Breaking Bad ‘Buyout’: Everybody Wins

What attracts Walter White to power? Is it the thrill of the hunt, and that instantaneous rush of satisfaction when a plan is pulled off? Or is it all the adrenaline that leads up to it: the scheming, the life-on-the-line moments where he felt more alive then he had in the last twenty five years of his life? These are questions Breaking Bad‘s always hinted towards, and in ‘Buyout’, the reminder of his past puts his present into terrifying perspective.

Back in his younger days as a founder of Gray Matters, Walter thought he was on his way to the high life. He had a beautiful lab assistant girlfriend, and his business partner was Elliott Schwartz, his best friend. But somewhere along the way, things went wrong, and not only did Elliott marry Walt’s girlfriend, but they pushed him into a measly $5,000 buyout for a company now worth $2.16 billion. To say he feels a little slighted or underachieving in life is an understatement – Walt is blind with fury and jealousy at the life he somehow threw away, so mad at himself that the only possible way to redeem himself and be as success in life is to be a drug kingpin.

It sounds like a stretch, but listen to the way Walt describes the decisions he made in the past. Look at his face when he tells Jesse off-hand that he still checks the company’s value every week (as probably done every week for the last twenty years): of all the regrets weighing down the Walter White we met back in the pilot, this one is probably the one that’s buried the deepest. Not incidentally, this obsession with success and typical elitism of his generation is what’s turned him into a complete sociopath, one who’s completely willing to write off the murder of a child as completely reasonable.

That desperate sense of self-preservation and redemption is what drives Walt at the end of ‘Buyout’ – but it’s also what is slowly starting to snowball the end of his ‘realm’ as a king. ‘Buyout’ opens with Walt, Mike, Todd, and Jesse cleaning up after the bank heist at the end of ‘Dead Freight’ – and it is a beautifully orchestrated visualization of what is happening. Director Colin Bucksey puts together a very somber montage of the team taking apart the dirt bike piece by piece, dismantling the complex ‘machine’ (their crew) with forceful yanks and power tools (the traumatic events that break down a well-oiled machine).

After watching them cut the tires and drop the engine to the ground like a removed heart on display, there are two very telling consecutive shots: the stripped frame of the dirt bike on the ground, following by a look at Walter. One thing is clear: without the team around to keep things running smoothly, Walt’s only going to run things in the ground, breaking his life apart piece by piece until there’s nothing left but the raggedy, cancer-wracked skin and bones of Heisenberg left – cold and alone. And in the end, that just gets boxed of and disposed of with the rest of the garbage.

What Walt doesn’t realize is that when he dies, so does his legacy: shit, the meth isn’t even recognized as his right now (Mike’s connection refers to Fring’s blue meth at their meeting). But that’s all he’s concerned about right now: forget the reasons he got into the damn business – which Jesse reminds him, was to make $737,000 to keep his family fed and housed after his death. To Jesse, a $5 million profit after selling the methylmine they stole is a massive product and a way for Walt to sleep easy and safe at night. To Walt, that $5 million is just stacks of reminders of failure: he doesn’t want to be a drug lord for the money anymore, he wants to do it to command the fear and respect he always thought he deserved, and felt Gray Matters took away from him.

I’ll have some more thoughts in my bullet points below, but ‘Buyout’ was another terrific episode, letting the four big faces on the show display their acting chops, swinging for the fences emotionally in every scene. Not only is it raising the stakes in every single tiny scene, but it’s showing the actors really buying into the journey Gilligan and co. have laid out for the show, going all in on their performances to really drive every moment of every episode to new levels. I’m just happy Breaking Bad is exciting again, even though it’s doing so with two more episodes left in the calender year.

Grade: A

Other thoughts/observations:

– bringing back Gray Matter and integrating it back into the show was a brilliant move, and does appear to provide a little explanation and closure to a short-lived plot thread from the first batch of episodes.

– Scariest thing Walt says in the episode: “My wife is waiting for me to die… this business is all I have left, and you want to take it away from me?” Walt’s trying to fill the voids in his life with the meth business, and no matter how much money he makes, there’s no way he could ever be satisfied without his old family back.

– Great Marie and Skylar scene: watching Skylar shut down emotionally after she realizes that Walter’s got her manipulated already was fantastic. She’s trying to engage in a little family chess, but Walt took all the pieces and burned the board already. She’s on her own.

– when Mike hears Hank and Gomez say they’ll wait for him to make a mistake, the look on his face not only suggests respect for the men who are chasing him, but possibly a realization that he made that mistake a long time ago, when he didn’t put a bullet in Walter White’s head.

– Jesse has the worst family dinners ever, whether his own, or others. Poor kid.

– What is on TV sets in television shows is always important, and the infomercial about fake caviar makes me think. Something to keep our eyes on.

What did you think of ‘Buyout’? Feel free to leave your thoughts/comments below! Also, to everyone who’s left positive, encouraging comments (or negative ones… really, any comments at all): thank you for taking the time to stop by my site, share your thoughts, and spark discussion. You guys rock!