Breaking Bad: "Salud"

Season 4, Episode 10

Your shelter from the Emmy storm

“I’m the guy your boss brought

here to show you how it’s done.”

-Jesse

“I made a mistake; it’s my own fault.”

-Walt

What interests me most about Breaking Bad – what interests me most about true quality television as whole, actually – is how it manages to subvert our expectations merely by not doing what most standard shows would do in the same situation. Tonight was the Emmy awards, and much like it like is every year, it was a 3-hour gala celebration of well-done mediocrity – those shows and performance that fits comfortably within an outdated notion of what television should look like.

Obviously, Breaking Bad does not fit into this mold, and though Bryan Cranston’s fantastic, understated, seemingly Emmy-repelling performance breaks that mold, the fact that the show has never won an Emmy for Best Drama only reconfirms it. (Mad Men, which certainly deserved the recognition for Best Drama, probably fits into the Emmy mold because A) It’s an old fashioned, character based drama, B) most Emmy voters probably grew up in the 60s, and C) they probably love its soapier elements.)

Keeping these thoughts in mind informs a lot of how I viewed “Salud”, an episode that seemed to the both expel and incorporate past TV drama tropes. On the expelling side, the episode didn’t even bother trying to deal with the immediate aftermath on Walt and Jesse’s fight at the end of last week’s episode. It just set the two men off on different paths, and allowed the tension between the two men filter out and they interacted with other people. It was a boldly understated move, and one that allowed the show to further dwell on the decaying relationship of these two men without spending any time actually talking about it.

On the incorporating side of things, we saw the two men’s path mirrors each other’s. Its a thematic tool that many shows have used before, but when a show that has as fully realized characters as Breaking Bad does, it's a storytelling device that takes on much greater weight. Jesse, who has been thrust into a new position within the cartel, seeks to assert his dominance amongst strangers. When faced with a group of cooks who don’t respect him or his lack of chemistry knowledge, Jesse stares them down and delivers his best Mike impression, and immediately follows it up with a Walt-esque demand for a sparkling clean cooking area. Jesse may want to pretend he’s a badass, but the only way he knows how is copy the badasses around him. But even this goes away, as at the party, surrounded by his superiors, he revert to the passive Jesse that we’ve known all this time, just sitting back and letting Gus do his thing. And it’s not until the final moments that Jesse finds out just who he is: a man of action, a man who is ready to use a gun.

Walter, meanwhile, is finding himself to be less the badass, and more the broken man. Reeling from his fight with Jesse, Walt goes home and take pain killers, making sure to wash them down with alcohol, and move that causes him to miss Walt, Jr.’s birthday, and leaves him a vulnerable wreck. He breaks down crying in front of his son, who must talk him back from the emotional edge. The next day, Walt tells Jr. a highly detailed account of his encounter with his own father in the hospital. The intent is clear: Though he may be losing that hard edge to him, and though it may be something that his family wants and he needs, Walt isn’t going to stop being Heisenberg without a fight.

Skyler, in a move that feels perhaps a bit too calculated for the episode, takes a path that rest somewhere between Walt’s broken man and Jesse’s new man of action. Attempting to save Ted (as well as her own) ass from getting jailed, Skyler has Saul launder over $600,000 and give to Ted under the ruse of an inheritance from a long-lost relative. Yet Skyler’s passive-aggressive patch to Ted’s money’s troubles doesn’t work, as Ted, ever the douche, uses it to buy a fancy new car, intent on paying the IRS back with money he plans to earn. So Skyler goes to Ted directly to nudge him along to the right conclusion. When that doesn’t work, she has to break him down: “Do you really thank your aunt willed you that money?” Skyler doesn’t fit easily into one box; she can switch between angel and bitch as needed, whatever helps her to do what she perceives as the right thing.  

Yet tonight’s ultimate transformation came in the form of Gustavo Fring, a man pushed to the extreme by the actions of those around him. Finally back at the site of Max’s death, Gus is able to take out his revenge by poising most of the Cartel’s top-level brass, but he has to poison himself as well in order to do it, making sure to throw it up before it can kill him. And though Gus, Mike and Jesse managed to get away still alive, they are all quite scratched up from the event, and they’ve got whatever remains of the Cartel bearing down on them. No one said being a badass came free.  

Quotes, Etc:

“I understand English.” “So you know what ‘asshole’ means.”

Another Breaking Bad Signature Gross-Out Moment: The blood on Walt’s head caused the sheet to stick to his face. We he tries to pull it off, the blood stretches like melted cheese.

Jeez, I never realized Bryan Cranston had such skinny legs.

“Fully loaded. He even got the heated steering wheel.”