Breaking Bad: "Fifty-One" Review

Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow.
Rian Johnson, who directed this episode, is awesome. Brick is fantastic; see it if you haven’t. His next movie, Looper, looks good. Johnson’s ideas waffle between incredulous and bizarrely mundane, but the focus on the bare bones of a scene or story (e.g.: the dialogue; the acting) and getting into the heads of his characters can make even the most absurd story realistic.

You can see it in the way characters talk to one another; the close-ups on their faces; the subtle droning tones. It’s not manipulative, but it draws you in. When Walt, Hank, Marie and Skyler are all outside, having dinner together, the entire scene is about Skyler about to break; and when it comes to a head—when Walt describes how Skyler was there for him, taking care of him during the cancer, one year ago—the camera doesn’t shift to the table at all. It is entirely on Skyler, her face unmoved with a twinge of regret, cut-to her point of view of the pool, cut-to her face. Cut to her walking into the pool.

Got dang. Even if “distressed person jumping into the pool” is a cliché, it worked wonderfully here.
“Fifty One” is a beautiful episode. Compared to Johnson’s last directed episode of Breaking Bad, “Fly,” it fits a lot more seamlessly into Breaking Bad’s catalog and especially into this season.

There was a lot to love in this one.

First, Skyler melted down. While I think there’s been a lot of misguidance on her character throughout the series—a good deal of it because fan reaction to her was so oddly visceral—“Fifty One” took a second to explore the depths of her fear and articulated it perfectly in one of the best scenes in this show’s history.
Just before that scene between Walt and Skyler, Marie and Hank talked to Walt about Skyler and brought up taking care of the kids while they work out their differences and of course this is Walt’s soft spot. Though Skyler’s clearly been out of sorts in the last few episodes, Walt’s ignored it. Now that the kids were being taken away—and how about those early scenes where Walt and Walt Jr. were connecting?—Walt needed some answers. She’s breaking up the family.

And this is the scene that gets BB another few Emmys in hand. The entire scene is so natural and familiar, it’s less like we’re watching a show and more like we’re seeing into some family’s life. The line between Cranston and Walt was severely blurred in this one. Nothing is brought out into the open unnaturally.

The whole scene was almost cut from a brilliant play, which, for a series that’s so excellent on so many levels, is something we haven’t seen before. The conversation ebbs and flows, from an early “OK, we need to talk” sentiment to a pretty harsh tone of implied domestic abuse one-upmanship and backhanded, subversive threats. When Walt knew she had the upper hand, he attacked her ability to plan and she broke down: “I don’t know!! This is the best I can come up with! I’ll count every minute the kids are away from you as a victory.”

Anna Gunn was fantastic in this scene. She was fantastic in the whole episode. This was her finest work yet on the series.

Lydia returned in this one and she attempted to game the system. I like Lydia. It’s not because she’s smart or clever or mean or anything, but she’s so type A and stressful and the fingernail biting and the wrong shoe wearing and etc. etc. I love it. She’s not a good person, but hey, who is in this series?

Yo soy Heisenberg!

When she convinced Jesse (who, ya know, can get fooled like we can) that the can was lo-jacked by the DEA and Mike saw through it, you knew she was done for. What was kind of weird was when Jesse stopped him and Mike called him sexist for thinking she didn’t deserve to die, just like he was when Mike let her live. I haven’t seen many instances of character confusion in this series, but this was one—Mike let her live because his soft spot is for people who have one last wish to speak with family before they die.
Either way, I’m looking forward to where Lydia takes us.

Maybe most important was the Heisenberg hat is back to full throttle. I love that hat. It’s kinda dorky, but it makes Walt feel so empowered, you kind of want him to have it.

“Fifty One” packed a punch. It didn’t have any explosions, but it was cathartic and demonstrated just what Breaking Bad can do best: hard-hitting dialogue, powerful acting and cool directing and editing, with a few laughs and some fun here and there.

What’s most impressive this season is how everything has been building toward a crescendo. Yeah, Season 1 through 4 were all pointing to this season, but even the episodes within this season itself are pointing to something greater; some great cataclysmic ending. I don’t know if there’s anything that can match this kind of build-up, but the series has taken a turn for the epic and I think we all know it.

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