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| Left to right: Giancarlo Esposito and Bryan Cranston |
Are you tired of long, tedious accounts of Breaking Bad episode recaps? Then look no further than Breaking Half: a weekly column that takes the good and bad from each week's episode of Breaking Bad and dilutes it down to the core necessities. Each Monday, Breaking Half will attempt to take a few key moments from the episode and boil it down to one juicy paragraph.
Season 2, Episode 11"Mandala"
*NOTE: This is a video of the final scene of the episode recut to music from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The actual music in the episode is done by the great Dave Porter.
"I was told that the man I would be meeting with is very
careful.
A cautious man. I believe we’re alike in that way. If you are who
I
think you are, you should give me another chance."
-Walter (Bryan Cranston)
Upon the realization that Combo (Raymond Cruz) has died, Walter (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse's (Aaron Paul) meth empire starts to crumble. While talking to Saul (Bob Odenkirk), they get word that they can join forces with a veteran dealer who hides in plain sight. They schedule a meeting at local fast food joint Los Pollos Hermanos. During this time, Jesse decides to walk away, stressed that everything is falling apart, especially since he is no longer perceived as the man who slammed an ATM machine on a junkie. He decides to inject heroin with Jane (Krysten Ritter) instead of meeting with Walter and the new business partner. Meanwhile, Skyler (Anna Gunn) is realizing that Ted (Christopher Cousins) lies on some of his forms. Also, the baby is set to come in a few weeks, after which Walter can have a surgery that will hopefully cure him. After a long wait, Walter finally meets the mysterious man: Gus (Giancarlo Esposito), who owns the fast food joint and actually is leery about Walter and Jesse's partnership, as it seems very haphazard. He agrees to the deal anyways by having him meet for a deal worth over a million dollars. However, Skyler alerts him that the baby is coming at the same exact moment that he is on his way to deliver the meth.
Rating: 4 out of 5
MVP: Walter (Bryan Cranston)
It is amazing to think how close we were to wrapping up this show only a few episodes ago. Now, with murder in the mix, things are even more high stakes, and it is bizarre that anyone would want to stick around for that. Still, Walter's insistence on selling the rest of the product is noble, but as Jesse points out is kind of silly. When will he stop? He'll just find new excuses and keep making the product until he dies. This episode pretty much connects the early half of the series in which everything was done grassroots to the latter half, which involves Gus and a major manufacturing deal. Thanks to Walter's stubbornness, this episode exists, though he really needs to find a new place to put that phone.
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| Left to right: Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul |
Best scene: I have not given any credit to Dave Porter so far in these recaps, but he is one hell of a composer. His music almost serves as a character unto itself. Just watch the final scene in which Walter rushes to Jesse's house to pick up the meth while Skyler is trying to get a hold of him. The music is so aggressive and filled with tension that it lifts the scene into something more. This is moral dilemma time. Does he go for the biggest deal of his life, or the birth of his child? Set to Porter music, it sounds haunting, aggressive, and almost like a digression into madness. While we don't see the final results here, what makes the final moments of the episode work is that it gives us a great battle between good and evil, and sadly, we get the impression that Heisenberg won.
Come back tomorrow when we recap "Phoenix"
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