By JOE DONATELLI
“Breaking Bad” returns for the second half of its fifth and final season this Sunday, August 11, and you have to watch it.
You have to.
If you don’t, you’ll be absolutely useless. What will anyone talk to you about? Traffic? Weather? “Criminal Minds”? Come on.
And if you skip the final episodes of “Breaking Bad,” you will hate social media for the next few months. Hate it. Everyone on Facebook is going to be all “OMFG! Walt Jr. is on meth! I knew that would happen.” And you’ll have no clue what that means or why everyone keeps saying it. You’ll just sit there and stare at your feed like an orangutan pawing an encyclopedia.
So it’s settled. You’re going to watch the final eight episodes of “Breaking Bad.”
If you’re a productive member of society, there’s not enough time for you to watch every episode between now and Sunday night. But you can catch up quickly. Unlike “The Wire” or “Lost,” “Breaking Bad” is not a complicated show. It’s a simple show. It’s a show about a man, an ugly car … and a dream.
SEASON 1
Walter White is a 50-year-old high school chemistry teacher in New Mexico. Wait, that’s not the worst part. He works a second job at a car wash. That’s not the worst part, either. His headstrong son Walter Jr. has cerebral palsy. Hold tight. We’re still circling in on the worst part. His henpecking wife Skyler is pregnant. Nope. Not the worst part. Walter White has inoperable lung cancer. There it is.
Before cancer, Walt was the average guy at the end of the cul-de-sac. His averageness is driven home by the fact that he drives a pea soup-colored Pontiac Aztek, which is possibly the ugliest car ever. Is it a car? Is it an SUV? Is it a minivan? No, it’s a metaphor. This is the car you drive if you live a life of plodding mediocrity that ends when you get cancer and die.
After Walt finds out he has cancer, he quits the car wash the way we all wish we could quit demeaning jobs: in a blaze of obscene glory. Cancer is taking Walt’s life, but it has given him the gift of stones.
Because Walt’s a good guy, he wants to make sure his stay-at-home wife, disabled son and unborn child are set financially. The answer, as it so often is in life, is drugs. Walt teams up with a former student named Jesse Pinkman to make and sell meth. Jesse is that kid in high school who ditched math class and sold weed to the music teacher.
Naturally, Walt and Jesse buy a Winnebago. They need it to cook drugs in the desert, and Walt later uses it to entomb an enemy drug dealer with poison gas. Convinced he’s going to jail for cooking meth and offing a bad guy, Walt tries to shoot himself while standing in the middle of the road in his underwear, but the gun jams, and he goes home invigorated and lights his old lady’s Bunsen burner, if you know what we mean.
That’s just the pilot.
Other fun moments during Season One include a cautionary tale about properly dissolving a body in acid, the introduction of Walt’s brother-in-law Hank, who is a one-dimensional DEA agent whose one dimension is kickin’ ass, and Hank’s wife Marie, who steals shoes because the show’s writers need to give her something interesting to do.
Walt starts chemo and assumes the underworld identity “Heisenberg,” naming himself after the German theoretical physicist. Walt and Jesse go into business with a crazy drug dealer named Tuco. In the season finale, right in front of Walt, Tuco kills an employee named No-Doze for practicing the 360-Degree Feedback method of corporate communication. Middle managers everywhere no doubt recognized Tuco’s motivations while secretly envying his means.
SEASON 2
This is a good season, but it’s really a bridge to Seasons 3 and 4, which are two of the strongest seasons of any show in television history.
Here are the highlights:
Tuco abducts Walt and Jesse and takes them to a desert hideaway with his elderly uncle Hector. Hector is in a wheelchair and can no longer speak and communicates by ringing a bell. Hector prevents Walt and Jesse from killing Tuco, but because it’s hard to ring, “These dudes just tried to kill you with a poison burrito” with a bell, Tuco doesn’t see the whole danger. Eventually, Jesse shoots Tuco, but not to death, and Hank arrives a bit later and finishes off Tuco during a firefight while Walt and Jesse run off unseen into the desert.
Skyler thinks Walt has a second cell phone, which he does, because women are never wrong about these things.
When Walt returns home, he fakes amnesia and says he must have entered a “fugue state,” which is common among men who undergo incredible stress or who must explain credit card charges from the champagne room at Mons Venus.
Walt’s Aztek is still awful. Just horrible. This vehicle’s existence stands as a monument to the American auto industry’s arrogance.
Skyler, suspicious that maybe a fugue state isn’t a real thing, starts smoking, even though she’s pregnant, possibly sending the fetus into a fugue state.
Jesse rents a duplex apartment and befriends Jane, the girl next door who has been sober for 18 months, so we all know where this is going.
Skyler goes back to work as an accountant at Beneke Fabricators, which has been fabricating its books. The boss, Ted, is sweet on Skyler, because nothing can be easy for Walter White.
DEA agent Hank goes on a stakeout where a tortoise carrying the head of an informant explodes, maiming several DEA agents because … Mexico.
We meet Walt and Jesse’s shady lawyer and the show’s dark comic relief, Saul Goodman, played brilliantly by the not-bald guy from “Mr. Show.”
Jesse and Jane get romantic. Jane treats Jesse like crap in front of her dad, whom we should note at this point is an air traffic controller.
Walt Sr. gets Walt Jr. drunk, sending his son into a brief fugue state.
Jane introduces Jesse to heroin, which at least gets him off meth and bad music.
Saul hooks up Walt and Jesse with a low-profile distributor named Gus who owns a chain of fried chicken restaurants called “Los Pollos Hermanos.” Gus is the Warren Buffett of the “I’m high, and I live in New Mexico” vertical market.
Walt misses the birth of his daughter because he’s out doing some drug world stuff for Gus.
Jane blackmails Walt into giving Jesse some money Walt had been holding onto until Jesse got sober.
Walt goes to a bar and has a conversation with a stranger, who happens to be Donald, Jane’s dad.
Walt feels bad and goes to Jesse’s apartment where Jesse has nodded off. Walt does not intervene as he watches Jane die a Spinal Tap drummer’s death, choking to death on her own vomit. (There would be no dusting.)
Walt accidentally confirms he has a second phone, and Skyler bails.
Donald, who is sad because his daughter died, enters a legitimate fugue state and goes back to work as an air traffic controller and causes two planes to crash, coincidentally, right over Walt’s house because … symbolism.
SEASON 3
Walt finally tells Skyler he makes the Dom Perignon of meth. She says she won’t rat him out if he promises to get a divorce and stays away. Great, he says. But Walt moves home anyway. Skyler is not happy, but what can she do? She nails her boss Ted, that’s what. Then she becomes Walt’s accountant and launders his money. Turns out Skyler’s true love is math.
Gus the chicken man keeps two Mexican cartel hit men sent to the states to avenge Tuco from killing Walt, whom Gus plans to employ in the Cowboys Stadium of meth superlabs. Gus leads the cartel guys to Hank, and Hank kills one and wounds another while sustaining serious gunshot injuries. One of Gus’s guys kills the other hit man in the hospital.
Walt doesn’t want to cook for Gus, but Gus gives a memorable speech in which he says, “A man provides, even when he’s not appreciated, or respected, or even loved.” Walt relents and takes a $15 million deal and cooks alongside Gale, a nerdy assistant hired by Gus.
Walt convinces Jesse, who’s had a really rough season dealing with the loss of his girl and getting his ass kicked by Hank, to work with him again. This means Gus has to let Gale go.
In arguably the season’s best episode, Walt loses it and goes all Colonel Kurtz because of a fly in the meth superlab. He’s worried that the lab is contaminated, but it’s his life that’s been contaminated. Symbolism.
During this season, Walt uses the Aztek to plough over two drug dealers, who no doubt later tell their friends they were run down by an Escalade because the indignity of being run over by an Aztek is too much to bear.
Walt and Jesse inevitably anger Gus, who reinstalls Gale as Walt’s assistant. Walt tells Jesse that Gus will probably kill them both once Gale knows how to cook Walt’s good-ass meth. It’s decided. Walt and Jesse must kill Gale. Jesse says he can’t do it, so Walt volunteers, but before he can off Gale, Gus’s criminal fixer Mike and another henchman named Victor take Walt to the superlab to execute him. Walt manages to get Jesse on the phone, and Jesse kills Gale.
SEASON 4
Victor, who is spotted at Gale’s by a neighbor, takes Jesse to the superlab. Mike and Victor hold Walt and Jesse in the lab, and they wait for Gus to come and deal with them. Gus arrives, and without saying a word he slowly and deliberately slits Victor’s throat with a box cutter and tells Jesse and Walt to get back to work. Total badass power move.
Walt lives in fear of Gus. Jesse goes back on drugs. Hank, still injured, looks through Gale’s notes from the superlab and thinks Gale might have been Heisenberg. The writers give Hank’s wife Marie something new to do – steal knickknacks from open houses. Skyler and Walt live every drug dealer’s ultimate dream and buy a car wash.
Walt and Jesse plot to kill Gus, and Jesse becomes part of Gus’s inner circle. Jesse saves Gus’s life a few times. Oops. Hank and the cartel close in on Gus. Gus loses the cartel by poisoning its leadership to death with tequila. The producers heroically refrain from playing the song of the same name.
Badass moment: Walt’s life is clearly in peril, and Skyler knows it. “I am not in danger,” Walt tells her. “I am the danger.”
It’s true.
He is.
Walt needs Jesse to feel the fear he does, and he pays Jesse a visit and meets Jesse’s girl Andrea and her son Brock.
Brock is hospitalized with a flu-like ailment, and Jesse accuses Walt of poisoning Brock to get him to fear Gus. The poison was from the Lily of the Valley plant, but no one knows this at the time. Walt convinces Jesse that Gus framed him, and that Gus will ask Jesse to kill Walt. Walt and Jesse try to kill Gus with a car bomb, but Gus guesses something’s up and doesn’t get in the car.
Walt learns that Hector, the wheelchair guy with the bell, is now in a nursing home. Gus and Hector are old enemies, and Gus visits Hector to taunt him. Walt pays Hector a visit. Hector invites the DEA to the nursing home. Gus gets wind of the DEA’s visit and goes to Hector with the intent of killing him with a fatal injection. Hector rings his bell and detonates a murder-suicide bomb that Walt had strapped to the wheelchair, killing Gus in one of the greatest TV death scenes ever.
Skyler sees the news about Gus and Hector and wants to know what happened.
“I won,” Walt tells her.
Walt and Jesse, friendly again, burn down the superlab.
There is a flowering plant poolside at Walt’s house. Final shot of the season. It’s a Lily of the Valley.
SEASON 5 (First Half)
The season opens with a flash forward. Walt, now 52, meets with a gun dealer and buys a car with an M60 machine gun in the trunk.
Walt, Jesse, and Gus’s former right-hand man Mike erase any tracks that could lead police from Gus to themselves. Their plan involves magnets, which is awesome, because “Breaking Bad” makes science fun. The trio forms a new business venture to fill the void left by Gus.
Walt and Jesse start cooking meth inside houses that are undergoing fumigation by Vamonos Pest, which is brilliant.
Skyler fears for her family’s safety and fakes an emotional breakdown by walking fully clothed into the family swimming pool during Walt’s 51st birthday party. Hank and Marie take the kids, which gives Marie something to do besides steal Tabasco sauce bottles from Chipotle.
Walt works with a German multinational to import the chemicals he needs, but it’s raided by the DEA, so Walt, Jesse and Landry from “Friday Night Lights” pull a train heist in the desert to steal the chemicals. Landry offs a little kid who sees the heist, which makes everyone who has ever watched “Friday Night Lights” sad.
Not happy that their business plan now includes offing kids, Jesse and Mike tell Walt they quit. Walt works out a deal with a Phoenix connection to transfer part of the business to their control.
Mike’s lawyer is busted by the DEA, exposing Mike and Gus’s guys Mike had been protecting in prison.
Walt kills Mike and gets the list of nine prisoners from his German multinational connection. Walt has all nine prisoners killed, plus Mike’s lawyer. Hank’s case is destroyed. Walt is now The Godfather.
Walt does well as the new meth king of New Mexico and even sells the Aztek, which we can assume the new owner promptly blew up for America. Walt eventually grows tired of the business, and he tells Skyler he’s quitting the drug game.
Later Hank and Marie come over for dinner (it’s entirely possible Marie steals all the silverware during dessert) and Hank excuses himself to go to the bathroom and finds a book that was a gift from dead lab assistant Gail to Walt.
On the toilet, Hank reads the book’s inscription and realizes that Walt is Heisenberg. The drug baron he’s chasing is his own brother-in-law. Hank shits.
Joe Donatelli is a journalist in Los Angeles. Follow him @joedonatelli.
