Quick Take: Breaking Bad, "Face Off"
"Sometimes your brain just makes these connections." - Jesse
Review: Breaking Bad, "Face Off"
(S0413) So, Walt won. Were you doing roundhouse kicks of elation in your living room when Gus turned toward the camera to reveal a mangled, one-eyed, blown-to-shit half-face? I know I was. But why? Why was I rooting for Walt to win and for Gus to die? Just a few weeks ago I was cheering just as loudly when Gus survived a potentially deadly encounter with Don Eladio and ascended closer to the top of the methamphetamine pantheon. So, what changed? Why am I now openly rooting for Walt -- a guy I've grown to abhor more and more since the first season -- to kill off one of Breaking Bad's (and, by default, television as a whole's) greatest characters?
The answer is because Breaking Bad -- Vince Gilligan, the writers, the director, the cast -- wants me experience this; to experience the tension and excitement of a constantly shifting allegiance. And in doing so, the show has pulled off arguably the most audacious move in the history of television.
As morally complex as the themes in The Wire were, that great show never had the audacity to try anything like this. All of the characters on The Wire existed within a moral gray area. They were simultaneously good and band. On Breaking Bad, characters like Gus and Walt actually orbit around this grey area, constantly moving from one pole (good) to the other pole (bad). In The Wire, it was the system, not the people that were broken. In Breaking Bad, the people themselves are burnt out husks. And yet, were are somehow able to identify with them enough to cheer when they survive, or, conversely, when they die. This is a true feat. After all, David Simon never attempted to turn a Rawls into a McNulty.
I would argue that there are two main characters in Breaking Bad that have yet to completely abandon the moral compass they began the show with: Jesse and Hank. If either, or both, of these characters were to find out the truth about Walt (that he poisoned Brock in Jesse's case, and that he is Heisenberg in Hank's case), it would be disastrous for our hero/anti-hero.
My guess is that Season Five will almost certainly feature showdowns between Walt and Jesse/Hank, especially since Walt has successfully dispatched all of his other enemies. If Breaking Bad can manage to convince the audience to cheer as Walt snuffs out Jesse or Hank, that will truly be the most impressive feat ever to air on television. And you know what? At this point, I don't doubt for one second that Vince Gilligan and company are capable of pulling something like that off.
First, I loved this season and think that BB's last two seasons rank with the greatest seasons in tv history.
I think that Walter White falls into a group of antiheros on some of tv's best shows -- with tony soprano and don draper -- of main characters that we root for even sympathize with even though they do and say and act in ways that may be characterized as evil (Draper obviously operates in a less violent universe but obviously does things that are ostensibly "bad").
What's perhaps uniquely fascinating about Walter in this group is that he is the least likable and yet as you say we *still* root for him and cheer when Gus and Tio go bye bye.
If nothing else the finale proved out one of the greatest revenge moves of all time.