack on until his final death blow is struck mid-sentence and Walt crumples to the ground catatonic, probably finally understanding all the turmoil Jesse has had to endure when the negative externalities of their meth-cooking repeatedly hit him at home. Walt's one line to keep his family out of harm's way has finally been crossed and virtually blotted out of existence.
Using the exact coordinates Walt relayed to him on the phone, Jack and his Merry Men locate the spot and dig up the barrels of cash. They load them on their truck, but Jack, in all his splendid generosity (which is funny because he berates his colleagues for being too greedy) decides to let Walt keep one of his money receptacles and leave. At this point, Walt is standing, back to playing toward an end game, projecting his guilt for Hank's death on the one other person available for punishment...Jessie. Walt claims Jack "owes him Pinkman" and wants him dead, but not just dead at this point, but to suffer. Jessie's betrayal and responsibility for Hank's involvement is unforgivable in Walt's eyes, so as everything else lay in ruin around him, why not tear this last thing down to perfect chaos?
Horrifyingly, Jessie is dragged out from underneath Walt's car and made to kneel before he is sent on his own farewell tour, each moment rife with bloody anticipation. Every time Jack checks with Walt on whether the decided course of action for Jessie's fate is the proper outcome, it stings like a thousand pricks of a used heroine needle. As Jessie looks up in the sky at a few buzzards circling, Todd decides to speak up and stop the execution. (The whole time we are dealing with Hank's death and the unearthing of Walt's money, Todd has been surveying the scene, trying to feel sympathy for Walt's loss but coming up short because he was born without human emotion. At some point, I thought actual feelings were going to kick in and he was going to kill his uncle ala Darth Vader throwing The Emperor into the Death Star's reactor, but alas, that's too much hope and nerdism to expect.) They need to find out what Jessie told the feds, so they land on whisking Jessie away to their meth-cooking paradise and beating the information out of him, so while we are all feeling bad for Jessie and his inevitable torture experience, Walt seals his misery with this sickening quote, "I watched Jane die. I was there. And I watched her die. I watched her overdose and choke to death. I could have saved her, but I didn't." That was the one nugget of truth I thought would stay dormant, but Vince Gilligan doesn't do that, he drudges every last inkling of rottenness up to make you sick, to keep you up at night, and to break you, just like Jessie.
With that last razor blade cutting immeasurably deep, the Nazi caravan files away and Walt takes his $11 mil and goes home, but during the course of his journey, his car runs out of gas because it was hit by the onslaught (one bullet). Walt must now roll his barrel of cash through the desert (I'm glad he finally listened to one piece of Hank advice, "Hey, try rolling it morons! It's a barrel! It rolls!") as he must once again struggle for the fruit of his labor. He happens upon an old Native American man with a dilapidated truck and offers him up a cool 10 grand for the automobile. The old man takes the money (no questions) and Mr. White continues on his way to try to salvage anything from this shit-storm of a day.
As this is happening, Marie comes to visit Skyler and Walt Jr. (Flynn) at the car wash. Marie is probably having an A-1 day without the wash and complementary wax, wanting to talk to her sister in private to relay the good (bad) news. Not only that, Marie offers to help Skyler through these troubling times, to be there in support when everything goes sideways but she has two conditions: they must destroy the farcical confession tape Walt and her made to implicate Hank in his meth business, and she must tell her son the truth about her father. Either Skyler has to, or she will, and there's no leeway, as in truth there never has been.
Jessie's new home is revealed as a dungeon next to the factory lab, and Jessie is lying there physically, mentally, and emotionally tormented. Todd retrieves him and walks him into the lab, attaching him to one of those Hannibal Lecter tethers so he can view his whole environment. He's frightened but it's not until he sees the photograph of his ex-girlfriend Andrea and her son Brock that the weight of his despair sinks in, revealing he has absolutely no choice but to give in completely. Todd (motivated by greed and his festering love for Lydia, his kind-of boss) comes back into focus donning a Haz-Mat suit and saying two little words that never seemed so menacing to Jessie (or us rather) than they do now: "Let's cook."
Walt Jr. is beside himself when we enter into the middle of his mother and aunt's truth seminar. He can't believe anything he is hearing, calling his mother "crazy" and "a liar", which sound like the most cutting words in the English language at this point. He storms off in dismay, and Marie advises Skyler to take the kids home. The drive is painstakingly awkward, with Skyler even nagging Flynn about not buckling his seat belt; he calls her out on the absurdity of highlighting that "problem". When they pull up to their house, they notice the truck and enter to Walt feverishly trying to get their lives packed up and get them on the road. Walt is a whirlwind that Skyler and Flynn try to temper by extracting the truth about his arrest (and in the case of Flynn, the truth about the last 18 months). Walt's ability to weave intricate lies is completely obliterated, which is really interesting when you look at the flashback at the beginning and see how far everything has come. Due to his unwillingness to talk about Hank, Skyler surmises that Walt must have killed him, leading her to the simple moral dilemma: phone or butcher's knife, phone or butcher's knife. She opts for the knife, shielding her son, "protecting her family from the man who protects this family", and ordering him to leave. For the second time today, Walt feels betrayed, and those feelings burst forward at full force when she slashes his hand. He lunges forward for the knife, leading to a clumsy and disturbing husband/wife melee. (All that time, I thought either Skyler or Flynn would be run through accidentally, but hope finally won out this time.) After Flynn tackles his father and looks at him standing with the weapon, Flynn finally is looking upon the man everyone else has seen in some iteration at some point. With Walt finally discovered, Flynn calls the police, and Walt makes his getaway with his infant daughter in tow, replacing the Skyler/Marie fight over Holly earlier in the season as the single biggest heart-in-your-throat, moral foundation-shaking moment of the series.
Walt tuned out the screams as he made his escape, but it was the soft, gentle cries from his 1-year-old that finally hit home for him. She wanted her mother, and she had little to no idea who this man was who took her away. He wasn't keeping his true self from her, he was anonymous in her eyes. That brings him to call home, now suddenly crawling with APD as they search desperately for the abducted child. Skyler picks up demanding Holly back, hoping the police can trace the call. The tables have turned, now she is lying to him about the involvement of the authorities on this conversation, but Walt has had time to think, not to fumble on the fly. He understands the cops are present, his son called them. As such, he sifts through this movie villain monologue about how she never believed in him (which had a hint of truth) and deriding her for questioning his motives, his methods, and his authority. He asserts, "I built this. Me. Nobody else." as a way to deflect blame from her and pull it all on himself like a tractor beam. (2nd Star Wars reference?) Finally, pleading actually seemed to hit through somebody's armor as Holly was able to break her father and get him to take responsibility without question, something he has been unwilling to do. He took off with the money, and the Nazis know about the confession tape Jessie made with Hank and Gomie so they are coming after Marie and Skyler and the kids, so they can't be secure, but he tried to give something back to his family for once, not just using them as an excuse. He tried to give them some hope for a semblance of a future, a future as a withering husk of a family but a future nonetheless. The show ends with him climbing into the van of Saul's guy that Jessie forwent to start a new life in New Hampshire, a dog (problem dog? rabid dog?) crossing the street and exiting the frame as the parting shot, not looking back, a lonely survivor.
So, Hank and Gomie are lifeless in their shallow, unmarked graves. Marie, Skyler, Flynn, and I assume Holly (Walt left her at a fire station to be picked up and returned to her true family) are waiting distraught, wondering if Walt will turn up and trying to put the pieces back together somehow, the Aryans are living it up with a fresh liquid $70 million and brand new batches of blue a day, Todd is working with his kind-of surrogate brother, Jessie is a meth-cooking, fear-addled slave with a leash, Saul is ??? (probably doing Saul things still), and Walt is becoming Mr. Lambert in the Granite State (name of penultimate episode). The final picture is coming more and more into focus as two hours remain to wrap everything else up, but when I think about the previous 60 hours, I think about that first line in the flashback of this episode, "The reaction has begun," and wonder if everyone's assessment on this show was wrong. In the pilot, Walt lectures that chemistry "is all about change" but I think everything that has led up to this point has all been about reaction...the components were always available, the ingredients always at the character's finger tips, but the progression of choices and decisions had to be sorted out. Walt reacted to his diagnosis by partnering with Jessie and cooking meth, and we have seen how far that one reaction of an unavoidable circumstance has brought us. Walt always thought he was in control, but that hubris was his downfall on several occasions; that mode of thinking was an illusion. He never acted...he was always reacting, trying to respect the chemistry. All of that reaction led him to the desert, to admire his crumbled empire that was an inevitability from the start, no matter how much he fooled himself into thinking otherwise:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
I looked upon the ruin same as everyone else, and that desert scene was symbolic of how I feel now: shattered and irreparable.
