Breaking Bad has some very shocking moments across its five seasons, but one of them stands out for being so brutal in such a short space of time. While the Breaking Bad cast was often tasked with especially long-form storytelling, the show also proved itself capable of compressed bursts of action on several occasions.
While I’ve heard complaints over the years about Breaking Bad‘s slow pacing, I remain convinced that the story’s measured approach is a big part of what makes it one of the greatest TV shows of all time. Many of the scenes that defined Breaking Bad stood their ground by sticking to the show’s formula, but it did stray from the path when required.
The Prison Slaughter Scene In “Gliding All Over” Is Breaking Bad’s Most Brutal Scene
Breaking Bad never got more violent than this
Breaking Bad season 5, episode 8, “Gliding All Over,” is a pivotal installment for the award-winning crime drama. It marks the point that convinces Walter “Walt” White (Bryan Cranston) to get out of the meth business for good. While his empire is the largest it’s ever been in “Gliding All Over,” he ends the episode without any active connection to the criminal underworld.
However, for Walt to pull off such a drastic lifestyle change, he needs to resort to drastic measures. So, he puts in place a plan to have all 10 of the men in prison who could inform on him killed. Breaking Bad shows the intensely violent scheme in action from start to finish, but it’s all over in just two minutes.
The 10 men Walt gets killed are all previous employees of Mike (Jonathon Banks). With Mike dead, Walt is preventing his victims from talking to the DEA.
Between the frenzied stabbings and inmates being burned alive, the sequence in “Gliding All Over” is genuinely hard to watch at times. Still, it shows how desperate and determined Walt is to sever ties with the last year of his life that saw him rise to the top of the meth trade in Albuquerque.
What adds to the impact of the prison slaughter is that Walt’s plan is ultimately in vain. Sure, he manages to silence anyone in prison who would get him caught, but Cranston’s character leaves a vital piece of evidence in his bathroom – the Walt Whitman book – for Hank (Dean Norris) to find, which is what leads to Walt’s brother-in-law discovering his dark secret.
The Scene In “Gliding All Over” Is So Short For An In-Universe Reason
Walt had a dark (but logical) reason for setting such a strict time limit
The prison scene shows the violent death of ten men in a sequence that is immaculately directed by Michelle MacLaren. There are a lot of moving parts that need to come together for the various shots to work and instill the desired emotions in the audience. So, I’d get it if the violence was compressed to such a short space of time for production reasons.
Interestingly, that wasn’t the case. At the very least, there is an explanation that eclipses the alternative. All the 10 men who died were being held in a variety of prisons to reduce the chance of what happened to them from taking place. They were all potential key witnesses in a massive case for the DEA.
Therefore, Walt’s plan involved having all of them killed in a two-minute window. That way, the respective prisons would be far less likely to have the chance to realize what was happening and communicate with one another to prioritize the safety of the targets.
“Gliding All Over” does a fantastic job of making sure that, from the second Walt starts counting, the entire sequence unfolds in exactly two minutes. Real-time occurrences don’t always abide by genuine timescales in TV shows, which often annoys me. If anything, Walt’s hitmen were arguably a little too efficient, as they didn’t make their first kill until 20 seconds into their allotted window.
Even Walt Is Barely In The Breaking Bad Sequence That Sees Mike’s 10 Men Killed
Bryan Cranston has very little to do in the show’s most brutal scene
For such a brutal landmark scene, one might expect showrunner Vince Gilligan to reserve the moment for one of Breaking Bad‘s main characters. At the very least, one of them should arguably be directly involved in the action. However, the prison scene only shows flashes of one main character, and it’s Walt.
Cranston’s character observing the time tick by on his watch is a framing device for the entire scene. The violence is interspersed with glimpses of Walt’s face and his watch, but he’s not actively doing anything other than staring out of the window.
Breaking Bad was still capable of being great even when focusing on minor characters.
While it’s a surprising writing choice, it fits the moment well and proves how Breaking Bad was still capable of being great even when focusing on minor characters. In other words, the show’s larger story always trumped the option of loading every scene with recognizable figures without reason.
Why Breaking Bad Didn’t Do Extreme Violence Very Often
Gilligan made sure not to overdo Breaking Bad’s brutality
Breaking Bad wears many hats when it comes to genre labels, but it’s not an action show. Instead, it often thrives when it’s generating suspense. It waits several episodes or sometimes entire episodes to release that tension, which is a huge factor in what makes Breaking Bad so engaging.
Related
After Rewatching Breaking Bad, I Know The Exact Moment Walt’s Plan Stopped Being About His Family
Walter White’s meth-led plan to leave money behind for his family began as a scheme with his loved ones in mind, but one scene shows a big change.
If the show had included constant action sequences and violent altercations more often than it did, then they wouldn’t have been nearly as effective as the way they were used. Those violent scenes are memorable because of how scarce they were and how vital to Breaking Bad‘s narrative they became, with the death of Gus Fring (Gian Carlo Esposito) serving as another great example.
Breaking Bad
10/10
- Release Date
-
2008 – 2013-00-00
- Showrunner
-
Vince Gilligan
- Directors
-
Vince Gilligan, Michelle Maclaren
- Writers
-
Peter Gould, Gennifer Hutchison, Vince Gilligan, George Mastras, Moira Walley-Beckett, Sam Catlin, Thomas Schnauz
