Editor’s Note: It should go without saying, but there are MAJOR spoilers ahead for the fifth-season episode of Breaking Bad, “Buried.”
Last week’s mid-season premiere of Breaking Bad answered a lot of questions, then raised just as many. Tonight’s “Buried” didn’t so much set out to answer those questions as much as it drew a clear line in the sand. On one side of it stand Hank and Marie. On the other it’s Walt and Skyler.
Immediately after Hank and Walt’s showdown in the Schraders’ garage, each man reaches for the one person they know can help get him what he wants: Skyler. When Hank gets to her first — damn those pesky landlines, eh Walt? — Skyler meets with him in a diner, where he lays all of his cards out on the table: He knows who Walter White really is and he needs her help to prove it.
Too bad Hank goes after Skyler entirely too aggressively, first by insisting she abstain from hiring a lawyer and then by getting Marie involved. After an extended — and cringe-worthy — showdown at the White residence between Skyler and Marie, everyone has their sides.
The episode’s title is, as always, as fitting an indicator of the circumstances each of these characters must endure in both the short run and the long run. In the short run, there are stacks of cash buried in the New Mexico desert, possibly near a cow house. In the long run, all four members of the Schrader-White family are inundated with choices and the resulting fallout of those choices.
Should Hank present his buddies at the DEA what he believes is the origin of the Sky Blue they’ve been chasing for the last year and a half — as is strongly hinted when Hank asks Gomie to schedule a conference call upon his return to the offices — there goes his career. His wife, on the other hand, is saddled with confusion and anger at Skyler for keeping Walt’s horrible acts a secret and ultimately leading to Hank’s hospitalization.
Both Walt and Skyler, burdened with the choices they’ve made over the same time period, have a dangerous course to navigate, which amounts to — as Hank so eloquently put it — running out the clock. The cancer’s back, as is proven to Skyler when Walt collapses in the bathroom upon returning from his expedition to bury all the cash he’s earned in the desert. And because of her meeting with Hank immediately after the confrontation with Walt, Skyler says Agent Schrader has his suspicions and nothing more, providing all the motivation she and Walt need to wait until the latter bites the bullet, pun totally intended.
With six episodes left, there are still a ton of moving parts in Breaking Bad. Tonight’s episode reminds us that the kids are still a major element of Hank and Marie’s and Walt and Skyler’s motivations — the former couple wants to remove the children from a volatile environment while the latter wants to make sure the kids gain the benefits of Walt’s drug peddling.
Even though Walt’s out of the manufacturing game, his legacy lives on and blood is still being shed because of it as evidenced by Lydia’s coup against Declan and his men out in the desert.
And what about Jesse? Last week we talked about loose ends and, as much as we’ve loved (or hated) Walt’s continual efforts to save his now-former partner, Jesse Pinkman seems to have outlived his usefulness. And we all know how Walt likes to deal with loose ends.
Stray observations:
This guy. I tuned in tonight expecting great TV. Little did I know I’d be introduced to the greatest mustache known to man.
Is anyone else looking surreptitiously at Lydia’s feet to see if her shoes match every time she appears on screen?
For four seasons and throughout a good part of the fifth, Skyler held on to her clunker of a car as Walt upgraded his ride. The shiny new vehicle — red, of course — in the Whites’ driveway is a good indicator that she’s gotten a bit comfortable with all of this.
Scrooge McDuck? Thank you, Huell and Kuby, for laying on that pile of money as we all wished Skyler and Walt would have back in “Gliding Over All.”