Peter Fenzel, Shana Mlawski, and John Perich recap Breaking Bad Season 5 Episode 11, “Confessions.”
Shout out to the official Mexican chain restaurant of Overthinking It, North Dakota’s Paradiso. Remember, “Chips are free; dinner extra!”
Audio Version
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When I first saw the mexican joint I though “Is that the restaurant Jesse suggested back in season 1 to do a drug deal”
and it was a Denys at the start of season 5
Well, actually.
When Walt was organizing the coordinated hit on the 10 prisoners, Todd’s uncle said that “getting Bin Laden was easier.” Or something to that effect. So, while it’s been just over a year since the story started, it apparently takes place in like 2011/2012. Or there abouts.
Here’s a pretty good encapsulation of the hows, whens, and whys (up until “Confessions,” at least) of the ricin cigarette.
http://emiliajordan.com/2012/07/31/breaking-bad-how-walter-white-poisoned-brock-and-what-happened-to-the-ricin-cigarette/
So like all right-thinking Americans, I loved this episode. I actually thought the Ricin thing was telegraphed pretty well, but that’s probably only because I binge-watched all 5 seasons in preparation for this one, so I was primed with Hewell’s sticky-fingers.
My favorite part of the episode was the realization that I had while Hank and Marie were watching the confession – Breaking Bad has finally and fully succeeded at turning the protagonist into the villain. Not just an anti-hero, but the guy that I actively want to see fail.
I realized this when I realized that I spent the whole scene thinking “How is Hank going to get out of this one? What could he pull out to prove it’s all BS?” I wasn’t thinking about how awesomely smart our protagonist Walter White is – I was wondering how Hank, the guy I’m rooting for, is going to pull this one out.
This is EXACTLY the same way that I’ve thought about Walt in Seasons 1-4 – How’s he going to get Hank away from the RV? How’s he going to get out from underneath Gus’ thumb? Now, In Season 6, Walt is Gus and Hank is Walt.
What HASN’T happened yet, though, is the brilliant chess move that turns the tables. What made Walt so much fun to watch all these years is his ability to come up with clever (albeit evil) solutions to the seemingly impossible-to-escape traps his adversaries have set for him. So far, Hank has been so far off of his game that we haven’t seen this.
That said, I’m willing to bet that next episode we’re going to see that change – there are only 5 episodes left, and based on the flash forward we know that things aren’t going to keep going Walt’s way forever.
I haven’t had a chance to listen to the episode yet, and I may not get the chance because there is too much content out there and now it’s football season and, you know, stuff builds up. However, there is something that struck me in the last episode that I felt like bringing up anyway.
Vince Gilligan has always said that Breaking Bad is about “turning Mr. Chips into Scarface” but after seeing Walt’s video “confession” it struck me how much more he reminds me of Professor Moriarty. I mean, he’s not really the Scarface-type. He is much more akin to the Napoleon of Crime himself. He’s always thinking ahead and trying to outsmart people.
Of course, this would paint Hank as Sherlock Holmes in this analogy, which doesn’t work, and it isn’t like Gilligan had the Walt/Moriarty thing in mind at any point. However, it did make me wonder if, maybe, just maybe, Hank could at least serve the Sherlock role in Walt’s end, basing this off the original story where Moriarty dies, and also considering things ending there like Conan Doyle intended at the time. Again, this seems unlikely to me, but Hank sacrificing himself to take down Walt for good would be interesting. Then again, he could do that in some more abstract way. Maybe he kills his career to kill Walt’s freedom. Or something.
Got a chance to listen. So you guys went more with Walt being a Bond villain as opposed to Professor Moriarty. I can see that, except he doesn’t have a secret lair or a doomsday device. Although he totally could build a doomsday device if he wanted to.
Yeah, that diner that Todd and company were at was not a Denny’s, as previously mentioned, but also not in the state of New Mexico, as a sign let us know.
To be fair to Walt (which is something rarely written) he lied to Skyler about the soda machine because saying, “My old partner is planning to kill me so I need to get a gun to maybe kill him,” probably would not have sat well with her, particularly with her belief the crime life is behind them both.
Walt Jr. walking in on Jesse is an interesting notion. My guess was that Hank “on his walk” was going to stroll by for some reason, which seems less plausible than Flynn.