That goes for many other characters besides Todd, of course – Skyler, Jesse, Marie, Walt Jr., and even the nameless identity-change man, played by the great Robert Forster, all benefit from the incredible economy of Gould’s writing. I could spend several pages waxing poetic about how completely Forster’s character popped off the screen, in part because I love Forster as an actor (mostly for Jackie Brown, one of my all-time favorite movies), but moreso because Gould gave him a real, three-dimensional character to play – sharp, no-nonsense, and pragmatic, but also melancholy and detached in a way that suggests a complex history – and the results were constantly terrific, especially since he was paired off throughout with an utterly moribund Walter White.
Think also of Skyler and Marie, each of whom essentially have one showcase scene for the entire hour. In the case of Marie, she does not even get a line of dialogue – just a long, still, disturbed close-up, perfectly expressing the inconceivable shock and horror of her situation. In a certain sense, she may be the White family member most damaged by all this, for while Skyler has a lifetime of hardship and emotional repression to live through, she at least has her children, and therefore something to love and to live for. Marie is alone. She and Hank never got to have children, even if they wanted them, and now, not only is Hank gone and her home completely ransacked, but her relationship with her sister is probably irrevocably damaged – I personally feel endless sympathy for Skyler, but if I were Marie, I don’t know if I could ever forgive her – and I am guessing the only person she has left she can really talk to about all this is Dave, her therapist. And Betsy Brandt expresses all of that and more in that single, beautifully performed glance.
As for Skyler, while she does have that exchange with Todd in her home, her key scene in the episode comes early on, sitting in horrified silence as prosecutors rail against her. It is not completely similar to Marie’s scene – this one is much longer, and Anna Gunn does get some dialogue – but like that sequence, this is all about what the character feels inside, expressed through the absence of words, rather than their presence. However calm and collected Skyler seems in confronting the prosecutors, she is clearly terrified on the inside, overwhelmed by the weight of her husband’s crime, crimes she is now left to deal with. It is not fair, it is not right, and more than anything else, it is humiliating and overwhelming. Whatever transgressions Skyler made, she does not deserve this – and yet she will have to bear this burden, because what other choice is there? The enormous sense of grief and horror and responsibility Anna Gunn wears throughout that scene is a wonder to behold, and a welcome reminder of how completely deserving her first Emmy win was tonight (given the material she has had this season, I think it is safe to say she will repeat at next year’s show).
And because Gunn is so good in that scene, and the scene itself is so confident in saying much of what it needs to say without words, “Granite State” is able to put Skyler aside, physically at least, for the rest of the hour. Ultimately, this episode is about Walter White’s ongoing journey, and to best understand the place he is in for the last portion of the hour, Skyler has to be invisible to us, just as she is to him. We hear from Robert Forster that Skyler has lost the house, and all her money, and that she is forced to work in a taxi dispatch to make end’s meet, and while seeing all those things happen would certainly be dramatically effective, they hit even harder, in the context of the episode, by occurring off-screen. We see just enough of Skyler to know she will persevere, no matter how miserable things get – something Walt, as clueless as he can sometimes be, is probably aware of as well – but otherwise, we have to imagine the horrors she endures, and that only makes the abject awfulness of the entire situation all the more palpable.
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