Breaking Bad: "Buried"

Spoilers for everything up through this episode! I mean it!

First, one of the reasons I love "Breaking Bad" is because it introduced us to Michelle McLaren. That wonderful, silent pre-credits sequence with the old man and the trail of money is a fantastic little mini-movie that shows off her directing skills. The desert drive with Walt, the hallucinatory digging scenes (with barrel cam!), and the trip to the giant pile of money in the storage unit also stand out as fantastic moments.

Now let's get to what happened this week. So far nearly everything I've predicted about what was going to happen episode by episode has been completely off. "Breaking Bad" keeps accelerating far faster than I think it will. So sure, I figured that Marie would find out eventually, and she and Hank would try to get Skyler to turn against Walt, but not this fast. And I certainly wouldn't have imagined that it would end with Marie turning on her sister and trying to run off with Holly. Between Hank's overzealousness and Marie's utter lack of sympathy and kleptomania, Skyler's been backed into a corner.

Now the biggest quibble I had with the episode: do Marie's actions make sense? She's the least major developed character in the whole show, and it felt like her anger and feelings of betrayal erupted out of nowhere, which I expect was by design to some extent. If you go back into earlier seasons, and all the times that Skyler and Walt lied to and endangered the Schraders, which Marie references, it does provide some explanation for the depth of Marie's hurt. Still, I can't remember Marie ever being so quick to resort to violence before – not that Marie's really been put in situations where she's gotten the chance to display such tendencies – and I'm not sure I fully buy it. Kudos to both actresses though. Best fireworks of the hour, even with the massacre in the last few minutes.

I also figured that Todd and his relatives were going to be back in charge of the meth cooking operations soon, but I didn't think they'd be seizing control so directly and so fast. Lydia continues to be a great comic figure, a ruthless operator with absolutely no stomach for the actual workings of the meth trade – the inappropriate high heels! – but is at least smart enough to make friends with the right reprobates. The same is true of Walt, who quickly sends Saul's guys to fetch the money, and then gets to re-enact the most painful parts of one of my favorite under-appreciated Stephen King short stories: "Dolan's Cadillac." He takes the money and buries it in the desert alone, and then pays the price for it physically.

I love that the show takes the time to give us a comedic interlude with a pair of minor characters, similar to last week's "Star Trek" fanfiction monologue with Skinny Pete and Badger. This time it's Huell and Kuby going Scrooge McDuck with the pile of money, and weighing the pros and cons of absconding with the stash to Mexico. As dark as the show has been getting, it's still got its sense of humor. Jesse zonked out on a playground roundabout, the awkward hug in the diner, Hank talking his way into the interrogation room, Jesse leading Lydia out of the massacre zone, and the punchline to Skyler trying to convince Walt that she's still on his side – it's black humor, but it's effective.

Now, the one thing I more or less got right was that Jesse's guilt would put him in a position to become an informant for the DEA against Walter White. The first half of the show was so emotionally charged, that even though we saw Jesse in the cold open, I completely forgot about him until Hank hears about his arrest at the DEA. It's a great bit of plotting, since much of the episode was about how Hank blows two chances at getting Skyler to cooperate, and then makes the stakes explicit in the kitchen scene with Marie. Jesse represents one more shot at redemption at the last minute for him, and at the same time he's one of "Breaking Bad's" common loose ends that will only bring more trouble for Walt.

The battle lines have been drawn – Skyler has thrown in her lot with Walt, and is now enabling his bad decisionmaking. Marie is similarly pushing Hank toward further confrontation. It was too quick, perhaps, but the momentum is so strong and the performances are good enough that I'm not too bothered by it. Jesse's a giant question mark. And as with last week, there's one major playing piece who didn't show up in this week, but will surely be pivotal in episodes to come: Walter Jr.

See you next week, assuming I don't get sent to Belize.
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