Walt & Jesse Recap (Part 1/9)
The Long Winded Blues of the Never
Meta by falafel_musings
Artwork by cylune9
As Walt says to his family the one thing that he needs is a choice. That choice comes in the final exchange between Walt and Jesse when they both choose to cook together rather than being forced into it by circumstance. Walt can no longer claim he is only cooking meth because he has no other way of providing for his family and paying for his cancer treatment. Jesse can no longer claim that he's being blackmailed into this partnership by Mr White.
The Pilot
"If you've gone crazy, that's something I need to know about. That affects me."
Walt and Jesse are the first two characters we're introduced to in the Pilot episode, even though initially we only know Jesse as 'unconscious guy wearing a gas mask'. They are the only two characters who appear in every single episode of the show. This story is largely theirs. Their first meeting (or rather, reunion) comes midway through the first episode. We learn that Jesse is one of Walt's former students, who has been out of high school for roughly five or six years assuming that he made it to graduation. After all that time, they still recognize each other when Walt catches sight of Jesse fleeing from Hank's meth lab bust. This may imply that Mr White was a memorable teacher to Jesse and perhaps that 'Pinkman' was a particularly troublesome student to Walt. Jesse is far from the ideal lab assistant, yet partnering up with an ex-pupil may be the most comfortable way that Walt could have transitioned into the drug trade. Walt can slip into his most familiar role as teacher (which Jesse affirms by calling him "Mr White") and he can feel a sense of authority in this risky new venture. Only a few days earlier Walt was on his knees at the car wash, scrubbing the hubcaps of one of his cocky slacker students. It's kids like Jesse who Walt has wasted his chemistry genius on every day that he worked in the classroom. But Walt's the one in control now; this kid will listen to him and he will do what Walt says and if he doesn't then Walt can easily turn him in to the police.
Incidentally, Walt found Jesse's house by digging the address out of his old school file which implies that Jesse's parents first sent him to live with his Aunt Ginny when he was still a school kid. It's never been established exactly when Aunt Ginny died. The house is still filled with her furnishings and her make up. That may be because Jesse is very lazy about decor, but it also wouldn't be out of character for Jesse to keep his Aunt's house the way she left it, like a shrine to her memory. However long Jesse has been living alone in Aunt Ginny's house in his state of prolonged adolescence it seems there has been a lack of a paternal role model in Jesse's life. And either as a mentor or surrogate father Walt has come to fill that void. When Mr White steps into his driveway, Jesse crouches behind his car and bares his teeth like a cornered animal. He thinks that Mr White is here to lecture him; like Jesse's other teachers and guardians he must be trying to straighten him out, set him on the right path. This is Jesse's first mistake; he's naive enough to think Mr White actually cares about what's right for him. Walt soon makes it clear that he's only interested in using Jesse as part of his own agenda. Their partnership begins with an act of coercion. In a darkened driveway Jesse is forced into Walt's service. And it won't be until two years later, in another darkened driveway, that Jesse will finally be set free. Jesse thought Mr White came to tell him to 'Get right with Jesus'. He didn't know this man was the Devil coming for his soul.
Right from the start, Walt and Jesse bicker. They are an odd couple not just because their age, appearance, behavior and modes of speech are at different ends of the spectrum. The first episode neatly characterizes Walt and Jesse's different perspectives on their shared vocation of cooking crystal meth. For Walt it's chemistry, for Jesse it's art. This theme will be expanded on throughout the seasons, but these are two men with very contrasting mindsets on what they do together. Walt the rational calculating scientist and Jesse the more imaginative sensitive artist. One thing Walt and Jesse do share from the start is a desire for escape and adventure. Jesse is full of wistful yearning when he talks about getting an RV and driving out into the boonies. When Jesse asks Walt why he's suddenly decided to break the law, Walt doesn't not tell Jesse about the cancer. Instead he gives Jesse a hint of his true motivations simply by saying: "I am awake". Walter White wants to live a little before he dies. And since Walt no longer fears to live he is capable of saving himself and Jesse too by gassing two drug dealers to death who are threatening to kill them. Walt and Jesse saving each other will become a long running theme, but in this first instance Walt is just acting on his teacher's instinct. Any teacher who takes a student out on an extra-curricular field trip knows he's responsible for that student's safety, even if that student is an obnoxious idiot boy. Jesse screaming "Run Mr White! Run!" when they're stranded in the desert at gunpoint isn't remotely helpful but Walt at least knows that Jesse was on his side and hadn't intended to screw them over. So when it came down to it, they protected each other.
Cat's in the Bag...
"After we finish cleaning up this mess, we will go our separate ways. Our paths will never cross."
After their ordeal with Krazy 8 and Emilio, Walt and Jesse mutually decide that after they've disposed of their corpses, they want nothing more to do with each other (oh, how little they knew...). This is about the only mutual decision that they make in the episode. Already Walt is getting into the habit of bullying and browbeating Jesse into doing things that he really doesn't want to do. Like Walt insisting that they keep the meth equipment and the dead bodies at Jesse's house, despite Jesse's repeated "Not my house!" protests. When Walt first proposes the idea of melting bodies in acid, Jesse is freaked out. Again Walt is simply opting for the most effective scientific method of corpse disposal while Jesse has the more human perspective that dissolving bodies is "messed up...". But about a minute later Jesse is pleading with Walt to be the one to melt the body in the acid just so he doesn't have to kill anyone. Walt has already convinced Jesse that being 50/50 partners is their shared contractual obligation, even though Jesse rightly tries to point out that this whole thing was Walt's idea and that Jesse was blackmailed into working with him. Jesse's life has been hijacked and yet he's already feeling obligated to the man who's compromised him.
Walt and Jesse are both aware that killing Krazy 8 is the more terrible job. Jesse doesn't detach himself from Krazy 8's impending demise, though he is clinging to Walt's original diagnosis that Krazy 8 is already dying from the poisonous gas so all Walt is really doing is putting the poor bastard out of his misery, right? From Walt's perspective, he chooses to flip the coin and he lets fate decide because while Walt doesn't want to commit murder, he may be fearing that if Jesse lost the coin toss, he would end up botching the job and creating even more problems; a fear that is affirmed by Jesse burning a hole through his bathtub and splattering his hallway with acidic gore. It may appeal to Walt that he gets to be the master and controller in his relationship with Jesse, but all too often that also entails Walt having to control the chaos that this rampant liability of a partner brings to his life.
...And the Bag's in the River
"We flipped a coin. Coin flip is sacred."
Considering their opposing moral standpoints in later seasons, it's interesting that in the early episodes Jesse is the more pragmatic one when it comes to the necessity of killing people. I don't really doubt that Krazy 8 would have killed Walt and Jesse if they'd let him go and that it was arguably an act of self-defense to finish the job. However, strangling a chained up man with a bike lock surely does not feel like self-defense and Walt is the one who has to go through with it for both their sake's. Jesse's attitude would likely be very different if he were the one tasked with doing the killing. But Jesse has become worse than useless to Walt in this episode. He can't cope with the horror show that his house has turned into and so he's locked himself in the bathroom to smoke Walt's crazy pure meth.
Krazy 8 seems to have his own survival plan to turn Walt against Jesse. I don't think Jesse blabbing all kinds of personal information about Walt to Krazy 8 and Emilio was a betrayal so much as Jesse's foolishness in the early days. Jesse was driving around with his street name of 'Capt Cook' plastered on his licence plate after all. And though he denies it Krazy 8 was being pretty threatening when Jesse tried to sell him Walt's meth. But as we see again and again in Breaking Bad, Walt doesn't desire a partner who is smart so much as he needs a partner he can trust. Jesse's "Coin flip is sacred!" may be a desperate plea for Walt to get rid of the scary dying man in Jesse's basement, but it's also another example of Jesse buying into the idea that he and Walt have obligations to each other. Once Krazy 8 proves untrustworthy by hiding the piece of broken plate Walt cannot put his faith in any such bargains with him. That said, Krazy 8 may have only been keeping that piece of plate for self-defense, much like Jesse will one day keep a gun hidden in his waistband when letting Walt into his home.
Cancer Man
"After what happened it just seems like the thing to do. You know, talk about it. We can't talk to anybody else."
Barely any Walt and Jesse interactions in the next two episodes, but I'm still fascinated by the parallels and contrasts in their separate stories even when they aren't together. They are both disturbed by what they've been through in the last few days. Walt is imagining that police cars are chasing him. Jesse is doing meth and hallucinating that scary biker guys are coming to his house to burn him alive. They both feel alienated among their friends and family, Jesse particularly since he is already an outcast at his parent's house. The only thing that cheers Jesse up on a sleepless night is finding an old chemistry test with a crude, insulting (and yet well drawn!) cartoon of Mr White sketched on the flipside. And while I'm sure that Jesse Pinkman was a lazy obnoxious slacker kid (and he hasn't exactly changed at this point), it's a little sad that his obvious artistic talent was never encouraged at school and instead branded 'ridiculous' by his teacher.
There are several reasons Jesse comes to see Walt at his house, though Walt only pays attention to Jesse awkwardly asking if Walt would be interested in cooking a little more meth. Walt's view of Jesse is pretty low at this point. He accuses Jesse of ratting him out and coming to his house wearing a wire. This is the first and last time that Walt suspects Jesse of being a police informant and it ends up being Walt's biggest blind spot. Walt's old threat to give Jesse up to the cops is useless now. Walt's the one who has killed people so Jesse has a better chance of cutting a deal. When Jesse asks about cooking more meth Walt probably just sees Jesse as a desperate junkie after his next fix. But Jesse can't shake off what they did to Krazy 8 and Emilio and he's seeking solidarity from the one person who went through that with him. But more than that Jesse is wanting to prove to Walt that he is not a worthless scumbag. He fails to change his parents view of him, but he does stay true to his partnership with Walt. He brings him his half of the money even though Walt had forgotten to ask for it, even though Walt assumed Jesse smoked it all and even though Walt is being a bastard to him. 50/50 partners.
Gray Matter
"Wanna cook?"
The above quote is the only conversation that Walt & Jesse share in this episode, but for me it speaks volumes for both their stories. Jesse begins the episode trying to get a job, maybe in a last ditch effort to prove his parent's wrong. But since Jesse screwed up his education and has no legitimate work experience, the best he can hope for his waving a sign around while wearing a 'ridiculous' costume. Just like his loser friend, Badger. Jesse and Badger partnering up to cook in the RV was an obvious mirroring of the Walt and Jesse partnership, only this time with Jesse in the Walt role. When Walt is not there, Jesse often ends up channeling him, playing the knowing teacher in front of his stupider friends and obsessively striving for perfection. Jesse was once content being Badger level, but now that Mr White's "Apply Yourself" has taken root and Jesse wants to be so much more than just "good enough".
Walt had far bigger prospects than Jesse in his youth. Walt only amounting to being a high school chemistry teacher is Walt's equivalent of doing a degrading job wearing a stupid costume and twirling a stupid sign. Walt, like Jesse, is also spending time with another partner, his Gray Matter partner, Elliot, who offers Walt a job as a very thinly veiled act of charity. Walt can't handle this indignity after a lifetime of bitterness since Elliot and Gretchen succeeded with the company that should have been Walt's empire. Walt doesn't want to feel needy. As Walt says to his family the one thing that he needs is a choice. That choice comes in the final exchange between Walt and Jesse when they both choose to cook together rather than being forced into it by circumstance. Walt can no longer claim he is only cooking meth because he has no other way of providing for his family and paying for his cancer treatment. Jesse can no longer claim that he's being blackmailed into this partnership by Mr White. From this moment, they work together and they break bad, because this is what they have chosen to do.
Crazy Handful of Nothin
"This operation is you and me...no matter what happens, no more bloodshed. No violence."
As Walt and Jesse reaffirm their partnership, Walt sets a bunch of strict ground rules; he cooks, Jesse sells, they don't bring anyone else into their business and they'll be absolutely no more violence. Then Walt quickly proceeds to break his own rules for the rest of this episode and in the seasons to come. It starts with Walt allowing Jesse to finish the cooking for him, which suggests that in some off-screen moments Walt has noticed that Jesse is now 'applying himself' to the chemistry. Walt and Jesse trading roles so early is an interesting foreshadowing. One day Jesse will be able to cook as good as Walter. Jesse will actually be chosen by Gus to replace Walt as the chief cook is his million dollar drug ring. We'll also see that Walt (or rather Heisenberg) can handle the more brutal side of the drug trade far better than Jesse ever could.
This is also the first episode we really see Walt and Jesse showing compassion for each other. Jesse in his concern for Walt's condition as he's going through Chemo and his admiration for Walt when he deduces that he's trying to leave money behind for his family. When was Walt going to tell Jesse he had cancer? Maybe he wasn't planning to tell Jesse at all. A big part of Walt breaking bad is escape from his terminal diagnosis. Jesse knowing brings them closer together (which Walt possibly didn't want, but what are you gonna do?) particularly because Jesse now associates Walt with his beloved late Aunt Ginny. And even though Walt is (again) being a bastard to Jesse when he struggles to sell enough meth on his own, I think knowing about Walt's plight makes Jesse more determined not to let Walt down. As portrayed in the Team SCIENCE minisode it's likely that the idea of Mr White fighting back for his family was what got Jesse looking at Walt as a Superhero and wanting to be his wing-man.
There are many reasons why Walt makes his transformation into Heisenberg - needing the money, needing to get respect, needing to lash out after he's lost his hair, etc - but avenging Jesse's pain and suffering is, I'd say, the main catalyst. I think Walt finally appreciates that Jesse was right about Tuco and that Jesse knowingly risked himself at Walt's asking. However, in the end Walt's concern for Jesse only stretches so far. Walt will give Jesse monetary compensation for his injuries, much like the 1.5 million Walt offers in Season 3 when Jesse is the hospital again after another beating. If Walt really felt loyal to Jesse he should have quit his dealings with Tuco after getting their money and taking revenge. But the creation of Heisenberg gave Walt a sudden rush of superhuman power that he'd never experienced before and his desire for power will ultimately override his humanity and concern for others.
A No-Rough-Stuff Type Deal
"Today is the first day of the rest of your life. But what kind of life will it be?"
The final S1 episode has a lot of Walt and Jesse in teacher/pupil scenes. Or rather, Walt abusing his position as teacher. This episode begins with Jesse attempting to sell his haunted fucked up house and wanting to leave town. Which is the best decision Jesse could have made at this time to save himself. For Jesse, having to melt a body in acid and almost being beaten to death is enough to scare him out of the meth business (and that's peanuts compared with what's to come). But even early on Walt can't just let Jesse leave. Who else would do all the grunt work for Walt if Jesse left? In the moment when Walt clasps Jesse by the shoulders, imploring him not to waste his potential in meth manufacture, not to live his life in fear, etc, Jesse asks him, wide eyed "What are you doing?" It's called manipulation, Jesse. You'll get used to it. But it's interesting because for Walt breaking bad means freeing himself from the fear that has held him back all his life. I don't know if Walt realizes yet that for Jesse this experience is not so liberating. Walt is chaining Jesse to him, link by link, and dragging him deeper into a world that already horrifies him. It will take until the end of the series for Walt to see those chains he put Jesse in.
But for now still it's endearing to see Walt teaching Jesse about Thermite and Jesse hanging off Mr White's every word. There's already a sense that they are each filling some emotional need in the other and even if Jesse knows he's been used, then Jesse (the disowned son) will accept being used just for the sake of being wanted by someone. Walt and Jesse are both still naive to how much danger they are in, their status as amateur criminals perfectly captured in the silly little bobble-hat balaclavas they wear when stealing their first barrel of methlaymine. Walt has his Heisenberg hat but he is still only playacting at being the gangster as his shock over Tuco beating No Doze to death reveals. Like Jesse points out, meeting Tuco in an empty junkyard is like Walt thinking of himself as a criminal in a movie and it puts them in greater danger. I'd say in later seasons that Jesse develops into the voice of Walt's conscience but in the first season Jesse is at least a voice of caution that Walt doesn't listen to.
Walt & Jesse: Season Two, Part One