Breaking Bad - Season 4, Episode 13 - "Face Off"

A good tagline for the first two seasons of Breaking Bad might have been, “So, it has come to this.” A good tagline for the current season, then, would be, “Mother of God, what the hell is wrong with me? Why, oh, why, did it have to come to this?!”

Make no mistake, this isn’t to say that it’s a bad show. In fact, quite the opposite; if season three didn’t manage to cement its status as one of the single greatest TV shows ever created, this season has pushed it above and beyond. For the uninitiated, Breaking Bad centers around Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a middle-aged high-school chemistry teacher who starts selling meth to cushion his family’s future, after he is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer (tough break, considering he doesn’t even smoke). He takes on a partner named Jesse (Aaron Paul), a former student of Walt’s school who has already broken into the meth game, albeit weakly. They quickly establish themselves with the purest product this side of the Mississippi, but as the show progresses, their numerous flaws conspire to make nearly all of their victories hollow, and no matter how many problems they manage to solve, they always seem to just end up creating newer, much bigger ones. Jesse’s flaws are generally the usual pitfalls to be expected from a twenty-something punk with no real direction in life, but every character in the show manages to defy stereotype, and he is no exception. He is smart, but not educated, good at heart, but rough around the edges, and the irony of his character is that the more that Walt condescendingly underestimates and pigeonholes him, the more Jesse starts to overestimate himself. Whenever Jesse abandons common sense and charges headstrong into danger, it’s usually in reaction to Walt somehow belittling him. Of course, this ends up creating trouble for both him and Walt, who then chastises him even further. Jesse’s flaws are tragic, but we’ve felt like we owe it to Walt to go easy on him because of the cancer. Well, the cancer hasn’t been mentioned for a very long time now, and it’s getting easier and easier to hate Walt. At first, it was possible to chalk his brazen behavior up to extreme shock over his diagnosis. But now it’s become apparent that his numerous flaws were simply amplified by the cancer, not created by it. Walt has an attitude that the whole world owes him something for being so damn smart, and he has a paper-thin tolerance for anybody who doesn’t match his standards of intellectual superiority. Season two was about the fact that all of his actions have consequences, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. In this season, he is now either fully aware or completely in denial about these consequences, but it doesn’t matter, because he simply doesn’t care either way. In fact, looking back on the show with season-four-tinted lenses, it becomes painfully clear that he may never have cared about anyone else’s problems. Whenever he’s needed something from someone, he will stop at nothing to get it, even if it means hurting people along the way. But throughout the show, when Jesse has approached him with serious, sometimes life-threatening problems, some of which have even been Walt’s fault, he has coldly dismissed Jesse with some variation of the phrase, “It’s your mess. Clean it up.”

You’re probably wondering when this review will get into any details about the actual episode. Well, it’s pretty hard to talk about the plot of this episode to anybody who knows the show without ruining anything, and to someone unfamiliar with the show, it’s practically impossible to explain the events of the episode without the preceding four seasons worth of context. All that can really be said is that the title, “Face Off”, is probably the best indication of what to expect. It is a final and breathtaking clash of powers that have been building slowly episode after episode, and the climax elevates the already incredibly deep characters into something bigger than themselves, something larger than life. But in this ultimate payoff, this creation of legends, there is still an emptiness. There is a lingering feeling that what has happened in the episode, while stunning, was not really supposed to happen, that it always could have been avoided if not for Walt. And with this, the creators of Breaking Bad have accomplished something amazing; a perfectly crafted show, honestly poetic yet completely gripping to average viewers. The main character, the person we follow and who we’re supposed to identify with, has made a seamless transition from being brash but lovable in seasons one and two, to being the fool that we love to hate in season three. And now, with this season finale, the circle is complete, and Walt has completely and unapologetically become the shows only remaining villain. There is a great moment in this episode when he is attempting to contact his crooked lawyer, Saul (Bob Odenkirk), and gets into an argument with Saul’s secretary. It is a perfect example of how the consequences of Walt’s actions don’t even seem to register with him; this woman has been inadvertently taking crap from him ever since Saul took him on, and now that the two are finally face-to-face, it is revealed that her plight never even occurred to him. Veteran viewers of the show will remember Walt’s cowardly and tragic act toward the end of season two. Well, in the end of this episode, he does something damn near unforgivable. If you don’t hate him already, you will now. But you’ll still love the show.