Unraveling 5x06: :" Buy Out" (i.e. "Sell Out")

I tell you the truth, it is hard for 
a rich man to enter the kingdom 
of heaven. Again I tell you, it is 
easier for a camel to go through 
the eye of a needle than for a 
rich man to enter the kingdom of God. 
When the disciples heard this, they 
were greatly astonished and asked, 
“Who then can be saved?” 
Jesus looked at them and said,
 “With man this is impossible, 
but with God all things are possible.

    -Book of Matthew, 19:23-26, Wikipedia

Buy-out "i Sold my son's birthright..."

-Walter, 5x06, Buy Out

Now this is soul accountability!

What's that egregiously misused Sartre buzz-quote..."Hell is (what you project on) other people"



TAO: Walter, God even knows when a single ounce of methlamine sloushes in the stash-tank

Incomplete Accounting: Does anyone know what and where the soul is?

Previous Scholarship

• "Breaking Bad's Hell on Earth," by Michelle Kuo and Albert Wu, Salon, July 15, 2012.
• "Why we Need Breaking Bad," by Jackson Cuidon, Christianity Today, July 2, 2013

What about the Soul?

Well, older Walt would have responded with "...FUCK YOU."

No, really, what about the soul?
What does the word even mean....
QUICK HISTORICAL LINGUISTIC SPIRITUAL CONTEXT
This incredibly incomplete post may soon be the spot where I return to have a relaxing go at deconstructing the soul?
What's that Bizzaro James Brown? You're telling me that Walt, more often than not, doesn't "Got soul," but is still very much "Super Bad"?

Here are images and video clips...they speak for themselves, but eventually some words should show up to mess with the purity.

Fire and Brimstoning

Spotlight Episode: Buy-Out (link to post)

Unraveling 5x09: "Blood Money" (i.e. "Deja Vu, Huh...")

The more things change, the more they stay the same...
      -Cliche (the inanimate noun, not a name of some obscure French writer)

The Tao of the Epistemological-Odes

 (i.e. "if you want to get straight to the root meaning, and bypass these posts' core, twisty branches, robust and rotted leaves, and especially the unneeded-but-unavoidable decorations....here's where you can come for some pith [...at least the Bullet Points....wait, oh nooot really that relevatory a pun).

Alright, these will be statements that try to navigate the slippery slope between obnoxiously over-thinking-it and profound-realizations-that-a-step-by-step analysis or rambling-pontification just couldn't do.

I will definitely explain many of them once I get a chance to refresh, revisit, listen to others, and rewatch (and repeat...on regress!)

• There is no escape from this.
• Nothing could have ever really stopped the White Train: all that they, and us, can do now is watch the crash...we couldn't avert our eyes even if we wanted (we don't)
• Many ghosts haunted the fabric of this "yarn," especially the resurrected iconography of Gustavo Fring!
• Every action, every inaction, every word both said and unsaid, even an elusive sound, echoes in eternity.
• Every composition, every indelible musical accompaniment, every structural choice, every choice and past moment and future moment and no moment, reflects into a shattered spectrum through a hall of cracked mirrors. 
• The road to the realization of the self and the other, leads to a surge of regressive denial and acceptance that eventually causes a cognitive dissonance in which your car (...as my friend and fellow madman Nick Bacon could show you, in the univers ) crashes.
• Lydia, the quality of the blue is inferior most likely because Todd and the Skinhead crew don't know what they're doing. 
• while this possible scenario doesn't jibe with Lyd's definition of a "best-laid-plan," it certainly reifies the metaphor of Walter's Great White "Hopes." More to come in the Crucial Threads about race and class and all that geopolitcal/existential fun stuff!

• To figure out the way to truth (I mean, Hank always knew, he was just spun about by the hands of fate and blinded by his own good-naturedness)...you just need a spacious man-cave, a.
• The road to recovery often leads to a psychotic freak-out in which you drive reckless and toss stacks of cash at the fragmentary echoes of all previous places where-you-tried-to-do-right-but-witnessed-sin (...oh Jesse, there's a better path toward renouncing your material possesions...trust me...)

If You and I (each "other") don't know what this post is about...then we better tread lightly; and I will do my best to "Thread" not-so-hardly...oh, if only this sloppy and always "looming" business could be as simple as art itself....

Mind blowery

--------------------------------------------------

Path I Took

Gut Reactions; Pre-(necessary evil)-rambling remarks and free wheelin' observations, some elusive attempt at plot summary 

My audible utterances during the show: 

(I try to stay completely quiet, especially watching it with friends and fellow fanatics....really): hehehehehehe, sick....ooooo....oh no, a ha....real...oh, wait....pfffft...pfffffft...hahahahah....oh, man....YES!...nice.....niiiiiiiice..... then stoned silence for a while.

What it felt like:

I usually only get the "take-your-breath-away" affect from sublime landscapes that exist in my actual spatial reality. This was the first time I had that feeling when watching a TV show. I reme

So yeah, it felt like that could have been the final episode, and I still would have seen the whole series as perfect (not just thematic, but the audience really is given a lot (the writing of what happened is literally on the walls).

I also feel like it is already my favorite episode they've ever put together. I have a feeling I may feel this way each week from now until....

INSERT SHOT FROM COLD OPEN HERE

...it would have been a postmodern mindfuck akin to the end of Infinite Jest or the book/film No Country for Old Men

Plot Summary (?): 

Hey, guess what. All it takes is an insignificant spark to set off a chemical reaction long in the making...the show is evolving before our eyes. Reviewers can't do what they did last half and force conventional schemas of realism. This played out as art-entertainment of the highest order. I was speechless after the final shot (you know, the one after Walt threatens to murder Hank, doing a symbolic (to use a televisual analogy, here's an equivalent sequence from my second most-obsessed-with ...depending on how long my string of under-employment lasts, there may be a "The Meaning of Trigun is also the Meaning of Life" sibling-site on the vaguest of well-meant horizons!)

This episode was also mainly about the uneasy road to recovery. Everyone seemed to be in a disoriented state of either sobering up to harsh realities, or attemptiong to  (even if their specific vices have changed, the mentalities of a deceptive-drug-addict (why do you think Gus made such a big stink about... "Never...trust...a....drug addict,:

Primary Tao (the episode's "catalyzer"):

.... one sentence that brings back into unity all the tactics of art-dissection..... 

To take the initial advertising mantra from Shawn Ryan's The Shield (as I might eventually get to, Breaking Bad is indebted to The Shield more than any of the other "ground-breaking-tube-viewing." Shawn Ryan and company's pithy advertising mantra was, "The Road to Justice is Twisted." So, for this epistemological-ode, the P.T. would be:

• The Intertwining Paths to Karmic Justice are entangled.

Misc. Hits and Misses

Here are some pictures that may elucidate the arduous yet exhilarating BB hole I submerged myself in today:

I really wanted to just live through the astounding atmosphere and delicious rubix-cube mirror logic of episode 5x09, but I desperately needed to jot down stuff once Walt says "Deja Vu, Huh..."  if I wanted to get stuff down and not forget all my impressions. This match-book was closest at hand....

Once I realized that the mid-episode (I have to double-check, but I'd bet this scene occurs in the exact middle of the episode). The closest thing I could find to write on was this (sorry Edwin Lew...), I found the unintended metaphor chuckle-able

...I tried to jot down stuff during the commercial breaks...

...but the formulas got a little unruly.

The Name of the Rose 

(i.e. explaining the title and getting down to serious business):

Blood Money

Well I'm grinding my life out, steady and sure 
Nothing more wretched than what I must endure 
I'm drenched in the light that shines from the sun 
I could stone you to death for the wrongs that you done 
Sooner or later you make a mistake, 
I'll put you in a chain that you never will break 
Legs and arms and body and bone I pay in blood, but not my own 
                            -Bob Dylan, "Pay in Blood," Tempest

The first "outside" song that I thought I'd get clever with; kind of parallels Jesse and Saul

If you just watched the episode I just watched, I figure I won't have to point out how the above blog-bastardized-epigraph(ic)s relate to the themes of this specific episode (hmmmm, maybe a good and authentic play on words really is to refer to "episodes" of BB as epistemological-odes...?]. I may end up hyper-linking some silly little "foot-note" later on, just to cover all the bases of the "mission statement."

But for now, just know that after I actually listened to the lyrics after just arbitrarily pasting the text in, I discover that there is an eerie amount of seemingly unintended intertextuality between Breaking Bad's exhilarating celebration of the abyss and Dylan's latest (and likely last) album.

Both Tempest/Bob Dylan and BB/Vince Gilligan subvert and adhere to the mythology of The Bible, Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, and James Joyce...I really believe this! While I'm testing the limits of proper paranoia, am I the only one here that is also spooked by how similar sounding their last names are?

What Does The (i.e "Insert quote from episode") Mean?

Deja Vu.... Trust me on this, the following will make the case LOUD AND CLEAR (....though, as you may see, not as loud-and-clear as the loud-and-unclear-sounds that weave throughout 5x09
images...across numerous episodes...across every season...ESPECIALLY THE PILOT...yup, BB episode 5x09 totally pulled a Third Season Arrested Development structural-mirror-switcheroo...the type of device that draws stark att (...see Wikipedia page on Gestalt theories....I'm not hyperlinking that now)
Here's another example I find pretty clutch! LYDIA AND COFFEE...WALTER BACK AT THE BEGINNING...BUT NO.

This shows the kind of stuff the cats over at the AV Club have been getting at, the shows aesthetic works so well because it (for a interesting take on these type of "spectation" check out Chris Hager's undergraduate thesis for a different perspective on the same types of questions Breaking Bad necessitates...this is a personal hyperlink, as well; since the

Cold Opening and Fiery Finale 

One of my old friends was talking to me about the three years he was a cocaine addict in high school. He despised the mentality and culture of hardcore drug junkies. He, in a poetical fashion, once told me that the best way to summarize a coke-junkie is that they get caught up in a state of "lying about lying." This never made sense to me...until I saw Walt's performances in this episode. Even his final

Was is just me, or....after taking aside the sublime ecstasy of the opening sequence...did anyone get the feeling that Ralph Edwards was going to come out the crawl space and say, "Walter White, this is yoooour liiife!" And then Ralph would take Walt on a symbolic and performative journey through the pivotal parts of his life! That was actually kind of what happened, wasn't it?

The opening shot cements that this will be the most Symbolic Season of Television Ever Presented! 

I'm referring to the future-present Walt as "No-Where Man."

Funny, current-in-the-shows-main-timeline Walt is, as Marie jokingly says, "the devil." 52 year old Walter strikes me as the most fallen-yet-still-trying-to-finally-get-one-final-shot-to-do-something-recklessly-decent

The final shot is this....

Profound Photography

....soon, this is gonna take a hot minute or hundred....

Musical Overtures and Undertures

----do do dooo do doo doo do do dooo dod do

Dramatis Personae 

Moments in which the stars shine brightly against the darkness, or have their light enveloped by the expanding event horizon of Heisenberg's black hole (...sounds cultist and psychosexual....umm, Vince and Crew probably didn't intend that interpretation...but...maybe?)

Hank

Jesus Christ, Hank (...not "Jesus Christ, Marie"...but that too, I guess...). I get you buddy. Want to know how. Here's Hank's work  station....

Here's a spookily similar scene (oh, the commonalities of us Ahab-types...wait, is this "White" Whale an honest depiction of mankind's mortal nemesis....shit, I'll get back to ya on that one) from my own life

 That was the work-station I'd been using all Sunday, in a fury of disorientated analysis...trying to at least figure out "who dun it" in the whole "meaning of Breaking Bad" query. I'm still flustered (like Hank, I just needed a garage door to close, leaving me and the "accused" alone...then I can get to the point

Jesse

Oh Jesse, you ugly beautiful bastard (literally, in this episode, symbolically)

Skylar

Saul was at his swarmiest this episode (though, to be fair, based on the life he's lead and the people he ingratiates himself with and the clientele he serves and observes on a daily basis, I can't blame him for not understanding Jesse's attempt at karmic justice).

Walt Jr.

Not promoted to end of things pantheon quite yet, but I have faith it will happen. Walt Jr. has to be used for something. It may seem like a forced sacrifice of a pawn; but that may have been the intent behind Walt Jr.'s passivity to begin with (...or at least, Gilligan and Crew did some fancy hand-work and used their stellar power of self-correcting narrative-revisioning to make it seem that way, at the point of 5x09.

For now, there's still a good old call back to the obsessive quality that defines Junior:

The Spectres:

Mike

Still dead, but still finding ways to kick Walt's ass and continue to maintain quality control of Walt's evil products, and to help orient the moral compasses of his fellow fallen angels.

Gus

Oh Gus, Walt may not be consciously reflecting on how the tactics he used to usurp you ended up bringing him to his demonic knees, but the Fritz Langian expressionist shots sure make the astute viewer aware.

WHAT THE HELL COULD POSSIBLE HAPPEN NEXT WEEK?:

I could make specific guesses, but I'd most definitely be off. At this point, I think that Vince and Crew have already thought about what even-the-most-perceptive-viewer may expect, and
will subvert and twist the hows and whens into something elusive and thrilling. Though, as the Dramatis Personae section is beginning to tease through, it's safe to assume that "...nobody wins." No question there will be further from the Hank and Walt "falling out," but the next episode will likely start to introduce and reintroduce more shadows of Walt's past, ready to unleash the onslaught of karmic justice that puts him into the No-Where-Man zone of the future.

So yeah, there is still a pluri-potent (i.e. shit load) of meaning and observations to be made by the potency of the plural! Feel free to contribute, even if the discussion is still incomplete (it most certainly always will be...most likely). Any stray observation, brutal critique, or...these posts don't bite, and its not like we're crammed into the confines of a symbolic domestic space, or anything!

Let's get weird(er)...

Prelude (Elucidating Flashbacking and Flashforwarding)

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, 
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; 
And on the pedestal these words appear...
             -Bryan Cranston, as alter-egos WW/Heisenberg, reading P.B. Shelley's "Ozymandias"

Before you start unquestionable internalizing the spoken poetry used in that amazing promo...

...quickly skim this article from Slate. The multiple and fourth-wall breaking elements of that  (debt to former teacher David Rosen for teasing through the Mobius Strip logic of the poem's syntax). Shelley did his deed with a Sonnet, Vince Gilligan is doing it with a  television serial.

(SEE "Abstract" and "Crucial Threads" to understand better what this site is all about).

If you aren't caught up on Breaking Bad (BB), please don't look at this site. This isn't an elitist, "no cretins allowed" proclamation; but rather a caveat to ensure that it doesn't steal the amazing psychological experience of trying to piece the puzzle together from episodes 1x01 (Pilot) to 5x16 ("Felina"). And yeah, at the time of this post we are only up to 5x08; any predictions are based on either uncertain conjecture or an understanding of the amazing finale that Gilligan and crew have been scheming (either through intentional clues made in recent seasons, or through retroactive use of the shows numerous red-herrings and preexisting components).

See Final Acts for further stuff on this type of shit (...let me clarify, many of these hyperlinks will contain material in-media-res; in other words, expect a hopefully-temporary schizophrenic text dump, or some strange terms that may mean nothing at this point).

BB is the pinnacle of visual storytelling. The finest, most enthralling, most unique-yet-deeply-rooted-in-mythology, most fully realized work of art that I've ever seen. Yeah, there are still 8 episodes left, but I would be shocked if they weren't even better than what came before (...only being as captivating as they should/will be to a viewer that has been tracking the series' "lot of angles" religiously).

But, you ain't need no Comp. Lit. PhD or familiarity with highfalutin theories to feel the show's grasp on your psyche/soul/cognition. Being a TV-freak helps a lot, but BB is the type of show that could convert television-serial-nay-sayers into people that genuinely realize, "I am in the middle of the rarest of things; a cultural craze that is every bit as worthy of the critical praise. This show transcends all that I ever thought a 'TV show' capable of."

Many believe that its a show that will only seem brighter once the fury has died down. Let's not wait for stuffy academics to lay claim to the show's truth content. Let's figure it out here. For free. No loans necessary (just a whole lot of worthwhile time, watching, thinking, reminiscing, intense conversations with friends, re-watching, and overall obsessiveness)!

But trust, this is a show that will make you a better person (if you learn how to tread the waters of its aesthetic maelstrom); or at least make the whole life-is-beautiful-ugly-terrifying-satisfying-confusing-coherent-heavenly-abyssal-perfect-flawed-WE'RE-FUCKED-but-maybe-in-the-best-spot-for-salvation thing about human-experience-these-days way easier to swallow. 

SEE "Everything is Contaminated" for more "information" about the Breaking-Bad-universe that arose in the "real world."

BB is a show of such amazing craft, that an average viewer thrust into it at any given point can figure out a lot of the magic. Recent example: I was playing some songs featured in the show to a close friend who has never seen an episode [he's also one of the few of my buddies that I haven't really spoiled things for]. I played the great Nat King Cole song "Pick Yourself Up" that plays during the Godfather-esque montage near the middle of 5x08. I say something like, "Oh man, if you saw the scene this was played during, you'd love it." Based on the lyrics, he guessed that it was a scene of someone just getting brutally beat, Close enough to the prison-slaughter that occurs. The fucker even made great guesses about the crux of action, based on the songs tempo.

To be fair, my friend has a knack for immediate deconstruction, but immense credit goes to Gillian and Thomas Golubic (music supervisor that helps Vince select preexisting songs that are essential to the show), for having this unfathomable capacity to find tonally-perfect songs that don't seem like the usual "HEY LOOK HOW RELEVANT THE WORDS OF THIS SONG ARE TO THE ACTIONS YOU'RE SEEING THE CHARACTERS PERFORM IN THIS MONTAGE." quality seen in even the better quality TV serials; even if in hindsight many of the songs describe exactly what the scene and show are about.

SEE Music section for further inquiry.

Much of the initial fun of watching the show is due to having no idea what will happen next. A viewer unavoidably makes constant predictions about the narrative. In the earlier seasons, Vince and crew would intentionally set up scenarios where narrative expectations are upended (e.g. the cold open of 2x11 "Mandala," where the cross-cutting made me convinced that the child riding the bike would be shot in a drug-deal-gone-bad; of course, much like Combo, the audience quickly learns the error of prejudice). This type of gift is due to the intense writing and cinematography.

SEE Photography section if you want to see the juxtaposition of sublime images and clips, and dig into the ways that the show makes almost every shot an instant icon. Hypothesis: the cinematographer and mise-en-scene are able to exist in multiple "planes of experience."

I still don't know what I'm "talking" about with the previous hypo., but I think the following may hold a clue to the overall "thesis"

It seems as if the crew of BB, mainly its show-running mastermind, have seen every visual narrative (television shows and movies) worthy of investment (running the gamut of pulp entertainment, Looney Tunes carnivalesque carnage, middle-class satire, and high-brow artsy stuff). Both the best and the worst (determined by Gilligan and crew's tastes) are chewed up vigorously. What is spat out is shockingly more appealing that the sum of food parts that Gilligans eyeballs were crunching on (yeah, real stupid metaphor...sorry).

SEE Shadows of the Past for more on the plethora of artistic homage

The show seems to know what you're thinking, even before you think it. It usually twists the expectations, but in a way that-either immediately or in hindsight-fits perfectly within the internal logic of the series. When I watch the show, I don't feel like an innocent that is judging Walt (and "bad" company) from afar; I feel the real/constructed paranoia that Walt lives through when he realizes that Gus is the ultimate mastermind. As Walt says to Gus during their last shot-reverse shot meeting, when he realizes he must humble himself while still holding onto his hubris, "I can't pretend I don't know that person is you. I want there to be no confusion. I know I owe you my life, and more than that, I respect the strategy."

To continue to let BB's astounding screen-writing speak for itself, (I guess this would be a deluded fantasy of a BB fanatic talking about Gilligan to doubters, or apostrophizing to "Breaking Bad" itself), "He has been ten steps ahead of me at every turn...No, he's known everything all along..Don't you see...Think about it! It's brilliant!" (4x12, "End Times)

Best part about the show (and the reason it grew as organically as it did), though, is that a lot of the nuts and bolts of Vince's "best laid plans" were due to collaborative improv and the unswayable hands of fate!

So yeah, this is a site meant for the fanatic, or aspiring fanatic that has seen every episode at least once. Once the surface nature of the plot and characters are understood, we can try to figure out the specific formulas behind the unbelievable and unprecedented chemistry. Relevant analogy provided by the show: Walt's lesson in the pilot, where he knew that his apathetic students would give a shit if he explained the mathematical underpinnings of chemical reactions; so he has to rely on razzle dazzle and showmanship to have them at least glimpse the light of his passions; this scene is also "seen" as the show's initial fourth-wall-breaking mission statement.

That was a teaching quality that he has clearly lost when he teaches Todd the trade in 5x08. At that point, he's just pure ego blathering to the deaf ears of his projected good-soldier-id. I'll need the contributions and check-and-balances of y'all to ensure this project becomes more than just esoteric, monomaniacal babble. Help!

SEE sections Internalized Works and Previous Scholarship, to see the specific shoulders of giants I'm desperately trying to balance myself on.

Aside from critical responses and observation reactions, please feel free to comment on ways to improve this site's form and content; even my quirky rhetoric and writing style is up for lambasting (the inner internet troll in us all can be used for good, when contained). 

SEE Posting Structure for more specifics.

With this show, a site that tries to encapsulate its elusive genius is gonna have to get complicated, but I need to avoid it remaining convoluted. In the spirit of the show's shift from seeming structural chaos to crystallized purity, this site's context (the stuff clunked down in the non-blog sidebar links) will be constantly self-correcting and collaborative. No one mind is capable of complete omniscience; even when interpreting a television show that, through a cosmic umbrella of interconnectiveness, succeeds in making every separate thing at least seem like it means something.

What would happen if a single mind thought it could understand fully and without error even the tiniest grain of sand?

Path to the answer...remember all the scenes where Walt attempted to see the devil in the details...attempting to control the tiniest things when everything crumbled...band-aid in the pool, uneven table leg at the hospital, the entire episode "Fly," the loose thread in his hat after his wife wishes that he die faster, and pretty much everything he stares at after he kills Mike.

What happens in real life when an individual contains himself from all human contact and humble interaction is what happens to the Dramatis Personae in Breaking Bad.

What would happen if someone let a progressive obsession develop into regression, living through the cognitive dissonance of engaging with a show in a method counterproductive to it's very essence?

The answer to these questions will probably be best seen and heard in whatever the final shot  (hell, you never know, maybe we already did see the final shot of him chronologically). Expect subliminally sublime symmetry!

Here's a pop culture analogue that could also shed some light on these questions, and at least would show the state I'd be in if I ever thought I could wrap this little site up anytime soon...

So yeah, with that caveat, let's jump down the rabbit hole(s). Who's coming with me!?

"Bad" Puns

In reflecting on the nature of the show, there are many really clutch puns that Gilligan and crew could have likely gotten away with in advertising the show (see section on marketing-strategies for examples of their clever juxtaposition of words and images). This is a post dedicated to those "what-ifs." Some will seem likely. Some will seem like a stretch. Some will most likely stretch the limits of "good" taste. Big shout outs to the greatest BB humor site I've ever encountered, "Breaking Bad Comics," for inspiring such silly reverence.

• Heisenberg: There's a Meth-Id to his Madness
• (CONTRIBUTION BY Alex Connell) - Walt Jr: "Remember I'm Lame."