Ozymandias

When this season of Breaking Bad was being advertised, they had Walter White reading the famous poem "Ozymandias", by Percy Shelley.  In some ways, after last night's episode, I first thought that Yeats's "The Second Coming" would have been appropriate with such lines as:

 Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

Such lines do describe last night's episode well, but it does not tie in to the desert technique of the show as well as Ozymandias does.  When I saw the episode title, even before it began, I thought back to the advertisements with Walter reading it, "Look upon my works, ye Mighty and despair".  It was not a portent of a good episode, at least for the touchy feely side of the show.  What it was, however, was something that deserves a slew of Emmy awards.  Spoilers ahead my friends, spoilers ahead.

The story about Breaking Bad is primarily broken into three types.  The first is that of crime; Walt as Heisenberg, is a meth drug lord and all that implies.  The second is the story of Walter White's transformation from mild mannered family man, to ruthless kingpin Heisenberg.  The third is Walter's relationship with his family, trying to hold on to it, despite the evil things he has done.  Last night hit upon all three of these elements and tore them apart.

The episode began with a flashback to a simpler time, where Walt had to prepare himself to lie to his wife about cooking meth.  We see him as the man he once was, the man who wanted to help his family with the drug money and the loving father who was incapable of easily betraying the trust of the love of his life.  Yet that did not continue for long, as fans know.  Cut forward in time and Walt is laying in the back of a bullet riddled car.  Agent Gomez is dead.  Hank, Walt's DEA brother in law is bleeding on the ground.  As the white supremacists move in to kill Hank, Walt struggles from the car and begins to beg for Hank's life, "He's family!"  In the past, this is where Walt would have managed one more deal and boy did Walt try, informing them about his $80 million and offering them the money if they would just spare his brother in law...this time however, Hank gives the most chilling line of the entire show, "You're one of the smartest men I know.  Can't you tell he made up his mind ten minutes ago?"  Then he turns his face to the white supremacists and utters one last line, dying with some dignity as he's killed mid sentence.

Walt tumbles to the ground and lies there, as if upon the sands of Hell, or perhaps Purgatory, just trying to process how things had come to this.  There were only a few lines that Walt had held as being uncrossable, and one was to kill his brother in law.  The thugs give him one of his barrels back, $11 million, and ask if there will be any problems, with an implication they'll happily kill Walt too.  At this moment, Walt stands in silence before finally shaking hands with them, and in that instant...Walter White has ceased to be any semblance of a good person.  His fall from grace has finally cost him his soul, just like the Gospels ask in Matthew 16, ""For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?"  Within moments, Jesse is captured, and before it seems he'll be killed (he isn't), Walt turns and tells him that he was there when Jane overdosed and did nothing to help her.  Another of Walt's unbreakable lines is no more, as Jesse was like a second son to him, and he leaves him to be tortured and possibly killed, but only after rubbing salt in the wound as it were.

Walt's empire has been destroyed, just like that lost kingdom of Ozymandias.  There is almost nothing left, but the remnants of a once proud operation.  The sands stretch around Walter and he begins his trek back to civilization, through the ruins of what he has spent the last five seasons building.  However, things have not fully fallen apart yet.  His son, off-camera, his son who is so adoring and worshipful of him has learned the truth and is also falling apart.  When Skyler and Flynn return home, they know he should be with Hank, but he screams at them like a madman to pack only what they need...finally Skyler snaps and pulls a butcher knife, ordering him out of the house.  She ends up slashing his hand open and he wrestles with her on the ground, until he gets the upper hand and his beloved son dives between them and calls the police, telling them that Walter is the one who pulled the knife.  In that moment, Bryan Cranston's face is truly heartbroken, and this scene alone is deserving of an Emmy nomination.  He flees his home, with his money, and grabs his daughter Holly as well.

When the police come and Walter calls again, he leaves Holly at a fire station with her address, after realizing at "mama" that he can never have family again and any attempt to force Holly to love him is doomed to fail.  He knows the police will be tapping the call, so Walter does the only thing that may possibly save him from damnation when the cancer finally kills him...he rips into his wife.  He calls her stupid, a bitch, and told her this sort of thing is what happens when you cross him.  That he built everything up himself.  To the police, it seems like he's being an abuser, but from the gorgeous acting with the body language between the two, on opposite ends of the phone, its apparent they both know this for what it is.  For one last time, even though he's lost his family, Walter White is saving them from destruction.  His ranting "confession", saves Skyler and his son from any of the consequences of the meth business, at least legally.  He also confirms for her, even though he didn't do it as he implies, that Hank is dead and off to the side, Skyler's sister Marie, who was married to Hank, bursts into tears.

As the episode ends, Walter is being picked up by the van from his lawyer's guy who starts people with a new life.  He looks down the vast barren stretch of desert road.  Walter White, King of Kings of the meth business has been reduced to a wreck, alongside that of his empire which has faded away with the sands.  He goes to take one last look at the surrounding area before he gets into the van, evoking the last lines of the famous poem, " boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away."