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The Crystal Ship

by DICK CHENEY

Mercy is almost the most useless of human compunctions. Once, as part of a therapeutic exercise, my analyst asked me to name the ten human emotions which I felt held the least value. Number one was obviously mercy; the rest of the list went like this:

10. Jealousy

9. Morning boner

8. Joie de vivre from listening to "Call Me Maybe"

7. Hunger

6. Condescension

5. Anticipation as to whether a boomerang will come back to you

4. Envy

3. Patriotism

2. Guilt

When she asked me what I felt the difference between jealousy and envy was, I responded, "How long do you have?" She directed my attention to No. 6. I explained that just because you believed something was useless didn't mean you were immune to it.

After the untimely death of his boss Gustavo Fring, Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) was at a bit of a loss. Some people just enjoy being told what to do, until they don't. He was willing to take orders from a megalomaniacal businessman, but Walter White is not a businessman, he's a scientist. And there is nothing more futile than arguing with someone who always has the facts on their side.

When newly revealed associate and Madrigal executive Lydia comes to Mike in a coffee shop with concerns about how the rest of Fring's operation will fare under the hard glare of the law, he brushes her off. His seeming lack of interest was, I suppose, itself a kind of mercy. This was her first opportunity to forget what she had asked of him. By hiring someone to kill him, she earned the privilege of a house call.

A person's home either says everything or nothing about them. Which of the two it is depends entirely on that individual's humility. Walter White may seem to think a lot of himself, going around issuing commands like he's a white Gus Fring, but in reality, it's all just a carefully constructed facade designed not to betray the real truth of his desperation. His home reflects this underlying point of view; even when he made his money, he didn't allow himself to purchase a new dishwasher. I can't even look at his walls without imagining the mold in them.

In contrast, Condoleezza Rice's house has a vibrator made of solid gold instead of a doorbell. I have other examples. When I moved into the habitat of my predecessor as vice president, Albert Gore, I found a toy car that actually emitted carbon dioxide. It scared my balls off of my balls. The only thing in Al Gore's garage is a giant teapot in the shape of his wife.

Mike's home is that of a retired man inching towards his extreme old age, except for one instantly evident detail: his walls are covered with paintings so small they require another image nearby in order to properly cohere. We can infer from these details, as well as the presence of Hungry Hungry Hippos in his home, that Mike's Myers-Briggs personality type is INTP, and that the T in question is making a slow, Benjamin Netanyahu-esque move to F. Giving more weight to social implications than logic is the kind of nonsense that allows Maureen Dowd to go on living.

But give Mike more credit than that. He knew, from the moment he entered Lydia's lavish lair, that she had no man of the house to offer any kind of asylum — or else why is she showing up, frantic, in his favorite coffee shop and priggishly making sure the waitress will never forget her? And what kind of place doesn't have English Breakfast; was this a coffee shop in Fallujah?

Mike also knew that he would show her mercy; he did not simply decide it when he saw the relative size and brainpower of Lydia's daughter. He would not walk into a situation without knowing how it's going to come out, it's simply not part of an INTP's makeup to do something like this. From the moment he left the DEA's office, telling Hank Schrader nothing more than the fact that he has a permit to carry a concealed weapon in every state (including Colorado), he knew that he would be joining up with Walter White and Jesse Pinkman in a triumvirate. Naturally, he's Pompey.

Children have always been handled with a certain care on Breaking Bad. They are usually sheltered and protected by everyone except for Walter White. When he observed that Gus Fring did not care what the age of the obstacle he removed from his path was, he took on the same moral framework for himself. In truth, he sees children for what they actually are: slightly younger versions of ourselves that serve as an excuse for leverage in a negotiation.

By the end of last night's Breaking Bad, the true disgust that Mike feels for himself isn't because of the countless murders he's committed, or the fact that he has to go in business with a chemist he describes as a "ticking time-bomb." No, it's that he still requires a master. But hey, we all have someone we have to answer to, except for Alex Balk.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is the former vice president of the United States and a writer living in an undisclosed location. He last wrote in these pages about summer television, and you can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

"Night Drops" - Indian Wells (mp3)

"Love Frequencies" - Indian Wells (mp3)

The debut album from Indian Wells is called Night Drops, and you can listen to more of it here.