Breaking Bad S06E07 Review: "Granite State"
"No matter how much you got, how do you turn your back on more?" --Todd Alquist
Given last week's extra-long review, and anticipating an equally long write-up for the finale, I'll try to keep this one a little shorter, even though there's a lot to talk about, as always.
In terms of quality, "Granite State" is pretty much on par with the rest of the final season. The writers continue to prove that nothing and no one is safe, that everything's up in the air, and that there's still plenty of story left to tell. The penultimate episode of the series plays out like a cold, despairing bridge between the explosive "Ozymandias" and the undoubtedly transcendent finale. Over the course of 53 minutes, the final pieces of the plot are deftly moved into place, setting up a final showdown we all knew was in the offing.
I'll get the littler stuff out of the way first. I'm continuing to fall in love with the show's newer characters: Lydia, Todd, Jack, and the rest of the Aryans are each compelling characters in their own right. I should feel bored and antsy whenever the focus shifts to them instead of Walt or Jesse, but I don't. These are some fascinating players who stepped into the frame during the end-game and made us feel right at home with them. Todd has got to be one of the most magnetic psychopaths ever to grace a TV screen. (Take that, Dexter Morgan! Fuck you and your mediocre finale!)
In the course of this episode, we watch Todd have conversations with 3 different women, terrorize 2 of them, and execute 1. Andrea's quick-but-not-clean sendoff was one of the coldest murder sequences I've seen in a while, recalling a few other notable kills from The Sopranos, The Wire, and Game of Thrones. This turn of events suggests two things to me: (1) absolutely no one is safe, not even the innocent minor characters; (2) it seems like a setup for Jesse to adopt Brock in the finale, and finally get some redemptive happiness. Maybe.
Skyler's having to field constant questions from the police, not to mention allegations of a partnership between her and her husband. We see a brief shot of her smoking, a habit she naturally picks up whenever she's stressed, which gives us a good indication of her mindset at this time. In this season's millionth callback to the pilot, the sequence in which Skyler zones out during a deposition recalls Walter's initial cancer diagnosis and matter-of-fact reaction to the news. Life moves in circles, does it not?
Finally, A-list actor Robert Forster shows up in a fantastic guest spot as the mysterious quote-unquote 'Vacuum Cleaner Repairman,' who helps the fleeing Walter come to terms with his new lifestyle in the Granite State. Forster's character is another new one that absolutely feels like he belongs in the Breaking Bad universe, and his interactions with Walt are some of the episode's highlights. I get the feeling we may not see him again, but Forster played the character to perfection.
"Why are you still alive? Why won't you just die already?!" --Flynn White, to his father
Now we can get to the good stuff, relatively speaking. Walt and Jesse have been driven further apart than ever before, but it's remarkable how similar their situations are at this point. One shot early in the episode drives this point home: it cuts from Jesse in his underground prison cell to Walt in his underground shelter under the vacuum shop. Both men are waiting for others to decide their fates while they can only sit and reflect on the choices that led them to where they are now.
Thus I present to you the underlying theme of this week's episode: helplessness. This one's been building for a while now, getting clearer in "Ozymandias" when Walt fails to both prevent Hank's death and convince his family to join him on the run. But in this episode, Walt's and Jesse's utter powerlessness is the major focus as they both try to adjust to the new lives that circumstances have forced them to adopt.
Throughout the entire run of Breaking Bad episodes, there has been a constant thematic conflict between fate and coincidence. In season 1, Walt is dismissive of things like fate and destiny, telling his co-worker that the universe is governed by nothing but mere chance and random particle collision. But in season 3's polarizing "Fly" episode, Walt begins to voice his doubts when he thinks about the odds of him meeting Jane's dad in a bar on the night of her death: "My God, the universe is random, it's chaos. It's subatomic particles and endless pings, collision - that's what science teaches us. What does this say? What is it telling us that the very night that this man's daughter dies, it's me who is having a drink with him? I mean, how could that be random?"
The fate vs. chance conflict seems to have been resolved at last. Walt has always thrived on life's seeming randomness. Its unpredictability. That's why he chose the name "Heisenberg," after all. For him, the only sure thing, the only constant, was death. Everything leading up to that point was fair game for Walt to manipulate, to influence and control. But now he doesn't have that power anymore. No one believes or trusts him, so his power to manipulate is useless. He can't even make threats anymore--he tries to make one to Saul before a coughing fit puts a period on his sentence for him. The cancer is rapidly killing him now, making him cough and lose weight and despair, because there's nothing he can do about it.
A corollary theme to that of characters' helplessness in the face of fate is the theme of purgatory. Purgatory implies a kind of spiritual immobility, and many of these people are finding themselves unable to shake off the consequences of the choices they've made, and so their punishment is a form of stasis that prevents them from moving on. When you've reached the end of the line, where else is there to go? Purgatory is sometimes visualized through the color white. (Remember that surreal scene toward the end of the last Harry Potter film? Perfect example.) In "Granite State," the wardrobes of Walt, Skyler, and Saul are dominated by white, as they have been all season. Also, the bright snow of New Hampshire makes the further point that Walt's isolated lodge is the site of his purgatorial ruminations as he waits to die with his barrel of blood money and his Mr. Magorium DVDs.
Both Walt and Jesse try to escape from their personal purgatory, with equally disastrous results. Okay, maybe a little more disastrous for Jesse, whose only hope of happiness takes a bullet in the head because of his attempt at freedom. But this episode serves to remind us, before the shit hits the well-beshatted fan for the last time, that everyone involved in this operatic tragedy is a slave to the fate that has been pushing them all toward this final confrontation. And we're all just sitting on the sidelines, waiting for that last particle collision.
Written by Modern Sin
A little message from me (Matt):If you're getting a bit bored of the EBC just doing reviews, then fear not - we'll be releasing an interview (I won't reveal who with as I don't want to spoil the surprise) either later tonight or tomorrow. Stay tuned for that!
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