Breaking Badass Power Rankings: ‘Gliding Over All’

W.W. IS WALTER WHITE, JR. Breaking Bad is going to end with Hank mowing down Emo McGee, and the final shot will be Holly putting sunscreen on her nose...without eating it. McGee's no longer needed.

Obviously Walt wasn’t going to murder Jesse when he arrives on his doorstep — it wouldn’t make sense from a story-telling perspective, and even Breaking Bad wouldn’t kill two of its biggest characters in back-to-back episodes — and yet, didn’t a small part of you think Walt was going to kill Jesse when he arrived on his doorstep? It’s not just in the way the scene was shot, too. We saw that look of absolute terror in Jesse's (stoned) eyes when he peaked through his blinds and saw Walt there, silently waiting. He had good reason to believe he was about to reunite with Jane in Heaven...or, um, that other place: Walt has a history of permanently disposing those who he has no need for anymore. Plus, with the way the show is set up now, Jesse is just kind of...there. He knows everything, but he’s no longer involved with Walt, and he wants to do something new with his life. Or at least wants to want to do something new with his life. Judging by the way he’s home in the middle of the afternoon, smoking from a bong, he’s not sure what that something is yet. But Walt wasn't there to gun him down; he was there to reminisce about their misadventures in the Crystal Ship.

That scene didn't end with bloodshed, but Breaking Bad's playing the waiting game now: it's only a matter of time before Jesse figures out what happened to Jane and Mike. Once he does, what will he do to Walt? That's the plot I'm most looking forward to/dreading in the second half of the season.

Ranked so high because nary a silverfish will ever destroy anyone's giant pile of money ever again.

In last week’s Power Rankings, I (foolishly, it seems) wrote that Walt killing Mike was the beginning of his end, that he realized how much of a monster he’s become and that it was all downhill from here. I was half-right: Walt’s cancer is back, bringing him closer to death than he was before “Gliding Over All” began, but I couldn’t have been more wrong elsewhere: Walt is still a ruthless, efficient killing machine. Like Skyler and Hank and so many others, I underestimated Heisenberg. Never again.

He's a multi-millionaire who HIRES Nazis, is a global meth-making sensation, has taken out nearly all of his direct opponents (minus that whole brother-in-law thing), and he’s even a "nice" fellow, delivering literal sacks of money to his former co-cook, Jesse. But he’s still merciless, and like a Czech Republic junkie who’s gone from 60% concentration to Blue Sky, he’ll do whatever he can to get WHAT. HE. WANTS. He’s not happy, though, and it’s not just because the cancer’s back. Walt, not Heisenberg, is tired and worn out from the day-to-day operations of setting up a place to cook, cooking, dismantling the place to cook, delivering and/or picking up the product and/or money from Lydia, setting up another place to cook, cooking, etc. As my grandma used to say, meth cooking’s a young man’s game. Walt’s the undisputed King, but, without Jesse around, he’s a king without anyone in awe of him, constantly marveled by his genius. The thrill has worn off. It's becomes a job like any other job, and once Walt realizes this, with the trail of blood-splattered excitement long since dried on his path, he bows out...or so he says. He wants to go back to Skyler believing he's a family man; he has more than enough money to last “10 lifetimes,” after all. (I'm guessing he's in a CEO-type situation now.) For many movies, that would be the happy ending, the good man becoming a bad man who learns from his misdeeds and becomes the good man again. Now that Hank’s found W.W.’s copy of Leaves of Grass, however, Walt’s story still has a long way to go. There are no happy endings for Walt here, only a cancerously slow build to when Hank finally brings down Heisenberg.