Breaking Bad: Confessions

 "Goodbye, Mr Jesse Pinkman. Hello, Mr Credit to Society."

You have to hand it to this episode. I mean, I might as well just stop describing individual episodes of Breaking Bad as superlative, as you can pretty much take that for granted. But this particular episode manages to be basically functional, putting pieces in place for the next act, and therefore traditionally requiring a slight dip in quality.

Hah! No such thing happens.

The episode centres around Walt's incredible confession, a devilishy clever work of cleverness that weaves together the facts that we've all seen over the last few seasons in a way that implicates Hank. It's a tour de force of both writing and acting. Walt- no, Heisenberg, is as vgood an actor as Bryan Cranston here. There is no higher praise.

Yet Aaron Paul is no less superlative in his performance. The scene in the desert where, yet again, Jesse shows that he may be undereducated but he's bloody clevee, something the snobbish Walt will never realise. It's unsurprising that he refuses to cooperate with a secretive Hank, himself at the start of another descent into obsessive self-destructiveness, but less surprising that, as soon as he puts two and five together with the ricin (he's wrong, but sort of right,,,), he turms against Walt, in a very fiery way. Will he now cooperate with Hank.

This very much fees like the beginning of the end.

And there are stiull subtleties to mention. Walt manipulating his own son, the poor boy. Marie's alienation from obsessive Hank. Skyler's dead eyes. Todd muscling in on the meth trade.

This is soooo good. That is all.