Granite State (Breaking Bad)

"Granite State" is the fifteenth and the penultimate episode of the fifth season of the American television crime drama series Breaking Bad. It is the 61st and penultimate episode of the series. The episode was directed and written by Peter Gould. It aired on AMC in the United States and Canada on September 22, 2013.

Plot
Ed Galbraith brings Saul Goodman to his vacuum repair shop, where Walter White also awaits a new identity. Walt attempts to coerce Saul into coming with him but is subdued by a coughing fit. No longer intimidated by Walt, Saul leaves for his new life in Nebraska.

Jack Welker's gang raids Marie Schrader's house and finds Jesse Pinkman's confession tape. Jack wants to kill Jesse for informing, but Todd Alquist wants Jesse to cook meth to impress Lydia Rodarte-Quayle, with whom Todd is infatuated. Knowing Skyler White once met Lydia, Todd and other gang members break into Skyler's house and threaten her to keep quiet. Lydia is not convinced Skyler will stay silent, and aims to end their meth operation, but reconsiders after Todd informs her that the meth the gang produces is now at 92% purity because of Jesse. Jesse escapes but is recaptured. Jack forces Jesse to watch as Todd murders Andrea Cantillo. Jack then threatens to murder Brock Cantillo if Jesse attempts another escape.

Ed takes Walt to a secluded cabin in New Hampshire and says he will visit monthly to bring food and supplies. He cautions that Walt risks capture if he leaves the cabin. Months later, a disheveled, lonely and remorseful Walt has a full beard and head of hair. Ed tells Walt that Skyler is using her maiden name and working part-time as a taxi dispatcher. As the nationwide manhunt for Walt continues, his abandoned house has become a tourist attraction.

Walt packs $100,000 into a box and walks into town. He stops at the local bar and pays a barmaid to call Walter White Jr.'s school pretending to be Marie. Walt tries reconciling with Walter Jr., who has changed his name to Flynn after Walt fled Albuquerque, and says he will mail money to Flynn's friend Louis for Flynn to give Skyler. Continuing to blame him for Hank Schrader's death, an enraged Flynn wishes Walt dead. Afterwards, Walt calls the DEA to surrender, leaving the phone off the hook so they can trace his location. While waiting, Walt happens to see an interview of Gretchen and Elliott Schwartz by Charlie Rose, wherein they trivialize his involvement with Gray Matter Technologies, saying his contributions amounted to the name of the company and little else. Rose also notes that Walt's signature blue meth is still on the market in the southwest, as well as Europe. Enraged, Walt flees before the police arrive.

Production
"Granite State" was written and directed by executive producer Peter Gould. It was the second episode in which Gould directed, after "Problem Dog" in the series' fourth season. The episode title refers to the nickname of New Hampshire, which is where Walt is relocated upon being given a new identity. "Granite State" aired on AMC in the United States and Canada on September 22, 2013.

The writing team faced difficulties during the production of "Granite State", primarily on how to continue the character progression of Walter White. After the death of Hank Schrader in the previous episode, the team was unsure whether Walt would become depressed, or if he would have a different reaction. They ultimately decided that the episode was going to be about Walt "hitting bottom", in the words of Gould. The episode's reposing tone was an intentional contrast from the previous episode, "Ozymandias". An example of a scene that demonstrated this was where Walt attempts to "conjure up the spirit of Heisenberg" by coming up with a plan, but is simply told "it's over" by Saul Goodman instead.

"Granite State" marked the final appearance of Saul Goodman (played by Bob Odenkirk), as he flees to Nebraska. Odenkirk returned as Saul in the spin-off prequel to Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul. In the episode, Saul tells Walt, "if I'm lucky, a month from now, best-case scenario, I'm managing a Cinnabon in Omaha." Gould said this was simply a throwaway line as Better Call Saul had not yet been conceptualized, but once that series was greenlit, it was decided to show in the flash-forward of the series premiere that Saul has indeed become a Cinnabon manager in Omaha, Nebraska. Scenes that take place during the events of "Granite State" are shown in the Better Call Saul episodes "Quite a Ride", "Wine and Roses", and "Saul Gone".

The episode, alongside "Felina", were given extended run-times compared to the rest of the series, being 75 minutes including commercials. The portions of the episode in New Hampshire were filmed in Crawford Notch, though the filming of Walt's cabin was actually done in the Sandia Mountains, a mountain range in New Mexico. During filming, parts of the phone call between Walt and his son needed to be reshot after an airplane ran over the film.

Analysis
During the phone call between Walt and Flynn, where Walt attempts to give him the money in a final act of desperation, Flynn yells "why don't you just die" to his father, which were the same words spoken by Flynn during season 1 when Walt was first diagnosed with cancer. Comparing both uses of the line, Laura Hudson of Vice described the usage in season 1 to be the "angry, wounded talk" of a teenager grieving at the thought of losing his father, and its usage in "Granite State" to be Flynn quite literally wishing for his father's death after the damage he had done to the family. Furthermore, Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter wrote Walt's voice on the phone to be "an animal’s dying desperation", and Flynn's voice to be "rage and anger of the wronged". After his son berates him over the phone, Walt cries "it can't all have been for nothing", which Goodman further described as what the story of Breaking Bad effectively was, and that it was in-fact all for nothing. Hudson echoed similar thoughts, furthermore describing the episode as the embodiment of what Saul told Walt in the opening of the episode, "it's over."

Reception
The Ringer ranked "Granite State" as the 7th best out of the 62 total Breaking Bad episodes, with editor Chris Ryan writing that the episode could have been a "fitting ending" for the series on its own.

Ratings
The episode was watched by around 6.6 million viewers on its original broadcast, which was an increase from the 6.4 million viewers of "Ozymandias".

Accolades
This episode was nominated for two Creative Arts Emmy Awards. Michael Slovis was nominated for Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series (One Hour), while Kelley Dixon and Chris McCaleb were nominated for Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Drama Series, losing to Skip Macdonald for "Felina". Peter Gould was nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for Television: Episodic Drama for writing "Granite State", while Robert Forster's guest performance earned him the Saturn Award for Best Guest Starring Role on Television.