Breaking Bad S5E8: "How Much is Enough?"

Breaking Bad S5E8 is an episode where Walt hits his stride. His stride as a drug lord, that is. After the deal he negotiated with a rival gang lord from Phoenix (previous episode) he's free from the having to find or manage a distribution operation and can focus on what he does best: the chemistry. He just has to rub out 9 witnesses in prison first... which he does with the help of the Aryan Brotherhood, whom he pays an untold amount of money to kill 9 men in 3 different prisons all within a window of 2 or 3 minutes (to prevent news of one killing leading to the protective countermeasures on the others).

Once all those murders— and, of course, disposing of Mike's body— are behind him, Walt falls into a routine. Working with new guy Todd now as his assistant instead of Jesse, Walt cranks out batch after batch of blue meth. We viewers see a montage.... Walt and Todd mix chemicals, sort finished product into bins and bags, drop the bags into barrels of some other chemical for smuggling. Later Walt gets a should bag of money from Lydia or someone else and brings stacks of cash hidden inside cases of soda cans to Skyler for safe keeping and laundering. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The screenplay clearly shows that time is passing, though it doesn't indicate exactly how long this goes on. Given the time involved in cooking one batch— and several batches are shown— I guessed it's at least a few weeks. Commentary from the showrunner indicates a few months pass.

During one of Walt's deliveries of cash to Skyler, she says, "Come with me, I want to show you something." She takes him to a storage cube where she's keeping all the money he's brought in. The stockpile of cash is HUGE.

"How much is it?" Walt asks, before we even see the pile of money.

"I don't know," Skyler says in clenched anger.

"How much is enough?" she asks. "How big does this pile need to be before I get my life back?"

Then the camera pivots around to show this:



How much money is that? The crew that staged the scene estimates it's around $80 million— or would be, if it were real money.

Finally Walt has built the empire he wanted. But already we can see he'll never enjoy it. He's still facing cancer. And even his family will not be able to enjoy it. Skyler points out in this scene, "It's more than we could spend in 10 lifetimes. I'd need [to own] 100 carwashes to launder it."

Here the moral dishonesty of Walt's motivation is exposed. He didn't do this for his family, as he so often insisted. He did it for himself, and only to prove he could. To feel the power of having built an empire. An empire that will crumble to dirt before his family enjoys even a fraction of it.

The size of the cash pile shocks even Walt. He quits the business. The screenplay then shows another montage with the kids moving back into the house and Walt and Skyler getting back to some sense of normalcy— on the surface, at least. But then empire starts to crumble.

( The empire starts to crumble! (Spoilers) )

Atmospheric River in Bay Area, Tornado Warning in SF

Overnight through this morning the SF Bay Area got another atmospheric river rain storm. The colorful and slightly ominous term describes a rain system that comes across the Pacific Ocean— which, since we're basically on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, is pretty damn much every single rain storm we get. Indeed two winters ago we got at least seventeen atmospheric river storms. When news media trumpet a term like "atmospheric river" on something so ordinary it happens about once a week during rainy season it starts to lose meaning.

I remember the first time I heard this term, "atmospheric river", used in weather reporting. It was about 9 years ago and it described a massive storm. There was flooding in the streets all around the Bay Area. Traffic was snarled. Businesses closed. Events were canceled. Did that happen 17 times last year? Hardly.

This time, this morning, there was hardly any of that widespread calamity, either. Though San Francisco did get a tornado warning at 6am (SF Chronicle article, 14 Dec 2024). That's rare. No actual tornado was spotted, though, and the warning was lifted minutes after it was announced. If there had been a tornado it would have been the first in SF in almost 20 years. Instead there were just gusty winds of up to 83mph as measured at SFO airport. Yes, people who know anything about tornadoes beyond alarmist headlines in the news, that's a basically a nothingburger.

For us here in Silicon Valley the storm was, indeed, just an ordinary winter rain storm. We got about 1.5" locally. No drama... except we did get some thunder and lightning overnight. That's unusual here.