Welcome to today's Deep Dive. We're jumping right
into a really specific slice of television history
today. Yeah, we really are. And I'm excited about
this one. Me too. So if you're listening to this,
you're likely familiar with the world of retail
management. Whether you're running a massive
superstore like Walmart or, you know, a corner
bodega or even a high -end clothing boutique,
there is this specific line item on the annual
budget that every manager just absolutely hates.
Oh, yeah. But they all accept it. Right. They
have to. It's called shrinkage, or more colloquially,
in the trade. breakage. It is a really fascinating
bit of economic realism when you look at it.
I mean, it accounts for the jar of pickles that
just slips out of a stock boy's hands and shatters
an aisle four. Yeah, or the t -shirt that walks
out the door under a teenager's jacket. Exactly.
It accounts for shipping errors, spoilage, minor
accidents, all of that. It's the calculated statistical
inevitability of loss. A healthy business model
basically assumes that you will never ever capture
100 % of your potential revenue. Right, you accept
the loss to keep the machine moving. You sweep
up the glass, you write off the inventory, you
log it in the spreadsheet, and then you just
open the doors the next day. You don't shut down
the whole store because a single jar broke. No,
of course not. But here is the question we are
wrestling with today, and it's our core mission
for this deep dive. What happens when you apply
that standard retail logic to a high stakes criminal
enterprise? Right. What happens when the damaged
goods aren't jars of pickles, but human beings?
And perhaps most critically, what happens when
the CEO of that enterprise just flat out refuses
to accept that loss is part of the game? That
is the central tension of the material we're
covering today. We are looking at Breaking Bad,
specifically season two, episode five. Titled
Very Appropriately and Starkly. Breakage breakage
now before you think oh, I know this one It's
just a setup episode where they move furniture
around hold on don't skip ahead just yet We have
looked at the data and this particular piece
of media is incredibly polarizing I mean it is
a bit of a Rorschach test for the audience It
really is on one side you have critics like Noel
Murray from the AV Club giving it a straight
-up A grade. He called it a masterpiece of visual
storytelling and thematic density. But then on
the other side, you have the rankings. Vulture
ranked every single episode of the series. All
62 of them. All 62. And they put breakage at
number 62. Dead last. Dead last. The absolute
bottom of the barrel according to their metrics.
And the ringer wasn't much kinder either. They
placed it at 44th out of 62. So solidly in the
bottom third. So our mission today is to really
reconcile that massive gap for you. How can a
piece of media be visually brilliant and narratively
essential, yet be perceived as the worst or the
most boring? by a really significant portion
of the audience. It usually comes down to what
the viewer is prioritizing, right? Like the adrenaline
of the plot versus the architecture of the psychology.
Exactly. And this deep dive is definitely for
those who are interested in that architecture.
This episode is the absolute foundation upon
which the rest of the tragedies build. So let's
open the file on the basics first, just to set
the context for you. This originally aired on
April 5th, 2009. Right. It was directed by Johann
Rank and written by Moira Wally Beckett. And
Johann Rank is a name worth noting here. He brings
a very specific visual style to this. A lot of
claustrophobic angles, a lot of focus on texture
and silence. And Maura Wally Beckett later went
on to write Ozymandias, which many consider the
greatest episode of the entire series. So the
pedigree here is just incredibly high. It really
is. And for the trivia hunters out there, there
is a dedication at the end of the episode to
Kim Manners. Right. A titan of television directing.
He was huge on the X -Files and Supernatural.
He passed away shortly before this aired. So
it sets a pretty somber tone right from the credits.
Yeah, it does. But looking at the narrative itself,
the real meat here is the introduction of the
crew. We finally see Badger, Skinny Pete, and
Combo stepping up from being these background
jokes to being actual employees. And of course,
we meet Jane Margolis. Jane. Yes. We will definitely
get to her. She is pivotal in ways that ripple
through the entire series. But let's start with
the business meeting. The episode opens with
this really fascinating shift in the power dynamic
between Walt and Jesse. Usually Walt is the professor,
right? Right. Lecturing the burnout student.
But here they are discussing distribution and
Jesse is actually the one holding the whiteboard
marker, so to spoof. He is. and it's driven entirely
by necessity. Remember the context here for a
second. Tuco Salamanca is dead. Right. The insane
dictator phase of their business is over. Now
they have a massive power vacuum. And Jesse knows
the DEA is sniffing around him specifically.
I mean, they found his car at Tuco's, remember?
Exactly. He tells Walt point blank, I am not
being a lone wolf anymore. He is terrified of
being the street level target. So Jesse actually
proposes a new corporate structure. He wants
to layer it. He wants to be the middleman. He
says, I'll be the distributor. I'll get guys
to sell on the street. You cook. I manage. They
sell. It's actually a very sound strategy. It's
vertical integration. Jesse suggests they control
production, which Walt does, and wholesale distribution.
But they farm out the retail risk to subcontractors.
In this case... His friends. It's a classic pyramid
structure. Or a multi -level marketing scheme,
just with methamphetamine instead of essential
oils. Huh, right. And the three amigos, Skinny
Pete, Badger, Combo. Now, looking at these guys,
they don't exactly scream Fortune 500. No, not
at all. They're slouching, they're wearing beanies,
they're talking slang. But Jesse trusts them.
And for a while, it actually works. The montage
shows the money rolling in. It's efficient. It
works because they're insulated. Walt is insulated
from the street by Jesse and Jesse is insulated
from the buyers by the crew. But any business
model is only as good as its weakest link. And
in this case, the weak link is the unpredictability
of the customer base. Which brings us to the
inciting incident, the robbery. Right. Skinny
Pete is out there doing his job. He's not a tough
guy. He's just a dealer. He goes into a house
to sell to a couple of addicts. And the scene
is just, it's so grimy, it's unglamorous, it's
not a cool cinematic drug deal. He gets ripped
off by a couple who are clearly just vibrating
out of their minds. They take the meth, they
take the cash, and they essentially just bully
him out of the door. And this is where the definition
of breakage moves from a business term to a moral
crisis. Jesse meets Walt to settle up the accounts.
He hands over the money, but the envelope is
light. Walt immediately spots it too. counting
the stacks and he just stops. What is this? Where's
the rest? Jesse is surprisingly calm about it,
which is interesting. He explains it just like
a manager at Target would explain a missing inventory
log. He says, Skinny Pete got robbed. Yeah. It
happens. It's breakage. He literally uses the
word. He says, we made this much minus the theft.
Here is your split. To Jesse, this is just math.
He is operating completely on a cost of doing
business model. He is willing to absorb the financial
hit. He's even willing to let skinny Pete slide
on paying it back immediately just to avoid the
physical risk of confrontation. He is prioritizing
safety and stability over profit maximization,
which is a very rational, modern way to run a
business. But Walt. Walt looks at that light
envelope and he does not see a financial loss.
He sees a massive PR disaster. Walt is operating
on cartel logic. Exactly. Explain that a bit
more for the listener. In the illegal drug trade,
you don't have access to the court system or
insurance, right? If someone steals your inventory,
you can't sue them. You can't call the police.
You're only recourse. You're only actual asset.
really, is your reputation for violence. Right.
Walt argues that if word gets out that Heisenberg's
crew can be robbed without consequence, they
are finished. It's open season. Every junkie
in Albuquerque will take a shot at them. Is he
wrong, though? I mean, strictly speaking, in
that world. Strategically? No, he isn't wrong.
If you look at the history of illicit markets,
they really are governed by reputation. But morally...
he is making a terrifying calculation. He is
saying that a thousand dollars of meth is worth
more than a human life, or at least worth the
risk of taking one. He is rejecting the concept
of breakage entirely. He is saying, we are too
good to lose money. And he forces that calculation
right onto Jesse. This is the moment that genuinely
gave me chills when I re -watched it. Walt shows
up at Jesse's new apartment later in the episode.
He doesn't come to offer to cover the loss. He
doesn't come to strategize on better security.
No, he brings a gun. Jesse a gun. It's a snub
-nose .38, I think, and the instruction is implicit
but entirely clear handle it. He is outsourcing
the violence. And not the hypocrisy here. Walt
wants the reputation of a killer. He wants everyone
to fear Heisenberg, but he wants Jesse to be
the executioner. He wants to be the CEO who keeps
his hands clean while the middle manager does
the dirty work. Exactly. It's a total rejection
of the breakage philosophy. Walt is saying we
will not accept loss. And by refusing to lose
a little bit of money, he is totally willing
to break Jesse's spirit. He is pushing Jesse
from dealer, which is essentially a passive role,
to enforcer, which is an active, violent role.
And think about the long -term cost of that decision.
This is where the analysis gets really interesting
for me. If Walt had just said, OK, that sucks,
let's be more careful next time, and just taking
the financial hit, think about what doesn't happen.
Jesse doesn't go to the addict's house. Right.
The APM incident doesn't happen. The escalation
with the cartel doesn't happen in the same way.
It's the sunk cost fallacy completely weaponized.
He's trying to save a few bucks and creates a
black hole that eventually swallows his entire
family. Which brings us perfectly to the other
character who is being swallowed whole in this
episode, Hank Schrader. If Walt is the one causing
the breakage, Hank is the vessel that is literally
cracking under the pressure. Hank's arc here
is so heartbreaking. On paper, this should be
the best week of his entire life. He just killed
Tuko Salamanca in a heroic shootout. He is the
absolute hero of the Albuquerque DEA office.
And in this episode, he gets the golden ticket,
a promotion to the Tri -State Task Force. It's
a massive career jump. He's going to the big
show in El Paso. He's going to be working with
the feds, crossing the border, hunting the actual
cartel bosses. But watch his body language in
these scenes, in the scene with his boss and
the other agents. He's loud. He's cracking jokes.
He's doing that thing Hank does where he puts
on a big show. He is performing the role of the
alpha dog. It's a mask. It's entirely a mask.
And then the elevator door is closed. Oh, man,
that scene, the sound just drops out. The camera
lingers on him. He hunches over. He grabs the
rail. He literally can't breathe. It is a textbook
panic attack. And it's beautifully acted by Dean
Norris. You see the sweat, the pallor. But why
now? When he's getting everything he worked for?
Because the promotion removes his safety buffer.
He survived the shootout with Tuco, but it deeply
traumatized him. His brain is screaming, I almost
died. He hasn't processed that mortality at all.
Right. And now his job is rewarding him by sending
him into an even more dangerous environment.
the border war. His body is physically rejecting
the reality that his ego is trying to accept.
The writers use this incredible visual metaphor
to dramatize this internal pressure, too. The
home brewing. Ah, yes. Freight or brow. Freight
or brow. Right. Hank is bottling his beer in
the garage. There is a shot of him forcing the
caps onto the bottles. He is jamming them down
with this capping tool, and he's just using too
much force. One of them just shatters in his
hand, cuts him wide open. It's not subtle, but
it is incredibly effective. Hank is the bottle.
He is under too much pressure. the fermentation
of his trauma, and he is being forced into a
mold he just doesn't fit anymore. He's trying
to cap his emotions, and it's causing him to
break physically. But the sound design is where
the A grade from the AV club really comes from.
Later that night, Hank is sleeping, and he hears
it. Pop. It sounds exactly like gunfire. Exactly
like it. He wakes up, and he doesn't just wake
up groggy. He wakes up in full tactical mode.
He grabs his gun. He clears the hallway. He clears
the living room. He is moving like he is right
back in the shootout. He genuinely thinks the
cartel has come for him. And what do we find?
It's just the beer bottles exploding in the garage.
The pressure from the fermentation blew the caps
right off. It's the perfect metaphor for PTSD.
Yeah. The threat isn't external anymore. It's
internal. The danger is coming from inside his
own house, from his own hobby. He can't escape
the violence because he has completely internalized
it. The war is now in his garage. And that leads
right to the scene at the Rio Grande, the final
image of Hank in this episode. He drives down
to the river. He takes the trophy he kept from
the Tuco shootout. The grill. Tuco's teeth. encased
in that lucite block. It was a souvenir of his
victory. He looks at it with just pure disgust,
and he hurls it into the river. He is trying
to dispose of the breakage. He wants to throw
the trauma away. He wants to wash his hands of
the violence. Yeah. But the tragedy of Hank Trader,
and this is something that plays out over the
next three seasons, is that you cannot throw
away a memory. You can't throw away the way your
hand shakes in an elevator. So we have Walt refusing
to break and causing chaos. We have Hank breaking
privately and trying to hide it. And then we
have the white marriage. This is where the concept
of breakage becomes all about trust. The domestic
front is completely crumbling. We know Walt is
financially stressed. The medical bills are piling
up. The drug money from Tuco is dwindling. He
is physically sick from the first round of chemo.
Results in two months, they say. Right. But the
inciting incident here is so mundane. A clogged
toilet. It's really visceral. Walt is vomiting,
face in the bowl, and he sees the water rising.
He fishes out the obstruction and it's a cigarette
pack. Skyler's. Now look at the hypocrisy here.
This is classic Walter White. Walt is a meth
manufacturer. He has killed people. He is lying
about his entire existence to everyone he loves.
But he finds a cigarette wrapper and he immediately
mounts the high horse. He confronts Skyler with
his righteous indignation. You're smoking, how
could you? With me having lung cancer. And Skyler's
reaction is really fascinating. In season one,
Skyler might have cried or apologized. She was
still trying to be the good wife, but season
two Skyler, she stonewalls him. She just refuses
to apologize. She basically looks him in the
eye and says nothing. She is rewriting the marital
contract right there. Her argument is rooted
in reciprocity. She knows Walt has massive secrets.
She doesn't know what they are yet. She obviously
doesn't know about the meth lab, but she feels
the weight of his dishonesty. Her logic is basically,
if you can have a secret life, so can I. If you
break the contract of total honesty, I'm not
bound by it either. It's mutually assured destruction.
That's precisely. It's a stalemate. You lie,
I lie. And we see Skyler projecting this deep
need for truth onto her sister, Marie. Remember
the tiara incident? Oh, right. The stolen tiara
from the baby shower in a previous narrative
arc. Marie stole it, gave it to Skyler, and Skyler
almost got arrested returning it. Marie has been
dodging that for episodes. Skyler corners her
at the cookout, celebrating Hank's promotion.
It's aggressive. She demands an apology. She
basically says, this will irreversibly drive
a wedge between us unless you acknowledge reality.
And it works. Marie tearfully apologizes. Schuyler
forces the breakage out into the open. Unlike
the men who are hiding their cracks, Walt hiding
the crime, Hank hiding the panic attacks, Schuyler
is pointing at the crack and screaming, look
at this, fix this. She is desperate for control.
She can't control Walt's cancer. She can't control
his disappearances. She can't control the secrets
in her house, but she can control Marie. She
can force Marie to admit to the theft. It's a
proxy war for the truth she just isn't getting
from her husband. It's really heavy stuff. Every
single character is dealing with loss. And amidst
all this heavy psychological drama, we have Jesse
trying to build a new foundation. We have to
talk about segment four, the introduction of
Jane. This is such a pivotal moment for the series.
Yeah. Jesse is effectively homeless at this point.
He's been crashing in the RV. He finds this duplex
for rent. And he meets the landlord, Jane Margolis,
played by Kristen Ritter. Jessie is trying so
hard to cosplay a normal person here. He's wearing
decent clothes. He's being polite. He really
wants to be a responsible tenant. But the application
form is a disaster. No credit, no employment
history. He is a ghost in the system. Jane is
the gatekeeper to the normal life Jessie wants.
She looks at the application and says, no, she
is professional. She spots the red flags immediately.
But then Jessie flashes the cash. And this tells
us everything about Jane in about 10 seconds.
She looks at the unfurnished place. She looks
at the cash. She looks at the blank form, and
she improvises. She said she'll rent to him,
but if you pay cash, the rent is higher. It's
a corruption tax or a risk premium. She is signaling
that she is transactional. She's willing to bend
the rules for a profit. In a way, she and Jesse
are perfect for each other. They're both outcasts
trying to navigate the straight world and both
kind of failing to do it, honestly. It establishes
her as someone who isn't necessarily bad, but
who is morally flexible. She's not a civilian
like Skyler. She's in the gray area, just like
Jesse. And we also see Jesse trying to clean
up his other loose ends with Clovis, the towing
guy. Right. He goes back to the yard. He pays
for the gate he smashed in the previous breakout.
He pays for the towing. He stores the RV there.
He even buys a nondescript used car. A red Toyota
Trussell, I think. He is trying so hard to compartmentalize.
He thinks he can keep the daytime Jesse, the
guy with the apartment, and the cute neighbor
completely separate from the nighttime Jesse,
the guy with the gun and the meth. He thinks
he can simply pay off the past. But the gun is
in the apartment. The gun is in the apartment.
The breakage has already moved in with him. You
cannot separate the two worlds. That is the lesson
the show hammers home again and again. You can
buy a new car, you can rent a new apartment,
but if you bring the gun with you, you are still
in the game. So Bringing it all back to the critical
reception, we talked about this at the start.
Why did Vulture hate this episode so much? Why
rank it 62nd out of 62? I really think it suffers
from middle child syndrome. It's a bridge episode.
It doesn't have the kinetic energy of the pilot
or the explosive climax of a season finale. Right.
If you are binge watching for the adrenaline
rush, waiting for the big explosions or the train
heists, this episode feels like a break check.
It's moving pieces around. Hank to El Paso, Jessie
to a new apartment, Jane's intro. It's the vegetables.
You have to eat the vegetables to get the dessert.
But for the deep dive listener, for you, this
is the nutrient dense part of the meal. You cannot
understand Hank's character in seasons three,
four or five. without understanding the panic
attack in the elevator in season two. You cannot
understand the tragedy of Jesse Pinkman without
seeing him try and fail to be a normal tenant
in this episode. Noel Murray at the AV club was
absolutely right. The visual comparisons, the
bottles versus the gunshots, the retail loss
versus the human loss, Walt's secret versus Skyler's
secret that is high level character work. It's
doing the heavy lifting so the later episodes
can just coast on the emotional setup. It honestly
changes the genre. This episode is the pivot
point. where Breaking Bad stops being a dark
comedy about a teacher making drugs and starts
being a tragedy about the true cost of power.
So let's wrap this up. If we are looking at the
cost of doing business, what is the bill? The
bill is total. That is the key takeaway. You
cannot budget for the kind of loss they're inviting
in. Breakage isn't just about lost math. It's
about the cost of doing business in a life of
crime. Hank pays the cost through trauma. His
peace of mind is gone. Walt pays the cost through
the erosion of his marriage. He wins the argument
about the money, but he completely loses the
trust of his wife. And Jesse pays the cost by
being forced toward violence. The concept of
breakage suggests that loss is manageable. You
lose 2 % of inventory, you survive. But the episode
argues the exact opposite. In this world, the
loss is unmanageable. It spreads. It's not a
cracked jar. It's a cracked foundation. The whole
house is going to come down. And it all started
because Walt wouldn't let $1 ,000 go. That's
the thought I really want you to sit with. Consider
the definition of breakage presented by Jesse,
revenue loss that must be expected. Walt rejected
the financial loss of breakage. But by refusing
to lose a little money, he initiates a chain
of events that will break everything else in
his life. Is avoiding a small loss really worth
risking a total collapse? How many times in life
do we double down on a bad situation because
we refuse to accept a small loss? We throw good
money after bad, or we escalate a conflict just
to save face. Walt's decision to buy a gun to
solve a theft problem is the ultimate cautionary
tale. He thought he was saving his reputation.
In reality, he was lighting the match that would
burn his whole world down. Sometimes you just
have to sweep up the pickles and move on. Exactly.
Let it break. It's cheaper than the alternative.
That's a wrap on breakage. Thank you for diving
deep with us. We'll see you on the next one.