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It's not a deafening silence, nor a vacuum. Rather, it's inverted; a cup, not a bell. I'm talking about a silence that isn't defined by the lack of sound, but by the awful inevitability of the noise yet to come. It's silence like a threat, a marker that's primed to come due. It's not the silence of the grave. It's the ominous stillness that comes just before.
Director Michelle MacLaren is the John Cage of this malevolent silence, able to wield it as precisely as a pointillist with a paintbrush. And with "To'hajiilee," the final episode of Breaking Bad she'll ever direct, she has painted her masterpiece. Under the unblinking eye of her relentless camera, this was television not as entertainment but as endurance. It was agonizing, nauseating, unbearable. I loved every minute but hated every second. I couldn't wait for it to be over but I never wanted it to end. And I especially never wanted it to end like that.
Still, for a moment, let's focus not on the noise of that ending — of neo-Nazi bullets thunk-thunk-thunking into the sides of cars, of Walter White's shrill, impotent cries, of hope leaking out of this series like air from a punctured balloon — but on the silence. It descended on the episode at around the three-quarter mark, when Walt arrived at the site of his buried treasure, a pathetic pirate in a cerulean button-up. During the drag race out of town, he was as manic as we've ever seen him, as if he'd finally made up for all those years of not sampling his own product. Yet when he cut the engine, the piston-drums of the soundtrack began to fade, replaced by the banal donging of the Chrysler. Walt stepped outside and the noise washed away altogether. He was alone. There was nothing there. Just the soft scuffles of his own feet on desert sand, our own hearts, like his, jackhammering in our throats.
Are there birds? Maybe a few. I'd like to think they're buzzards; better yet a murder of crows. But watch the scene again and it's almost as if you can't hear them; they're temporary interruptions of that awful, awful silence. It's so still out there on the Indian reservation. It's the type of place where only two types of things can happen: terrible things and nothing. I think we all knew which to expect, even before the arrival of Hank's car.
About that: two thoughts. One, Walt is a monster but it's unhelpful and reductive to call him evil. Contrary to what Jesse believes, Walt isn't actually the devil — he's just willing to shake hands with one to consummate a business deal. Ultimately what blinds Walter White is the same thing that dooms him, not to mention the very thing that makes Breaking Bad so fascinating: his own unceasing, unquestioning commitment to himself. (Cue the other W.W.!) In those sick, ticking moments of indecision as Uncle Jack breathed into the phone and Hank yelled into the wind, we saw Walter come up against his own red line: He won't kill family. (Jesse's a gray area, though. He's "like" family. So.)
This is admirable, I guess. And consistent. Destroying people's lives but not actually ending them seems like a tough moral two-step to me but, then again, I've never had even a single barrel full of cash. (It's the same distinction, I think, between killing someone and killing someone with "no suffering, no fear." I mean, tell yourself what you want, but you're still killing someone.) So bully for Walt for calling off the Nazis — though I don't think for a minute any of us believed they were so easily mollified. History has demonstrated that they aren't the type of people who like to take "no" for an answer. But what I was saying was this: Just because he tried to do the right thing by Hank when it counted, it doesn't mean Walt's not still a monster. After all, Godzilla's ultimate intentions are kind of secondary. He can still knock over half of Tokyo just by turning around.
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Episode Name:Ozymandias
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Air date:9/15/2013
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Summary:Everyone copes with radically changed circumstances.
It's not a deafening silence, nor a vacuum. Rather, it's inverted; a cup, not a bell. I'm talking about a silence that isn't defined by the lack of sound, but by the awful inevitability of the noise yet to come. It's silence like a threat, a marker that's primed to come due. It's not the silence of the grave. It's the ominous stillness that comes just before.
Director Michelle MacLaren is the John Cage of this malevolent silence, able to wield it as precisely as a pointillist with a paintbrush. And with "To'hajiilee," the final episode of Breaking Bad she'll ever direct, she has painted her masterpiece. Under the unblinking eye of her relentless camera, this was television not as entertainment but as endurance. It was agonizing, nauseating, unbearable. I loved every minute but hated every second. I couldn't wait for it to be over but I never wanted it to end. And I especially never wanted it to end like that.
Still, for a moment, let's focus not on the noise of that ending — of neo-Nazi bullets thunk-thunk-thunking into the sides of cars, of Walter White's shrill, impotent cries, of hope leaking out of this series like air from a punctured balloon — but on the silence. It descended on the episode at around the three-quarter mark, when Walt arrived at the site of his buried treasure, a pathetic pirate in a cerulean button-up. During the drag race out of town, he was as manic as we've ever seen him, as if he'd finally made up for all those years of not sampling his own product. Yet when he cut the engine, the piston-drums of the soundtrack began to fade, replaced by the banal donging of the Chrysler. Walt stepped outside and the noise washed away altogether. He was alone. There was nothing there. Just the soft scuffles of his own feet on desert sand, our own hearts, like his, jackhammering in our throats.
Are there birds? Maybe a few. I'd like to think they're buzzards; better yet a murder of crows. But watch the scene again and it's almost as if you can't hear them; they're temporary interruptions of that awful, awful silence. It's so still out there on the Indian reservation. It's the type of place where only two types of things can happen: terrible things and nothing. I think we all knew which to expect, even before the arrival of Hank's car.
About that: two thoughts. One, Walt is a monster but it's unhelpful and reductive to call him evil. Contrary to what Jesse believes, Walt isn't actually the devil — he's just willing to shake hands with one to consummate a business deal. Ultimately what blinds Walter White is the same thing that dooms him, not to mention the very thing that makes Breaking Bad so fascinating: his own unceasing, unquestioning commitment to himself. (Cue the other W.W.!) In those sick, ticking moments of indecision as Uncle Jack breathed into the phone and Hank yelled into the wind, we saw Walter come up against his own red line: He won't kill family. (Jesse's a gray area, though. He's "like" family. So.)
This is admirable, I guess. And consistent. Destroying people's lives but not actually ending them seems like a tough moral two-step to me but, then again, I've never had even a single barrel full of cash. (It's the same distinction, I think, between killing someone and killing someone with "no suffering, no fear." I mean, tell yourself what you want, but you're still killing someone.) So bully for Walt for calling off the Nazis — though I don't think for a minute any of us believed they were so easily mollified. History has demonstrated that they aren't the type of people who like to take "no" for an answer. But what I was saying was this: Just because he tried to do the right thing by Hank when it counted, it doesn't mean Walt's not still a monster. After all, Godzilla's ultimate intentions are kind of secondary. He can still knock over half of Tokyo just by turning around.
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