Breaking Bad: Phoenix

 "If I gave you that money, you would be dead inside a week..."

I've mentioned before that this series is the tale of Walter White's represses sociopathic or psychopathic (I'm no expert) gradually revealing themselves as circumstances and temptation make his drift inexorably from humble respectability to the criminal underworld where life is cheap. But this is the episode, and a superb bit of telly it is too, that proves it beyond doubt.

It's not that Walt keeps Jesse's $480,000 share of the meth deal from him until he's off the heroin; that's the right thing to do, amusing though it is to see Jesse trying to confront him in the classroom and immediately getting alpha maled by a father figure he can't help but defer to.

It sort of is the casual lying to Skyler, which surely can't go on for ever- in this episode he rings her while drinking at a bar with music playing, pretending to be shopping for nappies, bonding with Jane's despairing father (John de Lancie himself!) with unexpected results.

And yes, it sort of is the devastating final scene where, having just been blackmailed by Jane for the $480k with which she and Jesse were talking about a new life in New Zealand but got high instead, Jane vomits while asleep... and Walt just stands there, calculating that her dying now is in his best interests. That's cold, and the scene is shocking.

But even that is not the main thing. It's how he can miss his own daughter's birth and, when he finally gets there, how he's clearly just acting, and trying to hide his coldness. I'm the father of a daughter, and let's just say that the birth of Little Miss Llamastrangler went rather differently.

There are other things in this episode- Walt's problem with being unable to find a way of being able to spend his money with everybody thinking he's nearly bankrupt, possibly solved by an innocent Walt Jr, Saul and two "Rain Man types" in Belarus; Hank not being a fan of public breastfeeding; Skyler's boss and potential lover Ted being at the birth. But man, Walt is cold. And this is as good as television gets.