Breaking Bad: "Thirty-Eight Snub"

Season 4, Episode 2

Another episode thrills using very little plot development

“Yeah, I have the job. But for how long?”

-Walt

If season three was all about things finally going right for our characters, and about how outside influences were attempting to take away those hard-earned rewards, season four seems to be about how these hard-kept positions are now theirs to lose.

To wit: It’s sometime after the Great Lab Massacre, and Walt, Jesse, and Mike all seem on edge about what they have witnessed. (Gus, meanwhile, is keeping his head down, but whether he’s scared of Walt or afraid that he just might kill his only cook for all the grief he caused, it isn’t certain.) Walt buys a gun from a mysterious dealer that Sal knows (played by Deadwood alum Jim Beaver, which only made me sad that they couldn’t give him a scene with Anna Gunn), yet apart from killing Gus – out of revenge, possibly as a power play – Walt doesn’t seem to have any specific ideas of how he’s going to regain control. Though Jesse puts on a brave face for Walt, he’s clearly shaken by what he experienced, and he can’t stand to be alone, and it’s heavily implied that he can’t sleep either. And Mike, well he’s obsessed with rubbing the barely noticeable blood stain out of his jacket, attempting to remove and forget about all traces of what he just witnessed.  

Walt and Mike’s story’s come to a head when Walt, whose attempts to confront Gus head-on fail, follows Mike to his favorite watering hole, and, trying to hide the tail between his legs, asks for Mike’s help, all while meekly trying to frame it so it seems as if he’s doing Mike the favor, and not the other way around. Mike, however, is too smart for that shit, and though it’s obvious he too wants to be free from Gus’s tyranny, he’s seen enough to know that no good can come from rocking the boat. So he kicks the shit out of Walt, effectively convincing him to drop his revenge plans, because Mike has seen firsthand what happens to lackeys who allow chaos to enter Gus’ operation. One problem though: Season one showed us what Walt is like when his back is to a wall, and though Mike’s beating may have stopped him for now, he’ll soon rise up with an even more destructive plan.

Skyler, meanwhile, seems hell-bent on getting that carwash through which she can launder all of Walt’s money, but her ambition seems to be foiling her every move. After recklessly mentioning the carwash to Walt over the phone, she then overplays her hand with the carwash owner by aggressively trying to underbid him. Her first mistake may have been introducing herself as “Skyler White” but her second, and far larger, mistake was treating the owner as less than her by offering so little money for the carwash. The lesson that Skyler has yet to learn, it seems, is that businessmen, legal or not, are a insecure breed, and their self-worth in directly tied up in the value of their product.

Hank and Marie, still off in their own little world, may only have each other to lose, but in the lower-stakes of their world. Hank, who continuously resent Marie if for no other reason that she’s the one who has to see him at his weakest, keeps putting emotional distance between the two of them. And poor Marie, who’s honestly trying her best to be there for Hank (and seems to be growing as a person because of it), keeps taking the emotional beating. But it’s clear from her half-joking plead with the physical therapist to stay full time that she can’t take much more of this, and it won’t be long before she snaps. Though I was originally turned off by this subplot, tonight’s outing proved to be far more emotionally charged than I would have expected, and if the writing and acting can stay at this caliber, then the show can keep on plugging away at this story line for as long as it sees fit.

Much like “Box Cutter” before it, “Thirty-Eight Snub” was an episode where not a whole lot happened, but still put us through the emotional ringer. Yet even if “Snub” wasn’t nearly as edge-of-your-seat tense, I think it was the better episode. While “Box Cutter” had the unenviable job of getting the show back to something resembling normalcy (and did a fine job of it), “Snub” had the much easier and far more interesting task of setting up how the rest of the season is going to play out. And though we still don’t have a whole lot of plot development, the scene is primed, and this episode has filled me with enough anticipation to keep me hooked.

Quotes, Etc:

The show often look fantastic, but it isn’t all that often that we get the odd directorial touches – the time lapsing during Jesse’s party, the POV Roomba shot, the close-ups of Walt and his gun – and they really added to the sense of the characters’ loss of perspective.

“Dude, you are so historically retarded!” Okay, that entire zombie argument was just great, and there were far too many quotes to mention. (The real question is whether or not that was a dig at The Walking Dead.)

“Walt, it’s a carwash, not a brothel.”

“You’re way too sensitive about your zone, bro.”

“You got some scissors? I will cut this bitch up good.”

“I got this cat, I think I’m supposed to feed it.”