Review: Breaking Bad ‘To’hajiilee’ – That’s Some Good Stuff

As is often the case with Breaking Bad (and many other great television shows), the opening scene of ‘To’hajiilee’ overtly reflect the themes at play throughout the episode. In the two pre-credit scenes, we see Uncle Jack and the crew discussing their latest product with Lydia. Although the purity is marginally improved, Lydia isn’t satisfied, explaining the idea behind the “looks like, smells like” theory: people pay a high price for blue meth. Whether it’s the strongest blue meth or not doesn’t matter: just as long as the meth is blue – not aquamarine, not blue-green, not any of that shit. They all look down on the still-drying product, trying to find a way to make it seem like their creation is the same ol’ Heisenberg crowd pleaser. It’s clearly not – but for the sake of all the money at stake, they’re trying to see it as something it isn’t. Replace the redneck crew with Walt, and the meth with Jesse (or vice versa, with dashes of Hank thrown in), and you’ve got ‘To’hajiilee’ in a nutshell: characters trying to convince themselves and others something is what it really isn’t.

These misconceptions lead to a very bullet-filled finale – but what leads up to it makes for fascinating television. Post-credits, we pick up where we left off last week with Jesse and Hank forming their new take-down-Walt superteam, complete with Gomie riding shotgun (with a shotgun, ala Lem from The Shield). This involves an elaborate ruse to manipulate Huell into helping them manipulate Walter. They accomplish this in part with a gruesome fake death photo of Jesse, and when that works out swimmingly, shift their attention to Walt to lead them right to their money with another fake picture.

And it works like a charm – unlike Walt’s similar plan to bring Jesse out into the open, visiting Andrea and convincing her to call Jesse’s phone (not knowing that it’s in Hank’s pocket, of course). But let’s back up a few scenes: what happens when Walt first appears on-screen (around the 15-minute mark) is one of the most important scenes in the series, for two reasons. One, it establishes that Walt is no longer cooking meth for the money: he’s literally trading his recipe for a murder of a family member (ok, Jesse’s not a family member, we’re talking symbolically here), the second part of the scene’s importance. This is Walter White throwing away the last remnants of his morality: he orders a kill on his surrogate son, literally trading the skills he wanted to use to help his ‘real’ family as payment. Make no mistake: this is as low as Walt can get, even as he insists that Jesse isn’t a rat, and he’s doing this because he “won’t listen to reason” (what a great reason to murder someone, right?).

‘To’hajiilee’ sits back and allows these various plots, plans, and deceptions pile on top of one other, slowly ramping up the tension as Jesse and Hank worked towards their unknowing target: Walt and his money. Not many other people get much to do acting-wise (though Todd the Indifferent Terminator grows on me with every hour), but the focus is on our three male protagonists for a very specific reason: as they did back in the season premiere, everything about Hank and Walt’s actions in this episode are driving them to another standoff, raising the stakes with dramatic plot twists (Walt drives wicked fast to the spot, then hides, then gets handcuffed) and an absolute mastery of pacing. It all leads them to the desert, the site of the first cook (Jesse’s memory, bitch!), and Walt surrendering.

But just as Lydia reminds the meth fume-breathing criminals, and Hank and Jesse show Walt, even the best-laid plans can be ruined by one simple oversight. For Todd, it was letting the cook sit a few degrees too hot; for Hank, it was letting his ego get in front of him doing his job correctly; and for Walt, it was forgetting that he hired some unstable motherfuckers to do their dirty work. And the episode ends with it all blowing up in their faces: Todd’s crew arrives with guns drawn, firing on Hank and Gomez at will, while Jesse and Walt scrambled to stay out of the line of fire in the two vehicles on their side of the battlefield. The episode ends their, mid-fight, with Hank sweating like crazy, Walt shitting himself while handcuffed in the backseat, and the persistent sound of gunfire ringing out in the desert.

Next week’s episode is titled ‘Ozymandias’, which harkens back to the season trailer, which utilized the poem of the same name. The poem talks about how all empires fall with time:. Some fall by war, some by natural societal evolution – and in the world of Breaking Bad, it happens like anything else: a chemical reaction, two elements (Hank and Walt) coming together for the explosive final scene, which surely represents the show moving into the next phase Mr. White so eloquently explained in the show’s pilot: transformation. After this, things will never, ever be the same – and we’re all heading full-speed towards the end, just like Walt’s Chrysler towards the desert.

Grade: A

Other thoughts/observations:

– that final scene was every possible ending I could’ve imagined pre-‘Live Free or Die’: Jesse as a snitch, Walt in handcuffs, Hank in a Walt-catalyzed shootout, Jesse yelling “Bitch!” and generally looking unhappy. Simply a fantastic way to set the table for the final act of Breaking Bad, throwing the standard playbook out the window.

– will Gomez and Hank live? In all honesty, it probably doesn’t matter: Walt’s made his deal with the white devils, and things have immediately spun out of control. Either way, Walt’s screwed…. but if Gomez and/or Hank dies, this would explain why Walt ends up on the run with a huge gun in his trunk. There’s only three hours left, so I’m going to assume this event and those flash forwards are directly related.

– Todd has a little crush on Lydia, doesn’t he. He’s also one cold motherfucker.

– Gomez calls Jesse “Timmy Dipshit”. Don’t know why I thought this was so funny.

– Walt (to Brock): “Froot Loops… that’s some good stuff.”

– notice how Skylar is teaching Walt Jr. “the family business” – and even pointing out to him the importance of branding, something Walt’s blue meth and Heisenberg motto can vouch for.

– Walt, to Jesse: “Coward.”