This weekend was a banner one for bald white dudes in pop culture. With the return of Breaking Bad, the premiere of HBO’s Clear History and AMC’s Low Winter Sun, as well as the release of Elysium, we got to see a good chrome dome sampling. We looked at the weekend’s most prominent cue balls and decided who made the most of the hair they didn’t have. (Spoiler alerts for all five, etc. etc.)
5. Hank Schrader, Breaking Bad (Dean Norris)
Last season, Breaking Bad ended with a shot of Hank realizing that Walt was Heisenberg all along. Many thought when the show came back, it was going to be Hank’s time to shine, his time to bust his white whale (another W.W.). But nope! Well, at least not yet. Hank didn’t spend last night’s episode as the guns a-blazin’ hero some might’ve hoped; no, Hank was broken up by this realization and had to come to terms with his own deductive shortcomings and the moral conflict at hand. At the end of the episode, he’s a mess and there’s no better symbol of that than an overly stubbled head. Hank’s resolute, completely shaven dome has been compromised.
4. Frank Agnew, Low Winter Sun (Mark Strong)
We don’t know much about Frank yet, other than there’s no hair on his head (save those two powerful eyebrows), but we can tell his expertly staged suicide plan wasn’t as chill as he hoped. First, there’s the whole accepting you’re a murderer thing. Second, there’s realizing your co-conspirator totally played you. Thirdly, there’s dealing with having a completely uncovered head during the eventual Detroit winter.
3. Max, Elysium (Matt Damon)
If it weren’t hard enough to be poor, think about being poor and bald. (You can’t even afford sunscreen to shield your bare head-skin.) Max probably lived his adult life looking up at Elysium and imagined sticking his head in a med-bed and not pulling it out until his hair was as thick as Earth’s polluted air. And then when he finally got to Elysium, it all went to shit. He did beat up the hirsute Kruger, however, so score one for baldies.
2. Walter White, Breaking Bad (Bryan Cranston)
It wasn’t a great weekend for Walt. There was the whole cancer coming back thing, which instantly made being bald way sadder. Then, of course, there was the fact that Hank had found him out, so all of his hopes of getting out of the game for good appeared dashed. Still, there’s one thing that Walt has over all these other baldies: We know he grows the hair back. Last night’s episode starts with a flash-forward of an alone Walt, after he apparently loses everything. But apparently he didn’t lose everything-everything: He still has a whole bunch of hair follicles on his head.
1. Rolly DaVore, Clear History (Larry David)
Notice that we are referring to David as Rolly, not his real identity, Nathan Flomm. The tortured Flomm was a miserable failure who freaked out at losing his hair in the shower. Rolly represented a person coming to terms with a much humbler life. Terrible things happened to him and terrible things happened because of him, but he still ended the HBO film contently playing poker with his buddies accepting him, bald head and all. He even had a date on the horizon and things looked promising, as, just like his last girlfriend, she blew multiple members of the band Chicago. And she’s paying! Pretty, pretty, pretty good.
