I read an interview with Vince Gilligan, the creator and showrunner of Breaking Bad, where he said that "this show is going to take Mr. Chips and turn him into Scarface." Walter White was probably no Mr. Chips when he first started out and it's doubtful that he'll reach the level of Scarface, but the transformation from unassuming chemistry teacher to drug kingpin is in full force this season.
Walter White has mad many dubious decisions over the course of this series, but this year is when he finally took the plunge knowingly and whole-heartedly. He's graduated from killing in self-defense with Krazy-8, to inadvertently killing Jane and the victims of the mid-air collision (and, in Jane's case, failing to try and save her), to outright murder by the end of this season. He may have had his excuses that he had to save Jesse, but when he puts a bullet through that drug dealer's head and tells Jesse to run, the look on his face says it all, there is no going back now. That was the moment Mr. Chips left and Scarface began.
Before that moment, Walt spent the beginning of the season trying to go back. He knew that his actions (and inactions) with Jane led to the crash and that knowledge was weighing heavily on him, but probably not as heavily as it should. The Walter White we know can rationalize just about anything. To help with his decision to get out is the fact that he's made a huge score of more money than he can ever need and that he's hoping getting out will help him get back together with Skyler.
We know from experience that things never go as Walt intends. Gus Fring wants Walt to cook for him and he knows exactly how to get Walt under his grasp, appeal to his vanity and pride. Giancarlo Esposito had himself a great season which fully justified his promotion to the main cast. Last season Gus was just a vague entity, clean cut and very exacting, but this year his come out as the full fledged villain. His speech to Walt in the lab that he had built about how a man provides was pitch perfect and pushed all the right buttons for Walt.
All the while that Walt is trying to get out and being pulled back in there's the looming threat of the Cousins coming to get him. A threat that Walt knows nothing about, dramatic irony at its finest. Their story comes to a harrowing climax with Hank in a parking lot in one of the most masterfully intense scenes I've seen in a TV show ever. I barely took a breath during that entire sequence. Moving the cousins focus from Walt to Hank was an ingenious ploy to up the ante. If they had been coming after Walt in that parking lot, we may be scared for what's going to happen next, but we would know that Walt was not going to die. Not so with Hank, he's the kind of character a show like this would be willing to get rid of. We never do find out who called Hank to give him that one minute warning, but all signs point to Gus and his plan to knock off El Jefe.
Hank's attack and recovery gave some great work to Dean Norris with his not wanting to feel helpless in his recovery, but also helped to bring Skyler back into the fold. She knows that Walt has a ton of money sitting around and what better way to use it than to help out her bother-in-law and sister. It doesn't hurt that she figures Walt has had some hand, unintentionally or not, in what happened to Hank (going back to the theme hammered home last season that Walt always ends up hurting everyone around him). However, if she's to be involved she's really going to be involved, and being an accountant she can be an asset to the Walter-Jesse-Saul criminal enterprise.
I've gotten this far without talking about the wonderful work of Aaron Paul as Jesse. When this show started, Walt was the lead and everyone else was supporting. That has slowly changed to to Walt and Jesse as co-leads as Jesse has gone from goofy sidekick to a damaged aspiring drug lord of his own. Jesse begins this season in the exact opposite position as Walt, he's already resigned himself to the fact that he's evil and runs with it. The emptiness in Jesse through the first half of the season, and then the anger at Walt after Hank had put him in the hospital was stellar work from Aaron Paul. I'm sure the episode with his monologue where he yells at Walt from the hospital bed was his Emmy submission episode. Jesse may want to embrace being evil, but outside duping his parents out of the house, he can't really go through with it. He tries to begin one of the most messed up schemes I've ever seen with selling meth to people in NA, but can't go through with it. He wants to kill the guys who had Combo killed and then killed his new girl's little brother. He was ready to go through with it, but die in the attempt so he wouldn't have to live with himself, until Walt came crashing in. That brings us back around to the moment Scarface began.
Walt may have tipped the scales in that moment, but the scales fall apart in the next episode. While the killing of the drug dealers may have been murder (especially the second one with the head shot, he was already incapacitated), it was still murder of bad people to save Jesse. Poor Gale never did anything but be a part of Gus' drug business. Walt doesn't hesitate to order the death of Gale, and when Jesse balks, he doesn't hesitate to take in on himself. Ultimately, Jesse has to finally enter the ranks of taking a man's life as Walt's life hangs in the balance. A great cliffhanger that left me wanting to start on Season 4 right away and skip this whole write up.
At the end here, I want to single out one particular episode, "Fly." The story of Walt and Jesse trying to kill a fly in the lab was a superb version of what, in the industry, is called a bottle episode. We've reached a point where we know these characters well enough that it can just be the two of them inside the lab for entire episode and it's compelling TV. Especially the point where Walt comes tantalizing close to telling Jesse that he was responsible for Jane's death. From a character standpoint, the stand out episode of the entire series (so far) in my opinion.
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