I was w...w...w...wrong last week. To'hajiilee was not the best episode of "Breaking Bad" ever. This week's episode is. It's *relentless*. Just when you think it can't possibly get worse, it gets worse. Which leaves me wondering what Vince Gilligan and crew have in store for us in the next (and final) two episodes.
For those who don't know, this episode takes its title from a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear -- "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.' And the episode opens with a flashback (like Shelley's) of the past -- Better Times At To'hajiilee. The last episode ended with the gunfight at the OK corral, set there. This episode flashes back to the first time we saw this site (on an Indian reservation near Albuquerque), back when Walt and Jesse were doing their first "cook" there, in the RV. In the flashback, Walt takes a break from better living through chemistry for a few minutes, and wanders out into the To'hajiilee desert, clad only in his skivvies and a shirt. He stands there, talking on his mobile to his wife Skyler, fabricating the first of a long string of lies to her, and then discussing a name for the baby they're expecting (Holly). Most of the shots during this conversation are "head shots," close-ups of either Walt's face or Skyler's face as they're talking, Walt weaving his magic and creating an image of himself in her mind of a loving, normal husband that couldn't be further from the truth. She thinks he's stuck late in a meeting at the car wash where he works a second job to help support the family and his son's special needs education. In reality he's in the desert, cooking meth. But then he gets to the end of the conversation and the camera pulls back to show the man behind the curtain of lies. He's standing there in his skivvies, the RV and Jesse in the background, Walt's white legs in the brown desert looking for all the world like the two trunkless pillars of an ancient statue. And then Walt disappears from the scene. He just fades, like the Cheshire Cat. Then Jesse fades and disappears. Then the RV. Cue the credits. After the credit sequence, we're back at the exact same To'hajiilee location. The camera has not moved. The scene is empty, but now the soundtrack is the sound of gunfire. Then the trucks behind which Jack and the Nazis were firing when we last saw them fade into view. Bam! We're back in the present, and a raging gun battle is taking place. Full circle. THAT moment -- when Walt first lies outright to Skyler -- is arguably more of a Breaking Bad moment than when he decided to cook meth. And this is where that moment took him. Masterful. I'll leave it there for now, so as not to get into possible spoilers.
