'We're supposed to be a family!'
Needless to say, spoilers ahead.
The opening showed how the story has really come full circle in it's wide-reaching arc, presenting the very first lie Walt told Skylar concerning hsi meth business. Whether it's a strange thing to start with by saying this, I'm going to say it anyway; kudos to the prop and make-up department for the opener depicting Walt and Jesse on their very first cook. Even though the characters have come a hell of a long way in the past five years, they looked just as amaeutrish/kind-of-normal as they did when they first started up business. The nature of the episodes title is in reference to the eponymous poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley (which made me feel like a true hipster seeing as I'd studied the poem in college) and essentially it refers to the harsh fact that no matter how vast the size of an empire can grow to be, it will eventually fall to the sands of time and be forgotten. Which is exactly what we're seeing in this episode.
This all started with Hank's inevitable death, which finally came ten minutes into the episode, alongside Steve 'Gomie' Gomez's demise, no doubt a shock for many fans seeing as he's quite the lovable sidekick. Rian Johnson's direction screeched profressionalism from the very beginning, particularly in the depiction of Walt's overwhelming remorse in the wake of his brother-in-laws death. This was the first of many difficult-to-watch scenes throughout the episode, and it really set the tone for everything else to come. Of course, the events in the desert had yet to come to a close.
Todd and Uncle Jack's gang find Walt's buried money, which we now discover to amount to $80,000,000. And here was me thinking it was a round a tenth of that. They leave Walt with $12,000,000, and despite this still being an incomprehensibly large amount of money, it gave further credence to the fact that Walt's empire was quickly crumbling; the image of him making his way through the desert, rolling his barrel of money along, couldn't have been more poetic.
Jesse's depiction couldn't have been more heart-wrenching. There were a lot of predictions preceding this episode that Jesse would be captured and effectively used as a slave to cook Walt's distinctive brand of meth, and for once predicitons about where Gilligan would take the story were spot-on. The scene in which he was chained up and bloody-faced in the underground cell was almost unbearable to watch, and we didn't need to be shown Jesse being given a beating to know exactly what had happened to him. He then becomes a slave quite literally, as we see him chained up to cook meth alongside Todd.
One of the biggest literal revelations that came with this episode was Walt's secret life being brought to the forefront, and Walter Jr being made aware of it all. RJ Mitte's performance was nothing short of excellent, especially in the lead-up to the knife-struggle/family-crumbling. On that note, I'm firmly under the belief that the scene in which the family falls to pieces was one of the best few minutes of television in memory, and likely for a generation. Nothing comes to mind as being any better, and it was only exacerbated by the knife fight, when it seemed inevitable that someone would end up on the end of the knife. Furthermore, Walter Jr's phone call to the police made the destruction of the family fully realised, as well as Walt's effective abduction of baby Holly. Every aspect of Johnson's direction, and the production in general, added to the mounting tension throughout this scene, and I've no doubt that, for a few moments, a lot of viewers will have forgotten that what they were watching was fictional, much as I did.
In the final scenes, we see Holly dropped off in the safe hands of a group of firefighters at a station - so she couldn't be any safer - and Walt have a high-pitched and heavily emotional converstion with Skylar over the phone as the police listen in. It appears that the secret is indeed out, now; everyone is aware of Walt's secret life. His apparent-catharsis over the phone could potentially act as a deterrent towards the police; the blame for all of the illegal actions has firmly moved singularly onto his head, rather than his family, particuarly Skylar. We then see him getting into the car belonging to Saul's 'guy', the faceless man who helps people start a new life off the grid, the result of which we've undoubtedly seen in Walt's return to his old house, and his breakfast at Denny's that ended with the delivery of an M60, the use of which is still up for deliberation.
I'd give a conclusion, but I guess my opinion would, at this point, come off as biased, because I have nothing but good things to say about this episode and the show as a whole. Predictions? Walt will get the money he has to the people that need it, save Jesse and go down in a blaze of glory, effectively redeeming itself.
But, hey, it's Vince Gilligan.
No comments:
Post a Comment