'Breaking Bad,' Season 5, Episode 14, 'Ozymandias': review

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There were a couple of great easter eggs in this episode, as well.

As Walt rolls the barrel, he passes a pair of his own pants, laying discarded in the desert.

There’s also some symmetry in the way he lays down compared to Gus, when things go south in Mexico.

And when Walt looks at the bullet hole in the car, it aligns with the center of his forehead.

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Well, so much for my theories.

That’s what I get for trying to predict the most unpredictable show on television – of course that’s also what makes it so god damn good!

Jesse does end up as a long term hostage, though, and Gomey got it pretty fast as predicted. But man, so dark. Ain’t nobody having an A-1 day on this show any more.

Some things I wonder about for the next episode, which will presumably be "many months later…"

  • the fate of the recording Hank made with Jesse.

  • what Marie will do, since she has confirmation that Hank isn’t coming back and thus nothing to lose.

I feel like the last episode is going to be Walt doing whatever he got the ricin and M60 to do, but the next one, the one before that, has to be fallout exposition and buildup to the final mystery confrontation.

My money is still on saving Jesse.

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Nazis using slave labor? Inconceivable!

Mary nearly had my sympathies until she went all vengeful b* again and insisted Walt’s son be told.

I think Jessie is going to escape pretty easily.

It was nice of Walt to use the phone call to give his wife an alibi.

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Regarding Marie, she is unknowingly in mortal danger since Jesse told Todd where HIS recorded confession can be found. Will she walk into an ambush when she goes home, or worse yet will Walt’s whole family if they accompany her, not wanting to spend another night in their own house? For a moment during this episode I thought Skyler was going to see the old pickup in the driveway as she was pulling up, freak out that it was some of Walt’s accomplices, and head to Hank and Marie’s only to have her and Walt’s whole family get ambushed there.

Seems to me that Jesse telling Todd about the recording is not just incidental dialog–there are going to be some form of major consequences for Walt turning him over to the Aryans the way he did when even having him be killed right there in the desert would have been more merciful.

I’ve been mainlining X-Files for two days and then I took a break and watched tonight’s Breaking Bad and now I’m back to X-Files and I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON

…so…so they’re going to hijack the railroad boxcar full of alien bodies and…and bury it in the desert…to make black meth with? WHY IS MULDER PUNCHING SKINNER IT’S THE STRESS OF BEING HEISENFOX Albuquerque and Roswell are in the same state what?

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I just don’t see Walt having a change of heart regarding Jesse considering how cruelly he kissed him off and how Jesse’s collaboration with Hank is what ultimately caused him to lose everything save a small fraction of his fortune. After all, Walt might have gotten away with it had it not been for that meddling kid (who refused to just leave town a multimillionaire).

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Yeah, but if Jesse hadn’t killed Gale, Walt would have been 100% dead by Mike’s hand on direct orders from Gus. That’s crucial. They’ve both saved each others’ lives a few times, haven’t they?

I do think he’s going to have a serious change of heart while he’s in his “witness relocation program” in New Hampshire. Jesse is as close to an innocent as this show has ever had. Plus there’s the father, son, teacher, student relationship. Jesse noticing that the location of the money was the location of their first cook, and the flashback in this episode, reinforces that history.

The show is crazy unpredictable though, so who knows.

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You guys! Jesse’s face in that shot when he sees the picture! Dead ringer for Gustavo and the Teddy bear!

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Yes, I also think the Walt will change his mind during his absence.
I think we will try to free Jesse, thats what the M60 is for, revenge on the Nazis.
And the Ricin? … That will be for Walt himself.

Seemed to me the Nazis had an A-1 day. This is like watching The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in reverse. Maybe Jessie will figure out some science to let him kill them all off and escape.

Good point. Someone on another site also pointed out that Todd must be left handed since he was “kind” enough to smash up the left side of Jesse’s face rather than the right as Tuco and Hank did.

If you want to kill yourself there are much less unpleasant ways than Ricin.

My guess is that the Ricin is for Little Miss Loose Ends. The M60 seems like more of a red herring to me, Walt has never been a guns blazing kind of guy.

Yeah that’s another reason why a Nazi showdown with Walt sometime later makes sense.

I’m stunned the Nazis

  • let Walt live
  • gave him a barrel of money

Pretty much all at the urging of Meth Damon. It’s incredible how many crucial plot decisions this season have hinged on Meth Damon, including Jesse surviving despite Walt’s explicit order to kill. Think about that creepy scene with Lydia and him too, where he drinks from the lipsticked cup of tea, too. How much is he doing out of … some weird sense of justice or empathy or … who knows?

I dunno, I just read an interview with Vince Gilligan where he said

And sometimes the most satisfying ending is the most obvious ending

It would be very, very Scarface for it to end that way. But unpredictable is a hallmark of the show … though being predictable at the end of five seasons of consistent unpredictability probably meets that definition, too.

The pants this is REALLY great in the context of the poem. Walt’s season 1 pants are akin to the isolated statue of legs referred to in the poem.

This is Walt’s empire crumbled, returned to the dust from whence it came. At the end of the day it will all be for naught but a pair of trousers in the New Mexico desert, persevered by arid heat and time but lost to all living memory.

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But how would Walt even know that Jesse is still alive? And what kind of mental state would Jesse be in considering that he was already a broken man even before being tortured? His is not a “live happily ever after” situation.

Just curious…why her? She never did anything to Walt.

I assume Walt will know Jesse’s alive because the blue meth will begin to reappear on the market. Just a guess, though. Who knows with this show?