“No more prolonging the inevitable.” – Walter White
“End Times” begins with Walt (Bryan Cranston) and Skyler (Anna Gunn) in a panic, scrambling to pack suitcases and duffel bags. Initially, the viewer is sitting wondering whether or not Walt figured out a way to pay for the family to “disappear.”
A few seconds in, it becomes clear that “disappearing” isn’t in the cards for the Whites. They are heading over to Hank (Dean Norris) and Marie’s (Betsy Brandt) to wait safely until the anonymous threat on Hank’s life can be sorted out. Well, Skyler and the kids are going to the Schrader’s, Walt isn’t. He astutely points out that his presence would probably exacerbate the danger. “I’m the real target,” he tells his wife.
The thing that makes this particular scene noteworthy is the moment when Skyler realizes just how deep a hole Walter has dug for himself. “How long until you’re safe, until you can work this out?” Walt’s response, and Skyler’s reaction to it, are heartbreaking. “I have lived under the threat of death for a year now. And because of that I have made choices. I alone should suffer the consequences of those choices. No one else. And those consequences, they’re coming. No more prolonging the inevitable.”
It doesn’t take long before the next amazing moment rolls around. Immediately following the credits, we see Walt alone next to the pool, waiting silently to “suffer the consequences of his choices.” A gun sits on the table next to him and he spins the revolver in a circle, as if playing a game of Russian Roulette with the gods.
The first two spins result in the barrel of the gun pointing directly at him. Not exactly a good omen. It’s an extremely well-done scene, and it’s quiet moments like this that make Breaking Bad such a spectacular show. Sure, big shoot outs and car chases are exciting, but somehow this show is able to make a simple scene of a man sitting by himself in his backyard just as thrilling. I wonder how many takes Cranston had to do in order to get the gun to spin the precise number of revolutions required to make the scene as poignant as it is?
Cranston and Paul aren’t the only actors on Breaking Bad capable of turning in an Emmy-worthy performance. Dean Norris has always been excellent, but especially last season. Jonathon Banks has turned the normally one-dimensional “bodyguard/goon” character-type into the fully formed, fan favorite Mike. Similarly, Bob Odenkirk has succeeded in the herculean task of making a sleazy ambulance chaser one of the most likable characters on the show.
His increasingly panicked voicemails to Jesse are a hilarious precursor for the next Emmy-worthy scene on my list. When Jesse arrives, he is brought into Saul’s inner-office lair past the receptionist, who Saul refers to as “HT”. “HT”, come to find out, stands for “honey tits”. “I say it’s endearing!” Saul tells a confused Jesse, although I doubt the secretary would agree
One of the main plot drivers on Breaking Bad, has always been the idea of increasing panic and paranoia (usually, but not always, on the part of Walt) causing people to make rash, sometimes crazy, choices. Saul’s paranoia about his involvement in the anonymous tip to the DEA. He calls a meeting with Jesse to hand over the stacks of Jesse’s cash stashed in his safe. “You ever hear of a fart in the wind, kid?” Saul says, informing him that he plans to hit the road before the shit with Gus, the cartel and the feds really hit the fan. The scene, aside from being really well executed by Odenkirk and Paul, served the momentum of the episode by hipping Jesse to the fact that Gus took Walt into the desert and threatened to kill Walt’s entire family. And what is Saul, if not family.
The writers throw the viewers a wicked curve ball midway through the episode when Andrea (Emily Rios) calls Jesse and tells him that her son Brock (Ian Posada) had to be rushed to the hospital with some kind of unknown disease. Paul, as usual, is great in these hospital scenes, and Emily Rios is serviceable, but I hesitate to put any one of them on this list. In fact, the only reason I mention them is because of their impact on the great scenes to come. I actually have a bit of an issue with this whole plot development.
It came off, to me at least, as an easy, convenient way to push the plot forward and in a specific direction. The old “sick kid in the hospital, scared and increasingly disheveled adult sits helplessly in the waiting room” routine has been done time and time again in order to ratchet up the drama, and Breaking Bad, to its credit, has usually avoided these kinds of tropes.
So, Brock somehow ingests the ricin from Jesse’s poison cigarette. Initially, the ER docs are unable to diagnose the culprit behind his mysteriously escalating flu-like symptoms. When Jesse is turned away from the ICU because he isn’t a relative, he steps outside to have a smoke and realizes that his ricin stick is missing. Jesse charges into the hospital, creating quite a scene, and drags Andrea out to break the news: her son has been poisoned. He tells Andrea to let the doctors know about the possibility that Brock has ingested ricin in front of a crowded waiting room, then storms out to “go see someone.”
Now, we don’t actually see Andrea tell the doctors anything, but I assumed that she does indeed inform the doctors about the threat of ricin. If that is the case, it makes the rest of the hospital scenes a little absurd. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but, in today’s world of envelopes tainted with white powder, wouldn’t you think a potential ricin poisoning would trigger a greater reaction from the hospital staff? Ricin poison probably isn’t something that happens every day, like a kid chugging a bottle of Draino from under the sink.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, “It would take a deliberate act to make ricin and use it to poison people.” If that’s true, wouldn’t an occurrence of poisoning, especially in a child, spark an investigation by, at the very least, the police department? If the cops were called, which I assume would be one of the first steps of hospital protocol in a situation like this, they would start to look for suspects. They would look at people closest to the victim. First would be Andrea, then you have to assume they would question Mom’s skeevy boyfriend who caused a big scene in the hospital and ran off just before Andrea mentions ricin to the doctors. Jesse wouldn’t be able stretch out on a waiting room bench and refuse to go to work because he would be handcuffed to a table at the police station (or FBI field office) waiting to be interrogated.
But there’s a silver lining. Regardless of the questionable realism surrounding the situation with Brock at the hospital, those events paved the way plot-wise for the scene that inspired me to make “Emmy-worthy moments” the focus of this review. For those of you that have seen “End Times” (and I assume that’s all of you, because otherwise why would you be reading this?), you know what scene I’m talking about.
Jesse knocks on Walt’s door (in this situation, Jesse, not Walt, is “the man who knocks”). Walt is barricaded inside, sitting on a recliner, waiting with his gun at his side. Presumably, he has been sitting there all day waiting for the other shoe to drop, ready to attempt to defend himself from Gus’ (Giancarlo Esposito) assassins. When Walt lets Jesse inside, what follows is Breaking Bad putting on a display of television at its absolute finest.
Walt tells Jesse that everything is over for him, that Gus “is going to make his move”, all the while gesticulating wildly with the gun in his hand. At the sound of a car engine outside, he sets the weapon down to check the windows like a paranoid meth-head. Jess picks up the gun, and when Walt turns around, he’s confronted with the image of Jesse pointing the revolver at him, standing in the same position he was in when he pulled the trigger on Gale. Only this time, with less terror on his face. He’s been here before – it must get easier to pull the trigger after a little bit of practice.
Jesse demands to know why Walt poisoned Brock and all a confused, scared Walt can muster is a “Who’s Brock?”. This, of course, just pisses Jesse off even more. Jesse assumes that because he and Walt were the only people who knew about the ricin cigarette, Walt must be responsible for the poisoning. “Why in God’s name would I poison a child?” Walt asks, to which Jesse responds, “To get back at me for helping Gus. And this is your way of ripping my heart out before you’re dead and gone.” Damn, is that a power line. Aaron Paul delivers this dialog with a twisted look of rage so convincing that I actually thought he might kill Walt. Of course, that’s a silly idea. Walt is the main character of the show, it’s too soon to kill him off now. But Cranston and Paul do such an incredible job selling the scene that I considered the possibility of Breaking Bad without Walt for a moment or two.
Jesse pushes Walt onto the ground and while Walt is sitting there on the verge of death you can almost see a light bulb illuminate above his head. “Who would…? Oh my god…” he stammers before realizing that Gus is probably the one responsible for Brock’s condition. This realization triggers another bout of maniacal laughter, conjuring memories of the last scene in “Crawl Space”. “I have been waiting all day for Gus to send one of his men to kill me, and it’s you,” Walt says. He lays out the case for Jesse, emphasizing that the one thing Gus needed to get rid of Walt once and for all was Jesse’s consent. “Don’t you see? You are the last piece of the puzzle.”
You can kind of see the gears in Jesse’s brain turning as Walt pleads his case. He doesn’t want to believe that Gus is the culprit, it would be much simpler if it were Walt. He could just squeeze the trigger and it would be over with. “If you think I’m capable of this, go ahead. Put a bullet in my head,” Walt says, grabbing the gun and smashing it into his own face. “Do it,” Walt says, but Jesse can’t.
Deep down, Walt’s argument makes sense to him. The image of Walt on his ass and Jesse standing over him, gun pressed to Walt’s forehead is both troubling and extraordinarily evocative. I hope the show takes a freeze-frame of this moment and puts it on a poster.
The next we see of the pair, Jesse is at the hospital, refusing to go with Tyrus (Ray Cambell) to the lab, and Walt is in his kitchen cooking up some kind of explosive concoction. The plan is for Jesse to lure Gus to the hospital, allowing Walt the opportunity to rig the I.E.D. to Gus’ Volvo. It seems like a pretty good plan to me, but something goes awry. When Gus approaches the car, it’s as if he has some kind of kingpin spidey sense that allows him to detect explosives. It’s very strange, like Gus has become so much of a bad ass that he has literally turned into a meth-manufacturing superhero.
Was anyone able to make out what it was that aroused Gus’ suspicion? I didn’t notice anything about the car that was different. Could it have been the way it was parked? I don’t know how Walt would have been able to start the car in order to move it, so I doubt it’s that. What could it be? Please leave a comment if you have a theory or noticed something I didn’t.
Speaking of comments: This list is certainly not definitive. There were at least a couple of great scenes that I had to leave off just to keep this piece under a million words. Please don’t hesitate to leave a comment and tell me and the other readers about the other “Emmy-worthy” scenes from “End Times,” or any other episode you want to discuss.
Some stats and info about Breaking Bad, “End Times”
TV SHOW – Breaking Bad
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 4, Episode 12
AIRED ON – August 2nd, 2011
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – AMC
GENRE – Drama, Crime Dramas
CREATED BY – Vince Gilligan
CAST – Bryan Cranston, Anna Gunn, Aaron Paul, Betsy Brandt, RJ Mitte, Dean Morris, Bob Odenkirk, Steven Michael Quezada, Jonathan Banks, Giancarlo Esposito, Charles Baker, Jesse Plemons
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.