Spoilers if you haven't seen tonight's episode of Breaking Bad ("Buried")!
The above video takes a look inside some of the more heated moments of tonight's episode of Breaking Bad, including Skyler and Marie's face-off. Series created Vince Gilligan and the cast discuss what the events of tonight's episode mean for the characters going forward. I'm especially interested in what Betsy Brandt said about Marie and Skyler's relationship as sisters changing forever.
High on my list of things I've wanted to see happen during these final eight episodes of Breaking Bad, it's Marie's reaction to Walt's deep-dark-secret, and more to the point, just how involved her sister was in said secret. Because I have sisters, and we're not all that unlike Marie and Skyler, in that we're actively involved in each others' lives. I can only imagine what it would be like for Marie to find out that not only has her sister been keeping such a huge secret from her, but then to learn that she's known for a long time, including before Hank nearly died during the investigation of Heisenberg. And the realization that the so-called gambling money they gave Marie and Hank to pay Hank's medical bills was drug money, blood money and guilt money. With that in mind, given everything Hank and Marie have been through, I'd say the slap was justified.
Let's backtrack for a second and recap how this all went down. In his fury and determination to take Walt down, Hank completely misread Skyler and grossly underestimated her involvement and consent to his crimes, thinking he could get her to confess everything she knew and give him an easy pass to a conviction. It's not all that hard to understand why Hank would assume Skyler was being held captive by Walt. In some ways, she has been. Don't get me wrong, she's made her choices. And could have gone to the police or to Hank for that matter. The fact that Hank didn't question why Skyler hadn't come to him just goes to show how unfocused he was, and how truly unprepared he was to have that conversation with her. So Hank brought Marie over to Skyler's house, filling her in on the basics. But Hank didn't know how far into this situation Skyler was. That was for Marie to find out on her own.
It's at this point that I want to throw major credit to Anna Gunn and Betsy Brandt for their outstanding performances during another amazingly tense scene in a series full of amazingly tense scenes. Marie slaps Skyler, and Skyler just looks stunned. Maybe her mistake was underestimating what this truth would do to her relationship with Marie. Or maybe not. Maybe she took forever to open the door because deep down she knew once she had that conversation, nothing would be the same. This is one price she's paying for her choices. Meanwhile, Marie's clearly chosen her side. And it's Team Hank! I'm with her on that.
Skyler's clearly not going to be Hank's route to proving Walt guilty. In fact, it looks like Skyler's hoping what Walt is hoping - that they can ride this out until it ends. Maybe until he dies. And if that happens then maybe she can keep the money and move on with what's left of her life. Meanwhile, the episode ended with Hank about to interrogate a guilt-ridden Jesse. That may yield better results.
We'll have a full recap of tonight's episode by tomorrow!
