All season long, Walt has been playing a game of chess with Gus, always a dozen or so moves behind on things.
Finally, Walt finds a blind spot for Gus and one that he's able to exploit to finally win the game, get out from his contract with Gus and find a way to save his family and Jesse. Walt's also got the added bonus that Gus took out the Cartel, leaving a huge power vacuum in the meth community, one I fully expect his Heisenberg personality to fill as the final season begins sometime next summer.
That still doesn't mean Walt has necessarily won for the long term. Walt's initial desire for entering the meth trade was to find a way to provide for his family after his death. And while the cancer was in remission, several points in the final four or so episodes seem to point to it being back, even if Walt isn't telling anyone it is. This season, we saw Walt and Skylar worrying about how they'd launder all the huge sums of cash they had from the meth business. Now it appears Walt is once again back to square one on the money because of a crisis and his belief that the money can buy him out of all circumstances (a belief Skylar shares as she tries to buy off Ted to get the IRS off her trail). I get the feeling one portion of Walt's demise will be the IRS showing up to question some things about where all this money is coming from. And while family and friends are willing to believe the gambling story, it looks like it could collapse under any kind of scrutiny.
Of course, that's assuming that Jesse doesn't figure out how many ways of Sunday Walt has manipulated him. First it was letting Jane die, now it's the implication that Walt poisoned the kid to push Jesse into his corner. We've seen that their partnership has been on shaky footing this year and while they had to join forces in the final episodes this year, it won't take much to tip the balance back to the rift we saw this year. And at some point, you get the feeling that Jesse could sell Walt out to save his own skin--or that of the girlfriend and her son. It's fairly certain that the Jesse is on the radar of the law enforcement community--not just local but also federal.
The final few hours of season four of
Breaking Bad were all about ratcheting up the tension and then paying it off brilliantly. Watching last week as Walt tried to take out Gus was edge-of-your-seat good as was all of this week. Walt finally came up with a plan that put him out ahead of Gus and while he won this round, I have a feeling he's lost his soul.
I can't believe the season is over. And that we've only got sixteen hours of this brilliant show left.
Labels: Breaking Bad, tv round-up
posted by Michael Hickerson at 10/11/2011 11:43:00 AM |
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