By DEVON SHERIDAN
Not often do television dramas produce hour-long odysseys of sustained fear, sadness and potential for vomiting quite like “Breaking Bad.” After watching Sunday’s episode, titled “Ozymandias,” which is named after a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley that tells of the fall of a great pharaoh and the inevitable collapse of great empires, maybe it is time for the general public to return to the generic storylines and milquetoast characters of regular television drama.
For the collective psychological health of the nation, that there are only two hours left of the methamphetamine fueled runaway train that is Breaking Bad is probably a better antidote than any cancer treatment Walter White could ever have received. Indeed, there is no mistaking it: last night’s episode, incredible as it may have been, was not fun to watch, nor was it ever meant to be (warning: spoilers ahead).
After the last week’s cliffhanger (to end all cliffhangers) in “To’hajiilee,” we all waited in suspense for the opening seconds of “Ozymandias.” At the genesis of the episode, the camera takes us to an old, familiar scene. We find Walt and Jesse cooking meth in their old RV. It’s a flashback. In the beautiful New Mexican desert, a setting forebodingly similar to the spot of the Hank and Gomie versus the Nazis shoot out, Walt teaches Jesse the ropes of the cook. They squabble. For a moment, we’re supposed to feel nostalgic. Then, during a break in the cook, Walt steps outside the RV, strolls up a sandy hill and dials up Skylar on his cell (I’ve always questioned the improbability of having reception out there in the desert). As Walt conjures up a fib to his wife, his boss at the car wash needing him to work overtime, we realize that this is the first strand in the web of Walt’s lies, the initial catalyst for what will, ultimately, end up with the execution of his brother-in-law in the desert and a shattered family at home.
In many ways, “Ozymandias” is the apex of the Breaking Bad story arc, the same way Shelley’s poem is about the apex and inevitable fall of a king and his empire. Hank is dead. Gomie is dead. Their deaths sting like the hot desert sun under which they perished.
That the demise of everyone’s favorite DEA agents is not the most heartbreaking moment in the episode speaks to the unequivocal black hole into which season five has fallen. The saddest moments came with the scenes involving Walt’s immediate family. Marie forces Skylar to tell her son the truth about his father. Understandably, Flynn refuses to believe that his father is a monster, but when Walt returns home from the tragedy in the desert, so too comes the truth about Hank’s death. Skylar lunges for a knife, and Flynn, now the disabled patriarch of a disabled family, tackles his once beloved father in order to protect his mother and baby sister.
One can interpret the final scenes of the episode in two ways. Walt steals his child from his shattered home and flees the house. Flynn calls the cops on his father and at this point it seems as if there will be no light at the end of the tunnel for the White family. Surely, Skylar will be implicated for compliance with her husband; but, then the phone rings and Walt is at the other end. The police listen in and now, finally, the world will know about Heisenberg. Raving like the lunatic that he has convinced everyone that he is, Walt berates and belittles Skylar. “This is all your fault,” he says. At this point Walt is one of two things: either completely off the deep end, or as calculating as ever. Did he know the cops would be listening in? By raving like a madman, implicating himself completely, is this his last sacrifice to his family?
Conjecturing about the next episode is not even fun anymore. Now it is just time for the sprint home. Walt will buy the huge gun we have seen in the flash-forward and Jesse will continue to be tortured by the Nazi’s; that will be the final clash and the question will no longer be who will die, but, for both the audience and the characters, how painful will the end be?
