Breaking Bad - "Fifty-One" Review

There is no Walt. Only Heisenberg. 

These reviews are starting to become a bit ridiculous, and a bit repetitive. Episode after episode just seem to highlight the fact that Walt is becoming more and more reprehensible. But the fact is that this continues to happen episode after episode and there's truly no respite from the evil that continues to brew inside him. And this episode is no different. Directed by Rian Johnson, who directed the season three episode "Fly" and also the excellent "Brick" with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and next month's "Looper", did another fantastic job creating tension in small situations and doing quite a bit with a relatively scaled back episode.

Despite the fact that this episode is titled after Walt's birthday, the focus is clearly on Skyler and the way her world seems to be crumbling around her and her futile attempts to protect her children from the self-professed "danger". Her suggestion to send Walter Jr. away to boarding school is met with nothing but a dismissive attitude.

We are now exactly one year from the start of the entire series from the characters point of view. And Skyler is as terrified as ever. Her role thus far this season has to have been a very difficult one for Anna Gunn to play. Her dialogue has been minimal and her primary function has been essentially to just look borderline insane for these last few episodes. But Gunn's success is clearly evident given that every moment she is on screen, I feel uncomfortable and fear for her. Even when Walt is having an otherwise unassuming conversation with Walt Jr., her expression just permeates discomfort.

Where Walt is expecting a huge party thrown in his honor, the reality is that Hank and Marie are invited over for a low-key dinner. Skyler won't even break the bacon in the shape of a 51 for him at breakfast! How dare she?! And as she listens to them rattle on about what's happened over the last year at dinner, she snaps. She jumps into the pool and looks like she may be attempting to drown herself.

Yet, that's not what she's doing at all. These are acts of desperation. This action has allowed Marie and Hank to take the kids for at least a few days. She tells Walt she has no plan. That she is going to do everything in her power to try and keep her children away from this drug dealing criminality. From her point of view, it's too late for her. Her hands are dirty. She can't go to the police without incriminating herself and every other idea is met with a scathing counterpoint by Heisenberg himself. Walt is winning, and nothing is going to knock him from the top.

Meanwhile, Hank is pulled off the Fring case and promoted to director of the ABQ office. What's finally clear to the rest of the DEA is how great of an officer he is and he's being rewarded for it. His only downfall is how he can't see that his greatest collar is right under his nose. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before that becomes evident, as quick as things have been moving along for Walt.

But our man Jesse doesn't have much to do this episode, unfortunately. After a quick cook with Walt in some suburban house somewhere, he's delegated by Mike to go pick up some precursor at Madrigal in Houston from Mike's old pal Lydia. When he pulls the barrel off the shelf, Lydia notices a GPS tracker and Jesse scrams back to New Mexico. After Mike's deduction that Lydia planted the GPS to get out of their arrangement, he makes the decision to kill her and ramp down production until they find some more methylamine. To Walt, this is unacceptable. They will continue as planned.

After their meeting, Jesse gives Walt a watch for his birthday. Walt sees this as another glorious victory and goes home to tell Skyler all about it. The man who had put a gun to his head, ready to pull the trigger, a few short weeks ago, gave him a birthday present. And now he believes that Skyler will come around just like Jesse did.

Something tells me that's not going to happen.


EPISODE GRADE: B