Walt Refuses to Take His Family to Belize in 'Buried' in Breaking Bad Season 5, Episode 10 Recap

Since 55 episodes and still counting, Breaking Bad has presented us with some unquestionably brutal viewing: the melting corpse of Season 1, the slit throat of Season 4, the parade of prisoners, stabbed and beaten like piñatas just one year ago. Not to talk of all the unspeakable things Walter Jr. has been doing to a stack of pancakes every morning. But none of that carnage was as difficult to watch as what transpired last night between Marie and Skyler.

The scene between the two sisters lacked box cutters, but it was plenty sharp. There was no acid, but it burned just the same. Breaking Bad is, itself, such a wonderfully elaborate fiction that it has often been possible to forget the scrim of lies and make-believe that's been wrapped around the main characters all this time. But now the truth is raining down like pieces of Wayfarer 515 and the wreckage is just as gruesome. 

Last week Hank and Walt dodged the debris with busted noses and macho bluster. But Marie and Skyler just let it all crash into them. There were barely any words, just Skyler's nodding head pushing the knife in deeper and deeper. Yes, she knew about Walt when the DEA had them all under lockdown. Yes, she knew when the two cartel cousins shot Marie's husband to hell. Marie's entire existence has been about putting a bright, purple smile on even the most hopeless situations; whatever pain she kept for herself was subsumed first in the illicit rush of petty thievery and then in the micromanaging of her husband's rehabilitation. Over the course of this single one-sided conversation, every bit of optimism and sunshine was stolen right out of her.

It made sense, then, that Marie's first course of business, after slapping her sister full across the face, was to reach for baby Holly. (The slap also made sense. It's what you do when you want to hurt someone but it's also what you do when you want them to wake up. Skyler and Jesse were both presented with the same laundered bills, but only she managed to blind herself to the blood staining every last one of them.) Marie had just lost something precious and vital, and as much as she wanted to protect her niece, she also wanted to reach into her sister and pull out something just as essential. But, oh, the cries of that baby — a baby who, with typical Vince Gilligan meticulousness, has never once so much as sniffled in any of the previous seasons — as she transformed from an actual breathing girl to a nuclear football of anger and recriminations. There's a reason why Michelle MacLaren, easily the most dynamic director on a show full of them, was brought on to shoot this; it felt like she used a sniper rifle instead of a camera. Every second was precise and deadly. And, to their great credit, neither Betsy Brandt nor the often unfairly maligned Anna Gunn flinched when things got bloody.

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