Breaking Bad: "Box Cutter"

Season 4, Episode 1

The proper way to hit the reset button

“Well?...Get back to work.”

-Gus

Right, so where were we? Oh yes. Jesse just shot Gale in order to save his and Walt’s positions as cookers in Gus’ meth empire. Such a move will most certainly upend the status quo, raining all kinds of shit down on out two anti-heroes’ heads, correct?

Well, yes and no. The problem that Vince Gilligan and his writing staff set up for themselves with that cliff-hanger ending is that they had to find a way out of it, some way in which to get Walt and Jesse back to making meth, given that that’s the basic premise of the show. Yes, Gilligan and Co. could have waited a few episodes to get the two of them cooking again, but it would have to happen eventually, lest the show fall too far off track.

Yet if the show drops the two of them back into cooking too quickly, too cleanly, then everything will seem for naught, and the episode will comes across as a cheat. Luckily, Gilligan was able to have it both ways, via a scene where Gus calmly walks down into the lab, coolly and neatly changes into an orange rubber jumpsuit, and then slices Victor’s throat open with a box cutter. With absolutely no dialogue, his point has been made: Yes, I may need you to make my meth, but cross me again, and I will seriously fuck you up.

What’s interesting to note is that this scene also worked as a microcosm for the format of tonight’s episode, in the fact that nothing really seemed to happened, yet this may just be one of the tensest hours of television I have ever had the pleasure of watching. It was all kicked off tonight with one of Breaking Bad’s signature cold opens, as we flashed back to Gale’s first day on the job as he begins setting up the lab, and then as he slowly talks himself out of a job by giving the highest of praise to Walt’s 99% pure meth. The message is clear: You can become obsolete at anytime, and it may be at your own hands.

Now of course that’s not really an issue with Marie & Hank, who are already pretty obsolete to being with, and are just struggling to get through Hank’s physical therapy. But Skyler? Well, her initial moral decline isn’t getting any better since she agreed to help Walt launder his money last season, and tonight she continues that downward spiral as she undertakes a bit of subterfuge by parking Walt’s car three blocks down (so that Walt Jr. won’t ask any questions), and using her baby to beguile a locksmith to let her into Hank’s place.

Sal, meanwhile, clearly senses that his own position on the drug game is in peril, now that he knows that Mike will always put Gus’ best interests first. He rummages around his office looking for bugs and contemplates fleeing the country, and as much as all of this might come off as comic relief, it serves a definite purpose. Sure, it might have been a narrative necessity to give Skyler and Sal (and Hank & Marie) some screen time in order to break up the scenes at the lab – which they did – but it also shows the large impact of Walt’s actions. Yes, Sal and Skyler got into this game mostly of their own accord, and so part of blame rest squarely on their feet, but they wouldn’t be in the positions they are if Walt didn’t insist on bucking the system. And all Hank ever did was try to uphold the law, and his marriage it going to fall apart because of the trouble Walt’s meth domination brought into the area.

Jesse, meanwhile, seems to have his own issues that threaten to wreck Walt’s life even further. Normally when Jesses in connected to a meth-business related death (Jane, Combo, etc.), he tends to go into a shock-spiral and hit up the glass pipe again. Tonight we got the shock-spiral, but no pipe. No, Jesse’s been through too much shit in his life already, and he knows the score. In a darkly comic monologue, he lays out the truth: There’s no one better than he and Walt to make meth, so their jobs and lives are safe. Worrying has become a meaningless activity for Jesse, a waste of time and energy, so he’s just given up trying, resigning himself to going through the motions until the next big inevitable upset comes along. The only question that remains is that if that upset will occur due to Jesse’s neglect.

And this in short in what makes “Box Cutter” work; though everybody ostensible positions remain intact/restored, the character relationships have become far more tenuous than they were before, and the whole system is even more violate than before. By taking things back, Gilligan had managed to move the story forward, and it’s now primed to blow up with the right trigger. Like that Gale’s folder full of “Lab Notes” that the police are sure to find….

Quotes, Etc:

In meth-speak, a 3% difference in purity is a gulf.

How long ago was Walt’s daughter born? Because either Skyler is still working of the baby weight, or Anna Gunn seems to have put on some weight between seasons, and my inability to tell is getting to me.

“He carpools?...He carpools to his job at a meth lab?”

“You got a passport, right?” Bob Odenkirk is always able to do so much with so little.

“So yeah, Marie, if you and everybody else secreted voted and changed the entire English language, yeah Marie, I broke new ground.”

“All right, I just want to go on record: We should all be wearing masks.”

“I never used this stuff, you sure it’ll do the job?” “Trust us.”

That jump cut from Walter mopping up the blood to a man swirling his fries in his ketchup was an unbelievably gross moment, but it was followed up by one of the funniest sight gags the show has ever done: Walt and Jesse sharing a booth a Denny’s, wearing matching Kenny Rogers t-shirts.