Breaking Bad Review 1.07 - A No Rough Stuff Type Deal

The structure of Breaking Bad seasons usually call for pretty explosive season finales. In two instances, the second and fourth season finales, that explosion is a literal one. Depending on whether you feel "Gliding Over All" is a season finale or not, this is definitely the calmest of the finales Breaking Bad does. It's fair to say the lack of any real resolution found in this finale is a direct result of the writer's strike that happened in early 2008. But just because this episode does not play like a season finale doesn't mean it doesn't  conclude an important arc. The season is all about the process of Walt breaking bad. By the time this episode rolls around, Walt is hooked on crime and danger now, and there is no going back from the life he's chosen at this point. He occasionally wobbles, but the confrontation with Tuco at the end of the previous episode has woken a compulsion within him, and he's unable to escape the situation he's put himself in from this point forward.

"A No-Rough-Stuff-Type Deal" is interested in exploring that compulsion Walt has, and how he's able to reconcile it to himself and to others. The newfound addiction to danger is present right from the pre-credits sequence. He's getting off on the fear of being caught, pleasing his wife where anyone may be able to take notice. He has sex with her in the back of a car, in a place where anyone may be able to peek through the window. It's the thrill of danger, the thrill that's present in the risk of being caught. And it's so clear throughout the episode how new this thrill is to Walt and how little he is able to control his compulsion to feed it.

The public fooling around with his wife is harmless enough, but continually pushing the envelope with Tuco is not. First, Walt has the guts to get paid the full amount for his meth even though he's well short of what is promised. Then, he ups what he and Jesse are willing to provide per week without even knowing whether he'd be able to get his hands on the material to mass produce in those sort of quantities. Then, rather than taking the easy road and paying some people off to steal the methylamine for him, he devises a plan to put himself and Jesse in danger instead. His ability to escape danger with his brilliance gives him such a high that he can't help but put himself in worse and worse situations, and if not for the wake-up call at the end of the episode, where Tuco shows just how dangerous he truly is, the result almost certainly would him biting off more than he can chew.

It's a compulsion, and it parallels the kleptomania Marie has. I'm not 100% sure I liked the Marie story this episode, or found it a necessary storyline to parallel what was going on with Walt, but I'm not going to complain about any attempts to flesh out the secondary characters at this point. The part of this storyline that stands out to me is how unapologetic Marie is about her problem. Skylar's caught her red-handed here, and yet she continues to act cool, and she continues to lie and treat her problem as nothing. The reason for this is she probably doesn't even think about it as a problem. She doesn't need Skylar to bug her about this because it's harmless. The jewelry store probably is swimming in money, and one missing tiara won't hurt anyone. Rationalization almost always comes with strong compulsions, and is probably the main reason many people with addiction problems  don't get the help they need. These people can't help themselves, so rather than see themselves as broken they minimize the impact of what they do.

That's what we see with Walt as well in this episode. Twice in the episode he tries to cryptically rationalize his new criminal lifestyle. First, he tells Hank the lines of legality are arbitrary and inconsistent, that they can change at any time. Hank properly calls him out on that, and saying he sounds a lot like the criminals he put behind bars. Then, he does a strange defense of Marie for Skylar, saying that sometimes you have to cross lines if family is involved. This becomes Walt's catchphrase going forward, that he entered the meth cooking life for his family. We know this to be a rationalization, a lie Walt tells himself, a lie Walt knows is false. Walt is in the meth cooking life because he became addicted to the thrill of danger. At multiple points throughout the series, Walt is in a place where he can sit back and (fairly) safely make good money. But he does not, he pushes the envelope further. He needs the threats on his life, and he needs to be able to show that he's smart enough to overcome them.

It's all well and good when you are putting yourself in danger, rock climbing without harnesses on your own, but bringing others into it is crossing a line. The amount of danger Walt puts Jesse in within this episode is astonishing. The fact that Jesse is still sticking around and still letting it happen is a result of the hypnotic hold Walt has on him. Shortly after Walt gives Jesse the shopping list to make the meth with, he does his best job of instilling confidence. "You can do this!" he tells him, and it's probably one of the first times anyone has shown any confidence in Jesse. It's true and sad that Jesse is Walt's dog throughout the series, constantly begging for whatever little crumbs of approval he can get and constantly getting slapped instead. The partnership is terrible for Jesse and great for Walt on all counts, yet it gives Jesse that feeling of competence he can't get anywhere else.  Jesse is trapped by his compulsion to seek approval, the same way as Walt, and the same way as Marie.

I feel terrible for Skylar this episode. She's getting lied to from two directions, one she's fully aware of and one she's not. In a clever bit of foreshadowing, Marie's lie traps her in a place where she has to go along with the scam and lie to the authorities in order to save face and get herself out of a bad situation. She's still pretty blind to what Walt is doing, though his sudden interest in Eastern healing methods probably should have had her suspicious. That does not sound like the scientifically minded Walt in the slightest and she probably should have known that. Walt's reaction to Marie's stealing was awfully suspicious as well. Skylar's no dummy, and she'll figure things out eventually, but it's another lesson how hard it is to look past "CANCER!" and see the problems that Walt has at this point.

The best scene in this episode is without a doubt the scene with the video camera. The family we see in the video camera is irrevocably shaken by the events of the series. This is almost like a "before" picture, and the "after" isn't pretty. That view of Hank and Marie so cheery is going to really hurt those looking at the video in the future. And Walt's speech at the end seems inspiring at the time, and the acting is fantastic, with Walt knowing that he's probably not going to be around to get the know the girl who will be watching this video years down the line. It would be tempting for Bryan Cranston to overplay the scene, have tears building up and his voice faltering as he delivers the message. Instead, he underplays it, instead remaining calm on the exterior when you know there's a struggle going on inside of him. It is heartbreaking to watch this scene knowing how it's going to look years down the line. Instead of being the inspiring words of a dying man knowing he's not going to be there for his daughter, it will be lying words from a villain. Walt ends up with nothing at the end of this series, not his name, not his innocence, and certainly not his family's goodwill.

Though the finale of Season 1 offers us no plot resolutions at all, it does complete the arc of Walt's entrance into the world of cooking meth. At this point Walt is addicted to the thrill of danger and the ability to feel like the brilliant chemist he once was. The next step in his journey is to learn how to be a criminal, and it will be much more costly than he thinks.

Notes

·         The first appearance of the porkpie hat! For that alone, this is an incredibly momentous episode.

·         "Yeah, science!"

·         The wonders of hindsight: You get to look at Walt and Jesse trying to carry the can of methylamine and all you can think of is the DEA's incredulous expressions in a later episode. Why didn't they just roll it? Walt and Jesse do figure out they have to roll the can later in the episode, as they roll it down the stairs. A little too quickly.

·         I love the scene in the Open House where one of the potential buyers complains about the smell, and the real estate agent has some air freshener in hand ready to spray.

·          Tuco is undoubtedly cartoonish, but the scene where he beats the guy to death for absolutely nothing wraps so far into the cartoonish side it passes back into brilliant again. There's off the wall, and then there's being 100% committed to off the wall.

·         Walt and Jesse wear sunglasses in the final scene to try to make them seem like cool customers. It's a nice contrast when they have to react to a man getting beaten to death while wearing those sunglasses. They were not so cool then.

·         The part with the parents reacting to the stolen lab equipment in the cold open is not good at all. First, there's more piling on Hugo, which served its purpose in the last episode, at this point it is overkill. Apparently there is no parent there smart enough to realize stories about LSD in Canada have nothing to do with the subject matter at hand. It's a cliched and wearing portrayal of parents in a show that should know better.

·         Breaking Bad is going to always struggle with plot contrivances, it's just a matter of how much you can turn off your sensitivity to them. The Open House being the same day as Walt and Jesse's big cook doesn't derail the episode in a way we may see in the future, but it is sort of groanworthy.