Breaking Bad "Rabid Dog" season 5 episode 12 gifs and memes
Adam Rifkin stashed this in Breaking Bad
Stashed in:
Grantland recap:
Episode discussion:
Post episode discussion:
http://www.reddit.com/r/breakingbad/comments/1ljwsu/postepisode_discussion_thread_s05e12_rabid_dog/
Oh man. Everything just escalated. How will it end???
Maybe that's a charitable way to look at Skyler's escalating ruthlessness, a window into her thinking in the Kokopelli Suite when she downs her drink and Lady Macbeths her husband like she was to the Scottish castle born. "We've come this far, for us," she tells Walt, darkly. "What's one more?" Initially the "for us" could have meant "for our future," or "for our kids." Now it may as well mean "for our own survival." I said last week that no character on this show needed anything more than Skyler needed Walt to really and truly be done. (This week I might add Saul needing rhinoplasty to the list.) I think it's possible to imagine that Skyler is thinking of her children in a way that Walt — deluded, still dreaming of winning — never actually has. She knows that keeping them rich and keeping them alive are only any good if they can also keep them ignorant. So it's telling that it's Skyler who's able to suggest putting down Walt's sniffly problem dog. While Walt, stripped of his Heisenbergian swagger, can't even bring himself to say the words. (I love the way, even at this late hour, Walt still has to play the innocent, if only for himself. "What are you suggesting?," he always sputters, as if he hadn't personally done far worse.)
Great analysis from Andy Greenwald of Grantland:
Would anyone have been surprised if "Rabid Dog" had ended with Hank braying about how, if "Pinkman gets killed," he at least will have it all on tape? Would anyone have been let down? But instead we pushed forward into a The Conversation–aping mini-masterpiece of tension, wonderfully shot by Sam Catlin, the longtime Breaking Bad hand who also wrote the episode. Since Jesse proved he had been paying attention to one of the central lessons of the series — always be afraid of bald people — we'll never know what Walt's true intentions in this rendezvous were. But I actually believed him when he said all he wanted to do was talk. (Of course, since Jesse wouldn't listen and Flynn was passed out after the all-you-can-eat morning buffet, Walt places a call to his third — and worst — son, Todd. I suppose we'll see the bloody fallout from that conversation next week.) Walt dissembles with nearly every breath, but his refusal to consider Belizean holidays for key family members — and Jesse is family, almost more so than poor Walter Jr. — rings true.
The biggest lie Walter White ever told may just be the one he's never stopped telling himself: that he's the hero of his own story, not the villain of everyone else's. A few seasons ago, Mike taught Walt a lesson on the difference between half and full measures and it's something he's struggled with ever since. Walt wanted to be both Heisenberg, the estimable crime lord, and Mr. White, the responsible family man. He wanted to be feared and loved at the same time. By wanting to have everything, he seems to have ended up with nothing.
By way of contrast, the reason Gus Fring was successful in his chosen field was because he didn't actually care what people thought of the real him. What mattered was that they did what they were told. The reason for this is because "the real him" died the moment his partner's brains splashed all over Don Eladio's deck. And this brings us to the endgame, to the tolling bells in Plaza Square, to the very public showdown still to come. What occurred to me last night was that for all his black eyes and flop sweat, his anguished tears and his desperate gambits, Walter White is the only character on Breaking Bad who has never really suffered. Yes, he has cancer, but that's always been an excuse more than a disease. But pain — real, irreversible pain — has rained down on nearly everyone else like stray bits of airplane debris. Hank was shot and nearly crippled, Skyler had the fiasco with Ted and now has had her sister ripped away from her. And Jesse's had it worst of all, something I think he's finally realized. That's why he says what he says into the receiver of America's last functioning pay phone: "Next time I'm gonna get you where you really live."
Walt can scheme and plan and lie all he wants, but sooner or later he's going to have to pay up for everything he's taken from those around him. A few years ago, after Tio's bell tolled for Gus, Walt declared that he had "won." But only when you have actual skin in the game do you realize it's not really a game at all.
10:09 PM Sep 01 2013