Season Finale Review: Breaking Bad ‘Gliding Over All’ – You Got Me

For five seasons, we’ve slowly watched Walter White’s ego build. Sure, it bred from pure panic and survival instincts, but Walter’s transformation from submissive chemistry teacher to shiver-inducing drug kingpin’s become more than just a mission to get rich. He wanted to sit on the throne, and dare anyone to take it away from him. And in some way, we all knew that Walt’s ego was going to get him in a world of trouble he couldn’t get out of: the events of seasons three and four with Gus showed us how fondly Walt thought of himself, and how far he’d gone to lose his morality.

‘Gliding Over All’ is the culmination of that journey, an episode that advances the show’s story line in a number of places, slowing down only a couple times to update the status of certain relationships on the show with some very tempered scenes. Rounded out with arguably the show’s two greatest montages of all time, ‘Gliding’ fills the role of mid-season finale to a T, placing marker points in many of its story arcs as it departs the airwaves until sometime next summer. In fact, the parts of the episode not dedicated to montages or time lapses are highly sentimental, revisiting moments from all of the previous seasons to really give the show to this point a sense of closure, a very important move structurally, because with Hank’s discovery at the end of the episode, the last eight episodes of Breaking Bad will be a completely different show than the first 54 were.

Unfortunately, ‘Gliding’ does reveal a few of the structural problems, leaving some of its developments feeling rushed. On some level as a viewer, I feel a bit robbed by not being able to revel (or feel disgusted) by viewing any of Walt’s reign at the top of his international distribution network (not to mention how convenient it was that Lydia was working with Gus, and had the network to the Czech Republic all but set up before he was killed). We go from him dealing with Mike and the beautiful, violent montage of Walt cleaning up the nine open mouths in prison, right through an incredibly lengthy montage going through the process of said distribution network. Everything runs without a hitch – because at this point, we can’t have Walt dealing with any kind of work problems, there just isn’t enough time at this point.

But after the montages and disbelief suspensions are over (white supremacists carrying out complicated executions of nine prisoners across three prisons, all within two minutes?), the last ten minutes of ‘Gliding’ slowed things right down, stopping to examine the characters at the heart of the show, and where they are. Jesse’s situation is the most depressing: he lives in so much fear of Walt, he’s disconnected from everything in the outside world, afraid to open his door to the nefarious Heisenberg. But it’s not just fear inside of Jesse: underneath that, there is enough hate brewing for him to consider murdering Walt when he shows up while “he’s in the neighborhood.” He’s so scared, he almost has a panic attack opening the bags containing the $5 million Walt promised to give him for his retirement. Jesse’s struggling to deal with everything he’s done and witnessed Walt do, and it’s only a matter of time before he finds out about everything Walt’s done to him, and Walt has yet another enemy on his list.

The second of Walt’s enemies – his wife Skylar – found herself in a really interesting position in this episode, and with almost no dialogue in any of her scenes, it’s hard for us to peg how she’s dealing with much of Walt’s actions in the episode. The only thing we get from her are questions: she brings him to the storage facility where she’s storing his insane amounts of cash and asks him “How much will be enough?” Besides that, a lot of wide eyes and frozen faces, not exactly the most revealing pieces for us to chew on over the next eight or nine months.

Walt’s first enemy has also returned: cancer. It’s very brief, but Walter goes to the doctor’s for a CAT scan, and the scene is followed by shots of Walter washing his hands, and exiting the bathroom where the camera hands on the towel dispenser, bashed in from the fist of pre-Heisenberg Walt back in the earlier episodes of the show. Showing us this without words can only mean one thing: the big C has returned. Right when he reached the top of the world, the only thing Walt can’t seem to kill (and the only thing that appears able to kill him) is rearing its ugly head. Nothing needs to be said in those scenes, and it’s brilliantly dropped right into the episode about two-thirds of the way through, right before Walter informs Skylar that he’s done.

If there’s anything I wanted more of, it was Walt’s decision to leave, and the effects of that. How did everyone, from Lydia to Todd, take Walt leaving the game? We’ve spent the whole show getting Walt into it, and while it’s not the point of the show, I still would’ve liked to see Walt have to make his way out of the game, the same way he made his way back in. But there was really no time for that in this episode, which really had to jump through a number of hoops story-wise, to set the scene for the final few moments of the show, where Hank finally makes his big discovery.

Now, the second Hank walks into the bathroom, it’s obvious what’s going to happen. The Walt Whitman book Hank gave Walt in season 4 (and what’s served as a proud reminder of sorts to Walt for what he did) was established in an earlier shot of the episode when Walt’s getting out of the shower, so Hank finding it really isn’t surprising. Sure, one could argue its very convenient that the book happens to be in the bathroom – but like the timeline-inaccurate comment about Bin Laden’s death, we have to be willing to accept that contrivances are going to fuel many important things in Breaking Bad. Gilligan’s style might be a little bit frustrating, but holy shit, was it entertaining to see Hank open that book, and finally see the light turn on in his head.

Earlier in the episode, Hank had told Walt a story about his college job of marking trees in the woods for a lumber company. What he did there was almost the same thing he does now with the DEA – he investigates, marking suspects and pointing the machine in the right direction to corral the bad guys. He told Walt he’d been thinking about that job a lot lately, and how much easier it was to mark the wrong tree, or miss the right one, than it was to do the same with criminals. And it turns out it was for good reason – the one tree he’s been trying to mark for a year has been right in front of his face.

That final moment was a tough one to write; how does one write a plot reveal five years in the making? But I think the show handled it quite well, ending the season with a closeup of Hank’s dumbfounded face (as he literally shit himself with the news he just discovered) following a flashback to an old conversation from last season between him and Walt, when Hank jokingly (but accurately) said the ‘W.W.’ in Gale’s book stood for Walter White. This is a reality-shifter for Hank, and one which should reinvigorate his subdued character from the last couple seasons. Over time, Hank’s desperation and stress over the Heisenberg case has stripped him of the confidence in his abilities. But boy, did that change in an instant last night.

All season long, we wondered when Walt’s unbelievable hubris was going to catch up with him. And in ‘Gliding Over All’, it finally did – all over a book he was just too fucking proud to get rid of. The cancer came back, and now Walt’s got his brother-in-law on his own trail. There’s nine months separating us from the closing moment of ‘Gliding’ and the flashback the season began with to Walt’s 52nd birthday. We’ve now seen the moment where the string gets pulled: we’ll have to wait until 2013 to see it all unravel, however. One thing is certain: Walt is going to be sick and alone, wherever and however we meet up with him at the beginning of next season.

Grade for ‘Gliding It All’: A-

Grade for Season 5: A-

Other thoughts/observations:

– yes, a lot of shit in this episode is rushed. This isn’t the fault of the writers, but more of the show’s structure. It had to be able to open and close arcs like Mike’s attempted retirement and Walt’s influx of cash, before it could move on to the slow destruction of his empire. I do think some of the pacing decisions unfortunately left the season feeling a little disjointed in places.

– Lydia once again proves herself useful, but what will happen once the heat is turned way, way up next season? Will she fold, or is Walt going to need that BFG to take care of her?

– I think Walt’s got two adversaries to deal with in this final season: Hank trying to arrest him, and Jesse trying to kill him. Walt’s so ignorant, he may not realize either is happening until it’s too late, and the last few episodes might just be a race to the bottom.

– lots of purple being worn by everyone, be it Skylar, Walt, or Holly (who also wears yellow, Jesse’s color, to remind us of the kid Walt’s kicked to the curb).

– Walt doesn’t use the ricin he keeps hidden, and Jesse doesn’t use the gun he kept hidden. Interesting parallel between two characters heading in opposite directions.

– only Breaking Bad can make happy pool parties the most tense shit on TV. Did anyone else almost crap themselves thinking Walt Jr. was going to get shot in that last scene?

– the prison shanking montage was so damn good. I liked how the second montage subverted our expectations, sounding like it would end two or three times before picking up speed and cycling through the process yet again.

– Todd’s awe of the auto crusher is a clear parallel to the respect he has for Walter, seeing first hand the force he exerts when he either wants something (the methylmine heist) or deals with something (poor old Mike, who gets his own fresh barrel).

– “Crystal Blue Persuasion” … been waiting to hear that damn song on this show since it premiered. That montage really laid into the monotony and lack of excitement in Walt’s job, the ultimate anti-climatic finish in his journey to the top. If nobody or nothing is threatening you, where’s the fun in it?

– Walt’s response to Hank’s tree-marking story? “I used to love to go camping.”

– Walt Jr. has a girlfriend! Flynn is getting some from a girl named Liz, apparently. (Update: commenter Jordan corrected me: the person Walt Jr. was talking to was his friend Louis, not a new female. Oh well, I was hoping Flynn was getting himself some tail, wishful thinking.)

What did you think of ‘Gliding Over All’, and the fifth season as a whole? Feel free to leave your thoughts/comments below! With Breaking Bad leaving for a year until it returns for its final set of episodes, I’ve got some cool stuff planned to fill the time in between, to keep us from forgetting about the show. We’ll have more news on that in the fall, so make sure to like the Facebook page or follow me on Twitter to keep up on that. Thanks for reading!