Wham! Episode/Live-Action TV/Breaking Bad

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Wham! Episodes in Breaking Bad include:

  • The penultimate episode of the second season, "Phoenix", in which Jane's relationship with Jesse is discovered by her dad, which drives her to blackmailing Walt into turning over the money he owes Jesse. With this in mind, when Walt finds himself watching Jane die via heroine overdose, he does nothing and lets her die.
  • And then topped by the double-whammy of the penultimate and final episodes of Season 3: "Half-Measures" and "Full Measure". In the first, Tomas is executed by his gangster employers, who are later plowed down by Walt in his car, with the survivor getting shot in the head for good measure. Then in the next episode, Jesse kills a harmless and relatively innocent man in cold blood, on Walter's orders after he emotionally blackmails Jesse into it. In the process, metaphorically spitting in the face of his kingpin employer. Talk about your Moral Event Horizon.
  • Season Four's whammers:
    • Salud Gus kills off the Cartel's leaders, Mike gets shot, Jesse kills again.
    • Crawl Space Jesse replaces Walt as Gus' cook, Gus puts a hit out on Hank and threatens to kill Walter's entire family, Ted dies and Walt loses his escape money.
    • And, above all, Face Off Walt talks Hector to killing himself, Gus and Tyrus with a bomb, Walt and Jesse destroy the superlab and it's revealed that Walt poisoned Brock.