In Which We Show A Great Deal Of Compassion For Others

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.

In Which We Witness The Victory of Walter White

Dig Two Graves

by ELISABETH DONNELLY

Breaking Bad
creator Vince Gilligan

It's horrifying to imagine that you're born, live a life, and then go back into the ground, simply forgotten. Humans naturally want to imagine that their life has some importance. Being a maverick or a wild card is appealing, since it means that you matter. You want to be the one who knocks. But life has a funny way of messing with you, changing up the circumstances so that you're suddenly faced with who you are under the most boring and dire of situations. An unblinking red dot, the camera-eye of Gus's surveilance, has been on Breaking Bad's Walter White all season long as he tries to make meth and somehow counteract what has already been set in motion — his inevitable death.

Plot on Breaking Bad is a gorgeous, cruel thing. Decisions and consequences fold in on each other like a house of cards' inevitable fall. The squeeze has been placed on every character — Walter and his estranged wife Skyler, his paralyzed DEA brother-in-law Hank and wife Marie, his partner Jesse Pinkman, the meth kingpin of the southwest, Gus Fring, his right-hand man Mike, even former Mexican Cartel kingpin Hector Salamanca, now festering in a nursing home, helpless, save for the bell he uses to communicate 'yes' or 'no'. The squeeze has been less of a thing to Walt's son Walt Jr., who mostly showed up for breakfast, and, quite possibly, in the very last scene where Walter White retains a little bit of vulnerability and feeling in a world that's pushing him to the edge of humanity.

Walt may be convinced of his own power — "I am the one who knocks!" he bellowed to his estranged wife Skyler, asserting himself in the face of her doubts — but is Walt really the one who knocks? The cruel, brilliant twist to this season had Walt besting his boss Gus Fring in one chess move after another. He made Jesse execute the other meth cook, dear departed Gale, so that Jesse and Walt would be indispensable. And yet, upping Gus that one time brought Walt no peace. He's just another drone, a cog in the machine, laboring under the watchful red dot of a surveilance camera, making meth day in and day out until he dies.

Convinced that Gus is going to kill him any chance he gets, Walt has been bent on revenge. And crucially, in his mind, it is vengeance, and it is justified. Walt is a volatile force: emotional, irrational, dangerous, given to blustering speeches full of hubris, and while he spins, we get to know some of what drives Gus Fring.

The Chicken Man makes revenge look good. Whether in the premiere episode, "Box Cutter", where he methodically sliced an underling's throat, blood spurting out, to send a message to Walt, Jesse, and Mike, or when he journeyed to Mexico, pulling off puking with elegance as he took down the entire Mexican cartel, Gus executes his plans gracefully. He strides through a hail of bullets because he's not going to get hit. He is the exact opposite of fluttering, flailing Walter White, and even though he's a bad man, he retains some sympathy.

Gus is a thorough, meticulous boss. His whole grasp for meth power was motivated by the murder of his very first chemist, his hermano, his probable lover. Revenge for the shocking, pointless murder of a loved one is an understandable thing. Who knows how many bright chemistry students have gotten scholarships from Los Pollos Hermanos as a result?

Walter White, on the other hand, is the sweaty, sniveling underling nobody wants to be, given to speeches full of empty bombast and generally pissing people off this season. What is his motivation? Does he want to live, does he chafe at being a company man under Los Pollos Hermanos? Back at nearly season one levels of impotence, Walt squirms miserably, stuck in a mouse trap, trying to get his power back but bested by Gus in most operations. He can't even win at home, where Skyler has become his partner in money laundering, dangling reconciliation like a carrot, but mostly screwing up his plans with the newbie criminal's first mistake: half measures. (Example A: Rest in peace, Ted Beneke.)

Walt is so far from human he can't even see the misery that Jesse went through in murdering Gale. When Jesse gets under Gus's thumb and learns how to be a company man, Walt responds with, "It's all about me!" It was easy to root for him when his newfound meth career had a motivation — he was doing it for his family, to pay for Walt Jr.'s medical bills, for the life of baby Holly. But when as a narcissistic, ego-centric man turning in on himself, convinced of his death, the protagonist became something else.

Jesse retains some heart, even when he's ping ponging between a variety of potential father figures: from his mentor, Walt, who's saved his life numerous times, to gruff uber-company man Mike, as he learns how to be an even more vital cog in Gus's operation. After a downward spiral where he turned his brand new house into a terrifying drug den with bleating methheads, he got cleaned up and became useful, convinced of his value in Gus's world. By the time he saved Gus and Mike, hustling them to a makeshift, creepily white medical tent somewhere in Mexico, he was valuable. And he still ended up using some of his ridiculous drug world riches to send out support to his girlfriend, Andrea, and her young son Brock. He managed to put other people first, in a way that Walt simply could not.

And what does Walt get, as a result of his paranoia? He ends up in his coffin-like crawl space, laughing a laugh of chilling madness and mania, with far less money and power then he thought. Did he rise, Heisenberg-like, out of the ashes? Quite possibly.

The penultimate episode, "End Times," left us with a cliffhanger — Andrea's son, Brock, is in the hospital and poisoned. Jesse is missing his ricin cigarette. Jesse accuses Walt, Walt blames, Jesse talks to Gus, who has enough Spidey-sense to avoid the car bomb on his crappy car, planted by Walt. It was the question: what really happened? Did Gus poison the kid? If he did, why would tell Jesse to come back when he's ready? Did Walt do it? Would Walt poison a kid?

Genuine questions, the sort of questions that make a week's worth of waiting for an episode delicious torture, and last night's finale "Face Off" knocked them down like a bowling ball. Jesse's suggestion of ricin poisoning put him in the hands of the police in front of where Walt sat in a hospital waiting room with a bomb in his child's diaper bag. Because Jesse has been detained by the police, he calls Saul Goodman, his lawyer. When Saul talks to Walt, he tells him about Gus's one point of pride and weakness — the still-alive Hector "Tio" Salamanca, rotting in a nursing home, visited only by Gus, who delights in informing him of the many members of his family who he has killed.

Which gives Walt his chance. Playing on Gus's pride, his very insistence that he must be the one to torture Tio, he conspires with the old man to take him out. The bomb in the diaper bag is attached to Tio's wheelchair. Gus is lured to the nursing home, a vial of poison at the ready. He wears his best blue sportscoat and takes the long walk into Casa Tranquila like a man about to face a reckoning. What reckoning it is, he doesn't know.

When he comes out of the room after the explosion, he is as dapper as ever, perfect posture, straightening his tie. Then the camera circles around him, in an Oh Shit! reveal, and he collapses. Goodbye forever, Gus. May nobody step on your Air Jordans in Chicken-Man Heaven, and may your dick ever be hard in a cruel and harsh world, be it Bed-Stuy or Albuquerque.

For his part, Walt has broken crazy. He has broken evil. He has learned what it takes to be a good boss — convince someone to do something for you, to improve your means. Never actually do the job yourself — as was proven all season long, Walt couldn't kill Gus directly. He and Jesse reunite to take out the 8 million dollar meth lab in a cool-guy explosion, and then Walt has his moment of initial kingpindom. He calls his wife to tell her the news. Standing on the top of a parking lot, surveying the land, he talks with Jesse. Brock will survive; the culprit was Lilly of the Valley berries. The very plant sitting in Walt's backyard next to his swimming pool of doom. Vince Gilligan has turned his protagonist into the antagonist, and he's subverted audience expectations in a way that feels nearly radical within the constraints of genre-driven television. Walter White has won.

Elisabeth Donnelly is the senior contributor to This Recording. She tumbls here and twitters here. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here. She last wrote in these pages about Nicholas Winding Refn's Drive.

"Broken" - Katie Stelmanis (mp3)

"You'll Fall" - Katie Stelmanis (mp3)

"Steady" - Katie Stelmanis (mp3)

In Which We Find Ourselves Pet Detectives No More

Hazy Days

by DICK CHENEY

Breaking Bad
creator Vince Gilligan

Condi Rice recently lashed out at me because I suggested in these memoirs that she cried in my office. And so what if she did, exactly? I've cried twice this week, and I can scarcely remember seven days that elapsed when I didn't. I cried reading Friday's TR, I cried when Princess Diana first wore a crown (for the death of England, natch) and I cried after reading Ender's Game. For some reason the entire premise of genetically engineered orphans always gets the waterworks flowing.

Here are some of the other times I remember weeping like a baby. (In the Pentagon we called them "wepts", like, "My So-Called Life gave me one hell of a wept last night.")

- When Molly Young deleted her tumblr; I was like, "WHY DIDN'T I MAKE SCREENCAPS"

- Nine times during Brideshead Revisited. Being British, or even knowing a British person, is just about the saddest thing I can imagine. Each time you come to an old townhouse near Shropshire you're overcome, and that kind of vulnerability touches me deeply;

- the homophobic lyrics of Katy Perry;

- The day in 1994 when it was no longer OK to say "Allrighty then" and generally pretend to be Ace Ventura;

- When they freed the West Memphis Three and Eddie Vedder was like, "G chord";

- The idea that Kate Winslet is eventually going to turn into that horrible old woman in Titanic;

- Whenever anyone's an orphan and is taken in by caring parents, especially in the third world;

- Seeing another man cry, especially if he was on CSI;

- Anytime someone reblogs Andrew Sullivan approvingly;

- SIMBBBBBBBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAA!;

- Anytime someone uses the name Robert Downey Jr with a positive connotation;

miss when u weren't trying so hard

- When Jonah Hill got thin and looked like the Scarecrow in Oz and/or the thought of someone caring about his godawful animated series;

- The old West was sad as shit;

- Every single moment Michelle Williams dresses up as a dead or suicided ingenue;

- After the Mission Accomplished banner on that aircraft carrier, but it was tears of joy.

Despite my ample experience working the tear ducts, watching Breaking Bad's Gustavo Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) do the weeping last night came as something of a shock. One disturbingly emotional moment fuels every man's drive for power. Winston Churchill's entire political career happened because one of his young classmates told him to stick a ceramic vase up his fat ass.

Yes, the traumatic loss of Gustavo's first chemist partner, and possibly his Chilean lover, brought on tears we haven't seen from the man in any previous episode. Gustavo, in fact, never seems to break his steely countenance. He never laughs, which is the one universal sign that the person sitting across the table from you is, in fact, human.

The men and women of Breaking Bad usually make a habit of showing us their humanity. Last night's episode began with Walt (Bryan Cranston) at the doctor for a cancer checkup. As a newly diagnosed patient lapses into reverie about the hopelessness of his condition, Walt disabuses him of his sorrowful notions: "Live life on your own terms. To hell with your cancer. Every life comes with a death sentence." This reality check itself is enough to get most men wet and teary, but not Walt. He's fresh out of salty discharge. Like Gus, he's well into the anger and resentment phase that Jesse (Aaron Paul) expresses by playing video games.

If you really analyze it, there is no human experience without pathos. Just watching John Edwards wake up in the morning or try to rationalize a single thing he's ever done is enough to get a hard wept out of Dick Cheney lately. The very sight of the wonderful new home Jesse made possible for his ex-girlfriend and her son, and the way he is unable to credit himself for doing a good thing is sadder than when all the lower class passengers were not permitted in the lifeboats.

Gus was questioned by the DEA last night, and his ample excuses for the fingerprints they found in the apartment of one Gale Boetticher dimmed the suspicion of law enforcement. His steely countenance as he took the elevator up to the place where he might meet his end was also quite moving.

Maybe I've just gone soft. When I wake up on a typical Sunday, I don't even feel the urge to light my neighbor's copy of the Sunday Times on fire. My wife Lynne said, "Dick, when you don't even want to set fire to a newspaper containing the writing of Paul Krugman, I have to worry about our future together." I said, "Quiet, I'm watching a YouTube of Stevie Nicks lip-synching 'Wild Heart'."

DEA agent Hank Schrader's rehabilitation from gunshot wounds, first inspired by a hospital handjob and then by the potential investigation of Mr. Fring, was enough to get most of the conversatives I watch Sunday night TV with ensconced in velvet tears. Usually it's hard to focus on the episode in my house, because whenever Jesse Pinkman shows up on screen, Grover Norquist is screaming, "Stop whining!" or Laura Ingraham is yelling, "Take off your shirt!"

Last week's amazing sequence, which featured Pinkman telling off the director of his Narcotics Anonymous support group, deserves more Emmys than Matthew Weiner has in storage. This was the best theater since Neil Simon's Chapter Two. I'm considering getting a tattoo of this entire scene permanently inscribed on my colon.

Listening to this scene more than once inspires a litany of different reactions. At first, there is stark approval of Jesse's destruction of the entire therapeutic purpose of a support group. Then, astonishment at the honesty of everyone involved, especially the group's alcoholic leader. Lastly, a hatred of everything that exists to bring about such an annihilating moment.

We think it takes one thing to make us cry, that something sad itself is enough to disturb the calm of our face, the twitching of our ears, tension in the cheekbones. But it is our own mental state that takes primacy: a instinct designed for self-preservation. Nothing, then, could be more tormenting than what we ourselves become in the moment of collapse. To overwhelm the gravity of the feeling, we attempt to transcend it through self-importance. When we weep, we're saying, "Me! Me! Me! Me! Me."

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. You can find an archive of his work on This Recording here. He last wrote in these pages about shame.

"Capitol City" - Wilco (mp3)

"Rising Red Lung" - Wilco (mp3)

"I Might" - Wilco (mp3)

The new album from Wilco, The Whole Love, is available on September 23rd and you can preorder it here.