‘Breaking Bad’ Retro Recap: ‘Open House’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

One particular storytelling quirk that continuously shows up in the masterpiece that is Breaking Bad, is that the series loves to expand upon concepts that fascinate the writers’ room. Which is why from time to time, we see several episodes that ponder upon whatever it was that left everyone going ‘hmm’ and season four is no exception to this particular pattern. For the next episode in this series, ‘Open House’, takes the time to expand upon the notion that was introduced in the season four premiere. Specifically, how we handle adversity when it comes knocking and it does make sense as to why this excited the writers of this series so. After all, the possibilities are endless when it comes to how people deal with tough times and Walter and Jesse’s respective journeys were merely the tip of the iceberg of that exploration.
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But to truly keep this deeper exploration on the matter, dynamic and engaging, writer Sam Catlin opted to do something quite bold, by having a secondary character deal with this conundrum. For this particular tale focuses heavily on Hank and Marie and the stresses their marriage is currently enduring, largely due to the fact that Hank takes his already insufferable nature to a whole new level here. Because at every turn he is just ripping on Marie and abusing her verbally and demanding the world of her, and while she does indeed love Hank and knows that this is part of the healing process… she sadly doesn’t say all that much about his actions and internalizes the abuse and that’s not healthy in the slightest. In fact, it motivates Marie to take out her frustrations in a supremely unique manner… by escaping into fantasies that she creates in her mind and using them to sneak into open houses so that she can steal from said houses. 

An act that quite frankly, works like a charm for her. Because in that moment, she can truly be someone else and speak to a life that isn’t filled with a cranky husband that sulks and surrounds himself with rocks, since collecting minerals is his new hobby and for a time… it appears as though this strange therapy is going to be quite successful for Marie. But alas, as is often the case, negative behaviors bring about negative consequences and eventually… one particular real estate agent became wise to her game and got Marie in trouble with the cops. To the point where Hank had to call in some local favors to free her and well… this really was quite the fascinating take on how we deal with adversity. Since this just goes to show that under the right circumstances, some people won’t deal with their problems in a healthy manner… they’ll use their anger to punish others. 

However, as season four is wont to do, there were more juicy plotlines present within the framework of this tale. Such as the thread involving quite the win for Skyler. Since she was able to convince Walt and Saul to go along with her plans for securing the car wash, and after a little Goodman inspired trickery, she landed it. Plus, we also came to learn that Jesse Pinkman is still suffering badly from his traumatic experience involving Gale, in fact… he’s diving deeper into drugs and parties and whatever temporary joy he can find so he doesn’t have to deal with the fact that he killed a man. And speaking of Gale’s death… well, this is the episode that informed the audience that that closing shot of his infamous notebook was of supreme importance after all. Since Albuquerque P.D. gave that very notebook and their case notes to Hank to look over, as a return favor for getting Marie off the hook.

Which means, it is only a matter of time before some serious clues about Walter and Gus and the operation come to light and that’s terrifying to say the least, since no good will come from that. But while we wait to see where that unfortunate surprise takes us, we can revel in the majesty of one fascinating tale. One that really did offer up a quality exploration on what happens when we turn adversity into something quite negative and more importantly, it allowed for Betsy Brandt to really shine. Because up until now, her character has been relegated to heavy background duty, so it was nice to see Betsy take the center stage and remind us of her vast talent and well, now that this fascinating exploration has come to a close, it’s time to dive into the next chapter of this grand and sweeping and downright engaging, tragedy. Until next time.    

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