Welcome back to the deep dive. Today we're doing
something a little different. Usually we are
zooming out. Way out. Right, like looking at
sweeping historical trends or, you know, massive
tectonic shifts in the tech industry. Exactly.
We usually try to encompass the whole world in
an hour, but today we're doing the exact opposite.
We're zooming in. And I mean microscope level.
Yeah. We are going to spend our time today inside
a single room focused on a single hour of television
that aired way back in 2010. We are talking about
Breaking Bad. And for you fans listening, you
probably already know exactly where we are going
with this. We aren't talking about the train
heist. We aren't talking about the explosive
finale. We are talking about season three, episode
10, the episode titled Simply Fly. Fly. One word,
one room, two guys. And a bug. It is arguably
the most polarizing hour of television in the
modern era. I mean, you mentioned this episode
to a Breaking Bad fan, and you get one of two
reactions. Always. They either groan, roll their
eyes, and say, oh, the bottle episode where nothing
happens. Or they get this intense look in their
eyes and tell you it's a masterpiece of psychological
horror. It really is the Marmite of television
episodes. You love it or you hate it. There is
very little middle ground here. And what's fascinating
is that both sides are kind of right. They are.
On the surface, it is literally 47 minutes of
Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul trying to swat
a housefly. That is the plot. Which sounds totally
insane when you say it out loud. Completely insane.
Because this is a show about meth dealers, cartels,
decapitated heads -on turtles, and high stakes
poker games with the DEA. Right. And then right
in the middle of season three, the brakes just
screech to a halt. We watch a guy fall off a
ladder trying to catch a bug. But that screeching
halt is exactly why we are here today. Because
when you stop the momentum of a thriller, When
you strip away the explosions and the villains
you are left with something much scarier. The
human mind. Exactly. This episode isn't about
a fly. It's a master class in psychology, a lesson
in the brutal economic realities of Hollywood
production, and really a visual experiment that
pushes the boundaries of what a TV drama can
actually do. So here is our mission for this
deep dive. We're going to unpack the why and
the how. We're going to look at the financial
desperation that forced this episode to exist.
Spoiler alert, they were completely broke. Totally
in the red. We're also going to break down the
psychological meltdown of Walter White, which
is the actual plot of the hour. And we're going
to explore this massive divide in the audience.
Why do critics call this a perfect hour of television
while so many fans list it as the one episode
they skip on a rewatch? And ultimately, we are
going to answer the question, is this episode
filler? Or is it actually the skeleton key that
unlocks the entire series? Okay, let's unpack
this. Let's start with the reality of making
television. Because I think, as viewers, we assume
a show like Breaking Bad, especially by season
three, just has a blank check. You would think
so. They were winning Emmys, the ratings were
climbing. Surely Vince Gilligan, the creator,
could do whatever he wanted. The reality is much
grittier than that. By the time they reached
the production slot for episode 10 of season
three, the show was... to use Vince Gilligan's
own words, hopelessly over budget. How does a
massive hit show like that just run out of money?
Well, think about what they had done in the first
nine episodes of that season. They had intricate
action sequences, massive location shoot out
in the desert, destroyed vehicles. Quality costs
money. It does. And they had simply spent their
allowance. They were in the red. So they can't
just go to the network and ask for a little more
cash. It really doesn't work like that. Even
for a huge hit. They had a hard cap. And the
source material highlights a really specific,
fascinating financial detail that explains exactly
why this episode looks the way it does. Let's
hear it. It comes down to the trucks. The trucks.
The production convoy. When you shoot on location,
say, you want to film a scene at Jesse Pinkman's
house and then a scene out in the desert, you
have to move what they call the circus. Right,
the whole fleet. The camera trucks, the lighting
rigs, the makeup trailers, catering, the actors
trailers. It is a massive fleet of vehicles.
It's not just hopping in a minivan. It's a full
military style logistical operation. Exactly.
And the sources note that simply moving that
production convol from one location to another
costs between $25 ,000 and $35 ,000. Wait, let
me get this straight. That's not paying the actors.
That's not the cost of the film stock or the
cameras or lunch. That's just driving. That is
just the relocation fee. The cost of fuel, drivers,
permits and the time lost setting up and tearing
down. Wow. And they looked at the budget for
episode 10 and realized we literally cannot afford
to move the trucks. We do not have the 30 grand.
That is wild. So they were just grounded. Grounded.
They needed a script that took place in a set
they already had standing, fully built, and fully
lit. The super lab. Exactly. And they needed
it to use as few actors as possible to save on
guest star fees. And that, my friends, is how
the bottle episode is born. Right. Bottle episode
is an old industry term. It goes all the way
back to the 60s, like the original Star Trek.
Oh, really? Yeah, when they ran out of money
for alien planets, they would write an episode
that took place entirely on the Enterprise. They
would bottle the cast up in the ship. It's a
cost -saving measure disguised as a creative
choice. Precisely. But in the case of Fly, it
feels like they didn't just accept the bottle,
they smashed the bottle over our heads. They
leaned into it so hard. They really did. If you
look at the cast list for Fly, it is startlingly
stark. Aside from a few extras in the background
at the very beginning and end, like the laundry
workers. The only people who speak or have any
screen time are Bryan Cranston as Walt and Aaron
Paul as Jesse. That is it. It's essentially a
two -man stage play. It really is. And there's
a funny quirk in the credits that the sources
point out. If you watch the opening credits for
this episode, you see the names of all the regulars.
Like Dean Norris who plays Hank. Yes. Bitsy Brandt
who plays Marie. R .J. Mitby who plays Walt Jr.
They're all listed in the opening text. But they
never actually show up. They get the credit.
And likely the paycheck, because they are series
regulars. But they were told to just stay home.
To save money on hair, makeup, catering, all
of it. Exactly. There is one tiny exception,
though. We do hear the voice of Skylar White,
played by Anna Gunn. Right. At the beginning.
But the production notes reveal just how broke
they were. They didn't even pay Anna Gunn to
come into a recording booth to do those lines.
Really? No. They reused audio from a season two
episode called Phoenix. where she is singing
a lullaby. They just recycled the tape. That
is how scrappy this production was. Very scrappy.
It's amazing to think that one of the greatest
television dramas of all time was basically operating
like a student film for a week. Like, hey, we
have a basement and two actors. What can we make?
But that is where the absolute genius of Vince
Gilligan comes in. Yeah. He didn't see this as
just a limitation. He had a whole philosophy
about pace. How so? He argued that a season of
television is like a piece of music. You can't
have a guitar solo screaming at you for 13 hours
straight. Right. You get numb to it. If everything
is an explosion, then an explosion isn't special
anymore. Precisely. Gilligan said you need the
quiet moments to make the high highs pop. The
contrasts. The quiet episodes allow the audience
to breathe, and they allow the characters to
actually process what has happened to them. So
fly is the deep breath before the plunge. It
is the pause button. But it's a pause button
where the characters are stuck together in a
pressure cooker. So we have the context. We know
why they're trapped in the lab. It's basically
because the accountant said so. Yeah. Now, let's
get into the story itself. Let's open the door
to the super lab and look at what actually happens.
So chronologically, we are right in the middle
of season three. And to understand Walt's behavior
here, you have to look at his medical chart,
so to speak. And we aren't talking about his
cancer. No, we are talking about his sleep. The
insomnia. The episode opens with this tight close
-up of a smoke detector. Just that blinking red
light. And Walt is just staring at it. Insomnia
is a classic literary device. When a character
can't sleep, it means their subconscious is trying
to eat them alive. Their defenses are totally
down. The filters are gone. Walt is fraying at
the edges. So he goes down to the lab with Jesse.
And right away, there's this tension about the
product. And of course with Walt. It is always
about the math. It is always the math. Yeah.
Walt has calculated exactly how much meth they
should be producing based on the chemical precursors
they have in the tanks. And the yield is coming
up short. Not by a massive amount, but enough
to be statistically significant for a guy like
Walt. Exactly. And Jesse tries to just wave it
off. He gives us the word of the episode spillage.
He says, oh, you know, just spillage. We spilled
some like they are baking cookies and drop some
flour on the floor. But Walt isn't buying it.
And the audience knows Walt is right. We know
from previous episodes that Jesse is stealing.
Yeah, he's skimming. He is skimming small amounts
of the surplus meth to sell on the side to recover
his own financial losses. So right from the jump,
you have this incredibly tense dynamic where
Walt is paranoid. But his paranoia is actually
completely justified. He's essentially being
gaslit by his partner. Exactly. And in that state
of sleep -deprived paranoia, he spots it. The
fly. Enter the antagonist. The antagonist. He
is all alone in the lab after Jesse leaves for
the night. And he sees this common housefly buzzing
around. Now, in a normal context, you swat it
or you ignore it. It's a bug. But to Walt, this
lab is his church. It is the one place in his
chaotic life where he has total absolute control.
It is sterile. It is perfect. And the fly represents
what? Dirt? Contamination. That is the word he
keeps using over and over. Contamination. He
convinces himself that if the fly lands on the
equipment, the entire batch of meth will be ruined.
Which is scientifically ridiculous, right? I
mean, it's a tiny fly. It's not going to ruin
200 pounds of crystal meth. It is highly dubious
science. But it isn't about the chemistry at
all. It's about control. Think about his life.
Walt has lost control of his family. Skyler wants
a divorce. He is losing control of his business
because he suspects Jesse is stealing. He can't
even control his own brain's ability to sleep.
So the fly is the one thing he thinks he can
actually conquer. Yes, it becomes a massive psychological
projection. And this leads directly to the slapstick
portion of the episode. And I think this is where
the haters we mentioned really start to check
out. For sure. Because we see Heisenberg, the
danger, the one who knocks, literally making
a makeshift fly swatter out of insulation material
and running around like a cartoon character.
It is pure slapstick. Yeah. And you have to give
credit to Rian Johnson, the director of this
episode. He leans fully into the absurdity of
it. He shoots it from these really low angles.
He uses wide lenses. There is a shot where Walt
falls off the catwalk that looks like something
straight out of Wile E. Coyote. He really hurts
himself too. He falls, hits the metal equipment.
It's a brutal drop. But that physical fall is
important structurally. It renders him physically
vulnerable to match his mental vulnerability.
Right. So when Jesse comes in the next morning,
he finds Walt bruised, manic. and refusing to
cook. Walt has completely shut down the entire
multi -million dollar operation. He locks them
in. It's a full on lockdown. He locks Jesse out
first. Then Jesse actually has to cut the power
to the lab to force his way back in. And then
Walt makes a decree. No one leaves until the
fly is dead. It becomes a siege. Two grown men
versus an insect. And I want to talk about Jesse's
reaction here. Because usually, Jesse is the
one who is emotional, erratic, the problem child
of the duo. Right. Walt is usually the cold,
calculating one. But here, Jesse steps up. He
becomes the adult in the room. It is a total
role reversal. Jesse sees that Walt is having
a legitimate mental breakdown. He doesn't mock
him. Well, at least not entirely. He tries to
actually problem solve. He suggests they just
cook anyway and ignore it. When that fails, he
tries to help catch the fly using fly paper and
a ladder. But crucially, he realizes Walt just
needs to sleep. So he glugs him. He becomes the
caretaker. He puts sleeping pills in Walt's coffee.
It's a protective act, but it's also a pragmatic
way to just shut Walt up so they can get back
to work. And while this is happening, Jesse tells
a story that I think is the key to understanding
Jesse's perspective on all this. The story about
his aunt. Right, the possum story. Jesse recounts
how his aunt, who died of cancer, started hearing
a possum under her house. She was completely
obsessed with catching it, but there was no possum.
The cancer had spread to her brain. Exactly,
and she was having auditory hallucinations. So
Jesse's looking at Walt, who we all know has
lung cancer, and he's connecting the dots. He
thinks the fly isn't real. He thinks the cancer
has metastasized to Walt's brain. It adds this
incredibly dark layer of tragedy to the slapstick
we were just watching. It does. Jesse looks at
Walt and sees a dying man losing his mind. Walt
insists he is in remission, that he's completely
fine, but the seed of doubt is planted for the
viewer. It reframes the whole episode. Are we
watching a dark comedy about a bug, or are we
watching the tragic final decline of a man's
cognitive faculties? And as those sleeping pills
that Jesse slipped him start to really take effect,
the energy of the episode shifts entirely. They're
running around stock. The frantic energy dissipates
and we enter what I think is the real heart of
fly. This is section three in our breakdown,
the emotional core. And this is where the writing
just absolutely shines. Walt becomes loose. He
becomes very talkative, and he starts a monologue
that is arguably the most important look into
his soul we ever get in the entire series. He
talks about death, but it's weirdly specific.
He isn't saying, I don't want to die. He's essentially
saying, I live too long. He is obsessed with
the timing of his death. He treats his life like
a mathematical graph, like a stock market chart.
He is looking for the peak. The perfect moment.
He's trying to solve the equation of his own
life. Yes. He says there was a moment where he
had made enough money to leave his family secure.
His baby daughter was born. But before the really
bad stuff happened, before Skyler found out about
the drugs, before he became the villain in his
own home, he says, I missed it. He missed his
exit ramp. And he pinpoints the exact night.
And this is where the hair on the back of my
neck stood up watching it. He lands on the night
Jane Margolis died. This is the elephant in the
room, the ghost in the machine for this whole
episode. For listeners who might be fuzzy on
season two, let's recap Jane. Jane was Jessie's
girlfriend. They were in love. They were planning
to run away to New Zealand with Jessie's drug
money. She was a recovering addict who relapsed
because of Jessie. And one night she overdosed
in her sleep. She choked. And Walt was there.
Walt broke into the apartment to talk to Jessie.
He saw Jane start to choke. He rushed to the
bed to help her, and then he stopped. He let
her die. He watched her die because she was a
threat to him. She knew too much. She was blackmailing
him, and she was taking Jessie away. It is the
moment Walt went from desperate guy breaking
the law to feed his family to an absolute monster.
Yes. And here he is, stoned on sleeping poles,
sitting on the floor of the lab with Jessie,
the man who loved her, talking about that exact
night. And he drops a bombshell of a detail that
Jessie doesn't know. He tells Jesse that earlier
that same night, before he went to their apartment,
he stopped at a bar for a drink. And he met a
man. A complete stranger. They sat and had a
beer. They talked about water on Mars. They talked
about raising daughters. And that man was Donald
Margolis, Jane's father. The father of the girl
Walt would watch die just two hours later. Walt
is obsessed with the odds of that meeting. He's
a scientist. He believes in probability and logic.
And he cannot make the math work. He tries to
calculate it right there on the floor. He says
the universe is random, it's chaos, it's just
subatomic particles colliding. But the odds of
meeting that specific man in a city the size
of Albuquerque on that specific night, he calls
it astronomical. It breaks his worldview. It
really does. Walt wants to believe the universe
is a cold, unfeeling machine. Because if the
universe is just a machine, then there is no
morality. There is no ultimate judgment for what
he did to Jane. But this coincidence, it feels
like fate. It feels like God put him in that
bar to warn him or to judge him. He says something
like the universe is screaming at you. Exactly.
And the fly represents that screaming. The fly
is the chaos he can't control. It's the physical
reminder that no matter how much he calculates,
he is trapped in a moral web he can't escape.
And as he is rambling about this, the tension
is just skyrocketing. Jesse is up on the ladder
trying to get the fly. Walt is on the ground
getting sleepier and sleepier. And he starts
apologizing. He says, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry
about Jane. Every viewer at home is holding their
breath. Because if he says, I watched her die,
it's over. The show is over. Jesse kills him
right there with the ladder. It is the ultimate
tease. We're teetering right on the edge of the
precipice. Walt is murmuring. His subconscious
is leaking out. He is inches away from confessing
his darkest sin. And then? The moment snaps.
Jesse sees the fly. The tension completely breaks.
Jesse swings. He swats the fly against the ceiling
light. A direct hit. The physical antagonist
is dead. Just like that? Jesse climbs down the
ladder, holding the dead bug like a trophy. He
shows it to Walt. Look. I got it. And the window
for confession abruptly closes. Walt looks at
the bug and he whispers, it's all contaminated.
and then he passes out. It's a brilliant narrative
move by the writers. The resolution of the physical
plot, killing the fly, actually prevents the
resolution of the emotional plot, which would
be the confection. The violence saves Walt from
having to tell the truth. Exactly. So the siege
finally ends, the next morning they clean up,
they cook the batch, the yield is good, and Jesse
drives Walt home. And there is this quiet moment
in the car where you think, okay, they've bonded.
They went through the trenches together. They
understand each other better now. You really
want to believe that. Jesse is being so gentle
with him, he drops Walt off at his house. But
then Walt turns to him and the mask is back on.
Heisenberg returns. Walt warns him point blank.
He says, if you are stealing, I can't protect
you. I can't protect you. That is so heavy. He's
basically saying, I know exactly what you're
doing. And if our boss Gus finds out, you're
on your own. It destroys the intimacy of the
previous 40 minutes in an instant. It reminds
us that these two are not friends. They are accomplices.
And there is zero trust. Walt knows Jesse is
stealing. Jesse knows Walt is hiding things.
They are locked in a death spiral. Jesse pushes
back though. He says, I'm not asking for your
protection. Which is a complete lie because he
definitely needs it. But he's asserting his independence.
He's putting his own armor back on. And then
we get the final shot of the episode. Walt is
back in his house. He's in his own bed. He's
trying to sleep. And the camera pans up. Slowly.
To the smoke detector. And we hear it. Blast.
The fly? It's back. I have a different fly. But
it lands right on the blinking light. So what
are we supposed to take from that ending? Was
the whole episode for nothing? They didn't even
kill the right fly. I think the expert interpretation
here is purely symbolic. If the fly represents
contamination, if it represents guilt or the
rot inside Walt's soul, then the ending is telling
us that you can't kill it with a fly swatter.
You can scrub the lab, but you can't clean your
soul. Precisely. The contamination is internal.
Walt is a contaminant. As long as he's alive,
the buzzing will continue. That is incredibly
dark. But it fits perfectly with the overarching
theme of the show. Now. We've unpacked the plot.
We've unpacked the production history I want
to spend this last segment talking about the
reaction because as we said at the start this
episode is a battlefield Marmite episode. Let's
talk about the people who love it first The critics
seem to really really rally behind this one Critics
usually love bottle episodes because they strip
away the spectacle and force a focus on pure
acting if you are a TV critic You want to see
Bryan Kranstenach. You don't just want to see
him walk away from a cool explosion. Who are
the big champions of fly? Well, Donna Bowman
at the AV Club gave it an A immediately upon
airing. She praised the visual risk taking. As
we mentioned, Ryan Johnson did some crazy stuff
with the camera. Yeah, the scrub brush POV. He
attached a camera right to a scrub brush so we
got the point of view of the floor being scrubbed.
He used extreme wide angles that made the lab
look miles long and totally isolating. It felt
disorienting, nauseating almost. Which was the
point. Matt Zoller Cites, writing for Vulture,
went even further. Years later, in 2013, he named
Fly the single greatest episode of the entire
series. Wow. Better than Ozymandias. Better than
the pilot. He called it a perfect hour of television.
He compared it to Pine Barrens from The Sopranos.
Oh, that's a huge compliment. It is. Pine Barrens
is another famous episode where two gangsters
get lost in the woods and essentially nothing
happens. The argument is that these episodes
force the characters to stop running from their
problems and look in the mirror. So the lovers
say it's high art, it's Beckett, it's waiting
for Godot set in a meth lab. But the haters,
they have a very, very different take. They do.
Honestly, their frustration is completely understandable.
If you tune into Breaking Bad for the plot, the
cat and mouse game with Gus Fring, the tension
with the DEA closing in, then Fly is a massive
speed bump. It stops the story dead in its tracks.
Right. Tasha Robinson, also from the AV Club,
so even the same publication was divided. She
completely hated it. She argued that it made
Walt look stupid. She said, seeing the great
mastermind Heisenberg falling off a catwalk and
obsessing over a tiny bug was petty to the point
of rank stupidity. She felt it betrayed the character's
established competence. I get that. You spend
three seasons building this guy up as a tactical
genius and then he spends an hour acting like
a fool. Clyder recently called it the most polarizing
episode and noted that many fans consider it
highly skippable. Skippable? Yeah. They argue
that because the fly is dead at the end and the
status quo is essentially reset, you can skip
episode 10, go straight to episode 11, and is
absolutely nothing of the plot. Business Insider
in 2019 even labeled it the most aided episode.
That is the big question, isn't it? Is it filler?
If I'm telling a friend to watch the show for
the first time, do I tell them to skip fly? I
would argue it is the least skippable episode
of the entire show. Because if you skip fly,
you miss the emotional explanation for everything
that happens afterwards. You miss seeing the
massive crack in the armor. If you don't see
Walt's crushing guilt here, his actions in the
Season 3 finale, which are incredibly violent
and desperate, seem sudden. They come out of
nowhere without this setup. Exactly. Fly shows
us that he is a man on the verge of a total psychotic
break. It's the structural load -bearing wall.
It doesn't look pretty, maybe, but it holds the
whole roof up. Yes. And it forces the viewer
to sit in the discomfort. We are so used to TV
moving fast, giving us constant dopamine hits.
This episode demands patience. It traps you in
the room with them. You feel the claustrophobia.
You feel the profound annoyance. That isn't bad
writing. That is the exact intended effect. So
we have an episode that was born out of literal
poverty. They literally couldn't afford to move
the trucks. And it resulted in an abundance of
character depth. It proves that limitations breed
true creativity. If they had a million dollars
more in the budget, we might have gotten a generic
cartel shootout. Instead, we got a terrifying
glimpse into the abyss of Walt's mind. I want
to circle back to that final image for our closing
thought. The fly returning. The buzzing in the
dark. Walt hears it, but this time he doesn't
get up. He doesn't grab the makeshift swatter.
He just lies there. He closes his eyes. Here
is my question for you and for the listener.
Think about this. If the fly represents the contamination
of his soul, and he decides to just ignore it
and go to sleep, does that mean he has accepted
the contamination? That is the terrifying implication.
Is fly the exact moment where Walter White finally
kills off the very last remnant of his conscience?
Not by swatting it, but by simply learning to
live with the noise. By learning to sleep soundly,
even while the guilt is buzzing right above his
head. I think that is exactly what it is. He
realizes he is a monster and he decides he can
comfortably live with that. He chooses to sleep
over the cleansing. It's a chilling thought,
and it totally changes how you see everything
that comes after. He isn't fighting for his soul
anymore. He's just fighting to survive. He surrendered
to the fly. Well, on that cheerful note, next
time you hear a buzzing in your room in the middle
of the night, maybe ask yourself what you're
feeling guilty about. Or, you know, just buy
a better fly swatter. Or just go to sleep. Thank
you so much for listening to this deep dive into
Breaking Bad's fly. It's been a truly fascinating
trip into the lab. Thanks for having me. We'll
see you next time. Stay contamination free, everyone.