Digital Refrain

Photo by Connor Huchton

In 2017, Raymond Green began a slow and irrevocable descent towards blindness. He was the greatest filmmaker of our generation, and everyone was quite upset when they read the news on Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr.

It is unknown what Raymond Green does now. After a few public statements and awards appearances littered with great reverence and wry jokes, Ray departed into some unknown ether within the sprawl of Los Angeles. His friends occasionally spoke of his good health and continued happiness in various public forums, but little else was written or said.

I doubt his happiness, against my own better nature.

Frankly, I wonder how he stands things now. Here’s a guy who lived his life thorough a lens and traversed from each perfectly constructed image to the next. And now he’ll never see anything again. Nothing. Not one of those perfect images, and nothing in between. So what does Raymond Green do now?

Perhaps he writes.

Photo by Connor Huchton

The room screamed with noise and status. Men in dark suits and women in bright dresses walked in circles and spoke of someplace else.

Don Larchmann, former mayor and businessman and current money launderer, commented smugly to his strained date that this room contained nothing but bullshit and whispers. The real people, he confidently revealed, weren’t here, and if they were, they wouldn’t say a word.

Don may have been right, but his comment missed the point. His gaze ignored the man who stared, the man who did not circle. This was the man whose eyes fell not on the nondescript paintings or who was who and what was what. This man focused entirely on the white spaces between the carefully overpriced specks of genius. So stark, those white spaces.

All had soon departed, but the walls and the man who watched them remained. The paintings now lay in the corner, stacked with little respect or heed for their integrity. They appeared far more at ease within the apex of this rough jostling than they ever had glued to the rectangular room’s white walls. Near the top of the unceremonious stack, the edge of a stylized self-portait peered out, a raised eyebrow and jutting nose revealed upon the muse’s face.

The muse stood next to his own visage and glanced down, arms folded and eyes drawn to the blankness surrounding him once more. And there he remained until sunrise.

Last week on WWE’s Monday Night Raw this wrestler Sheamus (guess what country he’s from?) stole a Ferrari from Alberto Del Rio. He took it on a joyride. And when he brought it back, it was downright totaled. It was intended as revenge for the assault by Alberto Del Rio and he was intended to be cheered for it.

I mean, why else would would the good guy announcer try to pass this off as just a joyride? Sheamus is the hero. Del Rio is the villain. By simple character math, we were supposed to cheer the act.

But somewhere between conception and execution? It missed. Why? Because they forgot about one of the major keys to making a quality anti-hero. Put it simply, the villain has to be worse in the audiences eyes.

Let me take you back to the days of Stone Cold Steve Austin. He got away with a lot worse, and we cheered for him. Why? He was the one who faced the monsters. Between The Undertaker and the proxies of Vince McMahon? Stone Cold could do what he wanted. Why? He was the better man. He was the more admirable man. We liked his fearlessness.

And a part of the reason why CM Punk bogged down during the middle of his title run was the fact that he was up against an ineffectual sympathetic villain in John Laurinitas. He was so goofy and that made him likeable, it softened the edges of the Punker. Whereas a guy like John Cena, while also putatively a good guy, is the sort of guy that is booked to be such a sickeningly sweet jock hero that makes CM Punk fresh and interesting.

I appreciate that the WWE is still attempting to keep the shades of gray that made their last big run of the late 90′s and today. But the thing of it is? They’ve moved back from a TV-14 rated program to a TV-PG one. A little more clarity of the morality of the good and the bad guys is a need. PG wrestling works. You all need to do a YouTube search for something called Chikara Pro. So long as it’s good, right?

But bringing it back to Sheamus? Sure. He was assaulted by a car hood. But this isn’t 1920′s Chicago, and the hero isn’t supposed to bring a gun to a knife fight. The hero can be a bit of a bully, a bit of a jerk, and may have a smug smile that some of the more smart assed fans would wish their demise. But there is one thing that must always occur if you want conflict to be successful.

The good guy must be better.

Books on Tape, a one man project formed by Todd Drootin in 1999, made a name in the early part of the 2000s through a self described “beatpunk” sound spanning four albums. The group’s frantic approach to sampling became its signature sound. After a series of tours, Drootin put the band to rest in 2006 due to a foreboding indifference with music. Last year, while digging through old boxes, Drootin re-discovered a series of unreleased Books on Tape songs which make up “Retired Numbers”, the groups’ first release in six years.

“Retired Numbers” consists of six songs, though the album can be seen as one large tapestry with several movements. The opening song and lead single “Super Dr.” offers an immediate introduction to Books on Tape’s unrelenting, layered approach. “Have You Seen This Man?” picks up off the opening song and features an interplay between guitar/synth/vocal riff, a scrambled noise, and an acoustic guitar sample. The album never lets up from this frenetic pacing.

I find three qualities define “Retired Numbers” – first, as described above, its pacing (if I were on Twitter, I’d say something like this album is the Jeremy Lin of beatpunk sampled music). Secondly, the incorporation of sound in all forms which add depth to each song. Thirdly, storytelling. BoT switches sonic storylines at will, at times within a few seconds into an idea. BoT unapologetically combines these three aspects. It’s difficult to describe specific songs in a usual manner. The final song, “Safety First”, begins with guitar chords, and slowly incorporates drums, a vocal track, and a synth line before morphing into a separate song 50 seconds in. That’s how it is.

Books on Tape retired in 2006. Six years is an eternity in anything, much less music where new genres and movements seem to pop up on a daily basis. Perhaps the most significant theme of the album is that the songs were recorded in the early half of the 2000s and they do not sound out of place today. May all our past ideas be this relevant.

Download Books on Tape’s latest album “Retired Numbers” or past albums on iTunes. Like the Facebook page and of course, follow the Twitter.

Illustration by Mary Grace Ewald

Season 5, Episode 7- Say My Name

“Shut the fuck up, and let me die in peace.”- Mike Ehrmentraut

So how does everybody win, according to Walter White? By driving out to Mike and Declan’s deal without the methylamine and essentially strong-arming him into accepting 35% of Walt’s new business and giving up his own product. Walt does this (accompanied by Dave Porter’s Heisenberg theme) by trumping up the purity of his product, comparing Declan’s to a “tepid, off-brand generic cola,” to the “Classic Coke” of the Blue Sky. He tells Declan that he knows about their attempts to “ape his product at every turn,” and how he’s giving them the opportunity to sell it themselves, making more money off 35% of his product than they would have off of 100% of their own. Since Mike is retiring, Declan and his crew could step right and handle distribution (always Walt’s weak point) seamlessly. Why eliminate the competition when you can just become the competition? Declan, intrigued, asks just who exactly Walt is, and when he responds that they already “he’s the man who killed Gus Fring,” a look of shock comes over their faces. Mike confirms it with a sly nod, and Walt asks Declan to say his name. “You’re Heisenberg, ” a spooked Declan replies. “You’re goddamn right,” Walt snarls. Recognition is everything to him now.

After the opening credits, the three return to Vamonos Pest, where Mike gives Walt some parting words. First, that the legacy costs for Gus’ remaining employees will come out of the $5 million severance pay he just received. Second, that Walt needs to get the bug out of Hank’s office as soon as possible. He leaves, and when Walt asks if a “thank you” is in order, he scoffs, and Walt leaves. After Mike warns Jesse to get out as quickly as he can, the action shifts over to the laundromat, where Walt hid the methylamine. Skyler and Jesse share a strangely symbiotic look as Walt barks orders and tells Skyler not to worry about it. “Vamonos,” Jesse says as Skyler inspects the logo on the side of their truck. “I wish,” she replies.

Later, when Jesse comes to talk to Walt about his severance pay, Walt begins showering him with praise, telling him that he’s “every bit as good as me” and that soon, he’ll have a cook all to his own. When Jesse reiterates that he still wants out, Walt switches to teacher mode, telling Jesse that being “the best” at something is worth holding on to, and that he shouldn’t squander his potential. When he still refuses to budge, Walt starts berating him. He’s manipulated Jesse so much that, even to Jesse himself, the strings are showing. You can see it on his face. And when Walt starts saying that what happened to Drew Sharp was a tragedy, just like everyone they’ve killed in their partnership. If there is a hell (“I don’t know if you’re into that”), they’re already going. But Walt’s “not going to lie down until he gets there”. Jesse asks, again, just how many more people have to die. How much is enough? He’s done. He wants his money. “But isn’t it filthy blood money?” Walt retorts, and Jesse has had enough. “Whatever, man,” he says, reiterating that he’s done. Walt doesn’t believe him, telling him that if he leaves, he gets nothing. He hears no response. So ends the White/Pinkman partnership, possibly for the final time. Soon after, we see Walt getting ready for a cook with his new partner: Todd, who, despite not having any idea what he’s doing, declines his share of the profit until he gets it right. He’s the perfect student, and Walt is willing to teach, but it doesn’t seem like he really cares about it anymore. The allure of the freedom of being your own boss, what Walt has been striving for this entire time, is starting to lose some of its luster.

Most of the rest of this episode is dedicated to Mike, and his attempts to disappear into the New Mexican desert. First, we see Not Saul the Lawyer (his name is Dan) leaving money in safety deposit boxes for the families of the Nine (what I’m now calling Gus’ men in prison). In a remote location outside town, Mike listens in on Hank and Gomez talking about the warrant to search his apartment coming in, and, with even more weary resignation than usual, he dumps his computer and a veritable arsenal into a nearby hole (a well, maybe?), stashes a “go bag” full of passports and emergency money in the secret compartment of his trunk, leaves his car at an airport parking lot, hails a cab and heads home to face the music. When Hank and company come knocking, they don’t find a thing. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Mike is like a ghost. Hank’s superior acknowledge as much, and he forbids the ABQ office from ordering any more searches on Mr. Ehrmentraut. When Gomez comes in to console him, Hank comes up with one last-ditch effort to bag Mike: start tailing Dan, the lawyer. He represents every one of the Nine but not Mike. If anyone knows how they’re all being paid, it’s him. Sure enough, the next time Dan the Lawyer arrives to deposit some cash, Gomez arrives with a shit-eating grin on his face.

This all dovetails nicely back into Walt’s storyline nicely when he arrives at Hank’s office, ready to sob his eyes out again and remove the bug from the office. Before he can, however, Gomez arrives with the news that Dan the Lawyer is willing to give them Mike, and we finally see that look of mute terror that so categorized Walt in the first two seasons of this show, back when he was struggling everyday just to survive in his new career. Soon after, we see Mike at the park with Kaylee, his granddaughter, when Dan the Lawyer calls him and offers to meet him at the park to discuss “something that’s come up.” Immediately afterwards, Walt calls him to tell him that the DEA has “some lawyer” and that they’re coming for him. Mike snaps into action, and as he starts to say something to Kaylee, squad cars begin pulling up. After agonizing over leaving his granddaughter without explanation (again, much like Lydia was afraid of Mike forcing her to do to her daughter), he runs. He calls Saul afterwards and asks him to retrieve the go-bag he stashed at the airport. Saul refuses, as it’s extremely likely that the DEA is tailing him as well. Jesse volunteers, but Mike isn’t having it. He won’t risk Jesse’s freedom in exchange for his own. That leaves Walt, who goes to the airport and finds the bag, with what appears to be, funnily enough, a .38 snub inside.

They meet (at a beautiful grove near a river), and Walt demands the names of the Nine men before he hands the bag over. Mike refuses, telling Walt to get out of town while he can. Mike takes the bag and turns to leave before, once again, Walt demands a thank you. Mike tells him that he doesn’t owe him anything, and proceeds to lose his shit, telling Walter off for ruining the good thing that they had with Gus. “If you’d done your job, known your place, we’d all be fine right now,” Mike says, and you can see the very pride he was referring to spring up in the form of Heisenberg. Mike turns to leave again, satisfied with finally giving Walt the reaming he so richly deserved. Walt turns to leave as well, tail between his legs.

But he doesn’t. Just after he disappears off screen, he marches back into it, purposefully. At the same time, Mike opens his go bag to find his gun isn’t there. He turns to get out of the car, and Walt appears, shooting him through the window with the snub nose. Mike hits the gas, and slams his car into the bush line at the river’s edge. Walt runs up to the crash, only to find that Mike is gone, and for a moment, the flash-forward from the first episode snaps into focus. Walt ran because he knew Mike was coming after him, and he came back to settle the score. But then, after a few seconds of frantic confusion, Walt notices footprints leading from the crash, and a bloody handprint on the rocks. He follows through the underbrush to discover Mike sitting on a rock at the river’s edge, with a pistol of his own half-heartedly pulled out of his jacket. He can’t even grip it when Walt grabs it and takes it away. This is the end of Mike Ehrmentraut. Sitting there together, watching the sun set, Walt realizes that Lydia also has the names he wants. He can get them from her. He stutters out an apology, to which Mike responds with this episode’s quote. For once, Walt listens, and we cut to a wide shot of the two of them watching the river. Mike collapses, and the episode ends. This season, for the most part, has taken us out of Walt’s head a bit and given us a glimpse into how everyone around him views the Great Heisenberg. This season, we’ve seen Skyler truly come to understand what her husband is, just as we’ve seen Jesse come to understand. The look they shared at the carwash was a look acknowledging this understanding. For the first time all season, we get to see Walt again. The same Walter White we saw in the first season, and in “Fly,” the Walter White of lucid self-awareness. The Walter White who realizes that he just killed a man for nothing more than a casual insult. How much is enough? It seems as if, for the first time in a long time, it’s Walter who is asking that question.

Season 5, Episode 8- Gliding Over All

“Tagging trees is a hell of a lot better than chasing monsters.”- Hank Schrader

In a perfect world, the eighth episode of the last season of Breaking Bad would be the exact point where everything starts to pick up in anticipation of the explosive finale. This is not a perfect world. Because of this, this final season has been split into two parts, with the second eight episodes airing in 2013. This episode serves as a mid-season finale, but in many respects, it acts a series finale. A lot of things come to an end.

When everything comes to an end, it’s common for people’s lives to “flash before their eyes.” This show handles this idea by having Walt relive some of the more harrowing moments from this show’s past. I say this because the very first shot of the episode focuses on a fly, buzzing around the Vamonos Pest offices. The background comes into focus, and there’s Walt, face to face with one of his old contaminants. “It’s all contaminated” he had said then, in one of his moments of lucidity. I thought, at the end of episode 7, that Walt’s most recent bout of lucidity would be fleeting at best, and the first scene of this episode did very little to dissuade me of that notion. Todd arrive at VP, telling Walter than he had Old Joe crush Mike’s car (tying up that potential loose end nicely). As they prepare to dissolve Mike’s body, Jesse arrives (without seeing the corpse), asking Walt what their next move is. “I’m the only vote left,” Walt states, matter of factly. “And I’ll handle it,” he says, closing the garage door on Jesse.

On the plot front, a large amount whips by without much emphasis. First, we see Hank in a position of power with Dennis the laundromat manager. He’s got nine guys (ten with Dan the Lawyer). He can take his time getting what he wants from them. Then we see Walt meet with Lydia, who gives him the names on the condition that he go into business with her in the Czech Republic (where his product with “blow them away”). She wants to remain useful, maintaining that Walt is liable to view her as a loose end as well. He scoffs, wondering if she thinks that he’s just going to kill her there and then, in the middle of a restaurant. After she sells him on expanding his business overseas (something she says Gus Fring had agreed to, which is a scene I would very much like to see), she writes down the ten names, they shake hands, and she leaves. Afterwards, Walt picks up his hat, revealing the ricin capsule underneath. Lydia saw right through him. He’s the only vote in the business anymore, and he’s tired of loose ends.

After the cold open, however, my initial fears are turned right around, as most of the rest of the episode is framed around Walt reliving moments from his past. First, there’s the familiar shower scene that emphasizes his surgical scar. Then, there’s a painting identical to the one in Walt’s hospital room after his “fugue state” following Tuco’s death. It’s a painting of a sailor leaving his family on shore while he goes out to what he needs to do. It’s the painting that convinced him to resume cooking meth, and he sees it in a hotel room while meeting with Todd’s uncle about taking out the ten men on Mike’s list. While he spaces out, musing about the likelihood of two identical paintings (“where do they come from?”) Todd’s uncle tells him that the logistics of taking out ten men at the same time can’t be done, to which Walt responds that it can, and the only question is who is capable of it. Sure enough, the next scene is an elaborate montage showing the brutal prison deaths of all ten men, starting with Dan the Lawyer getting shanked at a payphone and ending with Dennis the Manager being doused with bleach and set on fire while in solitary confinement, all of interspersed with Walt setting the time to the watch Jesse gave him and Hank being informed during a photo shoot. Powerful, brutal stuff, if a bit on the kitschy side.

What isn’t kitschy is the scene immediately afterward, where Walt bounces baby Holly on his knee while a news report about the men whose deaths he orders plays in the background. In the living room of the man whom it affects the most. Speaking of Hank, he arrives home just as Walter is getting to leave, and offers his brother in law a drink. They sit down, and Hank starts talking about a summer job he had during high school. He’d go into the forest and mark trees for lumberjack crews to take down in his wake. He says that despite the tedium of it, he should have enjoyed it more, since “tagging trees is a hell of a lot better than chasing monsters.” Heisenberg is his Moby Dick, except in this analogy Moby Dick has left a veritable trail of broken bodies and decimated lives in his wake, and shows no signs of stopping. It’s eating Hank alive. Finding Heisenberg was what he held on to as his life collapsed around him, but now it’s the thing that going to drag him down again. If Walt is understands any of this, he doesn’t show it, as he simply responds that he used to love to go camping.

Immediately afterwards, we get what may prove to be the last cooking montage this show ever gives us, and they saved the best for last. Set to the 1969 hit “Crystal Blue Persuasion” by Tommy James and the Shondells, it depicts a long period of cooking for Walt and Todd, interspersed with scenes of Lydia overseeing shipments to the Czech Republic and Skyler and Saul laundering money. It culminates in one of the most effective shots of the entire series, as a helicopter camera pans over a suburban area of the ABQ, with Vamonos Pests’ signature tarps popping up on every street. The smooth, reliable and unbelievably successful enterprise Walt always wanted has finally arrived. Afterwards, Skyler approaches Walt as he sits in their backyard, staring at the pool (another old trope this show is revisiting). She asks him to take a drive with her to a storage facility, and when they arrive, she shows him a literal mountain of money. “This is what you’ve been working for,” she tells him, revealing that what they see in front of them was too much for her to count, and certainly too much for her to launder. She has “no earthly idea” how much money it is, pleading with him to allow her her life back. “How big does this pile have to be?” Skyler asks, and it is at this point that I came to a realization. This is it. This is the zenith of Walt’s career. The pinnacle. There’s no where else to go but down from here.

Sure enough, the very next scene is another in the succession of greatest hits this episode has turned into: Walt getting another scan at the cancer center. His zenith followed by a reminder of his nadir: the cancer that ate away at him and forced him into this life that he now seems to be tired of. As he washes up in the center’s bathroom, he comes across another reminder of his crash; the bent and broken paper towel dispenser from “4 Days Out,” another reminder of the path he’s taken to the top, and how much more alive he felt while doing it than he does now.

Soon after, Walt shows up at Jesse’s, telling him that he was “in the neighborhood.” They start to talk, and Jesse reveals that Saul told him what Walt did (presumably that he killed Mike). Walt, unperturbed, tells him that he had no other choice, and when Jesse asks why exactly he’s there, Walt launches into a full on reverie about their old RV. Once an awkward pause sets in, we realize why Walt is there. He misses what he and Jesse had, the daily struggle to survive that was the crux of the first four seasons of the show. As he leaves, he tells Jesse that he “left something” for him: two bags. After Walt leaves, Jesse cautiously opens them, thinking what I’m sure most of the audience was thinking: that it would be Mike’s head, or Brock’s, or Andrea’s inside, one last torturous gasp to remember Heisenberg by. But when he opens them, it’s simply money. Jesse’s share. Probably $5 million or more. Jesse collapses against his living room wall and removes the pistol he had hidden in his waistline. The next scene takes place in the White home, where Walt approaches Skyler and tells her that he’s out. He gives her a relieved little smile and walks away.

Three months pass. A shot lingers on the White family hose, slowly dripping like it did in the apocalyptic flash-forwards from season two. The entire White clan is having a nice, almost peaceful family get together as Walt Jr walks Holly around in her stroller. The storm has passed. Walt has gotten away free and clear. He’s truly out, ready to live the rest of his life with his family. He seems to have finally come to terms with who he is. Skyler even seems to like being in the same room with him again. If I didn’t know already that there were eight more episode left for 2013, I might have even been fooled into thinking this was the final scene of the series.

But it’s not the end. We saw Walt in that diner on his 52nd birthday when this season began, bearded and despondent and buying an M-60 at a Dennys. And when Hank excuses himself to go to the bathroom, he begins searching for something to read. He find a magazine and tosses it aside. Then he finds a small green book. It’s Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” and on the title page, there’s an inscription. “To my other favorite W.W. It’s been an honour working with you. Fondly, G.B.” As Hank sits, perplexed, we’re treated to a flashback of sorts, from Season 4′s “Bullet Points.” It’s that tense little scene where Hank muses on who exactly the “W.W.” in Gale’s notebook refers to. “Willy Wonka? Woodrow Wilson? Walter White?” Walt laughs and raises his hands in mock surrender. “You got me,” he chuckles. Returning to present, we see the realization dawning on Hank. It’s only fitting that something this random and silly be what finally does Walt in. It’s a testament to his hubris that he would keep this little memento around, just as it’s fitting that Hank, after months removed from the case, would remember such a small detail. I’ve been talking about how this season has shown us how Walt, Skyler and Jesse have come to realizations about just what Walt is. Now Hank knows what he is, too. It’s a long fall to that Dennys, popping pills and buying automatic weapons. And it’s coming. The end is in sight.

Illustration by Mary Grace Ewald

Season 5, Episode Five: Dead Freight

“No one other than us can ever know that this robbery went down. Nobody. You got it?”- Jesse Pinkman

One of the most enduring things this show has done is to start off certain episodes with enigmatic, surreal or just downright perplexing cold opens. Season 2 was built around these non-sequitur teaser sequences, but each year has it’s fair share of them. This episode, the fifth episode in the final season, trumped anything the show has done to this point, and it did it by being as blank and meaningless as possible. The cold open in question features a young boy riding a dirtbike across the Desert of Opportunity. Apparently he’s looking for something. Sure enough, we find out that that something is a tarantula (he even brought a glass jar for it to live in). After he scoops up his new friend, he gets back on his bike and takes off into the desert. A train whistles in the distance. Well, that was illuminating, wasn’t it?

We pick up the episode proper with Walt launching his plan to figure out just who exactly has been bugging their methylamine shipments. He starts this off by paying a visit to the newly appointed ASAC Schrader in his office, where the former immediately begins crying and whining about how Skyler doesn’t love him anymore, while the latter jut as quickly recuses himself in an effort to escape what is surely one of the most awkward situations imaginable. As soon as Hank leaves, Walt springs into action, bugging his computer and leaving the microphone behind a loving photo of Hank and Marie. The next phase of the master plan involves taking Lydia to some sort of underground structure in an undisclosed location and, after subjecting her to some Ehrmentraut brand Bad Cop, Worse Cop, forces her to call up Hank and ask him if he bugged the barrels. To her credit, Lydia manages to question Hank without Hank questioning her, and, after Walt’s bugs pick up on the fact that it was the DEA office in Houston who was responsible, she does her best to convince Walt and Jesse not to kill her (“everyone sounds like Meryl Streep with a gun to their heads.”) Eventually, her promises of “an ocean” of Methylamine intrigues Walt to the point where he promises (on his children, apparently) that Mike won’t kill her.

Her “ocean?” a Madrigal chemical transport train from Long Beach that, after stopping in Flagstaff, passes through a three mile “dead zone,” where cell signals and automated signals cannot escape. Mike isn’t on board, for a multitude of reasons, least of which because they would have to kill the men on the train. While he and Walter argue over the logistics of the potential heist later at Jesse’s (in the second installment of “Two Angry Bald Guys Argue”), Jesse comes up with the brilliant idea of replacing the methylamine they take with water. We cut to Walt in full Heisenberg gear staking out a covered bridge inside the dead zone, with Mike and Jesse at his side. With the assistance of the Vamonos Pest boys, including Todd, (whom they explain the plan to while hammering home one simple tenet: no witnesses), they bury two giant tanks in the ground below the bridge: one for the methylamine they’re going to steal, and one for the water they’ll use to replace it. After a brief interlude at home, where Walter intimidates his son into going back to Hank’s and intimidates his wife for no reason at all, we’re back to the dead zone, and the plan is sprung.

Using Saul’s guy Kuby to stop and distract the train (by having him pretend to be a truck driver who’s ride has conveniently broken down on the tracks), they buy enough time for Jesse and Todd to set up the switch. In one of the longest and tensest scenes the show has done thus far, everything is going well, despite the variable presented by a friendly samaritan who happens upon the scene and offers to push Kuby’s truck out of the way and give him a ride back into town. Mike, acting as the lookout, orders Walt to withdraw, which of course Walt doesn’t do until he’s gotten his full 1,000 gallons from the tanker. Despite Walter’s procrastination, Jesse and Todd manage to escape, the former by hiding under the train while it passes, the latter making a daring leap from the moving train, a leap I was certain was going to kill him and provide yet another consequence of Walt’s hubris in a season dedicated to it. Thankfully, almost shockingly, neither Jesse nor Todd is hurt, and the heist has gone off nearly flawlessly. They’re back in business, and no one was seriously hurt. A truly victim-less crime.

They celebrate, Jesse calls the train a bitch, and Walt shuts off the motors providing the water pump. But the sound doesn’t go away. There’s still a motor on somewhere. They look around, and notice the strange little boy from the cold open sitting there on his dirtbike. A witness. After a few awkward seconds, he waves, and Todd waves back. Just some guys doing work on a train; a happy, coincidental meeting in the desert. A few more seconds pass, and Todd pulls out his pistol. No witnesses. He shoots the kid in the head. Jesse loses his shit. There are no victories in this business. There are no victimless crimes. Lesser shows might have given us at least a commercial break to process the catharsis that was the train robbery. Not Breaking Bad. We get barely even a minute before a child is murdered, barely even a minute before another of Walt’s victories destroys someone’s innocence. As Walt himself said in the last episode: “nothing stops this train.”

Season 5, Episode Six: Buyout

“My wife is waiting for me to die. This business is all I have left. All I have. And you want to take it away from me.”- Walter White

In a muted, soundless cold open, Mike, Walt, Jesse, and Walt begin the process of covering their tracks from the heist. First they remove the pumping equipment and set it aside in the Vamonos Pest warehouse. Then they uncover the dirtbike, and begin reducing it to it’s components so they can melt it down in a barrel. The looks on their faces let us know that soon afterwards, they will be doing the same to the body of Drew Sharp (the boy). The last time Walt and friends melted a body in a plastic barrel was after Gus killed Victor, and it served as a form of black comedy to lighten what was one of the darkest hours in the show’s history. This time, there is no such levity. There is nothing worse than this, than melting down a boy’s body simply because he was in the wrong place and the wrong time, denying his family from ever knowing the truth much in the same way Lydia was afraid that her daughter would think she had been abandoned. Todd goes back to the dirt-filled dump truck and digs around. We see Drew Sharp’s hand poking out. Mercifully, we cut to afterwards, where Jesse is smoking a cigarette next to the methylamine container. Todd approaches, and starts making small talk about how “shit happens, huh?” Jesse punches him and walks away.

The next scene takes place inside the warehouse, where Todd tries to rationalize what he did by dropping all the old platitudes. “It was him or us” and “I had to save the team,” and all other manner of Heisenberg-isms that we’ve come to be less and less convinced by over the seasons. Walt asks him to step outside, and Todd tries to state his value to the operation (with a seeming throwaway line about his uncle’s “connections in prison”). After he leaves, Walt, Mike and Jesse decide that the only way to proceed is to keep him “on the payroll” (Walt’s really taken to the idea of being a boss, hasn’t he?).

The next morning, we catch up with Mike, by way of the DEA agent tailing him. Gomez arrives, sees Mike make a dead drop under a trash can, and elects to find out what it is after Mike up and leaves. It’s a handwritten note, from Mike to his friends at the DEA, with a gentlemanly suggestion of what he thinks they should do. How nice of him. Later, in his kitchen, Mike hears Gomey’s report to Hank about their encounter. The latter responds that “even pros make mistakes,” and that they just need to keep the pressure up. Mike smirks, and then Mike sighs, looking more weary than ever (which is saying something indeed). He doesn’t have the heart for this anymore. Jesse, meanwhile, has his crisis of confidence when, during one of their cooks, he sees a news report about Drew Sharp’s disappearance and nearly breaks down. Walt assures him that they have to keep going, that the future will hold “plenty of time for soul-searching.” He offers to finish the cook, telling Jesse that he’s had trouble sleeping, too. After Walt thinks he’s gone, he comes back downstairs to hear his supposed friend and mentor casually whistling away as he goes back to work. It’s taken awhile (almost too long for some fans’ taste), but Jesse is finally starting to see just what his partner is.

It is with both these scenes in mind that Walt stumbles upon his two partners in conference at the Vamonos Pest warehouse, where they tell him that they’re out, both of them. They’ll be taking their shares of the methylamine to a guy Mike knows in Arizona for $5 each. When Walt scoffs that they’ll be selling to his competitors for “pennies on the dollar,” they both retort that this is the only way. The next scene, where Mike and Jesse meet with Declan, Mike’s contact, shows them that selling two-thirds of the methylamine won’t cut it. Declan wants the “blue stuff” off the market entirely, and isn’t willing to scrounge up $10 million when the real source of his opposition is still in business.

A short time later, Walt gets a call from Jesse, whom he invites over to his house to talk. In the episode’s centerpiece, Jesse fills him in on the situation, and attempts to convince him that enough is enough. They’ve made enough money. He tries desperately to reach the Walter White he once knew, the man who sat in a junkyard and counted out the $737,000 he needed to secure his family’s future. But that man isn’t here. Perhaps he never was. There is only Heisenberg, who talks about Declan’s deal as “selling out,” and how, in the past, he made a similar choice with Gray Matter, his and his friend Elliot’s business (been a LONG time since either of those names have come up). He talks about how, for “personal reasons” (hint: Gretchen) he took a $5,000 buyout from Gray Matter. He talks about how, now, the company is worth 2.16 billion dollars (he looks it up every week). He “sold (his) kids’ birthright for a few months’ rent.” He’s not in the meth business of the money business. He’s in the empire business. After Jesse wonders whether a meth empire is really something worth being proud of, Skyler walks in, and what was one of the most revealing character scenes in the history of the show turns into one of the most surreal as Walt invites Jesse to dinner, demonstrating to his partner just how powerful he has become in his own home. Jesse nobly, almost painfully, tries to compliment Skyler at every turn, and after she asks Walter if he told his partner about her affair, Jesse shrinks back and takes an awkward drink, almost like a kid trying to get his parents to talk to each other again. It’s a wonderfully dark comedic moment, further cementing Aaron Paul as the heart of the show, always put in these horrible situations by Walt and always reacting in the most endearingly dopey way possible.

Almost immediately, however, we’re plunged right back into the pathos from before, as Walter tells Jesse that his family, the thing he was doing this for, is essentially gone. He has nothing left but the business, the empire. And he will not abide Jesse and Mike trying to take it from him. After Jesse presumably leaves, Walt hustles over to the warehouse in an attempt to steal the methylamine, only to find Mike there waiting for him. Mike tells him that the deal is going down the following morning no matter what Walter does, and after an awkward night spent in the office together (not in that way, though I admit it would have been a surprising plot twist), Mike tells Walter that he has something to take care of before the deal, and ties Walter to a radiator. While Mike deals with his business (which turns out to be a meeting with Hank and Gomez where Saul threatens them with a restraining order), Walt sets about freeing himself. He does this by first attempting to grab a nearby coffee maker and use the glass to cut himself free. After he accidentally sends the coffee pot itself skittering across the room, he comes up with another idea, using his teeth to strip and separate the coffee maker’s power cable, using the current as a blowtorch of sorts to burn his way free.

Mike, after leaving the DEA office, learns from Saul that their little gamble has given him maybe 24 hours free to “pull the ripcord” and get out. So it’s more than understandable that when he gets back to Vamonos Pest and finds the methylamine gone, he puts his gun to Walter’s temple and starts counting to three. Walter, who wisely seems to have clued Jesse into his plan (Jesse manages, once again, to calm Mike down long enough to give Walt time to talk), tells him that, according to his new plan, “everybody wins.” Cue credits.

Illustration by Mary Grace Ewald

Digital Refrain contributors Alex Wong and Jesse Golomb exchange emails, dissecting the most recent episode of Breaking Bad.

Jesse: Tonight felt special, Alex. After queueing up episode one on my Netflix just six weeks ago, I watched my first live episode of Breaking Bad.

Well, sort of. I DVR’d it and watched the episode 45 minutes late. My NBA2K12 Knicks Association team had a elimination playoff game against the 2014 Celtics, and I just couldn’t miss it.

In case you were wondering: yes, Jeremy Lin is still on the Knicks in my alternative, less-depressing basketball universe, and no, it didn’t matter. I still got swept in the first round as the eight seed. Some things are simply past the point of salvation.

Like Walter White, for example.

That much has been pretty clear for awhile. But what hasn’t been clear is when exactly the nigh end is coming. One of the (many) many amazing things about Breaking Bad is just how safe and unscathed its protagonist has remained, even as he has dabbled in drug production and distribution, murder and serial murder, extortion and money laundering. From early on, I’ve been comparing this show to Dexter, another one of my favorite TV serials, and one I believe has not gotten nearly enough attention as it continues to glow through six seasons. That show has a criminal protagonist working under the nose of a family member in law enforcement. Finally, in last season’s finale (SPOILER ALERT), we were treated to the sight of Dexter’s dear old dectective sis catching him in the act. But whereas Dexter teased at that reveal for years, Breaking Bad has never even entertained it. I took a guess early on in my BB viewing (especially after catching a glimpse off the season five poster, where Walt seemed to be in a yellow jumpsuit) that one of the seasons would take place with Walter White behind bars. Yet despite all the battles and bruises accrued along the way, all the money won and morality lost, Walter White has barely a scratch on him. Never mind the fact that everyone around him is dead either in body or spirit; Heisenberg remains — at least for now — safe and sound from his somehow oblivious brother-in-law, as well as the King of his domain, The One Who Knocks.

It doesn’t seem like that’s going to be the case for much longer. And I don’t think any of us needed Walt’s 52nd birthday ‘party’ at the Denny’s in the season premiere to figure that out. The end is coming for Walter White, and it’s spelled out as clearly as the bacon on his breakfast plate.

The imagery was all over the place in this episode, so rampant that the final shot of a ticking clock seemed too obvious (sort of like last week’s Scarface viewing, even though I liked that little bit of meta-forshadowing — everyone dies in this movie! –  more than most). There was the clock ticking as Skyler sat, smoking a cigarette, waiting for Walt’s cancer to un-remiss. There was the fray on Walt’s Heisenberg hat, just waiting to unravel. There was Skyler’s pool stunt, which can only serve to make Hank (and Marie, and Walt Jr.) only more curious, only more prodding, only a bigger part of this grand scheme.

And oh how grand it’s been, and I’m not talking about the excellence of this series.

Like most viewers, I was thoroughly confused at the end of last week’s episode, when Walt tells Jesse that he believed Gus killed Victor because he ‘flew too close to the sun.’ Was Walt threatening Jesse? Was he implying Mike was next to go?

No. If anything, Walt was talking about himself — even if he didn’t realize it. For the entire series, Walt has done things and attempted to do things that no high school chemistry teacher — let alone any man — should think himself capable of. Not only has he been the center of this series, but he has been the center of this series’ universe. He is its god. The consequences of his actions are not only felt in the White household, where Skyler is so overcome by the chaos that the silence of the pool seems a welcome respite, but in Mexico, where the cartel is in shambles; in Texas, where several DEA agents lay dead; in Germany, where a multinational corporation is coming apart at the seems; and all over the world, where the scattered families of the victims of Wayfarer 515 grieve, unaware that a man in a hat could have saved one girl, and saved hundreds in the process.

Walt has flown too close to the sun for far too long. And as his hubris grows and his respect for logic and patience disappaites (“this train stops for nothing;” “I just know”), it’s about time he burnt up. Some have called these first few episodes, “meandering” and “procedural,” but I think — more than anything — the first four episodes of Breaking Bad’s last season have set our “hero” up for his fall. 

I’m already going long here, but a few more themes seem to popping up. These are more half-baked, but a few thoughts…

-There seems to be a switching of roles going on with Jesse and Walt. At the beginning of the series and throughout, Jesse was the impatient one, the one always wanting to push, push, push ahead, the one flying too close to the sun. Now, he is the one who preaches prudence, who is willing to give up his money to avert argument. Walt, on the otherhand, grows increasingly arrogant and ambitious.

-That final scene in the dark with Walt and Skyler was absolutely fantastic. Everything that’s been swirling under the surface with Skyler since the retirement home blew up came to a head. And I think anyone who thought last week’s car wash breakdown seemed sudden felt stupid. Skyler is trapped. Her husband is a murderer, and his ‘shit happens’ routine is BS. I think she bought his “I do this for my family routine for a while,” but after he announces his willingness to institutionalize his wife instead of quitting the business, I don’t think anyone — maybe even Walt included? — could believe that. I know that’s been an excuse of Walt’s for awhile, but I’m pretty sure tonight was the first time he made a conscious choice that he would harm his family instead of harming his business.

-I hate Marie. I hate that damn character. Sorry. For a show that has five principals, she has always been the weakest link and everytime she is on screen I wince. Sorry if I offended any Marie fans.

-I also have generally hated Skyler, and frankly, I haven’t been a big fan of Anna Gunn’s performance. She was absolutely spectacular in this episode. That’s what happens when a character becomes more than a shrew.

-Walt Jr. likes breakfast.

Ok, time to go to bed so I can read 25 episode recaps tomorrow morning. I’ll hit you back then.

Alex:

Sorry for the delayed response, taking a break from reading my daily “Sanchez-Teblow” Google news alert, equally great drama happening in Jets camp I tell you.

Loved this episode, loving this season.

The best imagery of the night the close-up shot of blood dripping down Walt’s head as he was shaving. Blood on his hands, bloodshed to come. The build-up is so great at this point I wonder when it’s all going to culminate.

It might be easy to say that things aren’t going to get really crazy until the last eight episodes next year — but you have to assume that after last night’s episode titled “Fifty-One”, a “Fifty-Two” episode is coming, and I’m really hoping they’ll give us an extended “flash forward” in the finale of the eight episodes this summer.

Without all the details in between, I want to see how we get to the diner scene sooner than later. Because that machine gun in the trunk means there’s still more story to tell a year from now.

I didn’t know how to interpret the last scene from the previous episode, but I like the way you’ve choose to read it. Breaking Bad has always built itself up as the season goes along. Consider all the elements that will have to contribute to the end game somehow aside from Skyler: Jesse finding out about Walt killing his girlfriend and poisoning the kid, Hank piecing it all together, Mike plotting some sort of long con on Walt and Jesse (it’s only a matter of time before he finds a way to eliminate them to take back the business), and Lydia.

I wasn’t so sure about Lydia’s first appearance several episodes ago, but everything about her last night — the mismatched shoes, planting a tracker on the container, and just her overall uneasiness about everything. Something must’ve happened in the past to make her this way. I hope they devote some time to telling that backstory, I trust that Vince Gilligan isn’t putting so much focus on a Madrigal executive for nothing, she will figure into the end game, and she’s as much of a wild card out there as anyone.

Other thoughts:

• Still very little of Jesse through episode four, which means something is brewing. Something always is.

• Walt Jr. without breakfast? A man with no country. Underrated line of the night, when he’s leaving Walt’s birthday party and Hank tells him to slow down when he’s driving. As he walks out he fires back: “Never”.

• There’s never been much use for Marie as an ancillary character, more just there for exposition and to further the story along from a narrative perspective. Although, I felt the same about Hank in the early seasons, he was a joke, a Vic Mackey lite to me. But that might be the most impressive character development work of the whole series, now he’s smarter than everyone and always one step ahead, although that will probably be his downfall. Few have squared off against Heinsenberg and lived to tell their tale.

Last thought: Skyler smoking in that last scene when Walt comes home, possible foreshadowing? We know that ricin cigarette is still lurking.

Jesse:

Good stuff. A few things to wrap up.

I have a strong feeling Skyler’s not going to survive this season. I don’t know what her undoing is — I really love your Ricin cigarette idea, especially because I never really understood why Walt saved the damn thing in the first place (couldn’t he just make another?) — but the Denny’s scene in the premiere seemed telling, with Walt alone, looking longingly at his bacon, arranging it in the manner his wife had for so many years.

As for Jesse, I’ve read some suggestions that the watch he gave Walt either has a bomb planted in it or a tracker. It wouldn’t surprise me at all. Jesse seemed to go out of his way (not in the usual sense) to give that gift to Walt. And you’re right, Jesse simply has been too low-key for the last four episodes. Something has to give.

I don’t think Mike wants this business. Mike wants out. He understands how much shit can pile up, and let’s also remember that he was ready to fly the coop until his nest egg cracked. Mike’s goal, in my opinion: settle his debts, make some money, and get rid of Walt.

He is a cancer after all.

Illustration by Mary Grace Ewald

Season 5, Episode 3- Hazard Pay

“He handles the business. And I handle him.”- Walter White

Running a business isn’t an easy thing to do. Never mind a business “big enough that it could be listed on the Fortune 500.” And yet, that’s just the predicament Walter, Jesse and Mike find themselves in, and it’s the crux of another entry in what is easily Breaking Bad‘s strongest season yet (which is saying something). Putting this business back together starts with Mike’s visit to Dennis, the former manager of the laundromat. Mike, posing as a paralegal, guarantees Dennis that he, and by extension, all the rest of the names on Lydia’s list will get all the money that’s owed to them. Which explains why Mike has decided to enter into business with Walt again.

A business which gets its start, fittingly, in Saul Goodman’s office, where Mike meets up with Jesse, Walt and a protesting Saul. The first major sequence is Saul taking his three clients on a tour of possible lab venues, including Danny’s Lazer Tag, which Walt and Jesse reject immediately (it’s fun to imagine what, exactly, Mike thinks this place is. So strange that barely a season ago, Jesse was hiding in this place while Mike was trying to kill him). Eventually, they check out a small warehouse belonging to a local extermination company (Vamonos Pest), and while there, Walt comes up with an idea. They’re going to hire this extermination company and use the cover provided by their bug bombing to conduct a quick, efficient cook. In the client’s homes. The only catch is that they’ll have to take their lab equipment with them, which is a small catch in the face of becoming almost completely untraceable.

With the help of Badger and Skinny Pete (who plays a wicked keyboard), they complete their cover, and almost immediately begin smooth production. Despite Mike’s warnings to never talk to Walt and Jesse unless spoken to (a move that draws a modicum of respect from Walt. Mike is nothing if not professional.), one of the exterminators, Todd (played by Friday Night Lights‘ Jesse Plemons) comes up to Walt and Jesse and lets them know that he disabled the nanny cam in the first house. Walt asks his name, obviously marking it down for future reference. A king always needs more pawns.

And what does Walt need pawns for? The upcoming power struggle with Mike, of course. After their first batch sells, the three new owners meet to divvy up their profit. Mike begins taking cuts from all three to cover the costs of operation. Drug mules, operation costs, Jesse’s cut for financing the setup (and also the mission they undertook to destroy Gus’ laptop). Through all these things, Walt is quiet, if visibly annoyed. But when Mike takes a slice to put towards his guys’ “hazard pay,” Walt loses it. He maintains that since buying the silence of these former members of the Fring Empire is a business decision, it should come solely out of Mike’s pay. Walt has no desire to adhere to any form of criminal honor or decency. He’s in the hole, sure, but it’s not like he isn’t making a profit from all this, a fact Jesse is all too eager to remind him of. They aren’t making as much as they did under Gus’ rule, but they’re the owners now. They get a bigger cut. Plus, they’re only cooking 1/4th as much as they did as Gus’ wage slaves. Jesse is content. Which isn’t where Walt wants him.

Earlier in the episode, after their first cook, Walt sneakily inquires about Brock and Andrea (whom he officially met at Jesse’s earlier). He suggests that if Jesse is unwilling to share the secrets of what he does for a living with Andrea, then their relationship is doomed to fail (which is true, except for the fact that he and Skyler have nothing that could be considered a working relationship). Jesse is visibly panicked, and after the money-splitting issue with Mike, Jesse informs his old mentor that he has broken things off with Andrea. Walt dismisses him. He never really cared anyway. He just wanted Jesse all too himself, because, as he tells Jesse, he now understands why Gus killed Victor. “He reached too close to the sun,” Walt says, referring to Victor’s attempt to cook the formula while they were under house arrest at the superlab.

Walt’s insidious use of the truth to manipulate those around him continues when, after Skyler blows up on her at the carwash, Marie confronts him (of course Marie just assumes that Skyler being upset couldn’t possibly have anything to do with her.). While playing the cuckolded husband card, Walt tells Marie about Skyler’s affair with Ted, and how his accident is to blame for her recurrent breakdowns. Marie buys it immediately, since this is too juicy a lead for her not to sniff out (and also possibly something for her to hold over Skyler’s head in a few episodes).

The quote for this episode, from Walt to Saul, comes early in the episode, after Mike’s assertion that the business side was entirely his jurisdiction. Does that division of labor sound familiar? It’s similar to the one Jesse and Walt made late in Season 1, one that Walt almost immediately fractured when he marched into Tuco’s hideout with a bad full of fulminated Mercury and a new haircut. The difference now is that when Walt first became Heisenberg, he did so as a way of protecting himself from the criminal underbelly that he’s now all too acquainted with. At this point, it’s less about escaping the chafing bonds of middle-class servitude as it an all-encompassing desire for more. More money. More power. More freedom. If Walter White met the Buddha on the road, he wouldn’t kill him. He would dominate him and use him as slave labor. I think’s it time we stop calling Walt an anti-hero.

Season 5, Episode 4- Fifty-One

“Nobody stops this train.”- Walter White

Upon a re-watch, this episode’s cold open serves as some of the most welcome comic relief sequences in the show’s history. Walt and Junior go to pick up his Aztek from the shop, where the lead mechanic spends most of his screen time telling Walt just how reliable his old car is (“she’s got nine lives, this car”). After a passing reference to the “gunk” they cleaned out of the fender (the Rival Dealers’ blood, which Walt told them was from a deer), Walt sells the mechanic his car for $50. He’s done being dependable. It’s time for him to buy a car befitting his status as kingpin. Notice how this differs from Gus’ Volvo. Hiding in plain sight, Walter is not. It’s like he doesn’t even think about how the man in charge of the task force made to find him is his own brother in law. Regardless, after a pitiful look from Junior as they pull up in their respective rides, they return to the dealership, and Walt buys another Challenger for him. The exact same model. Let’s see Skyler take this one away. Walter is in such a dominant position in the relationship that he’s almost Big Brother to Skyler. He dictates her reality. “Life is good, Skyler,” he tells her, and you can almost see her soul leaving her body.

On the business side of things, Jesse pays a visit to Lydia’s plant after Hank’s investigation forces her to give up her “guy.” As Jesse removes the soon to be ignored barrel of methylamine, she notices a tracking device on the bottom. Mike figures out what her game is soon enough. By trying to make it seem as if the DEA is tracking her shipments, Lydia hopes to give herself a reason to escape her dealings with Mike. It’s a bold strategy, and one that bodes well for her character, if not her future (“she’s dead). Mike’s remarks that he and Jesse are being sexist in simply disregard her as being crazy is an interesting one, since that seems to have been this show’s go to move in dealing with its female characters (Hank himself jokes that Marie isn’t exactly the picture of mental health). I hope Lydia sticks around a little more, what with her mismatched shoes and all.

The centerpiece of this episode is Walt’s birthday celebration. It’s been a year since he was diagnosed, and it’s fun to pick out the contrasts between his 50th birthday party and his 51st. When Skyler threw him a surprise party in the Pilot, he was nervous and unabashedly against the entire affair. This year? This year he seems to expect it, and is visibly disappointed when his birthday bash turns out to be just Hank and Marie coming over for dinner (of course, Marie almost immediately told Hank about Skyler’s infidelity. Walt’s glare at her when he realizes is priceless). During Walt’s grand speech about how much he’s had to go through, Skyler begins inching closer and closer to the family pool. After Hank and Marie notice (Walt’s back was turned to the whole thing, of course), Skyler jumps in and attempts to drown herself. The shot of her below the water is the first time all season she’s looked happy. She can’t hear Walt. But then, in a jarring shot, he appears behind her below the water. One does not simply escape from Heisenberg.

One thing to notice is Hank’s reactions to all this. Before Walter Junior leaves (just in time, because Junior seeing just how desperate his mother is might be enough to sway him to her side. He’s not ignorant about his father. He just chooses to ignore it), Hank makes a quick joke about his nephew being “a millionaire.” He’s just been promoted to replace Merkert as ASAC of the the New Mexico office. He will no longer be in charge of the Fring investigation. Most reviewers have thought that he’ll find a way to continue it regardless. I think he’s going to find himself with ample opportunity to begin a new investigation. One into his brother in law. It has to be happening soon. There’s no way this show isn’t going to ignite that particular fire.

After Marie puts Skyler to bed, she and Hank corner Walt into letting Skyler get treatment, and offer to watch Junior and Holly for a few days. After they leave, he confronts Skyler, dropping the doting husband facade and practically chasing her around the bedroom. He calls her on all her attempts to get the kids away from the house, stating that there is nowhere safer for them to be. Gus Fring was the danger. “I thought you were the danger,” she retorts, and suddenly, Walt isn’t dealing with a comatose shell of a woman: Skyler has decided to fight back. Much like Walter himself did when he broke into the house in Season 3, Skyler has decided to stop being dominated in the War of the Whites. Unlike Walt, Skyler’s methods are much more patient. After Walt shoots down every one of her possible escape plans, she admits that she doesn’t have his “magic,” the magic that allows him to weasel his way out of everything. Skyler has no illusions of innocence, which is refreshing for her, considering nearly her entire run on this show has dealt with her rejecting just how bad things have gotten, either with Walt and with her own dealings with Ted. Walter has a new enemy to deal with (to go along with Hank, the enemy he doesn’t even regard as a threat), and this enemy is content simply with waiting. She says so herself. When Walt asks her what she could possibly be waiting for, she chillingly responds “for the cancer to come back.” Walt stops in his tracks. The show has been building to this for awhile, and as we saw in the flashforward that started this season, it’s a eventuality that the show hasn’t forgotten about. Walt was taking that pills in a Denny’s bathroom for a reason. Right now, he’s on top. He won. But the cancer that, a year ago, started all of this, is still lying in wait.

As he sits and listens to Jesse and Mike argue about what to do with Lydia, Walt has his trademark hat, which he recovered from the Aztek before selling it. When he found it then, he immediately put it on, in public. In front of his son. It’s not like anyone could do anything about it. But while he fiddles with the hat, he finds a loose strand. And as he lays down to sleep in the bed his wife is powerless to keep him out of, the watch Jesse got him for his birthday is ticking. Fifty. Fifty-one. Fifty-two. I don’t think he’s going to reach fifty-three. The clock is ticking, Walter.

Illustration by @maddisonbond

After the release of his most recent album “Life Is Good”, I did something groundbreaking: I played Nas’s discography from the end back to the start. And than a question came to me: how does an artist’s career unfold when his debut is regarded (almost) unanimously as the best album of all time in your genre?

It’s a question that after nearly 20 years is still hard to tackle, if only because it’s still hard for most to let go of the fact that Illmatic was an achievement that should be viewed isolated from the rest of Nas’s catalog, which is underrated if only because it is upheld against him as a benchmark to his debut.

It’s the cruel punishment of peaking too soon, or just simply for being the best.

This whole analysis of Nas’s career means a lot to me, if only because mid to late 1990s East Coast hip hop was my introduction into the genre — and it’s something I still hang onto today. I could care less about keeping up with new music, or knowing the lyrics to your favorite club song. It seems people just keep up with music now to be relevant in some ways. I don’t want to veer too far off and sound anti-establishment or what not — I already went through that phase when I thought swearing by Rawkus Records was some sort of declaration — I’m simply anti-poor quality.

That particular era is difficult to define, but whether it’s Pun’s “Capital Punishment”, all of Cappadonna’s guest verses on Ghostface’s debut album, those violins at the start of John Blaze, Nature spitting natural disaster rap at the start of “Banned From TV”, or that Made Men collaboration with The LOX from the Belly Soundtrack, that’s my daily rotation on the iPod.

You have to hold onto something I suppose.

The most fascinating rapper from that era for me has to be Nas.

I didn’t first hear about him from “Live At The BBQ”, I don’t think I was even in North America at that age. It was about the time when The Firm came out that I was exposed to him, and his Queensbridge counterparts whom he would later destroy and rebuild.

But seriously, I was more fascinating by “Five Minutes To Flush” than anything Nas did on that album.

I don’t have to hold onto that thought I suppose.

But once I got more familiar with Nas’s body of work, I realized that this genre of music, which was still a blank canvas to me, could be so much more. Listening to “New York State Of Mind” for the first time, I didn’t need no message board thread to tell me that I was listening to the apex of hip hop. He was going to work, painting all our canvas full, raising the bar for what music should be about.

Turns out he raised it a bit too high.

A year or so after, Nas was coming off “It Was Written” — heavily criticized because it wasn’t Illmatic (a recurring theme in Nas’s career, especially the first decade after his debut), and was planning a double album titled “I Am…Nastradamus”.

I still remember when a version of it leaked really early, the one with a handful of tracks that ended up on Lost Tapes.

If we thought “Street Dreams” and “If I Ruled The World” signaled a change in Nas’s music, this bootleg set off all alarms.

Eventually, the project was split into two albums, more profitably or what not. Think Kill Bill split into two. Same reasons.

“I Am…” was an uneven output from Nas, although when he decides to just dial it back and make a “Nas Is Like” (also, “New York State Of Mind Part. II is so underrated, especially that first verse, the end of that first verse), it makes him that much more polarizing.

Why doesn’t he just make 12 of those and call it a day? Why does he insist on working with Ginuwine, Timbaland and do songs like Dr. Knockboots (experimenting has never really served Nas right, remember “Who Killed It?”) ?

We projected all our expectations, however unrealistic and rigid onto Nas, all very unfairly I might add.

I only realize it now, but I fell into that crowd that concluded that Nas was going in the wrong direction with his music. But who as listeners are we to hold back someone from growing, from experimenting, from shifting their subject matter and persona? It was a crime for Nas to be a rapper in transition. The only crime I think he was guilty of was not being very good crossing over.

Or I just read one too many message board threads.

Of course, no discussion about Nas’s career is complete without the mention of Jay-Z, and Biggie to some extent (it’s a requirement I think).

If BIG was the street rapper who crossed over and became a huge star (Jay did the same over a larger platform subsequent), Jay came in the game, brought his own street edge and bravado with Reasonable Doubt and grew beyond just a rapper (see: businessman vs. business, man) into an entity, a brand so large that you forget he probably has as many flawed albums as Nas (Jay: I can divide too).

To summarize, BIG was what Nas could never be. Jay is who Nas wanted to be.

But Nas as himself is probably better than the two.

If so, than why does Nas’s career seems so underwhelming in retrospect. Why is he in so many ways considered a failure, a letdown?

He’s only been rapping for almost 20 years and still few rappers can stand next to him lyrically.

We might not have a fully formed view on this until he’s gone, it’s how things work. Appreciation comes after, criticism is all that exists in the present.

But we can make educated guesses.

His beef with Jay-Z was the perfect scenario in that it allowed Nas to regain his “street cred” from his fanbase. The rapper who outgrew the genre was getting took by the rapper who we always knew was the best.

Understatement: Ether was the most important record of Nas’s career.

And with his epic intro on Stillmatic, this was a sort of a Second Coming (great song by the way, one of his many from his “unreleased” catalog) for Nas. The album name (and cover) was a bold choice. Here was Nas, almost recognizing and mocking a desire to return to his Illmatic roots.

But in putting out such a competent, mostly street record in a completely different era separate from Illmatic, Nas changed the conversation and introduced this possibility: maybe there just won’t ever be another Illmatic.

It was as if this was a thought that we never ventured to entertain before this. That he must deliver a replication of his debut at least once more.

But with this change in mindset, I felt that Nas (and myself, and many fans) were finally able to or allow themselves to distance their assessment of Nas from just his debut. He was allowed to carve out another phase to his career that could work in conjunction.

His subsequent work were all above average to great. I felt both a return to his original sound and a realization of how to adapt and change as a rapper without going to extremes and making records that seemed downright uncomfortable or uninspiring (usually both).

And there’s this: trace a musician’s career through albums, and you’re bound to find criticism that overshadows their brilliance. Is this not why blogs exist? We function to point out what we don’t like, the opposite just seems to mean we’re falling in line with some mundane belief.

But in all fairness, you’re going to have to talk about Deja Vu, Silent Murder, The Foulness and all of Nas’s b-sides and unreleased records if you want to start matching discographys.

Only rappers recently brought back in hologram form can hold a candle to Nas when it comes to quantity.

Quality wise? You act like he ain’t got a belt in two classes.

All of this brings me to the release of “Life Is Good”. 20 years ago, he was a child. 10 years ago, he wore an orange valor suit with his hat cocked to the side. Today, he sits with his ex-wife’s wedding gown on his couch. If you want checkpoints, those three album cover images is a pretty simple way to get a synopsis.

This is a rapper that’s still rhyming with the same vigor and visceral precision like when he first entered.

You mean “Locomotive” isn’t a lost track from the Illmatic sessions?

At the end of the track, Nas dedicates the song to “my trapped in the 90s n*ggas”.

That’s me.

That’s us.

It’s a homage to the old days.

It’s something I still hang onto, and something that Nas is still well aware of.

And he’s still making music that reminds us of those times.

It’s not too late to appreciate him for that, and everything else he’s done for two decades.

Illustration by @maddisonbond

If Digital Refrain is where pop culture meets genius, then we’re going to need to talk about Ai Weiwei.

The controversial Chinese artist and activist is many things, but there’s one quality that binds all of his interests and his passion: he is a creator.

To the mainstream, he is best known for his help in designing the Beijing National Stadium, better known as The Bird’s Nest that was the hub of the 2008 Summer Olympics. But where most people would consider a world renowned stadium to be the highest of accomplishments, it likely wouldn’t even rank too high on Weiwei’s list if you consider his artistic side to be a medium where he best expresses his creativity and provides a message all at once.

The more introspective, and conversation-generating pieces include a series of photographs of him dropping a Han Dynasty urn or the companion to that: painting logos on them. There’s his Sunflower Seeds installation at Tate Modern in London in 2010. Simplistic in its presentation, the one hundred million sunflower seeds were in fact all painted in a small town in China by over 1,500 artisans. To those that appreciate art, it is a massive project. Look a little deeper, it’s Weiwei’s way of communicating his long standing views on consumerism, famine, elitism and the dangers of tradition and unwillingness to change.

Ask any person who’s appreciated and interpreted Weiwei’s work, their opinions will differ; not a dispute over his genius, but rather the message that it sends. But it’s clear: his art stimulates and creates conversation. They’re not conclusive, but they inspire you to want to understand how that conclusion may have come about.

The need to create and the need to provoke change might’ve started at an early age for Weiwei. His father Ai Qing was a famous Chinese poet, but was denounced by the government in the 1950s during the Anti-Rightist movement and exiled for 20 years as a farm laborer.

Weiwei also spent sometime in the 1980s in New York, his photographs during his stint have been collected by the Asia Society Museum in New York.

He once said, “The New York I knew no longer exists. Looking back in the past, I can see that these photographs are facts, but not necessarily true. The present always surpasses the past, and the future will not care about today.”

Can a phrase be art? Can a man’s words carry more meaning that it’s meant to?

Read about Weiwei long enough, you start to question these things too.

Filmmaker Alyson Klayman sought out these answers in a wonderful documentary released earlier this year titled “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry”. The moments we as viewers get to spend with Weiwei in his secluded home and art studio gives us a glimpse into a man that seems, in a surprising twist, vulnerable.

His art and his views are surely not shy. He never even used a computer before 2005, but since doing so, became one of the most read bloggers in the world, and cultivated a large following on Twitter (his pronunciation of the social network’s name in the movie is a hidden gem) which he’s used to continue to exert his influence and spread his message.

But when he discusses his art, he claims that “I’m not sure I’m good at it, but I find an escape in it. This is one way you can release yourself.”

He doesn’t consider himself brave, but he communicates and makes himself available and accessible so that people are always aware of where he is. Because that matters when you develop your own unique voice in China, you can only go rogue for so long until they bring you in.

And Weiwei was no exception. His Shanghai art studio was demolished by the government, and he disappeared for 81 days during a jail stint for some unpaid taxes, or so the story goes.

This is where the movie leaves off. He returns, but can he still be the same? You can be strong, you can inspire, you can be the creator of art, of conversation, of change, of everything; but if all of that is suppressed within, where’s the escape for Weiwei? Where will he find his release?

This is just a small portrait of who Weiwei is. I could go on about his other projects, specifically his work with the Sichuan earthquake disaster, to illustrate the point. But all of what he does and what he believes in are consistently represented in all of his creations.

And so perhaps the one thing we owe him is to create something ourselves: the awareness of Weiwei’s story, and an appreciation for a man who claims to fear, yet acts with only purpose, and no regard for the circumstances that he is bound to face.