In this (once more) incredible episode, we see the what the characters have become after everything went to hell last episode. We see who they transform into after all the death, pain, and drugs that have consumed their lives. It is one of the most crucial points in their development. Their actions in this episode determine how they go out as.
Skylar is an empty shell of who she once was. All the care, all the passion, all the independence has been beaten out of her until she's nothing more than a mindless robot that sulks through events carelessly. She has nothing left. Walt has destroyed everything she cared about. She has given up. It's sad to see a woman so passionate and defensive of her beliefs be broken down and deteriorate to this state of mindlessness, but it is all a consequence of the choices Walt made.
When the episode began, Jesse wasn't broken. He had some motive left in him. He attempted to escape the clutches of the Neo Nazis and the psychopathic Meth Damon, but he failed. And he payed the price. With Andrea's death, Jesse no longer has anything left. Or rather, he has so little left that he's too scared to fight back any longer. Brock is the only thing keeping him going, but he's too afraid to disobey anymore in fear that he'll lose him too. But I tell you, when Jesse broke down during Andrea's death, I was genuinely disturbed. Aaron's acting is incredible. Rarely am I ever this affected by a death scene. I didn't even really care about Andrea, but Jesse's hopeless wailing made this one of the show's best death scenes to date.
Finally, we get to Walt, who also started the episode off with much hope, but it was gradually beaten out of him, as with everyone else. He starts off believing he can save his family, but a conversation with Saul that ends in a coughing fit demotivates him. Still, after hiding away in New Hampshire for months, he is determined to get the money to his family some how. It's the tearful conversation with Flynn that finally destroys him. His own son, that he started the meth empire for in the first place, telling him to die already. Him, frail and weak, realizing that he has failed, and the past two years of murder and tears was all for nothing. He literally sits and waits for it all to be over.
But unlike all the others, Walt gets re-inspired. A television broadcast reminds him of Gray Matter, the company that he poured his soul into that was taken from him. The very people that bruised his ego and helped spawn his dual identity of Hiesenburg. Somehow, what's said on that television encourages him to go on one last crusade. What exactly he took from the television and what he's going to do is being debated, but in truth no one will know until next Sunday.
This episode was brilliant in terms of character development and acting. One episode remains, and I personally am jizzing in excitement. The greatest narrative of the generation is culminating, and the supposedly polarizing end is soon upon us. What last step will the series take us? God only knows.
No comments:
Post a Comment