Television, the Drug of the Nation

(A few weeks ago, I started these Breaking Bad recaps, and then fell a bit behind.  Not one to give up without a fight, they’re still coming, just a tiny bit late.  I’m going to dump a few of them today, so read them if you wish, and if you don’t watch Breaking Bad, turn off your computer and start it today)

The episode begins with Walt, realizing Jesse’s not in the lab, becoming immediately concerned that Jesse has been harmed, or is about to be.  Honestly, I can’t blame Walt for that reaction. In his position, I would think the exact same thing.  However, he goes about it in a naïve, impulsive and foolishly headstrong Walt fashion, driving right to Los Pollos Hermanos to confront Gus, with the thoroughly unrealistic expectation he would just walk in unharmed and kill Gus.  Before he can do anything even dumber, Mike calls and lets him know that Jesse’s all right.

Jesse’s a passenger as Mike picks up cash at a bunch of different drop spots throughout the state.  He can’t figure out why he’s here, and even though Mike knows what the plan is, he really doesn’t understand it either.  Eventually, at the last drop, while Jesse’s in the car, a couple of armed gunmen come down towards Mike’s car, and Jesse is moved from his malaise to back the car into one of them and make a clean get away, realizing that maybe he’s not quite ready to die after all.  When Mike meets Gus later in the episode, we learn what I had suspected right away, that the attack was part of a plan to make Jesse feel like a hero and stop fucking up, and even better, that it seems to have worked so far.

Walt and Skyler are getting along again, and after a heated bout of love-making, Skyler suggests Walt move in again.  Walter Jr. seems pretty excited about that prospect, but Walt, not as much.  While right after he was kicked out all he wanted to do was come back home, Walt has changed in the past couple of months.  After a family dinner, Walt finds himself drinking a glass of wine by himself before rejoining the party.  I at first thought Walt is now bored by this sedentary suburban life that he was apart of for so many years before his cancer, but I think it’s more at least that he’s so terrified of Gus and Mike harming him or his family but doesn’t want to let his family know about it.

Hank notes at the dinner table that it looks like Gale was Heisenberg after all, and notes what a true and real genius Gale must have been.  Walt’s ego is shattered, and Walt feels like he must pipe up, no matter the fact that it would have been awfully convenient for his criminal enterprise for Heisenberg to have been thought dead.  Walt suggests Gale’s work shows he was a mere student, and that the teacher, the true genius must still be out there.  Walt’s desire to speak up is obviously partly a product of ego, but it might be of boredom as well.  Too much stress may be frustrating, but Walt may need a little bit to get excited anymore.

Tags: Breaking Bad

(A few weeks ago, I started these Breaking Bad recaps, and then fell a bit behind.  Not one to give up without a fight, they’re still coming, just a tiny bit late.  I’m going to dump a few of them today, so read them if you wish, and if you don’t watch Breaking Bad, turn off your computer and start it today)

First, a couple of notes about the cold open, in which Mike holes up in a truck and then kills a couple of guys who have machine guns.   I said in an earlier recap that Breaking Bad so often has great scenes, even aside from the context of the show.  I can’t see the actual reason this scene adds to the plot, as we had the scene we needed to show how insanely superhumanly badass Mike is when he took down that asian warehouse last season.  The only thing I can think of is if the ear injury gets referred to again.  Either way, though, bravo, great scene.

The scenes of Walt and Skyler working on the story they’re going to tell Marie and Hank about Walt’s gambling addiction highlight both the differences and the strengths and flaws in their two personalities (something we dealt with in last episode as well).  Skyler is detail-oriented (her resume would read) and well-prepared – she wants to be practiced down to the word, and down to the exact emotion.  That said, lying doesn’t come easy to her.  Walt is impatient and impulsive, but he also has a point in realizing that to some extent the story is just going to have to flow naturally.  They can plan a general guide for the story, but there’s something stiff about trying to actually write a script to the letter.  The story seems to go over pretty well when the Walt and Skyler go over to Marie and Hank’s for dinner.  Walt actually made money at cards, so his son doesn’t exactly understand why this addiction is a bad thing.

Hank brings Walt and Walter Jr. to check out the absolutely amazing video of Gale singing Major Tom karaoke, and Hank asks Walt to examine the notebook.  When Hank points out the initials WW, for the first time I felt as if Hank didn’t believe Walt 100%, but I may just have been reading in deeper to the situation because of what I know as the viewer.

Walt, frustrated with everyone, and stressed out about being captured or killed, fumes at Saul Goodman, using his lawyer session for therapy, but is still unwilling to commit to going into hiding.  He still thinks he can find a way out.

Jesse continues his vicious cycle of nihilism that he began in the first episode of the season, but it seems like something has to give.  Walt is furious at Jesse that he didn’t take proper care at the crime scene, and even more so that that doesn’t even seem to bother Jesse, oblivious to the difficulty Jesse is having when reliving the murder.  After some junkies burglarize Jesse’s funds, Mike gets it back for Jesse, who doesn’t seem to care.  Mike and Gus are clearly concerned about Jesse too, and we’re left wondering exactly how concerned when the episode ends with Mike taking Jesse on a ride.  Maybe it’s to his death, or maybe for ice cream.

Tags: Breaking Bad

(A few weeks ago, I started these Breaking Bad recaps, and then fell a bit behind.  Not one to give up without a fight, they’re still coming, just a tiny bit late.  I’m going to dump a few of them today, so read them if you wish, and if you don’t watch Breaking Bad, turn off your computer and start it today)

Plenty to unpack here as usual.  First, the car wash.  This whole situation highlights Walt’s flaws, and that Skyler is everything that Walt’s not.  Where Walt is bold and impetuous, Skyler is patient, shrewd and detail oriented.  It’s almost comical watching Walt decide Skyler’s plan is a failure after waiting five hours without a call, hopping up and down next to the phone like an anxious middle school girl, and then decide even faster that Skyler’s negotiating tactics have failed after she intentionally lowballs the car wash owner.  Walt is unconcerned that his grand gesture of buying a ludicrously expensive bottle of champagne might look out of place for an unemployed school teacher because after all, he paid cash.  Walt has had his fair share of victories in the show due to his willingness to be bold and act quickly and aggressively, but that’s also a path to getting himself arrested or killed.  He would never have come up with as intricate a plan as reporting a false EPA violation.  It’s great to see Saul again as well, mocking Skyler’s stated intentions to buy the car wash, and send a message, but just without hurting anyway, openly, and yet she figures out a way.

Marie gets a big chunk of plot this episode as well – she begins to lose a little bit of the sympathy she was gaining, as she turns back to her own shoplifting ways. She goes to open houses, inventing new lives for herself, and takes personal items each time.  Luckily, she has a DEA husband with connections in law enforcement to get her off.  She’s immature, certainly, and enjoying her flights of fantasy and escape from Hank being, well, simply mean to her.  Getting on her case because she confused Fritos and Cheetos?  Harsh.  Pretty immature of Hank as well.  Maybe she’s back to her shoplifting because she wants to get arrested for attention like a teenager and wants Hank to notice or take care of her.

Jesse wants to go og-carting with Walt after work, but Walt takes a raincheck.  Walt at least does him the courtesy of pretending to consider it, but go-carting is below him.  Jesse is at heart still interested in the simple pleasures of Go-carting; he’s just a kid.  He’s not getting what he wants to out of the go-carting, though. He can’t seem to enjoy it.  Either it’s because he’s still devastated over killing Gale, or was so thrown for a loop by being nearly killed and watching Gus kill Victor, or probably both, but just the like in the last episode, he’s dealing, but with a new strategy.  He tried to hang with friends in a non-stop party last episode but it only worked for so long.  Now he’s at a drug den, giving money away.  Blood money, perhaps?  While Walt has become a master of rationalizing away anything he does,  Jesse can’t even justify the things he did that were actually necessary.  He’s punishing himself. While Walt thinks he’s always the good guy even as he breaks increasingly bad, Jesse always sees himself as the bad guy, even when he’s not.

We get the return of Gale’s notebook in this episode.  Clearly foreshadowed in the first episode, we knew it was only a matter of time until it came into play, continuing the set up of Walt being squeezed by both Gus and the police.  That’s about it for the notebook for now though, as a fellow detective puts it into Hank’s hands, but its importance is unquestioned.

Tags: Breaking Bad

My brother’s one major complaint about Breaking Bad (he still loves the show) is its occasional slow pacing and inconsequential scenes.  While I prefer to describe the pace as deliberate rather than slow, he’s not entirely wrong.  What I always tell him,though, is that the genius of Breaking Bad is that some scenes transcend the plot and the episodes in which they’re found.  Even by themselves, as scenes, or vignettes, or whatever you’d like to call them, they stand out as brilliant and compelling. The scene with Mike and Walter at the bar was one of these scenes.  The plot implications of the scene were certainly important, but even without, the scene was wonderful.

Stepping back, we have two main plotlines in this episode, and two minor ones.  Walt and Jesse are both reacting to their new lease on life differently.  Walt is paranoid that if he doesn’t take out Gus, somehow, Gus will be taking him out soon enough.  He shows off some of Walt’s classic characteristics such as naiveté, impulsiveness, and thinking that he’s cleverer than he is, when he buys a gun illegally in a great cold open, and then tries first to go right up to Gus’s house with a piece.  After that fails miserably, letting Gus know what Walter had in mind if Gus didn’t already,  Walt, in the above-noted best scene of the week, tries to talk Mike into letting Walt kill Gus.  Walt is smart, and he is bold, and both of these are two attributes are to his credit, but he’s so far out of his league at this point that it makes you wonder how he’s going to avoid getting killed.  At the same time, even though Mike responds to Walt’s request with a well-earned beatdown, Mike must be wondering how long he ought to deal with Gus – even battle-tested Mike appeared shocked when Gus killed Victor violently in the first episode.

Jesse is still dealing with killing Gail, watching Gus kill Victor and with coming close to being killed himself .  His way of dealing is to do a bunch of drugs and try to constantly surround himself with people.  It’s hard not to feel for him when everyone, even Badger and Skinny Pete, go home after a couple of days of partying – even they need to rest.

I also like the short Marie and Hank scenes with the physical therapist and then with the rocks.  The physical therapist scene is the first strong indication of the current problems with the marriage – previously it seemed as if Hank was miserable all the time, with his condition, but he’s totally inspired when the therapist is there, and then comes down again when he leaves.  Marie is only half joking when she asks the physical therapist to move in.  It’s one of the first times we really feel for Marie, who has been one of the less likable characters in the show up to this point – here, she’s doing everything she absolutely can for Hank, and he’s still unappreciative.

Tags: Breaking Bad

I’m going to do my own little Breaking Bad recaps here, and since it’s just the third week now, I’m going to run back and give my take on the first two episodes of the fourth season so there’s some sense of full-season completion.

Season 4, Episode 1 – Box Cutter

Here’s something that Breaking Bad does well.  It takes a situation which could easily be boring and predictable and makes it exciting and tense. In this case, the circumstances at the end of the third season and the beginning of the fourth, where the writers have painted themselves into a corner.  Walt and Jesse’s lives are in extreme danger, yet they can’t kill Walt or Jesse this early in the show’s run without dramatically changing the show.  There is a situation that should have high tension, but you already know how it’s going to end; Gus needs Walt to run his meth lab, and Walt, in turn, says he needs Jesse – and the two of them live.

Even though you know what’s going to happen,  Breaking Bad does a great job of making this predictable set of consequences feel both incredibly tense and completely natural. Based on everything we know about these characters and the circumstances they’re stuck in, this feels like the outcome that would come of it.  Gus needs Walt, as it’s been clearly established that without this lab running at capacity all the time, it’s a giant money sink, which Gus can’t afford.

On top of this, when the show ends, even though the immediate tension of the third season finale has been extinguished, as Walt is no longer less than a minute away from dying, the long-term fourth season tension has been set up. Whenever Gus finds a new cook, which could take a long time, but might not, Walt and Jesse are finished, and they have just that amount of time to figure out a plan.

The episode features a fantastic edge of your seat scene. Gus angrily, but calmly, comes downstairs to the lab to deal with Walt and Jesse after finding out Gale is dead, and then kills Victor, who is trying to prove that Walt is unnecessary by cooking the meth himself.  Gus murders Victor in the most cold-hearted manner, silently with a box cutter as Walt, Jesse and Mike look on.  The exact purpose of the kill is unclear; there are a couple of different possible reasons.  Gus may be punishing Victor for getting seen at Gale’s apartment, or he may be sending a message to Walt and Jesse, telling them that they’re this close to death themselves.  Likely, it’s a combination.  The scene gives us a new appreciation for Gus’s cold business sensibility.  Gus’s murder of Victor was at the least disturbing, maybe borderline sociopathic, and even Mike seemed shocked by the sheer manner of the kill.  Watching Gus clean himself off afterwards was priceless.

The scene ended with a nice touch, showing Jesse and Walt using chemicals to destroy the body.  Mike, looking on, asks if they’re sure their method will work. Jesse and Walt assure Mike that it will, showing us an example of how chemistry and Walt can be as dangerous in its own way as Mike’s time-tested methods.

The police investigate Gale’s murder and we get a tight shot of Gale’s notebook, where Gale stores his notes on the meth-making progress (Gale has always been a diligent student).  Walt will be squeezed from both sides this season.  With Gus coming at him from one side, and the police from the other, the question for the rest of the season is who will get to him first?

Tags: Breaking Bad