Breaking Bad: A No-Rough-Stuff-Type Deal   Rewatch 
August 24, 2014 1:51 PM - Season 1, Episode 7 - Subscribe

Walt becomes more comfortable with his new criminal identity. Jesse, still reeling from what has transpired under his roof, decides to sell his house. Skyler’s sister, Marie throws Skyler a baby shower and gives a questionable gift.
posted by scody (8 comments total)
 
Jesse and Tuco's comments on the meeting at the junkyard are pretty funny. It will take a while to cure Walt of this kind of naivete.

I don't know how much I like Walt's chat with Hank. I suppose he is attempting to justify himself here, but its maybe a bit on the nose.

Sometimes this show cheats about the details. How did Jesse know this chemical was in this warehouse? Or the details of the security? Still, it leads to the very funny heist scene, so I shouldn't complain too much.

Marie's shop lifting plotline... isn't great. It doesn't ever provide much drama, and it kind of belittles the women that they are off dealing with petty theft while the men do the reaal crime.

And then we get that ending, a brutal moment reminding us that the Meth business is hardly the safest. Still, Walt and Jesse are committed now, to giving a violent psychopath his meth. I'm sure that'll work out fine...
posted by Cannon Fodder at 12:26 AM on August 26, 2014


I agree about the Walt/Hank chat here, and also about the heist scene. When I first saw this episode I didn't even notice they could have rolled the barrel; I was too busy laughing at the guard.

I like how the show sets us up to watch Walt pull off this heist and to revel briefly in his victory, then drops the hammer: oh, you managed to steal the methylamine? Awesome. But you're still working for this crazy Tuco guy who ... holy shit.

When I first watched this series I didn't know why the first season was so short. It was the writers' strike, which Gilligan has said was good for forcing him to pace Walt's descent into evil. And it also gave us Dr. Horrible, so there's that.
posted by johnofjack at 8:50 AM on August 26, 2014


Marie was a puzzling character at first, shallow and pointlessly annoying. In the end though, she of all the major characters turns out to have the most honor and integrity. I like her a lot more on rewatch.
posted by Corvid at 11:54 AM on August 26, 2014


Marie's shop lifting plotline... isn't great. It doesn't ever provide much drama, and it kind of belittles the women that they are off dealing with petty theft while the men do the reaal crime.

I was thinking about Marie's little shoplifting thing and wondering about it and where it takes us, really. I have a feeling that it was supposed to go somewhere, but the writer's strike maybe forestalled that?

What I'm looking forward to - when we get there - is the parallels (and I'm assuming they are there) between Hank knowing about Marie's criminal activities when Skyler confronts him about it; and Skyler knowing about Walt when Hank confronts her. Because it's a neat little detail here that I hadn't thought about until the rewatch: Hank is married to a shoplifter, is aware of it, and is trying to figure out how to manage it. Skyler is married to a meth manufacturer, and once she becomes aware of it, is trying to figure out how to manage it.
posted by nubs at 1:48 PM on August 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


Afaict Marie's shoplifting is (a) a nice riff harmonising with Heisenberg on rule-breaking and personas and (b) a chance for the actress to get some neat scenes.
posted by Sebmojo at 4:03 PM on August 27, 2014


I like how the show sets us up to watch Walt pull off this heist and to revel briefly in his victory, then drops the hammer: oh, you managed to steal the methylamine? Awesome. But you're still working for this crazy Tuco guy who ... holy shit.

And it's a neat inversion of the previous episode's structure. Last episode Walt is not in control of things until the end, where he asserts himself to Tuco. This episode has Walt firmly in control for almost the entire episode: virile, assertive, deceptive, winning at theft and chemistry. And then in just a few seconds Tuco snatches that control away from him. "Oh, Heisenberg says 'relax'." (And again Raymond Cruz totally sells it: "Damn, man, look at that!" at his bloody knuckles.)

Marie's shoplifting here is paid off later in the series in Open House but I agree it feels a little shoehorned in here. Maybe they were trying to draw some sort of parallel between Skyler's indignant reaction to Marie's theft from the store versus her ignorance of Walt's theft from the warehouse? (And I also really like nubs' "figuring out how to manage it" comment above.)
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 2:57 PM on August 29, 2014


Yeah, Raymond Cruz is awesome in this. Mercurial and terrifying.
posted by johnofjack at 3:24 PM on August 29, 2014


I also like the bit in the junkyard where Jesse gives Walt the side-eye for his new hat, and then again when Tuco addresses him as Heisenberg (which is the first Jesse's heard of this character!). Intentionally or not, it feels a little bit like Jesse gets to stand in for the audience here, since the transformation into Heisenberg was evidently rushed a little bit due to the writers' strike (which makes the pacing of this episode so different from the 6 episodes that precede it).

Yeah, the Marie-as-shoplifter never felt quite satisfying to me, either, at least not in the beginning, where it seemed mainly to serve as a device to depict her as kooky and potentially unstable. That said, it does fit in with the theme of the other three major characters all admitting to their own degree of (minor) illegality -- Marie with her shoplifting, Skyler with her admission of having smoked a little pot in college, and even Hank with his Cuban cigars. So none of them can claim to be completely unsullied (as it were) when it comes to the law -- even though, obviously, becoming a meth kingpin is different from smoking a Cuban cigar -- which renders their righteousness in certain shades of hypocrisy. But it's all a little too on-the-nose for me, though I don't mind it much because I feel like the first season is just the show getting its legs.
posted by scody at 3:24 PM on August 29, 2014


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