If only Jesse Pinkman could break that sentence apart and read it as an existential question followed by a very real world answer.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Mr. White.”
In “Madrigal,” a distraught Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) says this to his business partner, his mentor, and surrogate father Walter White (Bryan Cranston). And in those words and the picture that comes with it we get an incredible distillation of the dynamic between the two central characters in Breaking Bad.
In essence we see a new level of the horrifying manipulation that Walter has used to work over his former high school chemistry student.
Jesse is venting his deep pain and guilt over almost killing Walt late in Season Four, as he believed he had poisoned Brock, a young child, with the deadly toxin ricin. He now believes that Walt is innocent of this crime, with the kicker that Walt has planted the ricin – or, more accurately, salt that is presented to look like a vial filled with ricin – in Jesse’s Roomba floor sweeper (and how awesome and funny is it that the Roomba, which we’ve seen over the course of a few seasons and various states of chaos in Casa de Jesse, as a major plot device?). So in an evil and amazing feat, an art form that Walt is beginning to perfect, Walt is there to strengthen his hold over Jesse by consoling him over the very anguish that he himself caused.
Let’s take a look at that line of dialog again, as acted by the always riveting Aaron Paul:
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Mr. White.”
If only Jesse Pinkman could break that sentence apart and read it as an existential question followed by a very real world answer:
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” “Mr. White.”
What makes this lack of insight only more heartbreaking is Jesse’s use of the formal “Mr.” White – even after all they have been through together – as a high school kid would address a teacher. And all the while Walt sits behind and above Jesse… like the now demented puppet master that he has become.
As Mike pleads with Jesse later in the episode, Walter White a.k.a. Heisenberg a.k.a. Mr. White is tick-tick-tick trouble… even if he is about to be sucked back into a new power structure and methamphetamine cookin’ and slingin’ operation himself.
“Madrigal” deftly drops in another moment when someone close to Walt has a moment where if they could-just-put-the-pieces-together, they’d see the monster – or Scarface as creator Vince Gilligan would say – before them. As Hank Schrader (Dean Norris) has a belt or two of booze with Gomie and George, his outgoing boss (someone had to take the fall for half of Albuquerque getting blow’d up by Walt, it seems) muses about the irony of not being able to see that which is right in front of our noses… and Hank looks up with a face that is thisclose to making some kind of monumental connection.
Let us state for that record that the tenacious Agent Schrader is pretty damned good at getting his man. Eventually.
And Skyler (Anna Gunn) for her part? Now that she knows that Walt is (at least) a murderer on top of being a meth Top Chef, for the moment is taking the dark embrace of a good sulky depression. That’s out of character for her, so expect her to be on the move to protect herself and her son soon enough.
That leaves Walt Jr., who for the moment continues to eat breakfast, and doesn’t do much of anything else that we can see.
But you know what? He barely touched his cereal during the one scene in which we saw him during the episode.
Maybe he’s starting to wonder what’s wrong with Mr. White as well.
It’s a card that Gilligan is still tightly holding onto. To be played only when the stakes are at their most rich and rewarding.
This piece originally appeared on TV Geek Army.