Image: Breaking Bad
(WARNING: Before I get deeper into this essay, I have to warn you that there are spoilers. I won’t be covering the whole plot, but I will cover many important moments. I highly suggest watching the whole series before diving into this because everything in this series has built up to this episode and the impact won’t be the same if you don’t watch the series from the beginning. This is your final warning)
A well-crafted story is hard to make. Writers have to map out the beginning, middle, and end of the story from the first episode to the last. This can span seasons or sometimes the entire series. In order for it to be successful, it has to be compelling; it has to be one that puts a lasting impression on the viewer. This is never an easy feat, but I believe that Breaking Bad succeeded in that. Breaking Bad is, in my opinion, the best TV show ever created. The acting from Bryan Cranston and the rest of the cast is incredible, the directing and cinematography is some of the best I’ve ever seen, and the story from show runner and creator, Vince Gilligan and his team, gave one that made me think and analyze it for days on end. I can count a number of episodes from this show that showcases this shows brilliance such as the Pilot, Down, Fly, Face Off, and, of course, Felina. Out of all the episodes in this series, I think the one that stunned me the most is the show’s most devastating episode, and one of the best on TV, Ozymandias.
Image: Albuquerque
Ozymandias is a horror show from beginning to end. There is no gore, but there is some blood. The main horror comes from the events that unfold as a series of consequences each character has made throughout the series. There are no breaks in this episode. It goes full throttle with these consequences and it feels like there is no time to breathe. Not even the commercials helped at the time of its airing as it felt like that was the time to collect your thoughts and think about what is going on and how it’ll go down. In the end, all that’s left is the emotions of fear, devastation, and helplessness that left both the characters and the audience deserted out in the New Mexico desert.
Ozymandias starts where it’s previous episode To’hajiilee ended. After a shootout with Jack, Todd, and the Nazis, DEA agent and Walter White’s Brother-In-Law, Hank Schrader, and his partner, Steve Gomez, lose and Gomez is dead. Hank is wounded on the ground with a bullet in his leg and is caught by Jack. Begging not to kill him, Walt tries to intervene and save Hank by trading his drug money (earned by making and selling crystal meth) in exchange for Hank’s life. Walt gives his money’s location and how much he has. This negotiation fails as, as Hank puts it, Jack “…made his decision 10 minutes ago” and Hank is killed. Walt is devastated and so is the audience. This is only the first in the horrors that follow this episode. Hank was an incredibly important character to the series. He was likable, funny, and compelling. As a DEA agent, he was constantly on the hunt for Walter’s alter ego crime lord, Heisenberg, and all of his associates. Hank has faced near death through many of these encounters, but each time, the audiences was cheering him on to at least make it out alive. So, to see him finally killed because of Walt’s actions makes his death one of the most shocking and devastating moments in the series. What makes this episode even more horrifying is that it never lets up.
Image: Walter White
Once Hank is killed, Jack and his goons find Walt’s money in the ditch and they burry Hank and Gomez’s bodies down there. After lying on the ground in sorrowful defeat, Walt stands up and bitterly reveals Jesse (his figurative son and cooking partner) underneath a car and he gets dragged out into the open to be killed too. Except he isn’t. In what is worse fate than death itself, Jesse is told by Walter himself that his former girlfriend from back in season 2 died because Walt let her. He could’ve saved her, but he chose not to. With this information Jesse is completely broken and forced to become a slave to Jack, making meth against his will. At this point, Jesse has no choice. It’s either work for Jack or escape and risk the lives of his current girlfriend, Andrea, and her son, Brock. With Jesse abandoned by Walter, there’s no one left for him to save himself. Here is where the feeling of hopelessness sets in. Jesse has been this character described as “a good man with a good heart, but horrible luck and circumstances”. He has gained a lot of sympathy and likeability from viewers as we’ve seen him from his greatest achievements to his lowest points. To see Jesse become basically a dog to such a dangerous threat is one we’ve seen before, but nothing like this.
Image: Jesse Pinkman
The next devastation takes place in Walter’s family house. His wife, Skyler, drives her son and daughter, Walt Jr. and Holly respectively, back home after confessing the horrible truth about Walt to Walt Jr. and her sister, Marie. Walter comes home frantic, getting ready to pack up everything and run away with his family so that the DEA never finds them. As he’s packing, Skyler witnesses this and asks what happened to Hank. She doesn’t get an answer from Walt, so she concludes that Walt killed Hank. Walter Jr., who is still in disbelief, hears this and is horrified. Shocked by this revelation, Skyler grabs the closest kitchen knife she can find and confronts Walt. When Walt starts to show signs of violence, Skyler cuts Walter’s hand with the knife and they get thrown onto the ground in a struggle for the knife. Walt Jr. looks on in horror, but he does one of the bravest things on the show: he jumps in front of his abusive father and protects his mother, ultimately saving her life and calling the police on Walt. Walt is horrified by his son’s actions and repeatedly tries to convince them and himself that “We’re a family!!!” while little Holly is crying in the background. Realizing that this is no longer true, he grabs Holly, the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on as she’s a baby, kidnaps her and drives away. We watch Skyler try to catch Walt as he drives away and once he’s too far gone, Skyler can only look on in devastation and drops to the ground in horror. This is both where Walt Jr’s and Skyler’s moment sets in. Walt Jr. in where he, at first, denies that his father is a drug lord and a horrible person only to have this confirmed to him in the worst way possible. For Skyler in where she is nearly killed by her husband and faces the consequences of her actions by seeing her own daughter taken away from her for who knows how long. The devastation on her face when she falls to the ground in shock is the same emotion that the viewer has on their faces. Seeing that there’s nothing either they or the characters on screen can do except watch in disbelief.
The next important scene is smaller, but still important. The first comes with Holly. Her's comes after Walter's confession as I'll talk about in the next paragraph, but it's still important enough to talk about here. Holly is just a toddler who knows nothing of what’s going on. She doesn’t know Walt is a drug lord or what he does. All she can do is drive with Walt to wherever he’s headed next. But, of course, being a child, she misses her mother and cries for her as Walt changes her diaper in a bathroom stall. First off, I need to praise the acting here from Bryan Cranston for improving with the child actress as this scene was actually improvized on the spot because the kid was calling for her real mother at the time (who was on set) and Cranston acted the scene out as if it were a part of the show. Secondly, it is really sad to watch a young child being ripped away from her family in general. We’re supposed to think that maybe Walter is going to really take her out of Albuquerque with him until we see the look of regret finally show up on his face. He knows Holly doesn’t belong with him, especially as she is just a child. As one of his few acts of kindness in the episode, Walter leaves Holly at a fire station for her to be found and hopefully sent back home.
Image: Walter White
And finally, there’s Marie’s, Hank’s wife’s, devastation and another one of Walter’s last acts of kindness towards his family. After finally getting in contact with Walter, with the police at the White’s house to help investigate the drug lord, Skyler does her best to get Walt to tell her where Holly is and what happened to Hank. Walt tells them that Holly is safe, but confirms that Hank is dead. Marie, without a word said, is shocked at the revelation and breaks down as she hears Walter’s confession. Marie has done some bad things on this show (almost everyone on this show has aside from Walt Jr. and Holly), but she and Walt Jr. are probably the most innocent ones out of the family. They both did their best to support and love their family members and didn’t have much of an idea as to what the true story was. And their reward for staying out of the whole situation is a dead man and a runaway criminal. As for Walter, he confesses his crimes. He admits to what he did and now he is actively on the run with a new name and identification. The biggest part of his confession, however, is that he tells the police that Skyler had nothing to do with his criminal acts; that he forced her to participate in them and that it’s his fault that she was even a part of it in the first place. Walter insults and degrades Skyler over the phone, but it’s in a way that takes her completely off the hook and gives Skyler the freedom she needs, but may not completely deserve. It’s almost like the show is allowing the audience to feel relieved for the Whites in what feels like forever as they finally get a conclusion of some kind, albeit a sad one. But for Walter, it’s the end of his dream to make sure his family is safe, happy, and most of all, financially secure. Now, though his family is safe, one of their members is dead, they’re all grieving, and they have none of the money Walt promised them from the start.
I remember the first time I watched this episode. It was when it initially aired back in 2013. I had recently gotten into the show at the time thanks to it streaming on Netflix and AMC having marathons of it to catch viewers up. I remember being fascinated by this show, having never seen anything like it before. Admittedly, there were some parts of the show that were very difficult to watch for me (Face Off and Freight Train, as great as they are, do come to mind). Ozymandias became one of the hardest episodes I ever had to witness and became the episode that stuck in my mind ever since. Every consequence to every action was met. There were no true happy endings in this. The only real victories were Jack and his Nazis. Everyone else lost. There was no room to breathe and soak everything in until the credits rolled. I remember sitting down on the family couch speechless at what I just watched. I sat there for several minutes. The feeling of devastation sank in and I wondered how in the world was Vince Gilligan and his team were going to wrap this series up. We all had to wait two more episodes until we got our answer and they were probably the most grueling two weeks of any piece of media I ever had and will witness.
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