Here at Los Pollos Hermanos. BrBa/BCS rewatch thoughts repository. General content warnings for discussions of police brutality, racism, and addiction. Jacob, white, 24, he/they. Correction welcome, bigotry not.
Debuting this thing so my twitter followers don't have to suffer me. I'm Jacob and I'm in BBCU hell. Having committed myself to another rewatch, I'm just gonna go ahead and lay out some ground rules.
-Given that a lot of really excellent work has already been done on Breaking Bad and masculinity I instead want to focus my analysis more on how this series handles criminality and the construction of mid 2000s middle class white suburbia. That analysis is going to involve a permanent content warning for discussions of
Racism
Police brutality
Law enforcement
Prisons
Addiction/criminalization of addiction
Anti-blackness
Disability/ableism
Misogyny
Homophobia
Potentially transphobia as I get more into the weeds with Jesse
With that in mind I think its important to lay out my credentials. I'm a white transmasculine bisexual American with a background in queer studies, as well as some critical background in postcolonialism. My work is influenced by non-white critics within my personal circle, as well as some lived experience with the American justice system, so I like to think I'm not talking out of my ass here about these topics. That said, in the very possible event that I overstep I am open to correction, apology, and reevaluation. I also want it on the table that my work should be interpreted as strictly within the bounds of the fiction. I don't know Vince Gilligan or Peter Gould or Gordon Smith and don't wish to credit them for a racial consciousness they simply may not possess, I certainly don't hear them talking about this on the insider podcast or in interviews. I'm going to have positive and negative things to say about how this show handles the construction of whiteness, but its worth noting from the outset that I have high skepticism that any of this was on purpose. Its just kind of an inevitable result when you make media this steeped in Americana. Americana is a LOT about race.
With the bonafides out of the way, I plan to upload longform recap posts based on my notes that I make while watching. No consistent schedule, just whenever I put them together. Lot of reblogs I imagine as well, both of the shitpost variety and other analysis that I find interesting or related to my particular areas of interest.
UPDATE: This needs to be specified apparently but no TERFs or gendercrits allowed!
And as always, we invite you to try the spice curls
Picked a fucking barnburner of an episode to halt for two months on huh. Girls when Jesse interacts with kids etc. Pictured below is my friends watching me put on Breaking Bad for the 6th time
TW: Addiction, child neglect
Jesse and the beetle lode-bearing scene of all reality. There's a tumblr post on this already that I tried and failed to dig up. But the way this echoes and undoes Hank's entire monologue about criminals and cockroaches, how the instinct is to crush it. Jesse Pinkman, representative of the criminal faction for most of the early seasons....doesn't have that instinctive violence within him. He doesn't crush the beetle. He plays with it, protects it, and even mourns it for a half second. Given that Skinny Pete is the one doing the crushing, I'm hesitant to make any sweeping claims that the show is laying the violence at the feet of the police. But it does at the very least suggest that the kind of violence Hank takes as instinctual, human nature, may in fact not be instinct at all.
The scene between Skinny Pete and Jesse where he tries to give him some absolution for attacking the Spooges ("These two...they need to get got") echoes the scene from season one where Jesse attempts to talk Walt through killing Domingo. Much like Walt Jesse needs to get high to cope with the violence. To me this further destabilizes any image of Jesse as a hardened criminal. This is so out of the ordinary that he needs to be distanced from his surroundings.
Jesse's little pre-mugging rehearsal, while pretty cute, is another instance of the dynamic duo copying Tuco in a racialized performance in order to come off as more intimidating than they feel. A performance that is notably, briefly interrupted by a black woman who is nothing but affable and sweet. Vince Gilligan sometimes I can't believe you did this on accident
So its worth noting that Spooges are a generally a pretty harmful depiction of addicts. There's a lot of spectacle made of their class (their broken down horror movie house and the general neglected state of their kid) as well as. I hesitate to call it disability but something is definitely being made out of the teeth, the hair, and the scabs that it feels more like we're meant to ogle at them than understand them. Its not a bad thing to write the Spooges as awful parents, as spiteful, greedy people, or as short-sighted. Real life addicts can be all of those things. But it does feel, to me at least, like we're setting up a tier system of addiction. There's Jesse, who's junkie status is meant to be read as pathetic and sad but ultimately sympathetic. And then there's the Spooges, who are basically dark comedy.
Two things this does that are more positive. One, the presence of their kid always brings up the issue of collateral damage. Addicts, even the ones most unlikely to reduce harm or get back on track, have families. Jesse was able to be a positive influence for a single night for the kid, and there's definitely a sense in which he's better off without his parents in his life. But the fact remains we don't know what happened to him after Jesse functionally orphaned him and called the police. Maybe he found a better life. Maybe the system chewed him up like it does a lot of kids. Either way, it is at least partly on Jesse and Walt's heads. More than that, his presence complicates Jesse's attempt to go in guns blazing, as he exists as an uncomfortable reminder that the Spooges aren't just disposable enemy NPCs that can be tossed around with no consequence.
Two, while this is less explicit and arguably even accidental, we're seeing Jesse being brought up very intimately against the harm created by his line of work. He bleats about Spoogette not supplying enough to keep her child happy, but seemingly refuses to connect the dots that the addiction fostered by dealers like him are part of why this kid is as neglected as he is. Jesse and Walt don't eat without people like the Spooges, but brought up against the kinds of living systems they create, they can't cope with it.
Speaking of not coping, let's go back to Walt. At school he's finding himself on the receiving end of the kind of othering one can experience while disabled. Flynn's immediate understanding and attempts to shield him indicate to me this is something he's encountered before. Walt refuses to think about it, though he is going to stew on it forever. It does at least contribute to his one parenting W though (fire ants)
Walt apologizes to Gretchen the same way he apologizes to his wife, pretending like the problem here is her feelings are hurting. Not, you know, the repeated bewildering deceptions forcing Gretchen into a deeply uncomfortable situation.
Earlier this episode Walt has a little spiel he gives to the class about Dr. Hall, who got cheated out of profiting fully off his discoveries. Its clear he sees himself in Hall, as a beleaguered genius who got robbed of his dues. Within this argument, though, we finally get context for the dissolution of Gray Matter, and the full extent of Walt's self-delusion. The reasons he left the company without any stake in it were entirely about his pride, his inadequacy next to his girlfriend's rich family, despite the fact that clearly no one was attempting to alienate him, much less make him leave the company without so much as a stock option. The entire thing gets very Fight Club. Walt feels cheated, alienated, stolen from, and yet the thing that he feels he was owed was never a thing that was achievable to begin with, and what was achievable he tore away himself chasing a white patriarchal ideal that only ever hurts him going forward. More than that, he's refused (and is still refusing!) any path to get back that involves ADMITTING he needs help.
Gretchen here I think manages to cut Walt the deepest he's ever cut in the whole series, by telling him "I feel sorry for you". This gets him the angriest we've seen to date, and yet there's nothing he can do but get increasingly petty. Despite this, Gretchen doesn't expose him. Simply cuts her way out of the lie.
Walt repays this unimaginable generosity and kindness by attempting to drag Gretchen and Elliot down to his level, at least in Skyler's eyes. The story is meant to hurt in the way that Walt feels hurt. He degrades their finances, spinning a story that's almost a masturbatory fantasy about how the company's falling apart without him, and that Gretchen was the one on defensive from him. "They're prideful people" he says, without a hint of irony. As will become the increasing norm: Walt is very good at rewriting reality to soothe his own ego.
Sorry about the long pause there. Genuinely, no more compelling reason than, I got busy/tired/burnt out. Thanks to everyone who sent concerned messages.
The good news is I'm back, and putting myself on a minimum one episode a week schedule just to give myself some minor accountability. Peekaboo notes coming in like. 20 minutes.
Jimmy McGill shares an honorable ambiguity I once conveyed on my father of "are you actually autistic or were you just raised by an autistic dad with an autistic sibling and thats your social base"
Sorry about the long posting gaps, new job+sick+RDR2+L+ratio etc. Favorite line from this episode is "why don't you stop being such a freak about everything" I think I should be paid to say that to Walt once an hour.
So I've always been really unsure what to make of the cold opening of the two illegal immigrants crossing the Rio Grande. With the analytic frameworks I've applied until this point I think I'm choosing to understand it as complicating the idea that violence is sneaking up into the US across the Mexican border. Two scared, shivering men cross the river, and on the other end find an artifact of state-sanctioned violence. It never had to be imported from "lawless Mexican hell", as Marie describes it. We grow it just fine right here.
The cigarettes Walt finds jammed in the toilet act in visual parallel to Jesse's meth that he tried to flush down the toilet last season. The scene where he confronts Skyler about them is chockful of hypocrisy. Smoking while pregnant is bad for the baby's health. So is being a meth dealer trading with people who will shoot your whole family. Beyond that, though, there's one line from Skyler that stands out to me: "I'm sure you'll be very glad to hear that yes, I feel ashamed." She's accurately calling out what Walt's actual priority is. It's not determining the health of their child, or trying to help her so she doesn't feel the need to seek out a narcotic to cope. It's punishing her for needing an escape in the first place. Exactly the attitude he spends all of last season directing at Jesse.
Speaking of more socially acceptable addictions. I have never once seen anyone draw a connection between the fact that Walt cooks meth and Hank brews beer. Both manufacture substances that have heavy ties with addiction, and that can destroy lives. Both seem to seek out the crafting process as an escape from their day to day stress (Hank taking a day off to try and self-therapize with it). Only difference is Hank operates under the banner of legality, something the two of them talk about indirectly in 1x07.
We're getting in this episode to how Walt tends to mythologize the brown men around him into figures of ultimate violence, but also ultimate power. His disdain for Tuco is pretty explicitly racialized when he disparagingly asks Jesse if "you['re] gonna beat your 'homies' to death when they 'diss' you?" However, later in this episode he criticizes Jesse for not being ENOUGH like Tuco. "You think Tuco had 'breakage'? I guess that's true. He broke bones." This is of course, factually inaccurate. Beyond what we see in BCS that establishes Tuco had some clear problems in his organization that went way beyond some product theft, it's also just actually impossible to run any kind of business without experiencing any kind of skimming. Like Jesse says, J.C. Penney's gets breakage. How much more so when you're dealing with a substance that inherently manufactures dependence? None of those realities matter to Walt, though, who is chasing after his idea of what a kingpin is like. Tuco doesn't live on in his memories as a unstable guy with an uncle he looks after and poor long-term planning. Instead, he's transformed into an unstoppable killing machine, brutal and (you should read the full racial implications into this word) savage, but also untouchable. The kind of man Walt secretly longs to be and is currently using Jesse as a proxy to try to achieve
This is further doubled down on when, after an argument with Skyler where Walt feels unmanned by his inability to control his wife's behavior, he goes right to Jesse's house and demands he take care of business. Its him trying to imitate Tuco again, though this time not by his own hands.
Jesse is also doing some imitation here. It's not Tuco he acts like at the meeting though. It's Walt.
Hank can't glorify the Tuco fight with his usual bravado. He can, however, provide unique insight into a cop's view of a criminal when he describes them as functionally subhuman. Cockroaches. Your first instinct is to step on them. Drug dealers, addicts, gangsters, Mexicans they aren't people like you and me. If you saw one, you would immediately know you had to crush it to preserve yourself. This is going to get sooooo beautifully subverted next episode.
The Skyler-Marie conflict continues to act in parallel to the Skyler-Walt conflict, with Skyler refusing to proceed until Marie does her the basic service of respecting her with the truth. Marie tantrums like Walt does, asking "why are you punishing me" and seemingly frustrated that the consequences can't just evaporate because she doesn't want to deal with them. At the end of the day though. The distinction is that Marie loves her sister more than her pride. Walt...remains to be seen.
also have i mentioned that walt/jesse (yes jesse, in different ways than walt) are essentially losers and outcasts of white american middle class society who try to find power/belonging by breaking into brown immigrant spaces and (for walt esp) overthrowing the people there. and it’s not only to find the power he failed to command among white people but to GET BACK at those white people primarily his family. for the record i dont think this was intentional by the writers i think it was subconscious.
Listened to the Insider podcast for this episode while travelling. They are so excited about how they got that port-a-potty to work.
TW: Smoking, violence, ableism, homelessness
So we've now shifted from Walt attempting to share the blame about Tuco to just abdicating all responsibility in the matter. Something he insists over and over again in this episode when denying Jesse access to his money is "[why should] I suffer from your carelessness?!" Undoubtedly Walt needs the money. But he refuses to even acknowledge the fact that it was his over-ambitious strategy that got Jesse in this situation to begin with. When Jesse points this out, he instead pivots to personal attacks, asking him if he "smoked the entire 600", calling him a pathetic junkie, and asking him what he even contributes. He's unwilling to ascribe Jesse the degree of personhood to where he can acknowledge he's in equally tough circumstances, and he's also too proud to admit that he feels vulnerable without the money.
BREAKFAST ARC BEGINS. Like most boomer/gen xer dads, Walt's tactic to soothe his wife is to take on the barest degree of "women's work" and act like the novelty will make her forget why she's mad at him in the first place. (Fascinatingly this will also be something he does to Jesse after their wrestling match in the RV). There's something wildly grating about his attempts at conversation. It feels like he's trying to "bring himself down to their level". I love Anna Gunn's facial journey during his long rambly lie about cellphone alarms. The realization isn't just that he's lying, but that he's lying poorly and expecting it to work. He respects her so little that he thinks this half-cocked story will assuage her doubts, and in my opinion that's what ultimately drives her away. We see through their discussion later that Walt still primarily conceives of Skyler's anger as being emotionally centered. She feels neglected, worries that he's cheating, worries that he doesn't love her, and so he attempts to fix it by engaging emotionally. She's the little woman back home, and can't she see all of this is for her? Why on earth would she have questions about WHERE you are and WHEN (and there's such a poetry in her giving him a taste of his own medicine this episode).
That entitlement to Jesse's space reaches its ultimate conclusion with his parents kicking him out onto the street. We never see flashbacks to Ginny's last months, but I do think its notable that his mom doesn't really push back on Jesse's interpretation that she wasn't there for her when she was dying. Jesse's not wrong that he earned this house, even if not legally. More than that, punishment via homelessness isn't exactly an effective way to coax someone OFF of using, or even dealing. The Pinkmans ultimately aren't attempting to put Jesse on a better path, but washing their hands of him completely. So fed up with him they don't even want him on a property associated with their names. And while I don't necessarily fault them for making a decision to cut ties, through wielding the law as a tool between them they are contributing to the classification of Jesse as a Criminal by Class. More that that, it reinforces more than ever his dependency on Walt, as he has to go to him pleading for money just to acquire a spot to sleep at night.
The entire driving lesson is an exercise in Walt's ableism and also a specific expose on where it stems from: insecurity. Flynn's need for mobility aids, for alternative strategies to go about doing tasks, seems to brush right up against all of Walt's medical based triggers. He sincerely seems to expect Junior to bootstraps the cerebral palsy, telling him "there's the easy way and the right way" and more absurdly "your legs are fine, you just have to stick with it". Much like Jesse, Flynn is being set up to fail and then has to deal with the embarrassment and shame surrounding that. He has at least enough self-assurance to say I told you so, but its undoubtedly rough for a teenager to feel like his body is something his dad thinks he has to get over, rather than something to live with.
He's not the only family member with Jesse parallels this episode, as Skyler seeks comfort for her distress in a substance that she feels she has to hide. I'll dig more into this when Walt finds the carton, but for now I want to draw attention to the lady who glares at her. The presumption is irresponsible parent, not struggling parent. Junkie, not addict. Obviously this individual lady has no responsibility to check on the stranger she sees doing something potentially harmful to her future child. But that reaction of judgement before empathy is something that's going to echo hard with Walt, and I'd argue is a microcosm of social attitudes towards addiction as a whole.
After a frustrating argument with his wife, Walt meets his younger associate in an RV and immediately gets in his face to provoke him. Jesse and Walt wrestle, culminating in Jesse straddling him with his hands on his neck and Walt taunting him. He then rolls off him and Walt offers to make breakfast. This is a sex scene by proxy if nothing else.
Watching BCS for my own viewing pleasure and Chuck makes a reference to Carol Burnett in Season 2. Meaning Carol Burnett exists in the BCS universe. This has fascinating implications for Marion
Okay, I know I've talked about this before, but Gonzo is stated as being Tuco's brother-in-law, yes? This could mean one of two things. One: Gonzo has a sister to whom Tuco is married, which might make her the "meth head girlfriend" Schrader talked about. This seems unlikely, though, since none of the other Salamancas are married and Tuco certainly doesn't seem like the marrying type. Or option two: Tuco has a sister who married Gonzo and there exists a secret lady Salamanca. I lean more toward the second option, but I'd love to know what you guys think!
Vince Gilligan loves to make men walk out of a desert.
TW: Racism, misogyny, sexual harassment, police brutality, dismemberment allusions. This fucking cake also.
So Walt's tactic here is basically sound. While its definitely going to be tricky to maintain its not the strangest thing in the world for a guy with terminal cancer and a variety of other stress to have a full-blown dissociative episode. The issue is Walt cannot COMMIT for the life of him. He sure will try to leverage it as an excuse to not continue with his physical treatment, but the second anyone attempts to categorize it as a psychological issue he squirms. Even though its arguably an easier lie to maintain. He resists therapy, resists anything that would categorize him as "unsound". Because again. The image of the patriarch is far, far more important than even his own life.
Marie asking with concern "It wasn't Whole Foods, was it" is its own race analysis
He's not the only one. We're waiting an episode to get into Hank's own feelings on the firefight. For now, let's focus on the reactions of those around them. Junior expresses some childish delight in it, telling his barely recovered father "Uncle Hank wasted him" like he can't wait to say it. Skyler and Marie express a little more concern, but Marie waves it off, telling her "he's indestructible, you know that". His superiors cheer, and his office makes him a present of Tuco's grill. Not quite a body part, but it is undeniably. A hunting trophy for a human being. I also think its notable that the gift presentation is positioned alongside Cake!Hank (Cank) being cut up. Violence takes people into pieces. Even when they win.
Jesse is becoming more and more isolated from his friendgroup. Badger doesn't really have context for the source of Jesse's fear and jumpiness but he is undeniably falling outside of Jesse's experience bracket. This further encourages Jesse to depend on Walt exclusively. Like he says last season. Who else do they have to talk to about this stuff.
Once again. A fully armed squadron to ambush two people. Police paranoia of everyone and everything leading to entirely disproportionate violence
The interrogation of Jesse and Wendy is functionally a greatest hits of Hank's bigotry. He's sexist and sexual towards Wendy (AGAIN) and in such a distinct way that it triggers her memory of him. He also makes sexually charged comments towards Jesse. On top of all of that, there's just some. From the hip anti-Asian racism about a hypothetical Chinese place they may have ordered from. And it finally reaps negative consequences. Wendy, despite her fear, gets angry enough with him to clam up. His disrespect for Jesse means he can't actually start to piece together what he's lying about. And his inability to take Steve's warnings about Hector seriously mean he wastes a lot of time for a literal shitload of nothing. He runs out the clock on how long he can hold them hostage, and gets nothing but a vendetta that is going to continue to haunt his career.
Doesn't stop him from being racist to Steve later in the episode but I digress. "Your late homie"....
The therapist listing a potential circumstance where Walt could get shot by the police while disassociating is both a real valid concern and also. Pretty damning so far as American law enforcement is concerned.
Walt lists Junior's cerebral palsy as another source of his stress. Again: I don't doubt its a stressful circumstance for a parent to have a child with serious medical issues for most of his life. Through no fault of Junior's its a huge medical strain and likely was a traumatic experience for both Walt and Skyler whenever he first started showing symptoms. However, its another case of Walt positioning Junior's disability as a drain on his life, another way he's been screwed over. Its a human reaction. Its also just very autism mommy, for lack of a better term. Contrasted with Junior's stern reminders to drink his juice, it sets up something very specific about who's more of an adult about their medical circumstances.
Long pause between updates there. I've backlogged a bunch of episode notes that I'll hopefully be releasing in batches.
TW: Racism, elder abuse, ableism
Ok so I took these notes a few days ago and the first thing that greets me is "car looks like its fucking the sand", with the sub point "put that in the post". I hope this provides insight into the rigorous intellectual process I work with.
The cop scene is basically an endless series of hits, enough that its difficult to not just transcribe it fully. Tuco's head is mounted on a shooting target by Hank, who talks floridly about interrogating his meth-hag girlfriend and then does a whole routine about apologizing to hr for using the word "hard-on" in the presence of ladies, which is frankly only further fuel to the fire in terms of eroticism literally being criminal in Breaking Bad. He comments on Mexico, saying to general agreement "We all know what's going on down there. We sure as hell don't want it going on up here." which is just. Very interesting considering next episode is going to open with two men illegally crossing the border. Finally, when Gomez asks him if he really thinks they'll track him down, he laughs it off, commenting that its about "keeping up appearances". If he's implying that most of the DEA's work is about the appearance of stopping bad guys and saving good guys....well! He said it not me.
Skyler is hesitant about describing Walter as depressed, especially in front of his son. Even in front of the guy who (theoretically) is trying to find him and needs information, saving the face of the middle class white patriarch takes precedence. She softens it to simple stress. This is echoed again later when Marie blurts out Hank's knowledge about the second cellphone. Sure, Hank is very possibly trying not to add more emotional strain onto his sister-in-law. But he's also denying her information (and in his mind, possibly even covering for Walt's affair). They may be more comfortable possibly letting him die than they are ruining his image as a good family man.
I didn't expect to emerge out of this as a WaltTuco truther but literally what am I meant to take from Walt momentarily imagining Tuco as Skyler appearing to him and telling him that she understands.
The yard is littered with a lot of broken toys. While I'm not super thrilled with the way this visually suggests Hector as another "broken" thing in the house, I do think it lends itself into an understanding of Tuco as ultimately, a bit of an overgrown child. I don't say that to be infantilizing. Trauma, especially as a child, can freeze up your mental development a little bit. Tuco tends to approach his circumstances with a very simply and childlike logic. His paranoia (tragically unable to ever catch the actual threats) is his special powers, his visions of the future. While talking about No-Doze and Gonzo he's clearly seeking out some absolution, insisting "I was good to him! I was good!". None of this, of course, makes Tuco any less dangerous or unstable. But he's a lot more vulnerable than Walt (or arguably, the audience) gives him credit for. He takes personal betrayals of his love aso wildly personally, and seeks escape in drugs when he fails to threaten people into staying loyal to him.
So there's a clear disability horror going on with Hector. The first level of that is inherently ableism, implying that there's something unsettling about being in the proximity of someone with an atypical body and atypical means of expression. The second level (and I believe the unintentional one) is the horror movie happening inside Hector's own perspective, seeing a threat to someone who you, in your own fucked up way, love, and being unable to effectively communicate about it because Tuco is not intuitive with how he approaches Hector's communication needs. Regardless I think it is important that treating Hector like an object fucks over everyone, Walt, Jesse, Tuco, and Hank in the next episode.
Speaking of ableism, though, in a rare Jesse L he does briefly position his life as inherently more valuable than Walt's, because Walt's going to be dead soon anyways. Notably Walt does advocate for his life in a way that he did not when chemo was on the table. Still, Jesse, there are so many better reasons Walt should kill himself for your sake.
At this point I don't even need to do analysis, I can just tell you Skyler says "Marie, you don't get hooked on pot like that" and you can put the pieces together yourself. Post-War on Drugs American normalcy challenge Any% never passed never succeeded.
So I'm not going to quibble with Walt and Jesse trying to kill Tuco, or even (for once) Hank succeeding. The guy was an active threat to all parties involved and his life is taken in self-defense. But I want to highlight this line in particular: "We tried to poison you. Because you're an insane, degenerate piece of filth, and you deserve to die." Given how Walt's historically used the term I think its fair to read "degenerate" as interchangeable with "junkie". So of all the reasons Walt has decided to highlight that Tuco might need to die here....the ones he highlights are "junkie" and "mentally ill".
Jesse kicks Tuco into a hole hope this doesn't foreshadow anything in his future.
Just came by to say that I really love your analysis!! You don't sugarcoat anything and delve into themes I haven't seen that many people talk about. Looking forward to your season 2 thoughts!
Thank you! In general my method of analysis tends to be pretty blunt, mostly because I find one million "of course this is only supposition" "this MIGHT mean" and a lot of equivocating pretty monotonous to read. Hence the pinned post, just to make it clear that I don't think Vince Gilligan actively decided to start writing a deconstruction of white suburbia (with varying success) lmao. Part of the reason I wanted to start this blog was I couldn't find anyone talking about the specific insecurities and anxieties Walt manifest along racial lines, and I REALLY couldn't find anyone talking about this series and addiction (interesting considering the subject matter). I'm glad its resonating with people!
Season 2 let's fucking goooo. Said out loud "Jesse kill him" in this moment
TW: Sexual violence, addiction, police abuse, racism
So I mentioned in the last post that Tuco very much matches a white middle class Idea of what a criminal is. Violent, unpredictable, and indulgent, with a massive temper and hang-ups about respect. At the risk of poor meow-meowing him a little I think its interesting that this is complicated in this episode. Tuco PANICS when he realizes No-Doze is seizing, enough to turn the car around and seek out the closest help he has access to. When No-Doze dies, he gets angry, striking him again. This matches what we'll learn in future episodes (and in BCS). Tuco isn't necessarily violent for the hell of it. Rather, using makes him unstable, and that instability often manifests in actions he regrets later. To be clear: Tuco has definitely killed before and likely would have again had he not encountered Hank. He's certainly not taking any steps to protect himself or the people around him. No-Doze's death is really no one's fault but his own. The Salamancas in general tend to manifest their psychological issues and insecurities into violence directed at a lot of indiscriminate bystanders. But to me, even that capacity for regret and lack of control complicates that "stone cold killer" image that Walt and Jesse have of him. Gonzo is also complicated, worrying that shoving No-Doze's corpse under a stack of a cars "[isn't] very Christian", but I'll dig more into that closer to the end.
So we've got another pairing of eroticism and criminality, but this time its manifesting as explicitly sexual violence. Walt assaults his wife. There's no other way to describe it. She is telling him to back off and until she screams "stop it" he continues to ignore her objections. To me, there's two ways to read this scene. One, Walt is unexpectedly aroused by what happened. Something about the distress of the situation, (or very possibly, being yelled at and degraded by a bigger, younger man) created a sexual reaction in him. And/or, Walt is attempting to imitate Tuco as a way to cope with the fear of that situation. Tuco beats the shit out of No-Doze, Walt attempts to act out his fear and frustration on Skyler's body (including shoving her forcefully against the fridge). Skyler even explicitly attributes it to fear, though she believes it stems from his cancer anxieties. Regardless, this isn't going to be the last time Walt attempts to imitate brown men who humiliate him/terrify him in a desperate attempt to defend his own masculinity. Bringing my inevitable cuckoldry discussion ever closer (threatening).
I think its important to give some due credit: Hank is legitimately making an empathetic attempt at helping Marie with her issues. He doesn't always say or do the right things with the situation (clearly being more comfortable tossing her at a therapist than having honest conversations with his wife). But the thing with dealing with addiction is that there's rarely a concrete right solution. He does his best (for now) to not lay blame at her feet, provides her with multiple support mechanisms, and is resolutely in her corner for dealing with this. Which would be very sweet to see if it weren't also likely some tactics he would make fun of a meth addict's family for employing. Its hard not to connect Marie's issues and Hank's work when the show takes pains to show Hank smacking a prisoner's cell bars after a frustrating interaction with her. Hank may be frequently disrespectful and callous to Marie, but he clearly views her as worth investing in, worth coaching through this, and is clearly conscious that she can't be held meaningfully accountable for what she does unless she has the proper help in place too. An attitude that does NOT apply to anyone who isn't his rich white wife.
It is notable, though, that the Schraders have clearly left this all as a secret in order to save face and keep up appearances. I went after Skyler pretty hard for how she responds to her in the moment, but I want it on record: Hank very much ambushes her with information about her kleptomania, and then immediately asks for support without a word of apology for either her distress or for keeping this from her. What Skyler says isn't kind. It isn't nice and it isn't empathetic to her sister. But she's also not wrong that she's being asked to just box up her feelings at a point when she's already under an immense amount of strain, which no one has really bothered to reach out to her for. They really are Jesse and Jake aged up, both vying to be taken seriously while also being mortally afraid of admitting to weakness in their day to day life.
Walt doesn't nail down the lie about the meth, writing off Jesse's concerns. Specifically what he says is "How much salesmanship do we really need? That degenerate snorts anything he gets his hands on." This is going to bite him in the ass next episode, but is pretty telling of how Walt views addicts. Unthinking, ravenous, almost animalistic, and importantly, with no sense of self-preservation.
Gonzo is my final note: he dies doing something innately human. He dies going back to rebury his friend, another gangster that polite society doesn't give a shit about, because its the respectful, Christian thing to do. He dies slowly and in pain, bleeding out alone. This is all extremely funny to the DEA, who pose for selfies with his corpse and cackle about the idiot criminal.
They look like a Youtube thumbnail. I hate that I miss this sometimes.
Pretty much everything about the cold open does my job for me in plain text. The (extremely subtle) "Meth=Death" sign. The way the stories about Hugo have already spiralled out from "possession" to "drug dealer" to "meth kingpin" to "feeding all the students LSD". The parents demanding to know why a guy with a record of marijuana possession was even allowed to be a janitor, and one mother in particular protesting that he was arrested in front of her daughter. Again, criminals aren't just people who have done wrong. They're a different class of humanity altogether, one that should be kept far, far away from nice regular people. The parents are so distressed at even the possibility of drugs in proximity to their children that they start throwing out extreme security measures: drug-sniffing dogs, metal detectors, locker searches, even strip searches. Obviously, the school does not implement these measures. But its extremely telling that these parents are willing to subject their children to, functionally, human rights violations in order to prevent them from touching drugs. A prison, if not by name then by function, is preferable to a junkie.
In the middle of all of this we have a non-repentant, extremely turned on Walt making most of the words I've spent on analyzing the relationship between crime and eroticism pointless when he fucks his wife ten feet from a cop car and tells her it was so good "because it was illegal". Walt is riled up by the fear and the confusion left in the wake of his crimes, by outsmarting the room and getting off apparently scot-free. He does not, it seems, particularly give a fuck about the innocent brown man that takes the fall for his crimes. What matters is that he, brilliant middle class white guy, is deceiving everyone around him and no one suspects a thing
He bounces from that to buying off Jesse's fear and trauma to enter into a business arrangement he is decidedly unprepared for. Walt scored a big victory with Tuco, and its empowered him to make plays that are more likely to get him killed than anything else. As Jesse says repeatedly, they make a lot of bad choices that would've been easily avoided if Walt had bothered to ask about things like where to host a drug meetup, what's a standard business arrangement for things like a loan, and how do we get our resources to make our product. He does some brilliant problem solving in this episode, but it wouldn't have been necessary at all if he hadn't gotten overambitious with a guy he knows is prone to beating people up. The unspoken assumption Walt has is that crime can't possibly be that complicated. His low opinion of junkies carries over here. There shouldn't be anything someone like Jesse does regularly that he can't pick up instantaneously. This rubs up majorly against Tuco's apparent insecurity around being perceived as stupid.
Bouncing to Skyler's plot, first of all, Walt describes the baby shower as "a day that's finally just about Skyler". This is pretty equivalent to buying your wife baby diapers for her birthday. Sure, she definitely benefits from it, but its a far cry from the day being "about" her. This is where the Marie-Walt parallels start to buildup, however. Much like Walt can't help but make Skyler's existence about himself and "his" children, Marie seemingly can't help but make Skyler's baby shower about herself with an absurdly expensive tiara. Both have a tendency to utilize her as a prop for their own ego. More on this in a second, I have to talk about the Hank scene.
Hank and Walt have a long conversation about legality and substances. Walt, clearly still attempting to rationalize his own actions, points out how fluid substance regulation laws can be, as well as attitudes around those regulations. Hank's a DEA agent and doesn't see a major issue with sneaking Cuban cigars. They both drink beer without question, even though the action would've been illegal during Prohibition. Hank doesn't really have an answer, derisively pointing out he sounds like the guys he's locked up for pot before reflecting that "some stuff used to be legal that shouldn't have been. Like meth...thank God they came to their senses on that one huh?" What neither party does in this conversation is really step back to address the WHY on why these substances should be a legal. They don't discuss addiction, harm reduction, or medical issues and severity. Its just a gut instinct conversation, with Walt functionally contemplating if anyone should care about lines of legality and Hank implicitly defending the status quo for the sake of it. Oftentimes a white middle class view of the law has less to do with right and wrong, and more to do with the code as written down.
Back to Walt and Marie parallels. So this episode marks the start of Marie's kleptomania subplot, a subplot that is so frequently understood and is a lynchpin of this analysis. Kleptomania is not a very well understood disorder. But notably: its an impulse control disorder. Functionally, it is a literal addiction to crime. Within the wife of the cop we manage to bring together both our themes of how we handle crime, and how we handle addiction, all in one fell swoop. Its frankly elegant. This is going to be an ongoing plotline and I'm going to have a lot to say about this as we see how she manages (or fails to manage) this disorder, and specifically how Hank understands and responds to it. Two things are worth drilling in on here though:
Skyler seems unaware of the condition, meaning either Marie developed it into adulthood, or Marie just successfully hid her shoplifting habit from her family in childhood. She approaches Marie as though the theft was done on purpose to embarrass her, or just out of basic obliviousness from Marie about anyone other than herself. This is a tone that gets taken with Jesse a LOT, especially by his parents. There's an assumption for many that addiction is a self-control issue, that the addict simply does not care about the consequences to them and their loved ones enough to stop. Whether or not she's currently cognizant of her having an impulse control disorder, Skyler penalizes her in the same way, assuming all of this is done intentionally. And its important to note: whatever issues with self-absorption Marie can often have, her kleptomania isn't something she's doing on purpose. She's not doing any of this to hurt Skyler, or Hank, or anyone else caught in the spiral of it. At the end of the day, the one who always suffers the most from addiction is the addict themselves, and losing sight of that is missing the forest for the trees.
Marie and Walt compartmentalize what they do in roughly the same way. This is made explicit when Walt feels called on to defend her (in a wildly disjointed manner that frankly should've got him caught a little sooner) and then asking Skyler what she'd do if he'd done something similar. Both functionally refuse to think directly about their actions, and when forcibly confronted, immediately reposture as a victim. Marie demands to know why Skyler would return her gift in the first place. Walt will eventually scream again and again at Skyler that he's doing this for the family. Both tend to throw up ingratitude as a retaliatory accusation to accountability.
This is all brought back around to that theme of legality vs morality. Walt has apparently decided to cope by deciding that any action done "for the family" must be inherently moral, with legality being something that can be altogether ignored. To people like Skyler and Hank, legality and morality are still for most intents and purposes synonymous. Thus, much like Jesse can't effectively argue against Walt's abusive boss strategies, they can't argue against Walt's actions in a way that makes him feel like he's actually doing something wrong. That failure of communication, to me, is functionally the essence of this season, and what makes all these character studies so fascinating to do.
OUR MEET UP WITH TUCO (WE WERE SHOCKED!!!) (GONE WRONG?)
Also lovely analysis!! I love reading this stuff it's so interesting 😭
Marie simultaneously having parallels to both Walt and Jesse is so interesting to me. She rationalizes crime in the same way Walt does, but is treated because of that crime the way Jesse is.
Also; loved your point about the baby shower and Skyler, I never see people discuss that😭😭❤️❤️
Aaaaaand that's a wrap on season one, thanks everyone who showed up for it. I'm getting started in on Season 2 tonight because I'm an impatient bitch. I've been tossing around a couple of ideas for in-betweeners, stuff that kept coming up over the season but that I never had the space to justify including in the episode-by-episode posts. I might put those together if I have time. In the meantime uh. Keep breaking or whatever.
