(no subject)

[proximoception]

Discussed sans any qualifications to speak about the former.

He finds he made the decision long ago and can't again.

100,000 being not so far from the value of a singly-mortgaged one-story suburban Albuquerque home c. 2010, when the story ends.

The other amount being a hundred times as much. But the one who would give the money must already want to, or it won't happen. Can what he wants be known? He doesn't assure Walt that he can be trusted to do what Walt wants but instead points out that there's no way Walt can know, which may gesture in the direction of his favoring Walt; but he also doesn't say he'll do it, or name a price, which may suggest he doesn't want to. But of course he may do it anyway, either for no extra payment or for whatever he deems fair, or might have if permitted. There's no knowing. Hence poker, hence the most poker-faced actor available. Walt doesn't cut the deck because he has to trust the man, despite having no idea if he can. The man then cuts it himself expertly. Two kings are dealt - Walt has succeeded, but the power is as much in another's hands, an other who can be surely prevented only if his intentions are known. This is more or less Newcombe's, where you make a decision and the other does, and we may see just how free we are or how much God knows, though probably not both, and we probably won't know which we've seen, thus won't know anything.

But, as I said, he made this choice long since and just doesn't know it. There is no safe choice with one hundredth as large a payoff because he's lost his family's trust. Hence the ring falling off. But he still loves them, hence tying it back on. He doesn't wait to see what the world decides, since he can't anyway. He decides he knows the world well enough to push his own choice through. He doesn't know whether his knowledge is adequate, but he knows enough to try and that the true choice is long past - if it was ever made at all. And this realization makes him formidable in a new way, as a magician of physics rather than chemistry.

The keys fall into his lap, but only because he remembers to check one of the places you might find keys. And from then on he makes sure that he awakens in the people he needs to fulfill his plan a desire to do the very thing that serves his purpose - for some reason of their own, in most cases. He knows the price of Badger and Skinny Pete, knows how much Gretchen and Eliott require good publicity, how soft their wealth has made them become, who Skyler and their son will accept money from, what to say to Skyler to make her move on (even if true), what Jack values more than caution etc. He correctly reads everyone but Jesse, who knows him too well, and, like him, has had time to think about his own patterns of response.

He caresses not just the meth vat but his image reflected in it, just as earlier he converses with who we at first assume is God, then see is his own reflection in the rear view mirror, requesting he get him to Albuquerque after which the speaking Walt will do the rest. (Following directly on from a fantastically brief eye roll up toward the visor holding the keys, the revelation of which was sufficiently deus ex machina that you're actually expecting him to look up toward heaven - but his eyes stop at that visor.)

The mirror bargaining recalls, and in its note of acceptance reverses, a scene in season 2, where he punches his reflection in a bathroom fixture and in context we're not sure if this is a resurgent "good" Walt attacking the broken-bad one or vice-versa. Here again it is unclear at the time who is bargaining with whom: the strong Walt with the dying man who fashioned him, whose body needs to hold together for one last, long trip, or that dying man with his creation - asking for its will-power to make this final effort, after which he'll operate sans ego.

Given his final actions, which are much less appalling than we'd feared, it appears to have been the latter - putting aside his own pride he is better able to see and manipulate that of others. His own self-involvement on earlier occasions, and his having come to realize exactly how badly it misled him, lets him understand theirs acutely, too. He is a sort of ghost, hence his not being noticed by those he stalks, his placement behind pillars or lines of customers in shots etc. He moves slowly, betrays no surprise, is undermined by no nervousness. He is acting based on knowledge, not desire or anger, but is not without desire. He sees his son for the last time through two sets of windows just to be safe, walks unhurriedly around the side of that building at the exact pace that his son passes it in order to see him again from the other.

He accepts his own contingency in the causal chain, which is part of his ability to tell Skyler to the truth, and convincingly, despite its including a lie of omission. This frees him from the chain, but only the external one. The image of the spent machine gun pivoting about, and especially the shot of it still doing so when only Walt is left nearby, recalls the obstinate mechanisms of episodes 2.2 and 2.3, in their kidnapping by Tuco and its aftermath, which included a hopping unmanned car and a convenience store door bumping away at the shoe Walt drooped to block it. Despite their nearly dying and then having to take extreme pains and further risks to cover for their absence, Walt and Jesse promptly return to making meth, because that's how they're wound.

Part of how Walt is wound is to love Jesse, and this he perhaps didn't anticipate - though it's not left entirely clear. I'm not sure that someone lying on the floor directly is much less of a richochet target than someone lying on a person on the floor, but I'm sure we were to take it that way. He doesn't just save Jesse but he risks, and receives, fatal injury continuing to keep him safe. He's accomplished everything else he wanted to, though, so compared to what's been at stake at other points it's all the same either way.

Though perhaps not, given Walt's obsession with dying like a man who would use the expression "dying like a man." Jesse's shooting him is either a way to escape some pain while not being seen as weak, the idea behind the harakiri spotter, or a way for him to grant Jesse closure. Jesse dislikes that granting part as well as the idea of helping Walt out, and of course on some level might not want to kill Walt, so it's strange that Walt would fail to predict his response. Though perhaps he does predict it, and simply wishes to free Jesse from both posthumous hatred of him and the sense of obligation to him by giving him a chance to make this final decision on his own. It is an amazingly overcharged moment, one where it is unclear whether Jesse should feel guilt for killing his father figure or for not killing him. But Walt can kill himself, after all, so Jesse simply gives the decision back. Saving Walt's face, preserving his idea of himself, is no longer a job he accepts.

I think making all of this so confusing, and then having the exchange end with Jesse frame not firing as giving Walt back the choice rather than making the one he's presented with, is the only dignified way for the show to suggest that Jesse's behavior has not been predicted by Walt, thus that they are finally equals. Having it all follow from the ricochet wound, which Walt also couldn't have predicted though he must have been aware of the risk, helps underline this, since he wouldn't have come up with this faux-choice ahead of time, and of course may not even have guessed that Jesse had been enslaved. But of course even through all that it feels Newcombian, like that confrontation between world-knowledge and an individual's impossible-if-possible ability to escape or outdo it. Walt is a mechanism that has come to understand its own workings, thus those of others like him, but so is Jesse. I'm actually kind of amazed at the writing here, since Walt isn't brought lower by this eventuality. He sees what he will never see with his own son - that Jesse has become a man. Thus even here he gets what he wants, which, nutty as this sounds, means we can't feel sure he's failed as a predictor even here.

Walt chooses to endure the pain while appearing to ignore it, so as to not die like his own father, a decision that reconfirms his original one to go ungently - one recalls his brandishing of his gun at the oncoming sirens in the pilot. He didn't want to shoot policemen, at the time, but to be shot dead by them rather than watch his life fall apart - and rather than die of cancer in a cell.

The decision to not wait around to die at the end of Granite State repeats the one that kicked off the whole series (without quite taking place AS one onscreen, as is emphasized in the Hank flashback - if Hank hadn't suggested the ride-along then etc.), but here that (also unshown) decision undoes the first, give or take some ruined lives and 10 million dollars. Giving Jesse the gun repeats the Gale incident, and offers him an antidote to that guilt, as well as his emotional bondage to Walt, those several leashes of debt, revenge, need for approval, need for direction, need to lash out at untrustworthy caregivers. Jesse is free.

The use of science to get what one wants is finally preceded by a scientific understanding of why one would want that, so one finally can. This isn't of much use to us as morals go, taken literally, though it might if we could understand whatever we tried to, like the predictor in the classical Newcombe's formulations. The problem itself seems strictly useless until altered, in fact, since there are no omniscient agents and free will is not a coherent concept. The most glaring Newcombe's equivalent in the real world is guessing what you'll want tomorrow, as only that acquisition - and its consequences - can be prepared for, not your grabbings of today. What you guess you will want then determines what you should want now - but your guesses will largely be determined by what you do want now, will just project that forward, unless your ability to imagine how others think, and just how and how quickly a self changes into an other, is formidable. In his previous attempts he never knew quite enough - even with his great successes, like the train robbery, there was an unforeseen cost, in terms of both physical and emotional damage and persisting risk, caused by haste and pride. To know what you will want requires facing what has caused you to want what you want now, which is painful and will change what you want to want. Making such an effort will take resources provided by the you of yesterday, assuming she correctly guessed you'd properly preserve, remember and value them despite your habitual insensibilities and temptations. If you Fassume you will be a thing, a known, then you contaminate your present self with that devaluation, and all your seconds drop. If you choose to see your future self as choosing to see that a past self is looking cooperation can begin. All your pages will find they're on the same page. You will make ten million dollars.

Or rather you will be able to help those able to help you, to combine into new forms with other people. Because they'll then know who you are, and because you'll have had lots of practice.