The One Who Knocks: The Fourth Season of "Breaking Bad"

Only read this if you are completely caught up on Breaking Bad. Spoilers will be everywhere.

In its four seasons on the air, Breaking Bad is a show that has been known for always taking the plot in unexpected directions. If audiences expected Walter White to turn left, the writers would turn him right. As such, when the third season ended with Jesse Pinkman killing Gale Boetticher—the nicest meth cook ever—people assumed the fourth season would hit the ground running rather than hitting the pause button for a several-episode reflection on just how far we’ve come. So obviously, this is the direction Vince Gilligan and his writers decided to go. Once Breaking Bad got past the predictable-but-thrilling premiere “Box Cutter,” it decided to go into full-on self-reflection mode. At one point, Walter White even wonders aloud how everything got so “screwed up.” For several episodes in its fourth season, Breaking Bad decided to look at itself in the mirror and examine how we got here, where the characters were in their lives, and where they can possibly go from here.

To some, this wasn’t an entirely welcome direction. For the first half of this season, some (not most) Breaking Bad viewers seemed to be bemoaning the slower-than-usual pace. These complaints mostly mystified me. In my catch-up that occurred over the past year, Breaking Bad always struck me as a slower show. Not The Wire slow, but slow. But really, this pacing is the only method in which the show’s story could have worked. If Walter was having Gale killed at the end of season one, it would have seemed ridiculous. Instead, Gilligan makes the transformation so gradual that only in brief, shocking moments do you realize how far the once-innocuous Mr. White has fallen. In fact, it happened so gradually that even the characters hadn’t noticed. Thus, season four; the time when everyone decided to stop and realize just how crazy the entire situation is. While certain fans wanted more plot, Breaking Bad decided to hit them over the head with several episodes of slow character development.

However, I loved most of it. There were moments where certain developments and moments felt a little forced—something Breaking Bad is normally great at avoiding—but when the season was clicking on all cylinders it produced some of the best moments and episodes in the show’s history. (Heck, the last six episodes of the season were all wall-to-wall great.) While it isn’t quite as effortlessly brilliant as the entirety of the third season—few things can be—it further solidified Breaking Bad as the most ambitious and gripping show currently on television.

For my money, this season more or less had three parts (or “acts”) to it. The first was “The Recovery,” in which the characters recuperate from the events of last season and Walt’s actions throughout the entirety of the series. The second was “The Divorce,” in which a rift is created between Walt and Jesse to the point where they ultimately separate themselves from one another. The final is “The Final Offensive,” in which the two of them ultimately team back up to try and bring down Gus Fring. I will discuss each “act” individually so that I may be as thorough as possible.

I. The Recovery

One of the challenges Gilligan faced at the beginning of the fourth season was just how he was going to get Walter and Jesse out of their current predicament. The final shot of “Full Measure” (the third season finale) seemed to suggest that Walt and Jesse were either going to be punished or spared because of their murderous deeds. Conventional TV wisdom would suggest the latter, simply because if you kill one of these characters Breaking Bad as we know it ceases to exist. It wouldn’t have taken a whole lot of intelligence to predict how “Box Cutter” was going to end, yet it was still as suspenseful as any television episode I’ve seen. The climactic scene—when Fring slowly walks around the meth lab before slicing open the neck of his henchman Victor—is just so perfectly executed that it’d be wrongheaded to dismiss it as predictable. While it was, it also wasn’t. (If that makes sense.) It was one of the rare season premieres that is able to scoot by all the problems season premieres normally face simply by being really, really entertaining. The outcome of “Box Cutter” was obvious, but oh what a ride it was.

From there, things slowed down real fast. The second episode “Thirty-Eight Snub” was perhaps my favorite of the early going (it was topped several times over in the season’s second half), because it was the best illustration of just how far-reaching the impact of Walt’s descent has been. Most depressingly, Jesse begins season four at one of his lowest points. Sure, in the past he’s gone to rehab and all that, but “Thirty-Eight Snub” shows him at his most lonesome. In an attempt to erase the murder of Gale from his memory, he brings all of his drug addict friends over for a never-ending party. For a while, he is able to distract himself through several days of debauchery. That all ends when he finally winds up alone in his house once again, and he breaks down with no one around to comfort him.

These first few episodes of the season were when Breaking Bad fans began to (wrongfully) grow impatient. Not only did they eschew any plot momentum in favor of character exploration, but for the most part they decentralized Walter to the point where he seemed like a supporting character on his own show. The fourth season spent its first quarter or so examining the toll that the series has taken on the various characters, and gave time to those that previously were never given the time of day. (Betsy Brandt’s Marie Schrader even got an entire plot to herself in the episode “Open House.”) Yet while some argued that these scenes were disconnected—that they were inconsequential to what Breaking Bad was really about—I could feel the ghost of Walter White in every last moment. This show is rightfully interested in so much more than Walt now, yet everything that’s happened in this series is because of him. Nothing is unrelated. Marie starts stealing things again because her husband has grown distant. Her husband has grown distant because the attack by the Salamanca cousins. The attack by the Salamanca cousins was caused because Walter was too valuable to Gus. Walter was too valuable to Gus because he is good at cooking meth. A whole lot has happened in this series, but all of it is because of once decision Walt made in the pilot.

That’s why I think this “recovery” phase of season four was so powerful. Think of the pain that Walter has caused and the damage that he has done over the course of these few years. Previous seasons have been so focused on pushing that further that the full impact may have been glossed over. Finally, the early going of this fourth season was an opportunity to ponder how far we have come and how unpleasant Walter’s current situation is. In many ways, it reminded me of the average season of The Wire. It seems impossibly slow at first, but the ultimate payoff only works as well as it does because the audience sat through every last second of it. Think of the final shot of “Crawl Space.” Is that nearly as effective if a single scene is cut from the season’s first half? I think not.

And yet, despite Walter’s increasing boldness, not a whole lot has changed. The end of the third season hinted at a new Mr. White; one who would be in control of every aspect of his new, dangerous lifestyle. For once, he had outsmarted Gus. As heartbreaking as Gale’s murder was, it was a rare victory for team Walter White. However, the victory would be short-lived. As soon as the fourth season began, it was made abundantly clear that Walt was still the servant in a larger machine. He was valuable, yes, but not so valuable that Gus would bend over backwards to make him happy. If anything, he’d make their lives as miserable as possible.

And that’s exactly what would play out over the course of the season, an arc best laid out in the episode “Cornered.” In what has become one of the show’s most memorable monologues, Walt proceeds to tell his wife that he is not in danger, but that he is the danger. He isn’t the one who answers the door when his potential killer comes knocking. In his mind, he is “the one who knocks.” (Hence the title of this blog post.) This is a line that would have ramifications throughout the entirety of the season, as several scenes would circle around one central question: who is really in control? As Breaking Bad argues, it’s not always who you think.

Of course, when Walt delivers this speech he is in an utterly powerless position. Jesse is slowly turning against him, Gus won’t give him the time of day, and death seems to be waiting for him around every corner. Despite his claim that he is “the one who knocks,” he’s actually still waiting to answer the door. The third season seemed to be building Walter up, but much of the fourth season was spent tearing him back down.

II. The Divorce

If we’ve learned one thing about Gus Fring this season—and we’ve learned many—it’s that he’s always been a huge fan of vengeance. If you wrong him, he will make sure there’s (in his words) an “appropriate response,” and he’s real smart about planning them. For the entire series run, Walt and Jesse have acted as a team. They’ve said as much to Gus: if you kill one of them, you better kill both of them. Gus’ stroke of genius in season four is he decided to drive a wedge between the two in his own, subtle way. By doing this, he hoped he could get Jesse to the point where he is competent enough to run the lab by himself, and where he has no real interest in whether Walt lives or dies. Sure, Jesse is the guy who pulled the trigger on Gale. But Walt’s the bigger problem, and he has to go.

Gus’ master plan begins in the episode “Shotgun,” in which Jesse is sent out into the desert with Mike to help him with several tasks. It’s all incredibly boring to Jesse, but that changes once he stops an attempted robbery. In that moment, he becomes the “hero,” and Gus calculatedly asks him to help out with more important tasks. Meanwhile, Walt is still stuck in the lab cooking the meth by himself. In his eyes, they are buttering Jesse up so that they can eventually make him their sole cook. He’s not wrong, but he approaches it in typical Walter White “it’s all about me” fashion. This newfound purpose is actually healthy for Jesse, but Walt does all he can to drive him right back off the rails. He’s at his most powerful when Jesse feels defeated—at these points he can step into his faux father figure role—but if you give Jesse any sense of confidence he can just as readily fight back.

This Walt/Jesse conflict came to a head in the episode “Bug,” which essentially finalizes the “divorce” of which I speak. (I couldn’t think of another adequate term besides “separation,” which was almost worse to me.) At this point, Walt’s survival is wholly dependent on Jesse’s insistence that he not be killed. The second he showed any apathy toward the situation would be the moment when Gus pulled the trigger. For the first time Jesse felt important within the Fring organization, so when Walt came into his house, belittled and insulted him, he could only react violently. The two of them brawl on the floor for a while before Jesse casts Walt out into the cold:

“Get the f—k out of here and never come back.”

It’s a simple line, but by the time the sentence ends it feels as if Walt has been sentenced to execution. Despite what he may think, he would be nowhere without Jesse. Without him, Walt would be in the bottom of a ditch somewhere. In his own Walt-centric universe, he is the one who is responsible for everything that has happened. The best comparison I can think of is the South Park episode “Fishsticks,” which illustrated how Eric Cartman remembers events not how they actually happened, but instead in a way that makes him out to be some majestic hero. When Walt looks at himself in the mirror, he sees a tough guy that nobody wants to mess with. Only after Jesse rejects him does he realize just how alone he really is. He becomes so despondent that he spends much of the next episode (“Salud”) in his apartment crying and moping about.

Vince Gilligan has said in interviews that much of season four was seen as a chess game between Walter and Gus, with the key to victory being the allegiance of Jesse. For most of the season, Gus is winning handily. He has Jesse working for him, and at times the two of them have gotten rather close to friendly. Walt winds up getting pushed further and further away, and it would take a truly bold move for him to even compete going forward, let alone win. Breaking Bad best illustrated this in the final shot of “Crawl Space,” which depicted Walter White as he realized just how royally screwed he was. It’s incredibly hard to feel the weight of an entire series come toppling down in a single moment, but with that shot the show accomplished just that. Walt had done so many evil things over the course of the show, and now it seemed like it was about to come back to haunt him.

Then, inexplicably, things started coming up Walt.

III. The Final Offensive

In the final two episodes of the season, a series of seemingly random occurrences drove Jesse right back into Walt’s figurative arms. Brock—the son of his love interest Andrea—is rushed to the hospital because he was poisoned. Jesse fears that what poisoned him was a ricin-filled cigarette that he had kept in his pocket (with the intention of eventually killing Gus). He knows he did not intentionally feed it to him, so his first instinct is that someone did it to get back at him. And who’s the guy who has the biggest beef with Jesse at that point? Walter. However, in a scene that reminds us just how persuasive Walt can be when he has to squirm out of a corner, he convinces Jesse that the only person with anything to gain from this is Gus. Gus is the guy who wants Walter dead, but Jesse won’t allow it. What plan is more genius than convincing Jesse to pull the trigger himself? At this point, they team up for one “final offensive” against the man who has made their lives a nightmare for the entire season.

Throughout the season, Gus’ story had more or less followed the predictable path. Of course he was going to spare Walt and Jesse in the premiere. Of course he was going to try and turn them against each other. Of course he was going to wipe out the entire cartel during his trip down to Mexico. And of course, if the season was going to end with the death of either Walt or Gus, it was going to be Gus. Breaking Bad is a show that takes risks, but they’re not that crazy. Yet Gilligan, his writers and his directors are so brilliant at milking every moment for all it’s worth. Plus, Gus’ entire arc throughout the season was made downright transcendent in the brilliant episode “Hermanos.”

For as long as we’ve known him, Gus has been little more than an exceptionally awesome version of the stoic bad guy who will cut you open without hesitation. In “Hermanos,” Gilligan and company made the daring decision to try and humanize the man. We sympathize with everyone in the Breaking Bad universe, which means we more or less hate everyone at the same time. While we recognize they are all human beings and we want them all to win, the reality is that they can’t all win. Yes, we want Hank to be proven right when he suspects Gus is in charge of the local meth business, but does that mean we want Walter to be caught? We want Walt to survive and claim victory over Gus, but do we necessarily want Gus to die? In “Hermanos,” he is not painted as the villain of Breaking Bad, but rather the protagonist. Considering he’s the man who very recently sliced open a man’s neck for no apparent reason, this is no small feat. In a brilliant flashback, we see Gus as he tries to rise up in the meth business. During a talk with the Salamanca family, his business partner (and perhaps lover) is suddenly killed as he is forced to watch. In this scene, the Salamancas are as evil as evil gets.

That moment also exposes what may be Gus’ primary weakness: his constant desire for revenge. In the end, it’s what does him in. Instead of having his new henchman Tyrus kill the immobile Hector Salamanca, he demands that he be there to do it himself. He cannot leave the past alone; he must be the one who looks Hector in the eyes as he drifts away into death. This allows Walt and Hector to team up, plant a bomb, and ultimately detonate it when Gus enters the room. Before this, Gus was a perfect villain who could detect a death threat a mile away. (Almost depicted literally at the climax of “End Times,” the season’s penultimate episode.) In this case, he was blinded by his desire to get rid of Hector. He could not see the obvious trap that awaited him. Plus, just before the bomb explodes, we see Gus in a more vulnerable position than we ever have before. He realizes the mistake he’s made, lets out a scream, and then the bomb explodes. In many ways, his death was bittersweet. Season four showed us Gus Fring the human, not Gus Fring the villainous mastermind. It’s sad to see him go, but it’s fascinating to think what might come next.

In particular, there is the relationship between Walt and Jesse. While it seems relatively resolved at the end of “Face Off” (the season finale), all evidence would suggest that in the final season it could explode once more. Why is that? Because Walt has time and again completely destroyed Jesse’s life without him even knowing it. The very catalyst for the reunion/final offensive this season was the poisoning of Brock, and the idea that Gus was responsible. As the last shot of the season states, that is a complete lie. In a relatively ingenious (but really freaking evil) plan, Walt decides to bring Jesse back to his side by poisoning Brock himself and convincing Jesse that Gus was responsible. Walt has spent this entire season at the edge of death, but this final plan was able to not only save his life, but also cause the death of Gus. As he aptly says to his wife in the final scene of the season: “I won.” In this case, he isn’t lying. He has long thought of himself as the one in control—the one who knocks, if you will—but up until this point it has never been the case. “Face Off” is about Walt finally reaching that point, even if it seems like it will all collapse under him at any given point.

The big question about Breaking Bad is always whether or not Walt is still in it for his family. At the beginning of the series, there was almost no question. Yet as the show went on, it became clear that Walt was a tad on the egotistical side. It was less about his family than it was about him. The final line of the season was not “we won,” but instead was “I won.” He doesn’t really care about Jesse; he just wants to use him to get to Gus. (HE POISONED A CHILD, FOR GOD’S SAKE.) During a crucial dinner scene earlier in the season, he gives a drunken speech to Hank that all but says “I’m the guy who’s making all this meth, so arrest me!” In a strange way, it seems like he wants to be caught. Maybe then he can finally be recognized for just how much of a genius he is. Or at least how much of a genius he thinks he is.

There are only 16 episodes left of Breaking Bad, a season which is expected to start airing in July of 2012. (Writing will begin this November.) Interestingly, Vince Gilligan claims he has no real plans for how the show will end. While this could be an absolute lie, it’s actually a mentality I kind of love. When television shows are given set end dates, any advance planning could make the series feel rather perfunctory; as if the various chess pieces are being moved around the board from on high, and the writers aren’t letting things happen naturally. Breaking Bad has always worked best when the writing has felt spontaneous, and that is why most (myself included) see the third season as the best. Gilligan has said that there was very little advance planning during that season, and the writers more or less dealt with each problem as it came up. I think that will be a great way to approach the final season, even if they only have a certain amount of time to resolve anything. This way it may not feel like the show is being forced into the most obvious ending.

Even if it isn’t all planned out, many can likely guess what the gist of it will be. While the first four seasons depicted Walt’s ascent to the top of the meth game—as well as his increasing immorality—the fifth season will likely be all about his punishment. There are too many blank clouds hanging around him to get off scot free, and I think the dominoes will start falling early and often once the season five begins. Not only is his poisoning of Brock hanging around in the air, but let us not forget the night Walt let Jane die without so much as lifting a finger. Let us also not forget the ongoing saga of the probably-dead Ted Benake; something I barely even touched on here. And where is that ricin, anyway? What is Mike up to down in Mexico, and what will he think when he comes back up north? And the DEA! The sudden fire at the laundry facility/explosion of Gus Fring has got to suddenly make Hank look really smart, right? Walt’s family is still mostly in the dark, even if Skylar is starting to get a general idea of the situation. Too much can go wrong for Walter’s victory to last very long. I’m starting to get the feeling that the final season of Breaking Bad may resemble the apocalyptic final act of Goodfellas. As rough as the ride has been thus far, there’s still a whole lot of misery ahead for Walter White. Considering all he’s done, there’s no way the series will end with all these deeds going unpunished.

While there’s still quite a bit I’m sure I haven’t touched on, I think I’ve rambled on long enough. What are your thoughts on the season that was? Comment below, fellow Bad-heads. Please. Oh, and if you’d like me to arbitrarily rank the seasons, I’d probably go with the old reliable: 3>4>2>1. For now, we wait for July.