Breaking Bad, Season 3, Episode 10 -- Fly

The Harsh Buzz of Conscience and Consequence

This episode was many things, but the one it wasn't was to advance the main plots of Season 3, such as Gus Frings building and reinforcing his Southwest methamphetamine empire, and Hank's recovery. Instead "Fly" was like a one act play, a character study, a Big Theme exploration and even filler to pad out the 13-episode commitment to AMC. It took place mostly in the meth lab, which gave it a claustrophobic, crazed feel.

Walt suffers from insomnia, annoyed at home by the blinking red light on his smoke detector. Coming to the lab, he becomes preoccupied with contamination, as he first hears and later spots the tiny "villain" shown in the opening scenes: a gray and black striped face fly (so called because it infests the faces of livestock). There must be no cooking until the impurity is eliminated. The fly must be slain.

That is the Big Theme, of contamination. The fly is a diversion, a ludicrous obsession that Walt uses to ignore the contamination both within himself and outside in his family, the city of Albuquerque and the region itself. Plagued by guilt and a severe lack of sleep, Walt seems to become psychotic.

At first it isn't clear, as Walt manically scrubs and sterilizes the equipment and tells Jesse they can't cook until the contamination is gone. He also checks and rechecks figures on a paper with a coiled, nervous energy and tells Jesse that their yield is .14 percent short, or about 1/2 to 3/4 pounds of meth. He interrogates Jesse to see if he's been siphoning off some of the product, which he denies, but indeed he has in his foolhardy plan to deal with his lunkhead peers, Badger and Skinny Pete. Walt reminds him that the men for whom they work would offer no forgiveness for this sin, only death.

Walt stays in the lab all night, and his pursuit of the elusive fly reaches absurd heights, such as when he throws his shoe up to the ceiling to hit the bug. It shatters a light, shards rain down on him, and the footwear becomes entangled its wreckage. Walt goes to the top of the stairwell to retrieve the shoe, which, of course, is just out of reach. He tries to snag it with a broom and falls over the railing, landing on the floor below in what could have been a critical fall. I was more than amazed when he was up later, no bones broken.

When Jesse returns the next morning, a loony Walt is standing in the lab, holding a long handled plastic wrapped fly swatter he made himself. Jesse has to believe his partner is ready for the rubber room, when Walt strikes him painfully with the fly swatter.

They have their usual 200-pound quota of blue meth to make, and Walt is raving about catching a fly that just happens to hide away until it their conflict is at dangerous levels, till it finally alights on Walt's glasses. Jesse, still smarting from Walt's blow, hits him back, and the fly takes off again.

Walt gets worse, tricking Jesse into giving him his keys to the lab and locking him out. Jesse runs through the laundry, trying to ask for an "el axo" (axe) in pseudo-Spanish. He goes into a maintenance room, where first he picks up and checks the heft of a ball peen hammer, then a sledgehammer, until he sees the master circuit breakers. But even turning off the juice doesn't faze Walt.

Jesse is antsy (sorry, couldn't resist a bug pun) to get cooking, so he comes back with a bag full of bug weaponry -- a real swatter, sprays and packs of fly tape. Walt rules against the sprays, because why bring in more contamination to remove a small impurity. Jesse points out that what they manufacture there is, itself, poison for humans, so what is the difference?

Soon the lab's ceiling is festooned with dozens of fly tape rolls. A desperate Jesse offers Walt a mug of coffee into which he sneaked a few sleeping pills. The product deadline is approaching, and Walt seems to be totally unhinged.

Walt looks back upon his cancer and his decision to start making the meth. He wonders aloud if maybe he has just lived too long. Cancer, a contamination of the human body, had affected both men.

Jesse remembers when his aunt -- the one whose house he now owns -- got cancer. There had been a kind of contamination there, too. A possum had moved in under the house, and its scavenging around the yard and scratching beneath the floor drove his aunt crazy. A pest control guy was brought in and told the aunt the animal had been removed, but she would not believe him. She claimed to still hear the possum and banged her broom on the floor to scare it away. She even named the phantom marsupial, dubbing it "Scrabble." It wasn't until the aunt was taken to the doctor that the family learned her cancer had spread to her brain, causing the hallucinations.

The pills take seemingly forever to take effect, so now the nutty lengths in which to catch the fly has Jesse setting up a stepladder on top of two file cabinets to reach the insect, which has retreated there for warmth. Jesse puts Walt into a chair after he falls. He climbs his precarious perch to get the bug, while a woozy Walt holds the ladder.

As Jesse swings, Walt descends further toward sleep. He talks about his decision to start producing meth, and not knowing when he will have enough money to leave his family. To quit kept being pushed back by need and life's events, such as Holly's birth or his own surgery.

The point, it seems, came the night Jane Margolis (Krystyn Ritter) died. That announcement turns Jesse cold, as he freezes in his swings at the fly, high above Walt.

Walt begins to remember the events in the Season 2 episode "Phoenix." On that night, Walt was still living in the family home, and Skyler sent him out to buy diapers for Holly. Before he left, he remembers that he heard Skyler singing a lullaby to their daughter over the baby monitor. He went to Jesse's apartment to give him his share of their payment.

Walt went to a bar and had a drink, meeting a man (John de Lancie, making any Star Trek fan forget Q with his tense performance). They had a drink together and talked about their families. They learned that they both had daughters.

Only later did Walt find out the man was Donald Margolis, Jane's father. And one thing Donald said, that stuck in his mind: family is the most important, and nothing else matters. This was what made Walt realize he needed to keep making money.

It was also on this night that the contamination from his activities began to spread. He returned to Jesse's apartment, where he found him and Jane in a drug induced stupor. Walt stood over their bed, watching Jane as she woke up and started to gasp and cough. Walt started toward Jane to help her, but then hesitated and watched her choke to death on her own vomit.

Whatever impulse drove him toward this was the sign of contamination within him. Jane had threatened to blackmail Walt and turn him in if he didn't give Jesse his share in their last payment. Her codependent relationship with Jesse was pushing them ever deeper into a swamp of hard drugs and personal destruction. That decision to let her die was the real turning point for Walt, who in an instant must have seen it as a way to eliminate a problem.

As the drugged Walt relates the story of meeting Donald, you almost think he will confess his part in Jane's death, but instead he expresses regret over other things -- his failed marriage, the blunder with the second cell phone, but not letting a young girl die.

Walt was haunted by Jane's death and his decision to let her die. He tried to ignore that contamination and how it spread to Donald, whose own reckless, impetuous behavior, fueled by a father's grief, had no place whatsoever in his profession -- air traffic controller. Donald's decision to let two planes collide over Albuquerque was the next wave of contamination that began with Walt's decision to make drugs. The contamination is reaching a crescendo this season as Gus Fring's multi-state network operating out of his Los Pollos Hermanos restaurants churns the potent blue meth out across the entire Southwest.

Jesse tries in his best way to support Walt, telling him that Jane's death wasn't his fault, and it was not his, either. What kind of irrational fury would have burst from him had Walt told him the entire story? The view of blame or fault for contamination, a horrifying act or event, would have shifted and brought yet another direction for that contamination to inflict more damage.

Jesse see the fly and finally scores a hit with the swatter. The insect drifts to the floor in slow motion and a shuddering sound. He exults in the kill and presents his quarry to Walt, but he has fallen asleep.

Jesse puts Walt to bed and does the cooking himself. Walt, back to his old self the next morning, grills Jesse and goes through a checklist to ensure his junior partner did things right. As they leave the laundry facility, Walt warns Jesse again that if he is stealing product, it must stop, because their bosses have zero tolerance, and he cannot protect him.

This episode was also a journey into Jesse's head. He too is trying to move on and stay sober. Early in the episode, he contemplates his life and past abuse as he pulls a cigarette butt out of his car's ashtray and stares at it. Perhaps it reminded him of a joint, or some other illegal substance he had used.

By the end of the episode, this often flighty man-child had to take the mature role in their relationship, normally held by Walt. He let Walt get a good night's sleep and filled their quota, presumably cooking up a just fine batch of blue meth. The fragility of their relationship is saved from shattering, and both leave.

Jesse, still clean and sober, has had an old wound reopened by Walt's recollections, and he must face the struggle with ice cold reality while preventing the monkey from returning to his back. And what will he do in regard to the stolen product and his own foolhardy idea to create his own little enterprise?

Walt goes home and finds himself lying in bed awake once again that night. The red light blinks on the smoke detector. He hears an annoying buzzing. Another fly! The detector light blinks and intermittently shows the silhouette of the insect upon it. The guilt, and the contamination, are still there.

[Photos: AMC]

Breaking Bad Season 3, Episode 8 -- I See You

This is my rather late posting on this week's Breaking Bad, and it is more of my impressions than a straight recap.

I am impressed by the savvy and the well-honed manipulation by Gus Frings in this episode. Under the meticulously assembled guise of benevolent philanthropist and prominent local businessman -- operator of the Los Pollos Hermanos fast food chain -- Gus literally had the competition blown away, and solidified his position as the undisputed meth kingpin of Albuquerque.

During the marathon vigil over the critically wounded Hank at the hospital, Walter Jr. showed his copy of Mark Bowden's Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw to his dad.

The book focuses on the hunt and downfall of Pablo Escobar. If you discussed cocaine in the 1980s, the name of Escobar quickly would pop up. The polar opposite of Gus, this lord of the Colombian Medellin cartel flouted law enforcement and gleefully used his earnings to curry favor with the Medellin poor by building soccer fields and churches and sponsoring sports teams.

That is the only thing that Gus and Escobar have in common. They win hearts and minds in their communities, but Gus "hides in plan sight, the same as you" as he tells Walter. Sponsor a local fun run, sell a ton of meth!

While Escobar was flamboyant and lived in a glitzy mansion in Medellin and was clad in fancy clothing, Gus is low key, dressed in muted garments that would look at home on the Sears sales rack. He virtually blends into the shadows. He deliberates each strategy carefully and quietly. Early in the season, when Walter and Jesse sought out the main local distributors, who would have guessed the head guy of Los Pollos Hermanos where they ate was their man? He even shows up at the hospital, comforting Marie and offering $10,000 reward toward apprehension of Hank's assailants -- and feeds all the cops gathered there too. It has enjoyable to watch Giancarlo Esposito immerse himself in this well modulated character.

I mistakenly thought that Hank was a dead duck and even said so in a recap of Lost, of all things, but I am -- pardon the pun -- dead wrong. Hank's doctors appeared at regular intervals through the show to give nervous bulletins that the gravely wounded DEA agent was hanging on. Walter juggled an awkward transition of assistants for the Giant Secret Cavern Laboratory, and sitting in solidarity with his clan while Hank was being treated.

The sword of Damocles over his head was to make 200 pounds of blue meth over the weekend, and his leisurely attitude toward the whole thing considerably bothered Gus' assistant, who kept checking in on the Secret Cavern Lab and wondering why no production was going on.

The assistant was also puzzled and perturbed why Walt dumped Gale as his assistant, as was the nerdy chemist himself. Neither could understand how Walt could trade in a mature guy with two degrees in organic chemistry for a seeming man-child who dashed about the expanses of the lab, acting like a 10-year-old in the action figures department at Toys "R" Us. Not to mention doing goofy, juvenile stunts, such as inflating his yellow safety suit with a vacuum device and, it is implied, nearly pulling his manhood up into said same machine.

David Costabile, as Gale, was more befuddled than his character in Flight of the Conchords ever will be in understanding why his wife is obsessed with the title folk duo. And his anger could lead to something worse. As karma has repeatedly magnified consequences of actions in this show, Gale could spell real trouble for Walt later this season.

Walt has his reasons to reunite with Jesse, as he knows the guy is puerile but also sticks to procedure and follows orders -- usually -- without much trouble. And after going through a reign of terror with Tuco Salamanca and a harrowing evasion of Hank as he tracked down their old RV, the bond between exiled high school chemistry teacher and recovering addict is potent. They are known quantities to each other, a team that fate seems to dictate must stay intact.

Some of the best scenes involved Daniel Moncada as Leonel, the one surviving cousin of Tuco. A patient is brought into the hospital, and the staff is talking about having to cut his boots off. I was trying to remember: was Hank wearing boots in his showdown with the Cousins? Then a cut to a long leather boot topped with a steel death's head. It was him, the one who didn't get the top of his head ripped off by a hollow point bullet.

In perhaps the best scene of the season, Walt is taken by the massive troop of law enforcement personnel to see the patient they repeatedly dub a "piece of shit." Leonel, his face baleful, sits in his hospital bed.

The camera pans down to -- two stumps instead of legs. Seeing "Heisenberg" standing at the front of his unwanted visitors, Leonel yanks out his IV, drops out of the bed and laboriously, furiously pulls himself toward Walt, leaving a bloody trail behind, and never saying a word.

All there is is that look of relentless vengeance as he moves toward the man he and his brother targeted in their petition to Santa Muerte (the deity seen in the village shrine in episode 1). Even as an amputee, only revenge fuels his existence. Leonel is a human Terminator, though now a very wounded one.

Either some excellent CGI, prosthetics or a stand-in amputee made Moncada look as if he had no legs. It was a stunning sequence in this engrossing show.

While Gus' assistant questions whether Walt can deliver, and if he's lost his mind in bringing that clown Jesse into the Secret Cavern Lab, Walt counters to Frings that give him a few days, and he'll double the amount of product to a whopping 400 pounds. I do believe he'll do it, even if the previews show that Jesse will flake out over that much blue meth and might get into some stupid shenanigans with Skinny Pete.

The hospital is just jam packed with DEA and Albuquerque city cops, showing that domineering, passionate and sometimes ostentatious construct of brotherhood exhibited by law enforcement and fire personnel. These men are loud and unapologetic, and there are no tears when Leonel finally goes into cardiac rest, effectively ending the Cousins' vendetta.

It was after Leonel bought it that I got the inkling great breadth of Gus' plan to sever ties with the Mexican cartel and take over. I originally thought that maybe one of those many cops sneaked in and took care of Leonel, but it seems it was Mike the Cleaner, Gus' go-to guy for dirty deeds. He cannily offers a DEA agent to the Cousins, thereby shielding Walt and knowing that his manufacturer is safe. And by having the Cousins try to murder a lawman, now the attention of his "brothers" on both sides of the border is tilted toward the cartel.

A frightened Juan Bolsa phones Gus that the federales are literally on his doorstep, and he accuses him of engineering the Cousins' attack on Hank. Gus tranquilly denies it, but Juan is totally right, a bitter realization that must pass through his head as he opens his door and meets up with a hail of bullets, which we never see but hear over Gus' phone.

For Gus, it is a sweet thought that the cartel is either gone or seriously crippled, as he hears Juan's shooting, and proceeds to calmly and leisurely snap the cell phone in half and throw it in a trash bin.

I also cannot forget as Hank's stretcher is pulled out of the ambulance, Jesse is sitting in a wheelchair, waiting for Skinny Pete to give him a ride. Jesse gets up, looks at the patient, and a look of joy spreads across his face as he recognizes the man who made mincemeat of his face in the last episode. He follows the emergency crew practically into the ER, amazed at the ways of karma and payback.

The episode's conclusion is with Hank's significant others filing into his hospital room, and he is only partially visible. The only sound is the hissing of his respirator.

With five more episodes left, will Walt keep his partnership together and meet his quota? What is Jesse going to do, and how will Walt control him? And what is up with the 18 wheeler in this week's previews, the most menacing I've seen since that old Steven Spielberg TV movie, Duel?

Breaking Bad Season 3, Episode 5 - Mas

One-third of the way into the season, and our Cookin' Couple are still bickering and seem to be headed toward divorce, much as the White marriage has pretty much hit the rocks. Dissolved relationships, clashing partners and literal shoegazing -- actually barefoot gazing -- were in this episode bearing the Spanish word for "more."

The same leisurely, low-key pace resumed, as established in the first four shows, where the only violence was Episode 1 -- the truck blasted to oblivion by the twin cousins of psychotic Season 2 dealer Tuco Salamanca, whom the Mexican cartel has hired to assassinate Heisenberg.

Another flashback opened the episode, quickly identified by a Walter White who has a full head of hair. He gives Jesse his life savings to get an RV.

Jesse's reactions are typical of his pre-rehab self: all night wine ("Dom Pering-Don," the stuff James Bond drinks, yo!), women and song, total debauchery at a strip club. He and his homies are chuckling over the fact that they're blowing the money of a sorry middle aged fella who trusted Jesse to spend it wisely. (It is appropriate that the strip joint's name has something to do with atomic bombs, not only reflecting new Mexico's connection to A-bomb history, but tying in with the explosive lives of Jesse and Walter.)

With dawn's arrival, Jesse finds he has only $1,400. His pal, Christian "Combo" Ortega, knows where he can get an RV right away, despite it being 6 a.m. Off they go to a house marked with a terra cotta sun with a creepy smiling face, money is exchanged, and Jesse is told to get out of there fast. Easy to extrapolate that Jesse has just bought himself a stolen vehicle, which he then proceeds to crash into several garbage cans along the way.

Chicken baron and secret drug lord Gus Frings (Giancarlo Esposito) continued his "gentle persuasion" to bring Walter back. In Episode 4 it was a Los Pollos Hermanos bag full of cash casually tossed into the window of his Pontiac Aztek. In this show, it was an entire state of the art lab in the basement of Gus' commercial laundry, coupled with a job quota of 200 pounds of meth a week. The pay's fantastic, and Walt can set his own hours.

Walter said "no," again, even after admiring that veritable chemist's wet dream of a lab: spacious, airy and stocked with the sleek coolness and sheen of stainless steel that spins the wonders of science, even the illegal ones.

Gus asks him why Walt got into cooking in the first place. He says it was for his family.

Family is everything, Gus agrees. Family is the most important thing of life, bar none. Walt can cook for them, for their future. A man's gotta do what he's gotta do. He is the provider, and he always will be for family. Cook, if not for himself, then again for them. But Walter is adamant -- no more sky blue meth! He's done!

Later Walter is shown cradling Holly, in one of the tense breakfast scenes with Skyler and Walter Jr. (Flynn). Family is the only thing, the best thing, embodied in a tiny infant unaware of her dad's nefarious turn.

Skyler continues her relationship with Ted Beneke, who invites her to move in with him. Her attorney, tired of her wishy washy attitude about Walter, seconds the idea of getting out of her old house, as staying at there would make her an accessory after the fact for Walter's illegal enterprise.

There were a couple shots of Skyler staring down at her well manicured, painted toenails, in a thick terry bathrobe in Ted's bathroom. She could resolutely declare that Ted's thermostat regulated, specially heated bathroom floor is the "best invention ever," but could not decide what to do about living arrangements or ending things with Walter. The next scene in both cases was Skyler setting the table for breakfast, down to proper flatware placement and cloth napkins, a gesture more associated with suburban stability.

Skyler snoops into the room Walter shares with baby Holly. She hauls down Walter's Big Gym Bag of Cash and gazes at it, her mind in turmoil over what to do. In a later trip to the room, she finds Walter's stuff gone and his signature on the divorce papers.

There was another kind of divorce, as the partnership of Hank and Agent Steve Gomez ended. Hank rejected the promotion to the "Super Bowl" of the drug wars, DEA El Paso, in order to follow his obsession with the blue meth and Heisenberg.

Marie's dreams of a Georgetown townhouse melted away. She phoned Skyler and cried on her shoulder, so to speak, about Hank's emotional volatility and her own marriage's problems.

Gomie is now headed to El Paso, as Hank later finds out abruptly, and certainly he is a better fit than Hank, as the guy speaks the Spanish that Hank lacked and earned him a razzing last season. At least, until Danny Trejo's Head-on-a-Tortoise blew a few of them up.

Hank's task of tracking down the 29 early 1980s RVs like the one our Cookin' Couple used begins disastrously, much as his career path has been going this season, what with the panic attack and an unnecessary brawl with a couple bikers in a local bar a couple episodes ago.

Hank and Steve are staking out a doppelganger of Walt and Jesse's lab that is set up in a placid campground. Steve checks out the RV but cannot see inside. Leave it to Hank to climb up the luggage rack ladder to the top, stealthily slide along the roof, peer in -- and spot a portly middle aged couple in their underwear playing cards. The guy spots Hank, who then has a lot of 'splaining to do as sunrise comes. Not a great start to the Great RV Hunt.

Walter hides in the closet in Holly's room, having a nasty argument with Jesse, who wants the other half of the money. The argument over rights to the blue meth recipe rages, and again there is no resolution.

Later Jesse is at Saul Goodman's Statue of Liberty Office of Legal Larceny, again screeching for the money.

Walter shows up to give Jesse the other half of the moola. He also mentions Gus' offer was $3 million for three months. He is now ready to cook!

Saul is happy to take 15 percent. A pissed yet empowered Walter -- the stronger man we are seeing emerge this season -- bargains him down to 5 percent. He rubs salt in Jesse's wounds with the fact that Gus wants only him, and the younger man was only a pawn to achieve that goal.

Jesse is upset that "his" attorney is now dickering with Walter, to which Saul says he only backs winners.

Jesse storms out to the parking lot, grabs a loose chunk of concrete that just happened to be there, and throws it at Walter's car windshield, making it a twin of the shattered window Walter received from the debris of Wayfarer Airlines Flight 515 at the season's beginning.

Saul is better at making money than in reconciling couples. I wish that our Odd Couple of Narcotics could be reunited. Because what we need from them is -- more. However, DEA Agent Hank Schrader could change things...

Finally, the Great RV Hunt takes a much better turn when Hank visits the house with the creepy sun decoration. It's Combo's family home, and Mrs. Ortega tells Hank that her RV was stolen some time ago. She gives the agent permission to search Combo's old bedroom, which has marijuana curtains and and just happens to have a photo of the dead guy with Jesse taken the night of the strip club craziness. One step closer to Heisenberg, and unknowingly, one more closer to his own brother-in-law.