It's been a long wait since the third season of Breaking Bad ended, though I haven't really noticed it at all. That's mostly due to the fact that I hardly knew about the series until last December. No, it is not the brutish equivalent to Mad Men, as it's weighed down by slight flaws like any other series. I love Fringe, but you're never going to hear me call it subtle. Now Breaking Bad hasn't always been the most subtle of dramas, usually spelling out episodic themes at the start of each installment. Box Cutter proved to be a powerful, intense, silent, and condensed treat for those who knew exactly what was coming.
The series has often done a sickening turn from episode to episode, so it's not a surprise that the things we thought we knew going into the premiere were dismissed brutally. At the start, while we were horrified by what Jesse and Walt had done, we knew that it kept them alive a little longer. Or at least we thought it did. As the episode progressed, we got the impression more and more that Walter's actions were misguided and oblivious. It turns out that Gale was merely a sheep, pulled in front of Walter to make him believe he had one option. And the Victor started cooking.
At first, I thought the exact same thing that Walter did, which was that Victor didn't know what the hell he was doing. Then the creeping fear came up that maybe he wasn't joking around, and maybe he was Gus' safety net in case Gale met an unsavory end. And then Gus came around, and that ten minute sequence speaks volumes about all the characters in the room, not the least of which being Victor. I don't think we were surprised by what happened, as you could tell that somebody was going to be killed with a box cutter. However, after a long layering of intensity, as Gus makes his way across the lab without saying a single word, Victor's gruesome death still came as a sickening shock. And you can tell by the look on their faces, Mike is in the same boat as Walt and Jesse, or at least he thinks he is.
The message Gus meant to send was the same as it has always been, and as Walt has once said: "There's no room for error with these people." We get the idea that despite Walt's babbling and desperate plotting, the only reason he's still alive is a technicality. If Victor hadn't been seen at the crime scene at the start of the episode, he'd still have the slit of flesh covering his throat. In fact, he'd still have flesh, skin, bones, brains, and such in general. He's just a big red puddle inside a plastic container labeled corrosive, much like the sanity and safety of our two leads' lives.
Across the past three seasons, things have been almost constantly fascinating, exciting, intense, and powerful, but things hadn't quite reached the point where everything is at stake. This season looks to be drawing out the intensity and unease as the lives of our leads intricately start to unravel, while they do their best to find a way to survive. Everything is indicating this as the penultimate season of this AMC series, and I'm bracing for a tough couple of weeks ahead of us. It's all the lead up for when the shit hits the fan in season 5, at least that's my strong guess. As for what was wrong with this episode, it moved a tad slowly in the midsection with Skyler, Hank, and Marie, but other than that the slow build was all too essential. And some final props to Giancarlo Esposito for a truly chilling and terrifyingly reserved performance in the most talked about sequence of the episode.
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