I’ve always liked John de Lancie as Q, the godlike being with a prankster’s attitude in the Star Trek universe, so I enjoyed seeing him appear earlier this season, even in just a cameo. In this episode, however, that cameo grows into a crucial supporting character, one far removed from the all-powerful smartass toying with the crew of the Enterprise. And he’s good. Really good.
As Donald Margolis, the father of Jesse’s (Aaron Paul) landlady/girlfriend Jane (Krysten Ritter), de Lancie gives us a man running on empty, having tried anything and everything to save someone he loves from addiction but out of ideas and exasperated. It’s a short role (he only appears in four episodes, two of which amount to only fleeting appearances), but in a way, the brevity works in his favor: there’s not enough time to delve into clichés or melodrama, and only enough to convey a sense of exhausted desperation (and in next episode’s case, despair).
In addition to newfound growth for that seemingly onetime character, this episode delivers moments of truth for two who are already established. One is Jane, who’s relapsed back into heroin use and brought Jesse with her. Watching a second time, it seems like their relationship is more important to Jesse, as he has no one else in the way of human contact; for Jane, it’s just a fling of convenience with her new neighbor. In this one, the way she controls Jesse to blackmail Walt (Bryan Cranston) is not unlike how Walt manipulates his former student. Like Walt, Jane only cares about Jesse for what he can do for her.
But, in the other said moment, we find that Walt actually does care about Jesse. Maybe seeing his new baby daughter brought out what’s left of the good in him, or maybe it was the coincidental conversation with Jane’s father at the bar (a scene that’s bit hard to believe, but I’ll overlook this unlikely event because of the great character drama it was a part of). Whatever the case, despite the way he constantly disparages and controls Jesse, Walt feels kind of like a patriarchal figure to his former student. And he shows it by doing fatherly things like showing Jesse tough love by withholding his share of their earnings until he sobers up, or trying to convince him to reject Jane’s corrupting influence.
It’s in this same capacity, however, that Walt shows that he’s past another point from which he can’t go back. The scene where he watches Jane die, able to save her but choosing not to, is a painful and powerful one. Walt exhibits several emotions. One’s guilt, like the guilt he felt having to kill Krazy-8 in Jesse's basement. There’s sadness, as he’s a father, too. And also relief, as he knows her and Jesse’s blackmail plot won’t survive without her.
But the most telling thing is not Walt’s mix of emotions. It’s his instinctual reaction to Jane's death. A good person’s instinct when seeing someone choking on their own vomit would be to help them. Walt’s first reaction is to stop and think about it. He’s now at the point where he’s calculating whether a person should live or die. Even if he'd chosen to save Jane, the fact he had to weigh his options first shows his fundamental nature has changed, definitely for the worse.
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