"Crawl Space" Review
Let’s start at the beginning. “Crawl Space” begins where “Salud” left off, taking us right back to Mexico, and showing the fallout of Gus’ mass murder. Things aren’t looking good, as Mike bleeds out while undercover doctors operate on Gus (he’s their boss, after all). I was a bit surprised with how quickly things got resolved, with Gus and Jesse back in New Mexico within the first half of “Crawl Space.” And on that note, we see Gus follow through with his torments and revenge scheme against Tuco’s uncle.
Meanwhile, Skyler deals with Ted Beneke in some interesting scenes; she questions whether or not Ted’s blackmailing her. In the end, however, Skyler takes the violent route, in a fun scene involving Huell, Saul’s overweight bodyguard. In typical Breaking Bad style, the worst happens, and Ted ends up either dead or in the hospital (it’s not clear, but I suspect he’s alive based on those twitching fingers).
But let’s get to the best part of “Crawl Space” - the end, where things spiral out of control. First, Walt tries to reason with Jesse, who basically brushes him off. Then, Tyrus comes along with a taser and kidnaps Walt and brings him out into the desert for a final confrontation with Gus. What? Who saw that coming?
There are some important developments from this meeting. First, Gus explains that he needs to deal with Hank in his own way (that can’t be good). Second, Gus fires Walt, warning that he can easily kill Skyler, Walt, Jr. and Holly if Walt continues to interfere.
One of Season 4’s biggest achievements was showing us all the stuff Gus deals with. Walt continues to vainly think it’s all about him… but we’ve seen some terrible things going on in Gus’ life that have absolutely nothing to do with Walt.
And this one ends big. Walt decides to hire the “disappearer” (as I predicted back in “Bullet Points”) and start his life over in safety. And then comes the desperate, terrifying revelation: Skyler gave the money to Ted. We watch as Walt enters full on panic-mode in front of a confused and frightened Skyler. Everything goes to hell here, and God, it was filmed beautifully. From Marie’s phone call, to Walt’s maniacal laughter, to Skyler trying to maintain her composure. This was television at its finest… and Cranston at the top of his game.
I’m still getting over that ending. The entire series has been building to this boiling point and the show-runners pulled it off perfectly… And to think I suggested last week that things couldn’t get more intense. The wait for next week is going to be excruciating.
-MP