Breaking Bad: Fly

 "It's all contaminated..."

This is, it soon becomes apparent, not a typical episode. Not so much a bottle episode but something with echoes of both Becket and Pinter, a two-hander with just Walt and Jesse with definite "calm before the storm" vibes. After all the complex machinations between Walt and Gus we pause for an episode of introspection and slow, philosophical character development.

On the surface this is a simple, silly and whimsical episode about cooking being disrupted by a fly, and much humour is found early on in Walt's over-the-top obsession with the fly versus Jesse, very much the voice of reason, judst wanting to get back to work. We end with the roles reversed... but what happens in-between is fascinating.

Because Walt finally tells a philosophical Jesse about the night Jane died, the night that he believes he should have died- after his daughter was born, after he'd provided for his family, but before Skyler found out. He never was motivated by the desire to live, but to be a provider beyond the grave. Now, his life trapped in its inevitable course, he has a darkness deep inside. He ponders the sheer unlikeliness of himself, a man who never going to bars alone, happening to do so and to speak to Jane's dad of all people. Walt draws, perhaps, a more philosophical conclusion than we viewers may, knowing as we do that coincidences are the wellspring of television drama.

It's a subtly done character piece, gently resetting the relationship between them- and gently establishing that Walt knows exxactly what Jesse is doing in creaming off an amount for himself...