Like every great work of art,Breaking Badworks on a variety of levels. It's a story about family. About character. About just how far a person will go when backed up against the wall.
But when it comes to what the characters want and how they get it on this plot-driven show,Breaking Badis a story about one thing: money and what it really buys.
(Spoiler Warning: The story contains spoilers for season 5 of Breaking Bad up to Episode 513.)
At the end of episode 512, Jesse calls Walt on his cell phone, and taunts him. "I'm gonna get you where youreallylive."
Jesse knows exactly where that is. Jesse doesn't lay siege to the A-1-A car wash. He doesn't hold Skyler and Walt Jr and even Baby Holly at gunpoint.
He threatens Walt's money.
From the very first episode of the series, Jesse--and we--have seen what Walter White will do for money. Jesse sat there in the junkyard at the beginning of season two watching as Walt did the math in his head, coming up with "the number" --$737,000--that would allow Walt to quit the business, and maybe even die in peace.
How far will he go to reach that number? In the middle of his first drug drop for Gus Fring, he gets a text from Skyler that she's about to deliver the baby. The 50-year-old cancer patient begins rushing around frantically preparing for his big moment. Not to get to the hospital maternity ward, but to arrive at an abandoned motel where a shopping bag full of cash awaits.
Flash forward two seasons, and we see a very different kind of Walt, a Walt who's reached his number many times over, but still needs more, lots more. Watch Walt's famous, and pivotal, "I am the one who knocks speech," and note how it begins: "Do you know how much I make in a year?" ($15 million a year, give or take, but Gus Fring's meth empire is big enough to be listed on the NASDAQ.)
The irony is that for all its importance in the world ofBreaking Bad, money doesn't actually buy you much.
During their brief period of detente, Gus invites Walter to dinner and clues in his protege."You are a wealthy man now," says Gus. "And one must learn to be rich. To be poor, anyone can manage."
What did Gus learn about being rich? That money isn't everything, it seems.This dinner takes place at Fring's modest suburban home, with his 10-year-old Volvo station wagon parked in the driveway. Despite wealth beyond imagining, Gus puts on a yellow shirt every morning, and punches the clock at Los Pollos Hermanos, living his cover to the hilt, inhabiting the life of an anonymous fast food restaurant manager.
Walt will live these lessons, too. When he tries to spend even a little of his ill-gotten gains, splurging on a $300 bottle of champagne bought with cash, or buying Walt, Jr. a new Challenger, his wife Skyler scolds him:Theymust keep up appearances at all costs.
In season five, Walt is allowed a little leeway--as a modestly successful car wash owner he no longer has to live the ascetic life of an unemployed school teacher. But make no mistake. Walter White is still living The American Nightmare, with millions in the bank and nothing to show for it but three newish American cars in the driveway of the same old dingy ranch house.
Of course, that cash isn't actually in the bank. More than any other show,Breaking Badhas made money into a tangible entity. InThe Wire, drug money is dropped off at lawyer Maury Levy's office, and magically re-appears in a numbered account in the Caymen Islands. But inBreaking Bad, it's all about the process.
Walter White will spend more time and effort figuring out how to deal with his cash--from hiding it in heating ducts to transforming that dirty money into something he can spend--than he ever did converting chemicals into blue meth. Feeling guilty after the air crash that ended season two, Walt hastily begins to burn his money on the barbecue. When he changes his mind, he literally sets himself on fire before dumping himself and the money into the pool.
In her role as money launderer, Skyler must bear the burden of all these bills. She stuffs them into garment bags, only to watch the clothes rod in her closet collapse under the weight. The bags of cash are then shoved into into a dank, bug-infested crawl space. On Breaking Bad, paper profits has a whole different meaning.
As Walt's meth business grows, so does The Giant Pile of Money. In Episode 508, Skyler leads Walt to a storage unit and pulls back a tarp to reveals a huge mound of cash--$27 million or so.
Walt: How much is this?
Skyler: I have no earthly idea. I truly don’t. I just stack it up. Keep it dry. Spray it for silverfish. There’s more money here than we can spend in 10 lifetimes.
"She's the protector of a enormous bale of paper that's of no real use to them," says showrunner Vince Gilligan, explaining Skyler's dilemma.
But even if they can't spend it, the money means something. It's a way of keeping score.
"How much is enough?" Skyler asks as she stands before the GPOM. "How big does this pile have to be?"
Walt doesn't answer right then--for plot purposes he needs to get out of the meth business. But only a few days earlier, he had a number on the tip of his tongue: $720 million.
Gray Matter, the company he started with Gretchen and Elliot is worth $2.16 billion--Walt confides to Jesse that he calculates the value of the publicly traded company every week--making his share just shy of three-quarters of a billion.
When he realizes his DEA agent brother-in-law Hank is on to him, Walt heads out to the desert, and buries seven barrels of bills like a dog burying a bone. The effort almost kills him, and in a scene that plays like a deathbed confessiont, he tries to extract a promise from Skyler.
"I'll give myself up if you promise me one thing," he mumbles. "You. Keep. The Money. Never give it up." Walt is willing to turn himself in, give up his freedom, and what's left of his life, so long as his heirs get to keep that big pile of partially laundered paper.
In the endgame of Breaking Bad, money is also about power. At least if you rule the money, rather than letting it rule you.
We've seen Lydia casually kill off Declan and his entire meth making crew over profits and product. In the opening of Episode 513, she's again unhappy with the clear, impure product--"Blue is our brand. It's what our buyers pay top dollar for"--but Uncle Jack won't make the same mistake. Don't let those White Pride tats fool you. Uncle Jack is playing the long game. When Walt comes over, asking him to kill Jesse, the conversation quickly turns to price.
Walt: "Let's talk about the money."
Uncle Jack: "I don't want your money. I want you to cook for us...It's a drop in the bucket compared to what we expect to earn from this blue stuff."
By walking away from the easy money--something that Walt can never do--Uncle Jack has transformed it into power.
Perhaps the biggest plot twist in a series full of them comes in the form of a proof-of-life photo sent on a cell phone. A sketchy cell phone image taken in Hank's back yard convinces Walt that Jesse is holding his cash hostage. And thus begins a series of some of the best moments of what might be the greatest show in the history of television.
"Don't you touch my money!" Walt implores, with more passion than he ever summoned in seasons past when someone held a gun to his head.
A panicked Walt drives like a maniac, trying to talk Jesse out of doing the unthinkable. The man who was so calm about the prospect of Jesse setting fire to his house, is out of his mind at the thought of him torching his money. He begins babbling a confession into his cell phone. While Hank records it all on a tape recorder. It's almost too sweet.
Walt heads into the desert, only to find no one there, and the place where he buried the barrels still intact. Heisenberg has outsmarted himself.As Hank, Jesse, and Gomez arrive and arrest Walt, it's a hard-earned moment, a long-time coming.
It would have been a satisfying, if not particularly authentic, ending for the whole series. But as the cuffs click around Walt's wrists, we realize there are still a few minutes until the top of the hour. And still three hours of Breaking Bad left to come. Even the most casual viewers know that it won't be spent on arraignments and plea bargains.
Sure enough, here comes Uncle Jack, and the good guys find themselves hopelessly outgunned. It's not the first time, but this close to end, could it be the last? If so, it would be, like so many things on Breaking Bad, all for the love of money.
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