The swimming pool. It’s the first thing we see in the episode that kicks off the final chapter of “Breaking Bad.” Only the pool — that frequently showcased pseudo-oasis in the White family backyard whose tranquility has previously been broken by mangled pink teddy bears and Skyler White plunging literally and metaphorically off her own deep end — doesn’t look like a pool. It’s empty, nothing now but hot, scuffed pavement that serves as a makeshift skate park for Albuquerque’s modern-day equivalent of the Z-boys.
The implication of this episode-opening flash-forward — a flash-forward that appears to take place shortly after Walter White walked out of a Denny’s in last year’s “Live Free or Die” — is that the life Walt got into the crystal-blue-persuasion business to maintain is now completely destroyed. Or rather, it will be by the time Walt reaches his 52nd birthday. With this second glimpse of the future, Vince Gilligan and the “Breaking Bad” writers have again given us a sense of where this antiheroic saga is headed as it hurtles toward its simultaneously anticipated and dreaded ending. We know it’s going somewhere bleak and scary, where it’s not just the pool that’s barren — it’s the entire, once modestly cozy White household. That place isn’t just empty, it looks like a one-time crime scene, aggressively ransacked within, fenced-off outside and undoubtedly destroying the property values for Carol — the petrified next-door neighbor who drops her groceries in shock at the sight of Walt — and anyone else unfortunate enough to live on Negra Arroyo Lane. There is some good news for house hunters interested in eventually purchasing that charming three-bedroom rambler, though: the yellow, spray-painted HEISENBERG on the paneled wall in the living room comes with the house.
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“Breaking Bad” season premiere: Walt’s destruction foretold
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