‘Breaking Bad’ Hall of Fame: “Ozymandias”

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This episode is brought to you by Max. The Emmy award-winning series Hacks returns this April.
The new season follows Debra Vance making a move from her Vegas residency to Hollywood showbiz. Tensions rise as Debra and Ava try to get their late night show off the ground and make history while doing it.

Starring Gene Smart and Hannah Einbinder.

Hacks Season 4 is streaming Thursday, April 10th exclusively on Macs.

And don't forget to check out the official Hacks podcast on Spotify.

Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. Now on video.
I'm Jonah Robinson. I'm Rob Mahoney.
Hi, Rob. Hi.
We're in studio. This is wild.
Welcome to the brand new Ringer TV feed. We're here to bring you our usual Prestige content.
We won't always be in this flashy studio when we do it. Sometimes we will be at home speaking at our cameras.
Your home setup doesn't look like this? The fake plants aren't nearly as nice in my home as they are here in the studio. I know these tchotchkes seem like you.
The football behind you very much, I would think, is on your shelf too. Very on brand for me.
But yeah, so we will be covering our usual content on this feed. We're doing a little special Hall of Fame episode though to kick it off.
We are ducting into the Prestige TV Hall of Fame, which is a very eclectic group of episodes thus far because it's just sort of what we decide to celebrate at the time. And this one goes out to Justin Sales, who has been shepherding this feed for several months now.
And Justin was like, let's do Breaking Bad. Let's do Ozymandias.
Specifically and understandably. If you're going to do Breaking Bad, this is the natural entry point.
That's not how it happened. Justin was like, we're going to do Breaking Bad.
I knew what he meant by that. You had some questions.
You were like, which? Well, look, I have my personal tastes. And I think for me, what is a personal litmus test for a long time, personally, if I talked about the episode The Fly with somebody, season three episode The Fly of Breaking Bad, and they didn't like it.
And they said, I didn't see the point. Nothing happened.
It was just very clear to me that me and that person are not watching TV in the same way. There's no judgment, but also I'm going to hold it against them for the rest of their life.
So now that people know if they meet you on the street in order to impress you, they should be like, you know, what's a great episode? You know, it's a real banger. The other Rian Johnson joint.
You know, it's a textbook definition of a bottle episode. It's fly.
We may or may not be coming back to that episode as we sort of talk about the what-ifs of what might have gone into the Hall of Fame other than Ozymandias in the Breaking Bad canon. But Ozymandias, if you folks at home are unfamiliar, is the third-to-last episode of Breaking Bad ever.
In the final season, remember that the final season was split into two. This is like an early, early move on the part of AMC to just really milk it on Breaking Bad.
This is a prequel to the Breaking Bad film El Camino. Stop.
Stop. It aired on September 15th, 2013.
How does that make you feel? Not good. Over 10 years.
Not good.

Since Ozymandias premiered. I will say, at least Breaking Bad feels like it has settled into the public consciousness

in a way that feels not old, but not of this era we're in now.

There are a lot of shows where you tell me, oh my God, that was 10 years ago.

And it's like, it feels like it happened yesterday.

This doesn't.

I think because it was so seismic.

It was immediately canonized. Like in real time.
Yes. That's an amazing episode of TV.
And since then, its reputation has only grown. It comes up anytime you're having a best episodes of basically any form of TV conversation.
And I think because of that, it almost seems separate from time. I also think that because Better Call Saul happened and Better Call Saul was great, we have a whole entire sequel prequel series that came after this to really cement how long ago it was actually that Breaking Bad ended.
This, okay, as I mentioned, September 15, 2013, written by Maura Wally Beckett, who is an icon in the sort of Gilliganverse in terms of writers and directed by, as you mentioned, the great Rian Johnson.

Rian Johnson, this is 2013, so this is pre his most universally loved and no one ever argues about it film, Star Wars The Last Jedi, a movie that I love. That's how young we were, is The Last Jedi hadn't come out yet and we weren't all aged by the experience.
Barely a twinkle in his eye. but he had to

break

my favorite

Brothers Bloom

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and Lou is The Last Jedi hadn't come out yet and we weren't all aged by the experience. Barely a twinkle in his eye.
But he had done Brick, My Favorite Brothers Bloom and Looper. And so he was like, he was a film guy doing television at a time when that wasn't as much of a thing as it has since become.
You know, when like Soderbergh did The Nick and stuff like that, like we started to sort of blur what is a, you know, you and I are sitting on the other side of several episodes of Disclaimer. You know, now we're living in a world where filmmakers are making television all the time.
But this was just like, for the Johnson fans, the real Ryan Sickos, this was a huge moment for us. Were you a big Ryan Johnson fan before? You're a brick guy, right? Absolutely, A huge brick guy.
I too am a Brothers Bloom head, enthusiast, supporter, advocate. We're out there in the streets with sandwich signs trying to get people to watch the Brothers Bloom.
Please watch the Brothers Bloom. It's so good.
Please do. As you celebrate Aiden Brody and the Brutalist this year, consider Brothers Bloom.
There's really no better way. It's the reason for the season.
But I think as far as what makes prestige TV, we talk about the anti-hero element of Breaking Bad and The Sopranos and all these shows that kind of crystallized during that period. To me, it's as much about the filmmaking.
It's as much about bringing in heavyweight, if not always big name, but like heavyweight cinematographers and directors and people who give these shows a real sense of visual flair and style.

Yeah.

And long, you know,

it's not just the Rian Johnson episodes of Breaking Bad.

This is a hugely visually inventive show in a way that made it feel like nothing else on TV.

Like there is a version of Breaking Bad

that is very simple, propulsive plot

that feels like almost procedural

if it was shot differently.

Still well-written, still well-conceived,

all those things.

But what gives it a lot of its style and flair is the way it looks. And this episode is no different, obviously.
Yeah. This episode is incredible.
Putting it on to sort of rewatch it to talk about it with you today. First of all, I was struck by how much I remembered.
I know. Almost every single line and shot composition and all that sort of stuff.
And yeah, to your point, what a visual, like every single shot. And yeah, it's not just the Ryan episodes.
Like Michelle McLaren, who is incredible, Breaking Bad director, did such good work making that desert and that sky look so huge. And these people look so tiny inside of it.
And that iconic sort of goldy red dirt and blue, blue sky, that sort of color palette of this universe. What a gorgeous show.
What is your larger relationship to Breaking Bad? This is a little bit of a redemptive arc for us on this video feed because we just admitted yesterday that we had not seen The Sopranos. But we have seen Breaking Bad.
Of course we have. So tell me, what was your, like, how did you watch Breaking Bad when it came out? I was like semi real time.
I think it was one of those things where it took a season or two under its belt. And then you start hearing the word of mouth.
I'm like, oh man, I really got to get up on this show. So I was able to watch the final few seasons in real time, including that excruciating weight as the final season was broken into two pieces.
Very tough times for all of us, but it's hard not to love when you're in it. Like, I think there's some shows that, with Distance, in retrospect, you find, like, greater admiration for.
I think that's true of Breaking Bad, but you're loving it day-to-day, second-to-second, episode-to-episode, because it's just one of the best plotted shows of all time. And plotted in a way that I think makes it so rewarding from a character perspective.
Like, it rewards, and this episode is a great example of that, every investment you make in Walt and Jesse and Hank and everyone on the board. And that's a pretty rare thing.
I think also, you know, you and I on this feed have covered shows that feel like there's a ton of meat on the bone discussed and shows that feel like quite thinner and harder to sort of pull out deep analysis about. This is a show that is just like made for recappers and podcasters to chew over.
The intentionality is ridiculous. Yeah, and the visuals.
The visuals you mentioned, it's funny. I know you know this, but I was just rewatching the cinematic classic, Sneakers,

which is a beautiful film.

But like,

there's that scene where

they dump out the Scrabble tiles

and they're sort of

doing anagrams

of Scrabble tiles.

I was like,

if this were Breaking Bad,

we'd be up through the bottom

of the table on those tiles.

I was like,

where's my Breaking Bad shot at this?

Every combination,

the word search engine

is just going nuts.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, so,

broad strokes, our relationship with Breaking Bad, we were watching in real time. I was, this was like in the last few seasons, this is like kind of the beginning of my podcasting career.
So this is one of the first shows I ever like podcasted about. Little baby Joe out there podcasting about Breaking Bad.
So this show and Justified, which were, you know, two of my most beloved shows, but those were like the first couple shows that I was recapping on podcasts. I had a podcast called The Ones Who Knock.
I don't think it exists online anymore. Oh, no.
But I have people occasionally being like, hey, where'd that Breaking Bad podcast you did go? To the ether. I do apologize.
That's a real shame. I think like an episode here or there exists around but that's but yeah and partially because i was recapping it and i was podcasting it and i was like so new and hadn't done this before i was re-watching and re-watching and re-watching and like so anxious to make sure i got every single thing right as opposed to my sort of like lazy slapdash approach now and um i mean it's what you're known for it's really notorious around the company but i'm glad you put a name to it but i um i like this show will forever have such a deep place in my heart because i mean it is a masterpiece in and of itself and i would have enjoyed it anyway but um because it's one of the first shows i covered in that way just like it it means that much more to me.
And it's funny because, you know, there's some people who missed it. Just like some wonderful TV podcasters, you know, may not have seen The Sopranos.
Of course. There are some people with excellent TV taste who've never seen Breaking Bad.
And sometimes when I try to introduce it to them and they can't get past the beginning of the first season, which is it's all quite violent, but there is some like real goopy dissolving bodies and bathtub stuff that have just like right at the beginning. The goop budget.
Yeah. Really impressive for cable TV.
Absolutely. AMC is really flexing on that one.
But they can't get past it and they're surprised that it's a show that I like so much. You're not like really a goop forward guy.
Like, is this in your wheelhouse, this show, in terms of the things you like in general? I'm not goop forward, but I think shows like Breaking Bad and by extension Better Call Saul reveal to me how numb I am to violence in general because I'm just watching these shows, having a great time recommending them, especially then to everybody. And then people will pull them up and be like, oh my God, like episode two or three, like there's really grisly stuff happening right off the bat.
Like I literally don't even know what scene you're talking about. And so I do think it's pitched well within the show in that context, right? The violence does happen, is surprising when it does.
But like Ozymandias is a great showcase of this, of we get a brutal character death in this episode. We don't actually see it in this case.
We get a hard zoom out, wide view of the canyon, of the sound, of the echo. Like every piece of violence on this show feels like it is about that resonance, right? It's not about even someone as important as Hank dying.
It's about what does this mean? Why is this happening? And of course, like setting the stakes of this world that is inherently crazy dangerous. I love that.
So Ozymandias is a really interesting episode in that it's a masterpiece in and of itself. But also, I think a lot of people sort of wish that this were the finale because I believe that Grand Estate and Felina have like a slightly more divisive reaction from people and they sort of wish that this were the finale of Breaking Bad.
Do you ever think about like how what's your attempt on the final two episodes and do you ever agree with the people who say this should have been where it ended? I think you'd have to. With Jesse chained up in a meth lab.
That's the thing. Like, I think you would have to button up things in a slightly different way.
Yeah. Jesse has done over the course of Breaking Bad plenty of terrible and reprehensible things.
But there is something about that character where he's so much of an open wound. Yeah.
And an emotional pressure point for the audience that if you left him chained up as a meth pet, I don't know that people would deal very well with that. Did you say meth pet? I mean, he's on the leash.
They're just telling him what to do. Like, I don't know how else to describe it.
Yeah. Gigapets, meth pets, same thing.
I mean, that is, it's one of those visuals and one of those concepts that is so, it like needles you to your core seeing him in the like cement pit, right? If that was the last we ever saw of that character, you know, again, sequel movies be damned, I think this show would have a very different reputation. Like there's a very cold ending.
And maybe one that Breaking Bad would have deserved in some ways and would be worthy of the series and overall like this was always going to end badly, but would be pretty badly i think i go back and forth on i really like grand state i really like felina a lot so i i don't know that i would ever wanted to end here but i do kind of think that walt getting to play the hero as he does in the finale and it you know, us leaving Jesse with this sort of, like, I fucking did it, I escaped sort of moment did strike some people as, like, unnecessarily, I mean, Walt dies, but, like, unnecessarily, like, redemptive, I suppose, for Walt. and maybe some people would have preferred him either leave him in the Volvo in Granite State or, you know, leave him waiting to get picked up, you know, by a vacuum salesman.
I think it ultimately comes down to how you think about things like redemption. Because even within this specific episode, Walt does some things by the end that are selfless in their own kind of way.
But that, honestly, again, I don't want to yes and the Breaking Bad writers because they're very good at what they do. I don't know if you know that.
But what Walt does in this episode, which is let Skylar off the hook legally whilst like grandstanding and growling and all this sort of stuff that he does kind of is the pitch perfect redemptive act for me. Like that's exactly what it feels like Walt is capable of.
And like selling Pinkman out feels right to me. Going back to save him.
I guess I do to this day have some questions about that, but I'm not upset about it. I just like to think about it.
I think it's fair. And there's no question that the last two episodes in that way do have a sort of dreamlike quality of like Walt fell asleep in a car and imagined this was how it all turned out or something.
But I think some of that is the problem of Breaking Bad very much starts as a Walter White show. And if it ended as a Walter White show, it ends with this episode.
But along the way, Jesse Pinkman became almost too important to just throw away in this capacity. And so he deserves a send-off too that's a little bit better than this one.
He lived many seasons past he was supposed to.

He really did.

You don't think meth pet is enough?

You know.

Spending time with Todd forever?

Okay.

One of the reasons,

other than all the things we've already listed,

that Ozymandias stands out to me

is I think a perfect episode of television

is to your point,

it gives all of our main characters

an absolute showcase moment or two at least.

There's room for Marie. Yeah.
There's room for Hank. There's plenty of room for Skylar.
There's room for Aaron Paul to do the crying, screaming thing he does so well. And then, you know, Cranston's just absolutely smoking it in this episode.
So when you get to the end of a series that feels as big as Breaking Bad did, this is a smaller core cast, but I remember when Mad Men had its final season and you would say goodbye to characters sometimes episodes before the show ended. And then you're just like, oh no, I'm never going to see Harry Crane again, I guess, you know, stuff like that.
It was like, if they had a big speech i'm worried that i'm just never gonna have any more time with that character and granted there are

two more episodes after this so like this is some goodbye for some people but um just the room and

the generosity this episode has for everyone i think especially someone like marie who is important

to spend time with because of when we think about the cost of hank's loss yes we have to think

Thank you. is important to spend time with because of when we think about the cost of Hank's loss.
Yes. We have to think about Marie probably first and foremost.
There's so much to highlight in this episode and I don't want it to get lost, but the scene in which she is explaining to Skylar what she thinks has happened. And we already know.
And we already know the truth. Yeah.
Is just one of the most heartbreaking things in this entire show. And again, this is an episode that ends with someone in a meth dungeon.
So it's so hard to watch and to see all these characters wrestling with the lack of information in real time and wrestling with the fact that they don't really know who Walt is or what version of Walt is going to show up or what this guy is even capable of. Like everyone is reckoning with these circumstances in their own way.
And I think the fact that she gets those moments where she not only gets to think she's in control for a second, but have it ripped away. Like you just don't get grace for supporting characters in that way in these kinds of episodes very often, as you said.
I think also we're going to run through some like awards we have for this episode. So I don't want to.
Do you have the Skylar Marie scene on your like awards list anywhere? I don't specifically. Yeah, yeah.
So I just want to talk about the composition of that shot, right? Because Skylar is all in white and then Marie is in her like classic iconic purple, but it's really, really dark. So she's like basically clad in black and they're sat facing each other, cross each other at Skylar's desk.
And it's just such a beautiful shot in a way. And it's like held there for a while on that sort of wide frame in a way that like, again, another director wouldn't think like now is the time for art.
I know. In this moment when these two people are talking to each other, you know? And it's just like moments like that in among the other more famous shots from this episode that makes me really appreciate it.
So one of the reasons I want to talk about this aspect outside of sort of our award structure, one of the things I love about this episode is even rewatching it and knowing every frame of it as I was last night, I was like was like wait is this the moment that Heisenberg dies? Is this the moment that Walt dies? Because there's like some sort of like letting go of something. There's a death of sorts for Walt in this episode.
There is a very iconic shot and we'll talk about it for sure. But like I was trying to figure out what is this the end of for Walt? And I think he still is trying on, you know, end of Walter White family man when his kid is standing over his wife calling the cops on him, shielding Skylar from him, and him saying, we're family and getting nothing from them.
So like end of Walter White, I think what it is, because he'll still try to Heisenberg his way out of things. He'll still, but end of his fantasy that this is a temporary thing or he could come back from this.
Yes. Or there is some way back from this.
The death of the Walter White who had several barrels of millions of dollars buried in the desert. The end of him as a father, the end of him as a husband, the end of him as a guy who could talk his way out of any corner.
I think that's the critical one. And like Hank puts a finger on it.
It's like it's almost the end of him as the smartest guy in the room. Right, right.
The one who has the answers, who can negotiate, who can plead, who can bribe people when he has to bribe people. He's straight up just like offering millions of dollars to try to save Hank's life.
Absolutely does nothing because he is outfoxed. He has no options.
He has no answers. And I think seeing that version of Walt where he has no recourse is what leads him.
Like he's still going through the motions of trying to make those cases and trying to do the thing that has gotten him out of so many jams and you can feel in the performance that character getting so exasperated that it's not working. It feels like the death of that as much as anything.
Clearly it's the end of an empire and it's the end of this kind of overall journey that he's been on. But really it's the end of him being able to solve literally anything.
This is also the beginning of TV nerds everywhere knowing more about a Percy Shelley poem than they usually do because the title of this episode comes from a Shelley poem and that poem is about, you know, look on my works, you mighty in despair, this broken statue of a man in a desert who had once conquered and then is now just sort of rubble and ashes. Broad strokes Ozyman's lasting legacy on TV.
Anything that comes to mind? I wrote that down without a clear answer for myself, but anything that had spurred for you? I think it casts a super tall shadow, not just for the idea that your finale needs to be great, but that you need this multi-episode arc build out to get there beyond just having a great final season

of whatever show you're trying to make.

It's like the idea that this is not just the finale,

not just the penultimate episode,

but this is really in the lead up.

And all of this is happening and all of this is paying off.

And it's just haymaker after haymaker after haymaker.

Like a showrunner for any other show

would kill to have the fourth best scene

in this episode, in their episode.

I just, I'm not envious of that challenge

in a post-Breaking Bad environment.

And I think that's part of why it hit the way it did

and it resonated so strongly

is audiences just were not tuned at that time

to think this is when all of these things

are going to be delivered to us.

And so I think ultimately it sort of changed the pacing of how final seasons are delivered. Yeah, I really agree.
I think to go back to my earlier point, I think that part of the shadow that it casts is people starting to question whether or not to put everything in the finale or to parcel it out of the last few episodes. Because I think for so long, that idea of the finale, you know, like Andy Greenwald did a great series on this very feed about stick the landing, this idea of celebrating and, and taking care of these finales and you and I love the leftovers finale, or there's like a number of finales we can point to.
I love the lost finale, but like this idea of saving all your juice for the final episode, I think is, is sort of, especially because, because that idea of like, did you stick the landing or did your finale have everything has become sort of this impossible bar to clear for, for TV these days that I think they're just sort of like, let's, let's just space it out a little bit. Let's give the bit.
Let's give the viewers a nice slow slide to the end sort of thing. But I think that is ultimately why this show was such a masterclass in momentum, right? Like the way that the seasons are paced, the way that individual episodes are paced is just so hard to do to keep the tension of the show that taught for that long.
I don't know how you do it without characters like this, without stakes like this, without... Honestly, a huge part of it in this episode is counterbalancing all of the meth, drug, crime elements with the domestic part of this story, which is, I think, where a lot of shows struggle of, like, what do you do with the wife and kids at home of your problematic male lead? And this is a show that I think the audience struggled with that at times in previous seasons of like, what are we supposed to make of Skylar? And I want to get into that in greater detail later.
Okay. Just to relitigate it one final time.
Why not? 10 years later, let's just bring it back up. We'll do that.
We'll do Last Jedi. Let's just run through the greatest hits.
Are you going to pay for Anna Gunn's therapy this time? Or who's in charge of that? I'm here only to celebrate Anna Gunn, who is wonderful in this episode and is, to the point here, given a ton to do and a ton to carry in a way that feels hugely satisfying for that character in addition to the DEA agents and the criminals and everyone else involved. I think also in terms of character deaths, Breaking Bad was obviously a show that didn't shy away from this.
We had already seen Mike's death. We had already seen Gus's death.
We had already seen Jane's death, which of course we come back to in this episode. there's something about Hank's death that signals to all of us we're in the endgame now right? What is it about that moment other than this is the moment that Walter White couldn't talk his way out of, but it's sort of the absence of something in the show.
What does that feel like to you? I think it's the one line that Walt doesn't want to cross. And so once he does or is kind of dragged across it, like, of course, there's no going back from any character dying.
But now he has things to explain. Now he has things to account for.
Now there's nowhere to run, right? Even if he is trying to go home and get his family together, the second that they find out that Hank, if Walt is here, Hank can't be. That's kind of when everything with Skylar and his son change.
So I think that's a huge part of it. And as an audience reckoning with the idea that like, look, some comeuppance is coming for Walt at some point in this show.
Like he's not going to be a successful criminal by the end of the finale. It's just like not how TV works.
But there's a version of that where Hank is the guy who brings him in or Hank is the guy who brings him down. And we're so close to that happening that having it ripped away just feels, it feels like the kind of thing you can't just stumble back from.
You're Marie. You're like, he had him in handcuffs.
He had him. He had him.
He had him there. This is why you don't get into business with Nazis ultimately is the real message of Breaking Bad.
I think that's it. There's a shot.
I didn't make my like awards list, but there's the shot where Jack shakes his hand and the swastika is just sort of like front and center on his hand. This episode starts, it's very much like a pickup from a cliffhanger of the previous episode, right? Like we're in the same scene that we left.
I mean, obviously we start with the flashback to season one, episode one. Right.
But when we're in the action, we're picking up where the previous episode left off. And Gomi has already died.
So we're already like, oh my God, we lost, and I think that's part of it too. We're just sort of like, okay, that's going to be the, that's going to be the sacrificial lamb of this scene.
And then they're like, no, we're in the final episodes. It's Hank.
And, and it's, and it's devastating. I mean, him kind of crawling towards the rifle to try to get some way to defend himself as you see Jack stalking towards him in the background.
Like, we are Hank, right? Jack slowly, like ambling. Taking his time.
Yeah, just a leisurely stroll. There's also a really interesting peppering of humor inside of this episode.
Like when Walt buys the truck, you know, or anything that Todd does in its bizarre way. What a perfect little psycho.
Yeah. He's just wonderful in this episode.
He's like polite to the end sort of demeanor. I'm sorry for your loss.
Kills me every time. When he's like just gently lifting Pinkman off the ground whose face is just like roast beef at this point.
And he's just sort of like, let's go. Let's go to work.
Ready to cook. Let's go.
You know, that's the show. And that's why the show is the best.
Anything else you want to say before we get to like some of our awards that we've assembled? No, let's cook. Okay.
Great. I'm starting with best performance which is like I feel like there's only one answer.
Baby Holly? Yeah. I mean, honestly, she's very good.
She's very good. She's very good.
But this is a Cranston episode. What did they do to that baby? I don't know.
I'm worried. I'm very concerned about what was going.
Where did they put that baby's mother that made that baby cry and call for mother so adorably? The way that baby cowers in the fire truck seat. Yeah.
Something was going on. Yeah, it is Cranston.
I mean, honestly, in my notes, I wrote down Aaron Paul and I knew I was lying to myself. It's Cranston.
Aaron Paul is doing what he does best, which is screaming and crying and sort of like becoming a sack of potatoes in people's arms because he's so devastated by more and more and more of what he's learned. Well, and not just the screaming.
I think he gives great like silent film acting in this episode. The look as he's kind of kneeled in the desert and looking up at Walt as he gives him up.
You see the whole show playing across his face. But Cranston, I think especially in that scene, the phone call scene, when he says, you know, you're never going to see Hank again.
And just his absolute devastation while giving this performance

for the cops listening.

We love a performance

within a performance.

We are who we are.

We do.

But as those things go,

that's about as good as you can do.

Yeah.

Best line.

For me, it's Hank's,

you're the smartest guy I've ever met

and you're too stupid to see

that he made up his mind 10 minutes ago.

I love that Hank gets the kind of send-off he gets. To the extent that anyone in this episode is a hero, it's Hank and he is defiant to the end.
He is not going to be manipulated or bribed or talked out of doing his job or what he thinks is the right thing to do. And the way he gets to be uncompromising is what makes this show so good.
And there are versions of characters in Breaking Bad who come up for an episode or two who are great. There are versions of characters who recur like a Saul or a Huel who are perfect.
And then there's Hank, who's just like both perfect hyuck-hyucking brother-in-law in such a precisely written way. Yeah.
And also the hero, D.E.A.G. and who's like the one person trying to do the right thing.
Rob, and I hope you take this as a compliment. You seem like the kind of guy who might one day start homebrewing.
Do you feel like that's something that you will do? I don't take this as a compliment and I absolutely will not do it. Okay.
Not happening for me. I will check in in 10 years time.
If you told me I'm like growing my own coffee beans, like I would believe you. Home brewing of a different sort, perhaps.
Okay. Home brewing beer in my garage against code.
I simply would never. For legal purposes, I would not do it.
All right. I'll check back in 10 years and I can't wait for your incredibly, disappointingly punny names that you'll come up for.
Oh, no. I also had that name blank.
Hopping Mad, that's the one. There you go.

He's ready.

The smartest guy I ever met.

I also, as a backup,

I've still got things left to do.

Yeah.

From Walt.

He said,

I still have two more episodes

of this TV show.

We are contractually obligated

to two more episodes for AMC.

So I will,

Walter White will return. Walter White will return to two more episodes.
And then, I mean, I don't want to, I like, I feel I don't want to step on like anything, any answer you might by like smuggling all these other things. Sure.
I watched Jane die. We have to talk about it.
Yeah. I watched Jane die as an incredible moment.
I think as far as the things in this episode that you feel like Walt can't come back from, and some of them he kind of does, right? Like I think the moment where he grabs baby Holly and runs to the truck, it's like, oh my God, this is, this has hit a different level. Babies in peril is a whole separate genre that is very, it's very difficult to watch for me personally, but I think for a lot of people, like I remember watching Eastbound and Down and there's a whole arc where Kenny Powers is taking care of a baby in like a Mexican hotel room.
And I'm just like, I literally cannot watch this. It is making me so uncomfortable.
What's your level of Babies in Peril you can't handle? Are you okay with a three men and a baby? Yeah. See, that's the thing for hijinks reasons.
I'm mostly okay. But like a Mad Max original flavor, it's a no for you.
We're walking the line a little bit. And there's something about that that escalates.
There's something about this sequence that— Snowpiercer. I'm a— I think once we cross the line into— You know, those babies serve a use at the end of the day.
I don't want to spoil for people who haven't seen Snowpiercer, but they have a function in the story. The fact that Walt doubles back to deliver this line to Jesse and reveal to him finally, after almost doing it many times throughout the show, that he was there when Jane died.
And doing it really only to be cruel. And I'd do it again, essentially.
That's really the vibe. When he kind

of doubles back, he could say anything, right? Like it could be a parting emotional moment. It

could be an apology. It could be any number of things, but it's him twisting the knife just to

twist the knife. And again, on a character who we just can't help but feel for an Aaron Paul

character in this way. It's hard.
And it is one of those things that you feel like,

how could I possibly root for Walt after something like this? Especially when he has to be thinking about that moment when he's chained up as the meth pet in the final scene. And he's like, I have one more opportunity to possibly protect another woman in my life and I'm going to take it.
Um, the, so Walt in that moment, that twist of the knife of I watched Jane die and giving Jesse up is because he has decided he is blaming Jesse for Hank's death, for everything that put them there because he has yet to reach the level of awareness where he can take responsibility for it. So he's like, it's Jesse's fault.
And I will make this as horrible for him as I feel right now. I mean, this is the problem with thinking you're as smart as Walt thinks that he is, is that if something goes wrong, it's always somebody else's.
Like he is making the perfect cook every time. And if there is a bubble, he didn't do it.
Someone else must have done it. If there's something to learn from this episode of television, this episode of this podcast, other than, I guess, don't brew beer in your garage.
No. Is if you're going to enlist Nazis, neo or otherwise, to help you.
Yes. Don't give them the precise longitude and latitude of where you've hidden your fortune.
Maybe go a few degrees off. I know we're all in a rush in our day-to-day lives.
Like, look, we're all just trying to keep up with this topsy-turvy world. A generalized location, I think, would have done fine.
Drop a pin. Drop, this is the thing.
Just drop the pin and drag it across the desert a little bit. They're going to see you.
They're going to see the cars out there. They're going to come find you.
All right, we're going to do Best Needle Up. There's really only one, but we want to talk about it.
So why don't you start? What is the song of this episode? The song. There is only one.
Yeah. But confusingly, maybe one of two names.
Take My True Love by the Hand or Times Are Getting Hard Boys by The Limelighters. Yeah.
I can't quite tell which one is the actual title of this song. We've seen it listed both ways in many reputable sources.
It seems like both, but it is one of these old standards. It is in this sort of like whistly, warbly tone that I think Breaking Bad does perfectly so many times.
And salt. This is the song that plays as Walt is rolling his giant barrel of money across the desert, past some ephemera of previous seasons that we may talk about a little bit later.
But overall, a song about how nothing ever ends easy. These things are always ugly or else they wouldn't be over.
I love that interpretation. I think also when it's take my true love by her hand, lead her through the town, say goodbye to everyone, goodbye to everyone.
And he's rolling the money barrel. I'm like, are we saying that Walt's true love is the barrel of money? And I think you could argue.
I think you could certainly, or at least the security that it provides, right? Like, I mean, in a way, this is what he's been after the whole time, right? Is like, this was the goal was to make the money. When you get to Felina, again, an episode that I actually really enjoy.
And my favorite scene from that episode, the finale is when he's talking to Skylar and he finally admits, I did it for me. So I think this idea of like, I'm a family guy.
This money is for my family. It's not.
It's him being in love with the power, the money, the journey of it. Yeah, absolutely.
The barrel of it all. The other lyrics are, had a job a year ago, had a little home, now I've got no place to go, guess I'll have to roam.
Which like, as we end this episode is a sort of perfect encapsulation of where Walt is. Definitely.
You know, to name the best needle drop in an episode where there's really only one needle drop might sound silly, but Breaking Bad was so good at this, and Saul as well. Like, the music supervision on these shows is, like, unparalleled.
And often it's these little hidden gem of songs that you then forever identify with the show. There's, like, they're, like, rule pick the most obscure Monkees track that no one's ever heard.
And we're going to play it over this soulful montage and you're forever going to get heart sick when you hear Crimson and Clover or whatever it is. And one of those things that's a really collaborative effort of this show, like I saw Rian Johnson in some interviews said that that was kind of news to him, that that was the song playing over that scene when he watched the episode.
And so like between music supervision, obviously Vince Gilligan is an active hand in so many of the things involved in the shows, the directors, the top line talent, both in front of and behind the camera and in the edit bay and working on the show on every level. It really is just one of those products where everything is pitched so perfectly.
It's also, Dave Porter, who did the score for Breaking Bad and for Saul, is one of those TV composers where I just, like, I love his interviews because some TV scores just blend into the background, and some you're like, tell me, Michael Giacchino, what did you mean when you did this? And Dave Porter's on that level for me. Okay, iconic image slash shot composition.
I think there's kind of two, and they're sort of twinned. For me, the go-to one when I think about this episode is Skylar collapsing in the street.
Okay, yeah. But you could just as easily say Walt collapsing in the desert, and they're there for a reason.
I agree. Like, Skylar was my runner-up.
Like, her in the white, you know, still dressed all in white with some blood on her because of the skirmish that they had. Because there was a fucking knife fight in their house.
Slashed his palms open. And on her knees screaming because he's taken baby Holly.
But I think Walt's, it's not just Walt collapses because it is that. It's the way that Bryan Cranston physically transformed his face into the tragedy mask.
Literally. Like it's insane.
How did he do that? How can you contort your mouth in that way? I don't know, but he did it. And so that face he is wearing for a while, but when he falls down and he's like on his side and his face is half in the dirt and that's when he sees Jesse under the car.
But that shot that many people, including myself, were like, well, clearly this is a reference to Ozymandias. And Rian Johnson's like, news to me.
Like, even on the Wikipedia for this episode, they're like, and here he is, Walter White, as Ozymandias. Crumbled statue himself.
Yeah, and Rian's like, okay, you say so. And that's art to me.
Dog, it's a metaphor. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Also, a lot of people compared it to Gus Fring's face when Gus sees his lover and partner killed and stuff like that. And again, Ryan's like, Kel, coincidence.
Favorite under-recognized detail. Before we go there, let me make the case for the Skylar part of this.
Oh, please, please. Because one, like this was Anna Gunn's submission for Emmy consideration this episode, rightly so, like an absolute powerhouse performance.
She is the emotional core of it. And I think a lot of those scenes kind of leading up to her collapsing in the street, the whole fight in the house, her kind of pulling the knife.
And as far as iconic images go or like perfect shots go in this show, the slow walk toward either the phone phone or the knife block uh is just as good as it gets and i think overall like they know how to play that sort of tension so well on breaking bad but her turn within that scene her her chance to be a kind of a hero and to stand up for herself and i think the realization that skylar has who look this is a woman whose life has been crumbling out from under her for seasons upon seasons now. And she's been aware of some of the ways for part of it, but it crystallizes when Walt grabs Holly and her transformation in those moments to banging on the truck window, like pleading with him to leave Holly behind if he's going to go.
And watching him as like, Walt moves another immovable object of like backing the truck through the car. I love that.
I just, I really, I think this episode hinges on her performance as much as anything. Like her ability, we're going to talk, I want to talk later about her on the other end of the phone call with Walt.
But really it's her selling the devastation of this, of the complete destruction of their family life. of the one thing, again, that Walt was purportedly fighting for, even if really he was fighting for himself.
And I think also leading up to that, there's Marie forcing her to tell her son about this and him saying, then you're just as bad. Yeah.
And her having to be like, I know. I agree with you.
Yes. Complicity is a hell of a thing.
Is this where you want to talk about Skylar or you want to wait and talk about it more? I want to hold that a little bit. Okay.
Favorite under-recognized detail. So we're going to talk about pants.
Do the pants count at this point? It's pretty recognized. It's pretty recognized.
Just in case people don't know. If you are not aware, as Walt is rolling his giant barrel of money through the desert, he strolls right on by his own pants that he lost five seasons prior, four seasons prior, four seasons prior.
Couldn't be bothered. And in his defense, he's hardly the same person who lost those pants.
I will say for the Ryan heads, the Johnson sickos, it's Noah Segan as the firefighter who flies baby hollering. I do love Noah Segan's appearance.
Noah Segan, who's in all of Rian Johnson's films and gets a Breaking Bad cameo as well. So if we're considering the pants to be like the free space on the bingo card.

Okay, what's your backup?

I have always been fascinated by the dog that crosses the road at the end of this episode.

Yeah.

So Walt gets in the minivan, it's carted off into the distance.

A dog crosses the road behind him that's like maybe a border collie adjacent.

I'm not sure what kind of dog it is exactly.

We know enough about this show. And I feel like we know enough about Rian Johnson as a filmmaker to surmise that that is not a dog that wandered through set.
It seems extremely purposeful. There is a lot of like heavy dog symbolism and language around Jesse throughout the life of the show.
And so like, I've always interpreted that as the sort of like, oh, there's still this trail we have to.

Don't forget about the meth pet.

Don't forget about the meth pet who's chained up in his little dungeon

on his little rotary leash.

I've always taken it as a subliminal nod to the sort of unfinished business of that.

I don't know exactly what that dog means, but I know it's there for a reason.

And it's a tribute to the show's power.

I'm still here trying to figure it out. All these years later, nearly 10 years later.
Okay, over 10 years later. Okay.
Best moment. Is this where you want to talk about Skylar? This is the phone call for me.
If that's a moment. I know, moment's tough.
Let's just say scene. If you're going to pick an individual moment, I will say it is the moment for both Skylar and for the audience where you get the slow click into place of understanding what Walt is doing on the phone.
Yeah. Of the shift from this man is a raving, dangerous lunatic who is scolding and threatening his wife on the phone to, oh, like, he is channeling this persona that he has built.
He is acting out this rage. And I think doing so in a way that is like kind of funny and pointed in a metatextual way because the things he is saying about Skylar are many things that people watching the show said about Skylar for a long time.
They sure did, Rob. They certainly did.
But I think like the way that all of this stuff just ties you in fucking knots because like you are ready to believe that Walt is the demon he is presenting himself to be at the beginning of that call. And by the end of it, realizing what his ultimate purpose was, which again, like selfless is maybe too strong a word for that kind of thing, but pointed and purposeful.
And like he is a person who in that moment had an exact objective and is not driven by the sort of rage he was displaying when we last saw him on screen when he left the house. I think also because it's the kind of, I agree with you that this is the moment if you want to call this a moment.
And I think it's because whenever Walt has done something, either heroic or not, it's been for recognition and applause. applause yes and here he's doing something where really only Skylar you know and perhaps his kid and perhaps Murray like know what he's doing yeah and so he's not doing it for and he's doing it for an audience of one essentially and that is as close to selfless as I think he's been able to get right in several seasons now um and so there's other things he's going to do including i would say rescuing jesse that is a bit more about like playing the hero yeah then what he actually does here which is i'm not doing this for a applause or recognition i'm doing this because it's the right thing to do.
And I do love my wife and I do love my family. And I think also you could add into that, again, on the performance front, his baby talk to baby Holly when he's changing her diaper.
You know what I mean? He's still playing the role of doting dad. He's like, this could be us.
This is our new family. It's just you and me, kid, on the road.
And I fixed the diaper so everything's fine. And baby Holly's like, no, they've traumatized me off camera.
I don't know what they did, but I'm very upset. Mommy, mommy, mommy, please.
Please, please, mommy. You know, and Cranston's face when he just realizes that he can't have that either.
Yeah. And I think for both of their parts, just A++ plus phone acting on both ends of that conversation.
The way Cranston is breaking down over the course of it, like literally in tears. And if you had any doubt as to what his intentions were by that point, I think that's probably your final reveal of what this actually was.
But like overall, the structure of him appearing to walk straight into this trap. And Walt is a guy who's walked into plenty of traps and he's usually had something in his back pocket.
We've been conditioned by this episode to think, this guy is off the rails. He has lost control of this situation.
And this is one area in which he can exert some sense of control over one thing that is important to him, which is getting Skylar off the hook. I was going to say in terms of like best moment without

dialogue or anything else around it, in terms of what you're saying earlier about this

circular payoff feeling of, you know, we get the flashback to episode one,

him on the phone talking, lying to Skylar. Right.

Jesse doing like fight moves behind him in the background. Honestly, relatable.
Incredible stuff. Is this what you do on like non-video podcasts? I'm just constantly throwing jazz.
Or, you know, like, look, I'm basketball inclined. I'm doing some crossovers.
I'm hitting some fadeaway jumpers. Like it's just, it's just what people do.
That's what I thought. But his first lies, essentially, this guy that we're watching on the phone and then like the brilliant way that all of that fades away.
Yeah. And then like the, you know, the shot is static and we get the current state of affairs come in.
But I think even more so in terms of Breaking Bad building lore, just the shot of Walt at the very recognizable wall where you go when you're going to be picked up by the vacuum salesman is just like tells us everything we need to know without any dialogue. Exactly.
We know why he's there. We know what that means.
We know where that goes. Yeah.
And the show trusts the audience to remember that wall, that van, all of that sort of stuff. One little honorable mention as far as moments go, the moment where Flynn dives to put himself in between his mom and dad.
Yeah. Again, a character who hasn't always had a lot to do and is kind of put in a raw, like given a raw deal by the structure of the show overall, for him to have that sort of moment in this episode.
For me, it was really powerful and it meant a lot. I agree.
And just like the physical composition of it. Totally.
Yeah, absolutely. Late in the day, I added a category, which was best fit because I really just needed to talk for a second about the image of Emmy Award winner, Bryan Cranston in, would you say they're Hanes, BVDs? What would you call mean just generalize I think they're store brand tighty whiteys Lucy whiteys a little Lucy a little worn to age as you know as Bryan Cranston himself is in this scene a little saggy whiteys a little saggy with the with the apron on top and the gloves it's a look it's a tremendous look and I just wanted us to honor it mean, it's one of the biggest pieces of iconography from this show.

When you think about Breaking Bad, that's one of the things that comes to your mind, visually speaking. It's either the button down with the no pants, or it's, yeah, the apron over, or the boiler suits.
The boiler suits, I think. A lot of pragmatic wear over.
This is not the best, best fit show of all time. It's a lot of dad wear.
Yeah.

You know, there's some occasional, like, you know, double shirt action, maybe some denims on top that Flynn is rocking in this episode, for example. Marie's purple everything.
She's on point. Nazi tactical gear, I guess if you want to get into that, that's not really my speed.
A classic Gus Fring, Pueblo Zermano's yellow button down. Of course.
But he's buttoned up but buttoned up in a way that I would not say Reed's style icon. No.
He has A style. Is it iconic? He certainly does have A style.
In a way. And then what would the runner up episode be? I think I already told you mine.
Why don't you tell me a little bit more about Fly other than it's as a litmus test for someone deserving of your time and attention. I'm just saying.
Fly's a wonderful episode of a wonderful show. And I think it captures something that we don't get in this one, which is time spent within the Walt and Jesse dynamic.
Yes. We get it in small but very impactful ways in Ozymandias, but it's the single most important relationship on the show.
And so you get the boiling kettle situation. You get this very identifiable and recognizable thing of slowly losing your mind over kind of an insignificant detail.
In this case, them chasing a fly around the meth lab and slowly cracking. To me, it represents so much of what makes Breaking Bad good.
And a lot of it is that slow building of tension over the course of scenes and episodes and within character dynamics. That episode works because we know everything that specifically Walt is hiding from Jesse, but really that both guys are hiding from each other.
And that you can play it out in that way in a bottle. The stakes may seem small, but within the scope of the show, they are massive.
A show will tell you what matters to it and how you're supposed to be watching it and what you're supposed to be paying attention to. If you're watching Fly and you're not wracked with the tension of these guys almost spilling their guts and almost murdering each other because of a literal Fly, again, I don't really know what show you're watching.
I think that's a really good pick. And what most people would pick as a second, I will will just offer another alternative which is four days out which is from season two which is similarly like sort of walt and jesse stranded out uh in in the desert um but i think you know this was a michelle mclaren special um so before brian came on in season three to sort of be like, I'm a filmmaker, and this is what filmmakers do.

Michelle McLaren is just like a top-tier TV director.

And this was – Breaking Bad is great from the start.

It didn't really catch fire until I think it's season three or four when it hits Netflix and people are binging it and then they catch on and stuff like that. I mean, you would be the person to tell us as a historian documenting Breaking Bad in real time.
True. Thanks so much for my bona fides.
But I think that like season two, season two, episode nine and this is, I would say visually the show hadn't like locked itself fully down in its first season.

It is like propulsive and compelling and great performances and a great premise.

And we're getting to understand what Vince Gilligan and his writers can do in terms of backing Walt and Jesse into a corner and having them figure out how to get themselves out of it and stuff like that.

I would say by season two is when they're becoming like artistic inside of all of that. The post-Weeds era of Breaking Bad.
Yeah. And so I think Four Days Out is one that I think about a lot when I think about, this is when I understood sort of how beautiful the show could be in terms of those like wide desert shots.
They really are something. I think they captured that specific, like, New Mexico landscape.
Yeah. As well as any, certainly, TV product has, and give it a life of its own, and it gives the whole, like, the setting of this show.
Like, I don't want to be the person to tell you New York is the fifth main character, but, like, Albuquerque is the fifth main character. What? The ABQ? The ABQ is a huge part of this situation.
Did it get an Emmy? It should have, frankly. But frankly but yeah i think the desolation of the desert in particular like look the suburbia of the white household like is what it is and is also kind of iconic in its own way especially when there's a pizza on the roof uh but the desert is is what jumps to mind for me of the them in in the rv out there obviously here in ozymandias, like the, how isolated everything feels and how hopeless everything feels out there.
When they, these characters in Walt and Jesse's case, like found a kind of safety in that isolation once upon a time, right? This was the place they could go where they weren't going to be meddled with. Now it's the place you go when Nazis are going to hold you at gunpoint and steal all your money.
It's tough. It's a tough and a slippery slope.
It really is. So here's my encapsulation of everything we've done so far.
Don't brew beer in your garage, but more importantly, don't make meth in a Winnebago, not even once. Yes.
Not even once. And certainly don't light a cigarette in there.
That's for sure. All right.
So this has been our Hall of Fame Breaking Bad Ozymandias episode. We did it.
How do you feel about it? Did we do it justice? We did it. I hope so.
Again, this is one that you could come back to once a year, if not more often than that. I know.
I feel like if this feed still exists several years from now, it's just going to be- We're going to re-Ozymandias? It's just going to be sales alone in a room in that Sean Fentasy black box room, just like soloing on the mic, talking about Ozymandias and going through all the things we've missed. Would watch, would listen.
I'm up for a season pass of that. If Sales' blood pressure has survived hearing you and me and Chris Ryan all say we haven't seen The Sopranos, then perhaps he will be able to talk about Ozymandias on mic.
So yeah, we'll be back with more Prestige TV. We've got some fun stuff for the end of the year.
Definitely. Some sort of like best of things that we're working on.
We've got some black doves on our radar. We got a lot of emails from people who really liked our coverage of the agency.
We certainly did. Begging, pleading for more of the agency coverage.
What is the email where they can reach us if they want to send more,

please cover the agency emails?

Email us at tiptopinthepink at gmail.com.

Yeah.

Which I think Walter White could appreciate as much as anybody.

This is a man who appreciates a good sound mind.

That's Holly when she's back at home.

She's tip top in the pink.

I hope so.

Baby Holly.

All right.

We'll see you soon.