Think of Vic Mackey's confession. Don Draper shutting down Pete Campbell. Jack telling Kate "We have to go back."
Breaking Bad, has had several of those episodes, including last night's "One Minute," which closed with a sequence that was as exciting and terrifying as anything the show has done.
Of course, that's what I'm saying now. At the time, I could barely speak. My heart rate sped up, I was actually shaking a little, and the only words coming out of my mouth were "C'mon, Hank..."
Let's watch it again. (And if you haven't seen the episode yet, wait. It's better that way, trust me.)
Hank's uneasy after the call, even as he writes it off as a prank by Gomez. He sees two bald silhouettes behind one of the cars in front of him. They vanish, and there's a nice little fake out when we see a bald man getting into a car.
The episode really takes its time with this scene. All together, it's about five minutes and 40 seconds long, and it takes about two minutes and 15 seconds from the time Hank gets into his SUV until the shooting begins. A lot happens in that time: he looks at the clock -- the full minute ticks by -- he checks for a gun that he can no longer carry. He looks at his hands, still bruised from punching out Jesse.
Then action, as the Cousins start shooting, and Hank sandwiches one of them between his SUV and another car. Then tension, as the unharmed Cousin goes looking for Hank. More action, as they exchange gunfire.
Then, the best/worst tension of all. The second Cousin decides it would be "too easy" to just finish off Hank and goes for that awful, shiny axe. As he goes for, Hank -- who has fired the first Cousin's gun empty -- notices the "Black Death" bullet the other man had dropped. He picks it up...fumbles with it...drops it. The Cousin is getting closer, scraping the axe along the ground.
Scrape...scrape...there's a car alarm that's been blaring this whole time, but now it fades as the music ticks along, and he's raising the axe, and Hank almost has it, and he's about to swing, and
BLAM
The back of Cousin 2's head comes off. He drops the axe, sharp enough to embed itself in the parking lot. We can all breathe now.
Well, not Hank, of course, who's in pretty bad shape. For all of his talk about how he's not the cop he thought he was, this is the second time he's gone up against members of the Salamanca family and come out on-top. Except each time, there's heavy consequences.
When we first met Hank, he was the master of his little universe, keeping New Mexico safe from the likes of season one Jesse. It was until Walt became Heisenberg that his world fell apart. Walt's business plan moved players like Tuco, Tortuga and the Cousins into Hank's orbit, putting his psyche, and eventually his life, into danger.
Jesse's in the same boat, of course, with the added knowledge that it's Walt who put him there. And after Hank's beating -- Hank assumes, naturally, that Jesse was behind the horrible prank call last week -- all of Jesse's pain and rage comes out. From his hospital bed -- looking like a post legal career Harvey Dent -- he promises vengeance.
First he aims it at Hank, promising Walt he'll give his brother-in-law 10 times the hurt and humiliation that Hank gave him. But for all his bluster, his visions of Hank reduced to a toilet mopper in Tiajuana, Jesse has no way of carrying this vision out. His real target is Walt, who has wrecked Jesse's life.
By the end of the episode, they're partners again. Walt has gotten rid of the too eager to please Gale, and convinced Gus to bring Jesse on board. But this is clearly a short-term fix, one that comes with a lot of pitfalls: Gus wanted his own man there, Walt can't trust Jesse, and Jesse might just think that his meth recipe is as good as Walt's. We're halfway through the season now, and even though the characters who seemed like they'd be this year's biggest threat are neutralized, I don't think anyone should feel any safer.
Other thoughts:
- Yet another amazing opening scene tonight, the flashback featuring the younger versions of the Cousins and Don Salamanca. I liked the way they brought back imagery from this scene -- the grounds-eye camera view -- in the final scene.
- And RIP, Marco and Leonel, two of the scariest characters on TV this year.
- Who gave Hank the warning call? It would have to be Gus, right? No one else knew about the Cousins.
- Between Walt's encounter with the novice meth cooks last season and last night's shoot-out, it seems like a lot of crime happens in the Albequerque Home Depot parking lot.
- Even though she doesn't state it explicitly, Skyler's "I guess crime does pay" remark tells Walt what we're all thinking: he's living in a much nicer place than the rest of his family.
- With such a bleak, suspenseful episode, be glad there's Saul, who really didn't need to say anything tonight, but only had to show up with that weird track suit jacket -- blue ribbon still affixed -- to lighten the mood. At the same time, he's the guy who suggests that "something" might have to be done with Jesse now that he considers Walt a "get out of jail free" card.
Tom Coombe
Posted by: |