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A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (a review)

November 20, 2024 / / 0 Comments

I was looking forward to this book tremendously as soon as I looked it up. It’s got an unusual (possibly unique) story structure, it’s loosely centered around the world of punk rock and the music industry, and it’s relatively (by comparison to some of the books on my reading list) new. I suspect it was partly my anticipation for this book that made The Death of the Heart such a disappointment.

Spoiler alert: I absolutely loved this book.

There are two things I mostly want to mention about it – the story structure, and the 12th (chapter or story, depending on who you ask) “Great Rock and Roll Pauses by Alison Blake”. I suspect both of these things are what other reviews also tend to focus on, but I’ve made an effort not to read any one else’s reviews before writing my own, so who knows.

The structure of this story is, as I mentioned, is unusual. To the point that some people apparently don’t consider it to be a novel at all. It’s a collection of standalone-able stories with no continuous main character. Instead the main character of each story has some connection, whether profound or profoundly casual, with a main character in a previous story. A few of the characters appear in multiple stories, some only in one. What interested me about this structure is that, off the bat it sounded similar to the structure of the first draft of a novel I just finished writing. In mine, there are three loosely connected stories where the throughline is a shared set of events.

It turns out the shape of this story is nothing like mine. Oh, and in my opinion Egan’s story actually does have a main character. Time.

Over the course of the book, a couple of characters (I think it’s a couple, it may have only been the one) refer to Time as a Goon. The book is called A Visit From the Goon Squad. The one consistent theme that appears throughout the book in various guises is that of the effects of time, in particular as relates to memory. I would argue that there is a main character after all.

Interestingly enough, I was recently involved in a workplace chat that found its way to the topic of memory – specifically childhood memories. I made the point that all memory is constructed (as is all experience of the world) and that while we have to act as though our memories are accurate in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we shouldn’t necessarily trust that they are accurate. Someone else pointed out that people who stay in their hometown and hang out with the same people from high school tend to reinforce (a version of) their remembered experience through reminiscing whereas those of us who moved away (in this case to China) don’t – and when we do go back (for reunions and the like) our memories of high school can vary greatly from those of the people who stayed.

And yes, I work with some pretty unusual people.

Egan treats memory in much the same way. Characters remember different elements of their shared experience, remember the same things differently, and in some cases don’t remember anything much at all. Time really is a goon.

The stories in this book vary quite widely in style, suiting themselves to the point of view character, but none quite so much as the 12th story. It’s written not in prose, but in presentation slides (no, actually presentation slides, like in a business meeting), and it’s brilliantly done. I don’t really know how to describe it any better than that. You should just read it. It’s amazing and I stand in awe of Egan’s talent in pulling this off. It seems like it should be too gimmicky to fly, but it not only flies, it soars.

It’s called Great Rock and Roll Pauses and, just as the songs mentioned in it are defined in large part by their pauses, so too is this story defined by the gaps caused by the way in which it’s presented (pardon the pun). It also ties back into the fragmented nature of memory depicted elsewhere, and to the idea that we build full stories about the past based on the bits and pieces we hold on to. In this story we are given only the smallest pieces of information, and yet it is a full and satisfying story. The whole book is enjoyable, but this story by itself is worth the price of admission. It even makes up for having read (some of) The Death of the Heart.

Go and read it.

The next book(s) in my reading challenge are C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, which I will hopefully be able to finish this week. From what I recall of Lewis, his prose is a fairly easy read.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield – a review

November 18, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Having just finished Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, I really wish I hadn’t bothered.

Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t a terrible book, it just that, much like Elizabeth Bowen’s The Death of the Heart, it isn’t a particularly good one either. And I had such high hopes for it, as well. Everything I’ve ever read about this book has been overwhelmingly positive. Also, I found Sun Tzu’s Art of War to be incredibly thought provoking and valuable and logically, and a book whose title is a play on that books title should be chock-full of wisdom. Right?

Well, there are some good ideas in The War of Art, but they are, all of them, other people’s ideas collected and presented by Mr. Pressfield. There are no original ideas, no world changing revelations, no fresh ways of seeing the world that are staggering in both their power and simplicity. Hmm, maybe I was expecting too much. Most of the ideas are useful, after a fashion. I will list them here to save you the time and trouble of reading the thing (which isn’t much, as it’s effectively a long blog post worth of text).

  • everything that pushes you away from doing a creative thing is called “resistance”
  • the more resistance you feel, the more important the thing is to do
  • focus on the work, not the result
  • show up every day and do the work
  • angels are real
  • all of the creative things exist already (in potentia) and we don’t actually create them but rather discover them
  • Do or do not, there is no try

And that’s the book in a nutshell.

I mean, maybe the thing that bothered me the most about it was the way he spent the final third of the book raw-dogging a sort of watered-down new age mysticism. Maybe it was the relative lack of substance in the other things he was saying. Overall it’s a fairly well-written and at times amusing rehash of standard writing advice, I suppose. I just resented the loss of the time I spent reading it. I was hoping to learn something new.

Next up for writing books to review is Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody. The subtitle says it’s the last book on novel writing I’ll ever need. Hope so.

The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen (an almost review)

October 4, 2024 / / 1 Comment

You know, for the past week or two I’ve been walking around thinking I’d fallen at the first hurdle with this reading project. In a way I have – in that it’s taken me three weeks or so and I still haven’t finished the first book on the list – but the truth is, I don’t intend to finish it. So there.

I take this as a sign of growth, actually.

I really struggled with this book. I couldn’t force myself to be interested in any of the characters. None of them seem to actually do anything, and it felt very much like work to make myself pick the thing up and read it. Every time I did pick it up, half of my mind was occupied with thinking of things I’d rather be reading.

So I stopped.

I read about a third of the book before I put it down permanently. I’m sure I was probably only a few pages away from something interesting – some fascinating little character quirk or wrinkle of conversation – but I just couldn’t bear the thought of forcing myself past any more boring to get there.

And that’s a real step forward for me.

I used to be of the mind that if I started reading a book, no matter how much I disliked it, I would finish the damned thing. In fact, this is only the second novel in my life that I’ve started and not finished. The first was the fourth book in Jean M. Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear series which was so poorly written that I have to suspect it was published as a practical joke (on readers) or that Ms. Auel had some sort of ‘leverage’ on someone high up over at Random House.

The Death of the Heart is not nearly as bad as that. Bowen’s prose is competent if not terribly interesting and the book isn’t bad per se, it’s just that it isn’t very good, and I have a whole list of very good books ahead of me. So many of them, in fact, that it really accentuates my lack of interest in this one.

And life’s too short to spend it reading books you don’t like.

If you are interested in unsympathetic characters that talk in vague circles about uninteresting things and where nothing much happens, this book is very much for you. As for me, I’m moving on to Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From The Goon Squad which I’ve already started, and which I’m very excited to continue.

My Dirty Little Reading Habit (book reviews incoming)

August 16, 2024 / / 0 Comments

A while back I had begun working on a series of non-fiction books I called the Book Club Companion series. The idea was to read and review current popular fiction, and then write some pop-literary analysis with an eye towards helping folks who might want to discuss said books with others, but who don’t have the literary background to feel comfortable doing so.

The secondary goal, of course, was to give me an excuse to read more, and in particular read outside of my normal wheelhouse (Science Fiction and Epic Fantasy mostly).

That project has been mothballed indefinitely, mostly because Amazon doesn’t seem to understand what literary analysis is. They allowed me to publish and to offer the books for sale, but then disabled them in all of the stores and made it impossible to actually buy it. They say “our customers generally find this type of book to be unsatisfying”. Oh, well. I only wasted a couple of weeks in writing the first book, designing the cover templates and covers, editing, formatting, and publishing. We’ll just add this to the pile of reasons why Amazon makes me hope Hell is a real place.

In the meantime, I’ve come up with a clever plan to fill the gap. I’m just going to read a shitload of books and then review them here.

But what books to read?

Well, to get the ball rolling, I Googled up a few of those “Top 100 Novels of All Time”-style lists and consolidated a handful of them into one ginormous list. I included a couple of lists from Goodreads that looked interesting, as well as the Reader’s Digest Best Books of All Time list, a list of newer books, and a Sci-Fi and Fantasy themed one from NPR. Then I made a combined ranking to generate a list from best to least-best. Now that I have the master list, I can read them in least-best to best order.

Make sense?

Here’s the list:

  1. The Death of the Heart – Bowen, Elizabeth
  2. A Visit From the Goon Squad – Egan, Jennifer
  3. The Space Trilogy – Lewis, C.S.
  4. The Xanth Series – Anthony, Piers
  5. Falconer – Cheever, John
  6. The Kite Runner – Hosseini, Khaled
  7. An American Tragedy – Dreiser, Theodore
  8. Perdido Street Station – Mieville, China
  9. A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement – Powell, Anthony
  10. Doomsday Book – Willis, Connie
  11. Americanah – Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi
  12. Under the Net – Murdoch, Iris
  13. Lucifer’s Hammer – Niven, Larry & Pournelle, Jerry
  14. Loving – Green, Henry
  15. The Mars Trilogy – Robinson, Kim Stanley
  16. The Caves of Steel – Asimov, Isaac
  17. Wuthering Heights – Bronte, Emily
  18. The Assistant – Malamud, Bernard
  19. The Sportswriter – Ford, Richard
  20. A Fire Upon the Deep – Vinge, Vernor
  21. Sunshine – McKinley, Robin
  22. Dog Soldiers – Stone, Robert
  23. The Color Purple – Walker, Alice
  24. The Illustrated Man – Bradbury, Ray
  25. The Recognitions – Gaddis, William
  26. A Death in the Family – Agee, James
  27. Little Women – Alcott, Louisa May
  28. The Elric Saga – Moorcock, Michael
  29. The Outlander Series – Gabaldan, Diana
  30. The Berlin Stories – Isherwood, Christopher
  31. A Handful fo Dust – Waugh, Evelyn
  32. The Thrawn triogy – Zahn, Timothy
  33. The Sheltering Sky – Bowles, Paul
  34. The Year of Magical Thinking – Didion, Joan
  35. The Book of the New Sun – Wolfe, Gene
  36. The Codex Alera series – Butcher, Jim
  37. Call It Sleep – Roth, Henry
  38. Hamlet – Shakespeare, William
  39. The World According to Garp – Irving, John
  40. At Swim-Two-Birds – O’Brien, Flann
  41. Anathem – Stephenson, Neal
  42. Herzog – Bellow, Saul
  43. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Murakami, Haruki
  44. The Crystal Cave – Stewart, Mary
  45. The Culture Series – Banks, Iian M.
  46. The Adventures of Augie March – Bellow, Saul
  47. The Sot-Weed Factor – Barth, John
  48. Between the World and Me – Coates, Ta-Nehisi
  49. The Eyre Affair – Fforde, Jasper
  50. The Malazan Book of the Fallen series – Erikson, Steven
  51. The Man Who Loved Children – Stead, Christina
  52. The Stranger – Camus, Albert
  53. Wicked – Maguire, Gregory
  54. Housekeeping – Robinson, Marilynne
  55. Something Wicked This Way Comes – Bradbury, Ray
  56. The Day of the Locust – West, Nathaniel
  57. Deliverance – Dickey, James
  58. The Dispossessed – LeGuin, Ursula K.
  59. Money – Amis, Martin
  60. The Kushiel’s Legacy series – Carey, Jacqueline
  61. The Right Stuff – Wolfe, Tom
  62. Rendezvous With Rama – Clarke, Arthur C.
  63. Appointment in Samarra – O’Hara, John
  64. Tropic of Cancer – Miller, Henry
  65. The Diamond Age – Stephenson, Neal
  66. Old Man’s War – Scalzi, John
  67. The Confessions of Nat Turner – Styron, William
  68. The Moviegoer – Percy, Walker
  69. The Legend of Drizzt Series – Salvatore, R.A.
  70. Pale Fire – Nabokov, Vladimir
  71. A Journey to the Center of the Earth – Verne, Jules
  72. The Heart of the Matter – Greene, Graham
  73. The Way of Kings – Sanderson, Brandon
  74. The Golden Notebook – Lessing, Doris
  75. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Niffenegger, Audrey
  76. The Farseer Trilogy – Hobb, Robin
  77. The Conan The Barbarian Series – Howard, R.E.
  78. Rabbit, Run – Updike, John
  79. The Shannara Trilogy – Brooks, Terry
  80. Ubik – Dick, Philip K.
  81. The Golden Compass – Pullman, Philip
  82. Lucky Jim – Amis, Kingsley
  83. The Night Watchmen – Erdrich, Louise
  84. The Riftwar Saga – Feist, Raymond E.
  85. Play It As It Lays – Didion, Joan
  86. The Giver – Lowry, Lois
  87. I Am Legend – Matheson, Richard
  88. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell – Clarke, Susanna
  89. A House for Mr Biswas – Naipaul, V.S.
  90. The Sword of Truth – Goodkind, Terry
  91. The Painted Bird – Kosinski, Jerry
  92. The Joy Luck Club – Tan, Amy
  93. Under the Volcano – Lowry, Malcolm
  94. The Mote in God’s Eye – Niven, Larry & Pournelle, Jerry
  95. Going Postal – Pratchett, Terry
  96. Gravity’s Rainbow – Pynchon, Thomas
  97. The Vorkosigan Saga – Bujold, Lois McMaster
  98. The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao – Diaz, Junot
  99. White Teeth – Smith, Zadie
  100. Rubyfruit Jungle – Brown, Rita Mae
  101. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever – Donaldson, Stephen R.
  102. Red Harvest – Hammett, Dashiell
  103. Small Gods – Pratchett, Terry
  104. The Book Thief – Zusak, Markus
  105. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Chabon, Michael
  106. The Forever War – Haldeman, Joe
  107. Wide Sargasso Sea – Rhys, Jean
  108. The Last Unicorn – Beagle, Peter S.
  109. The Age of Innocence – Warton, Edith
  110. World War Z – Brooks, Max
  111. Homegoing – Gyasi, Yaa
  112. The Crying of Lot 49 – Pynchon, Thomas
  113. The Power and the Glory – Greene, Graham
  114. Cryptonomicon – Stephenson, Neal
  115. Stardust – Gaimen, Neil
  116. American Pastoral – Roth, Philip
  117. The Hyperion Cantos – Simmons, Dan
  118. The Bridge of San Luis Rey – Wilder, Thornton
  119. Death Comes for the Archbishop – Cather, Willa
  120. And Then There Were None – Christie, Agatha
  121. Contact – Sagan, Carl
  122. Childhood’s End – Clarke, Arthur C.
  123. Out of Africa – Dinesen, Isak
  124. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Spark, Muriel
  125. Neverwhere – Gaimen, Neil
  126. Of Human Bondage – Maugham, W. Somerset
  127. The Once and Future King – White, T.H.
  128. The Silmarillion – Tolkien, J.R.R.
  129. Revolutionary Road – Yates, Richard
  130. The Left Hand of Darkness – LeGuin, Ursula K.
  131. East of Eden – Steinbeck, John
  132. Infinite Jest – Wallace, David Foster
  133. White Noise – DeLillo, Don
  134. Ringworld – Niven, Larry
  135. Middlesex – Eugenides, Jeffrey
  136. The Mistborn Series – Sanderson, Brandon
  137. Brideshead Revisited – Waugh, Evelyn
  138. The Mists of Avalon – Bradley, Marion Zimmer
  139. Naked Lunch – Burroughs, William S.
  140. The Belgariad – Eddings, David
  141. Love Medicine – Erdrich, Louise
  142. The Road – McCarth, Cormac
  143. Blood Meridian – McCarthy, Cormac
  144. Go Tell It on the Mountain – Baldwin, James
  145. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – McCullers, Carson
  146. The Chronicles of Amber – Zelazny, Roger
  147. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold – le Carre, John
  148. The War of the Worlds – Wells, H.G.
  149. The French Lieutenant’s Woman – Fowles, John
  150. Flowers for Algernon – Keys, Daniel
  151. Interpreter of Maladies – Lahiri, Jhumpa
  152. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Thompson, Hunter S.
  153. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea – Verne, Jules
  154. To the Lighthouse – Woolf, Virginia
  155. Light in August – Faulkner, William
  156. The Time Machine – Wells, H.G.
  157. Ragtime – Doctorow, E.L.
  158. A Canticle for Leibowitz – Miller, Walter M.
  159. Cutting For Stone – Verghese, Abraham
  160. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress – Heinlein, Robert
  161. Native Son – Wright, Richard
  162. The Blind Assassin – Atwood, Margaret
  163. Dragonflight – McCaffrey, Anne
  164. Charlotte’s Web – White, E.B.
  165. Watership Down – Adams, Richard
  166. All the King’s Men – Warren, Robert Penn
  167. The Sound and the Fury – Faulkner, William
  168. Starship Troopers – Heinlein, Robert
  169. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Marquez, Gabriel Garcia
  170. The Sandman Series – Gaimen, Neil
  171. I, Claudius – Graves, Robert
  172. A Passage to India – Forster, E.M.
  173. Cat’s Cradle – Vonnegut, Kurt
  174. The Martian Chronicles – Bradbury, Ray
  175. Possession – Byatt, A.S.
  176. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass – Carroll, Lewis
  177. The Fault in Our Stars – Green, John
  178. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Hurston, Zora Neale
  179. The Stand – King, Stephen
  180. Selected Stories – Munro, Alice
  181. 2001: A Space Odyssey – Clarke, Arthur C.
  182. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – Rowling, J.K.
  183. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Eggers, Dave
  184. The Dark Tower Series – King, Stephen
  185. Mrs. Dalloway – Woolf, Virginia
  186. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – Dick, Philip K.
  187. The Corrections – Franzen, Jonathan
  188. Angela’s Ashes – McCourt, Frank
  189. Frankenstein – Shelley, Mary
  190. The Kingkiller Chronicles – Rothfuss, Patrick
  191. Great Expectations – Dickens, Charles
  192. Stranger in a Strange Land – Heinlein, Robert
  193. I, Robot – Asimov, Isaac
  194. In Cold Blood – Capote, Truman
  195. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Kesey, Ken
  196. The Wheel of Time Series – Jordan, Robert & Sanderson, Brandon
  197. The Princess Bride – Goldman, William
  198. Gone With the Wind – Mitchell, Margaret
  199. Pride and Prejudice – Austen, Jane
  200. American Gods – Gaimen, Neil
  201. Atonement – McEwan, Ian
  202. The Grapes of Wrath – Steinbeck, John
  203. A Wrinkle in Time – L’Engle, Madeleine
  204. The Foundation Trilogy – Asimov, Isaac
  205. Lord of the Flies – Golding, William
  206. Things Fall Apart – Achebe, Chinua
  207. Brave New World – Huxley, Aldous
  208. The Sun Also Rises – Hemingway, Ernest
  209. The Shining – King, Stephen
  210. A Song of Ice and Fire – Martin, George R.R.
  211. Portnoy’s Complaint – Roth, Philip
  212. Valley of the Dolls – Susann, Jacqueline
  213. Ender’s Game – Card, Orson Scott
  214. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Adams, Douglas
  215. Anna Karenina – Tolstoy, Leo
  216. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – Lewis, C.S.
  217. The Big Sleep/The Long Goodbye – Chandler, Raymond
  218. Midnight’s Children – Rushdie, Salman
  219. Never Let Me Go – Ishiguro, Kazuo
  220. The Great Gatsby – Fitzgerald, F. Scott
  221. Snow Crash – Stephenson, Neal
  222. On the Road – Kerouac, Jack
  223. Neuromancer – Gibson, William
  224. The Catcher in the Rye – Salinger, J.D.
  225. Lolita – Nabokov, Vladimir
  226. Invisible Man – Ellison, Ralph
  227. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. – Blume, Judy
  228. A Clockwork Orange – Burgess, Anthony
  229. Catch-22 – Heller, Joseph
  230. Beloved – Morrison, Toni
  231. The Handmaid’s Tale – Atwood, Margaret
  232. Farenheit 451 – Bradbury, Ray
  233. Animal Farm – Orwell, George
  234. Dune – Herbert, Frank
  235. To Kill A Mockingbird – Lee, Harper
  236. Slaughterhouse Five – Vonnegut, Kurt
  237. 1984 – Orwell, George
  238. The Lord of the Rings – Tolkien, J.R.R.

I’m looking forward to reading quite a few of these – some for the first time, more than a few for the second or third. In many cases I’ve read other books by an author on this list, but not the specific book listed. There are a few of these books I am very much *not* looking forward to reading. I remember loving A Wrinkle in Time when I read it as a child (I was probably 5 or 6 years old at the time). I tried reading it again a few years ago and found it unreadable. I’ll do my best to give it another shot. I have never liked The Giver. I taught it once to an ESL class of teenagers. They seemed to like it. Every page was like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. Again, I’ll see what I can do.

There are a few books on the list that I haven’t read, and that I suspect I will not enjoy. I will do my best to finish all of the books on this list, but I’m not going to punish myself by forcing myself to read a book I actively hate. I may bail on one or two of the books on the list. Maybe even three.

As always, you are cordially invited to read alongside me as I make my way through the list. I will be going through in the order listed above, so you’ll be able to figure out what I’m working on at any given time. Hopefully, there will be some lively discussion in the comments of each review. And speaking of comments, let me know what you think of my list in the comments below.

Happy reading!

Breaking Bad – Season 2, Episode 1

January 16, 2024 / / 0 Comments

The first episode of a new season is an interesting sort of animal. It has a lot of different hats it has to wear (yes, that was on purpose) and some of them are contradictory. Starting off a new season, it’s important to capture, or re-capture, the interest and excitement with which you ended the previous season. In this type of show you also need to raise the stakes in some way. On top of all that, you also need to lay the groundwork for the upcoming season’s storylines, character development, plot twists and cetera. Oh, and all of this needs to happen with a story that is already in progress.

Tall order, that.

The opening scene is a pretty effective, though perhaps unimaginative way of accomplishing the first task. Replay season 1’s closing scene and use it to remind the audience of exactly where we were when last we met. It reminds us that when it comes to the evils in the world, there are levels. It also reminds us that Walt and Jessie are now very firmly in over their heads, but it reads a bit differently at the beginning of a season than it does at the end of one. As the ending of a season, it comes across as “Oh, holy shit, now what?”. At the start of a season it’s “Oh, holy shit, now what?“. It’s an important distinction. The stakes seem to have been raised significantly and our focus is subtly shifted from what just happened to what’s going to happen next. Walt and Jessie are now playing in the big leagues and they will either rise to the occasion or they will be utterly destroyed.

Now, when it comes to the groundwork for the upcoming storylines, I have a bit of an admission to make, dear reader. I haven’t quite managed to keep my knowledge of the show as spoiler-free as I would have liked. I have stumbled across the odd bit of information here and there such that I know there was a plane crash, though I’m not sure specifically how that will play into the plot of this season. I did catch, however, that the burned teddy bear in the swimming pool was detritus from the crash, and I’m pretty sure the $737,000 that Walt calculates he needs is a reference to a Boing 737. I also know that at some point there will be characters named Saul, Mike, and Gus Fring (thanks a lot YouTube algorithm), though again I have no idea when they show up, or what role they will play in the story.

In terms of threads that have been unplucked from the show’s frayed hem in this episode and are ready to be unravelled over the course of the next 11 episodes or so: we have Walt almost spilling the beans (also on purpose – sorry, not sorry) to Skyler; Walt leaving all the money in the box of diapers where Skyler is almost certain to find it (thereby forcing Walt to finish spilling the beans); the identity of the people who are surveilling Walt and Jessie (probably the big players that Hank mentions, whose toes are likely to get stepped on by someone who needs that much precursor); and of course the abduction of Walt and Jessie by Tuco, who probably thinks those big players are out to get him as he likely doesn’t know what happened to Gonzo other than that he suddenly disappeared.

I’m a bit less interested in the whole Marie/Hank/Skyler shoplifting storyline. It feels a bit tacked on to me, like it was meant to be a piece of smoke and mirrors distraction in season 1 and now the writers aren’t sure what to do with it. It’s important that we not lose sight of the fact that this is all happening as the result of Walt’s choices, and that rather than saving his family, those choices are more or less destroying it, which Skyler’s breakdown in front of Hank demonstrates, but adding in the conflict with her sister really only serves to muddy the waters unnecessarily in my opinion.

All in all, a solid episode that felt a bit slow in places, but laid some very interesting groundwork that I hope to see pay off handsomely in the next several episodes.

Breaking Bad – Season 1, Episode 7

January 7, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Interesting widening of the scope in this episode. We have Hank’s illegal Cuban cigars, Marie’s shoplifting (presumably some form of compulsive kleptomania-esque behaviour), Walter and Jessie’s chemical robbery and meth production, and then Tuco’s sociopathic murder of one of his own henchmen. As Joe Rogan is fond of saying, “there are levels to this”.

We are presented with an interesting spectrum of law-breakage. As Walter says, “it’s interesting where we choose to draw the line.” We, the audience, are also being invited to decide where we draw the line. What are we willing to accept? Is it acceptable for a DEA agent to use his position to get goods that he could arrest another man for possessing? Few people take the boycott of Cuba very seriously these days, but how do we feel about Hank’s abuse of power and position? Is it acceptable for Marie to steal from shops? Does it make it more acceptable if she is mentally ill and unable to control herself? What about Walter’s activities? Do his motives make a difference? Do we believe that his motives are what he says they are?

And then there’s Tuco. While the other three examples could realistically be seen as examples of generally lawful people transgressing the law – pushing the envelope in some way – Tuco is a clear example of someone who lives entirely outside of the law. Jessie’s description of him to Walter in the RV is spot on. He lives outside the law, and outside of society. He represents the extreme end of the spectrum of transgression.

There is also the theme of the forbidden fruit tasting the sweetest. Walter and Skylar’s back seat rodeo was “so damned good”, as Walter points out, because it is illegal. The risk of getting caught adds some spice to it all.

Walter’s conversation with Hank about the arbitrary nature of deciding what is legal and what is illegal is, of course, the flimsiest of strawmen. It is obvious that some things are illegal for very good reasons. It is a halfhearted attempt to justify to himself that what he is doing “isn’t really so bad after all, is it?” His question to Skylar near the end of the episode about what she would do if it had been him shoplifting tiaras is a pretty clear indication that he knows he can’t keep his new hobby a secret from his wife forever. At the very least, if all of this money is going to go to his family she will find out about it at that point. Her response is also telling. I’m looking forward to seeing how that dynamic plays out over the next few seasons.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this episode, though, is the expression on Walt and Jessie’s faces at the end of the episode as they watch Tuco’s driver load the body of the other man into the car. The stunned horror on their faces is a clear indication that this is their first clear glimpse of how deep the depravity rabbit hole goes. What a great way to end the episode and to end the season. Season 2 looks to be very compelling.

Breaking Bad – Season 1, Episode 6

June 7, 2019 / / 0 Comments

There are two major things I feel are worth talking about from this episode; the flash-forward (that’s the technical term for when foreshadowing and spoilers have a baby) at the beginning of the episode, and the masterful way in which Walter White’s internal conflict is manifesting in the world.

They are kind of the same thing, actually.

I recently read about research into the actual effect spoilers have on an audience. Turns out, knowing the ending actually enhances the enjoyment of a story. I guess that’s why Shakespeare is still popular after all these years. The reasoning behind this idea is that when you know what’s going to happen, you are free to enjoy the journey more. You can pay attention to the subtle nuance, the interplay of characters, you can appreciate the sheer inevitability of events and oh my god, the tension you can build.

I spent the whole episode knowing that, despite Walt’s admonition of no more violence at the beginning, he was going to end the episode with a bag of money in his hand and a building of exploded scumbags in the middle distance behind him. Every event in the episode, every decision, that image was brought back to mind in the back of my head. When Jessie called to say he had an in with Tuco, when he told Tuco he wanted money up front, when Walt found out what happened to Jessie…

That feeling of inevitability is what makes the anguish Walt feels at the end so effective. He didn’t want to be ‘that guy’ – he doesn’t want to be ‘that guy’. But he is that guy, and he had no real choice about it.

I still really expect that at some point Walt is going to embrace that part of himself, but until that time I’ll enjoy the hell out of his internal anguish.

Breaking Bad – Season 1, Episode 5

June 5, 2019 / / 2 Comments

I feel like I’m getting the hang of the pacing for this show now. I figured we’d get mostly character development and then a reunion with Jessie at the end, and here we are.

What was interesting to me was the nature of the character development. Walt’s backstory with Elliot and Gretchen is particularly compelling – I hope we get to find out more about how things went sour between them all. Either way, we now have a much better understanding of why Walt is more willing to enter a life of crime for his remaining time than he is to accept help from his old friends. There are reservoirs of wounded pride and ill will here that seem to go so very, very deep. I have the feeling that Walt’s pride will be a recurring theme in upcoming seasons.

Also interesting was the fact that it was Skyler’s sister who seemed the most empathetic during the intervention that wasn’t an intervention. Given that she spent the first few episodes being a total asshole to her sister (and is a shoe thief), that surprised me. Fantastic acting from Betsy Brandt in that scene in particular.

I’ve not a clue what specifically is going to happen next. There are two more episodes in the season, so I expect another batch of meth will get cooked and something will go wrong and the season will end with Walt in danger of getting caught by his brother-in-law. It might have something to do with that respirator that got left behind after the first cook site.

I’m looking forward to finding out.

If you’re watching along with me, any thoughts? What complications do you see in Walt’s immediate future? The comments box is there for a reason 😉

Breaking Bad – Season 1, Episode 4

June 4, 2019 / / 0 Comments

This was the episode I was expecting last time. A whole bunch foreshadowing, and Walt finally turns the corner!

The opening sequence in the DEA ready room confirms in my mind the idea that Walt becomes some sort of drug kingpin. I mean it’s not a far stretch even never having watched the show, given there are 5 seasons and the character has to go somewhere, but it’s nice to see some sort of more overt acknowledgement of the idea.

Jessie’s return home is a direct appeal to our sentimentality, a reminder that some bridges can never be re-crossed once they’ve been burned, and serves as a contrast to Walt’s opposite journey. It gives us a reason to believe that Jessie has no other options open to him. He can’t go home again.

Through most of the episode we see Walt trying vainly to hold on to some semblance of his old life, trying to go back to normal. He kicks Jessie out and tries to break ties. He has the in-laws over for a bbq.

The catalyst of Walt Jr. telling him to just give up and die if he doesn’t want to try and beat the cancer seems to be what pushes him through to finally commit to a decision. The final scene of him blowing up the douchebag’s car is a clear signal that he’s finally decided to live as though there are no consequences (although you’ll notice that he was cautious about not getting caught. Self-preservation is apparently a difficult habit to break).

The way that he dealt with the douchebag is also telling. That was a very ingenious way to destroy a vehicle (I’m not entirely sure it would blow up like that as opposed to just killing the battery and maybe starting a small fire under the hood, but hey – it’s TV), and he came up with it in a matter of seconds and then calmly and efficiently put it into action in not much more time than that.

When not crippled by indecision, he is a force to be reckoned with.

Next episode should see Walt stopping by Jessie’s place and getting the band back together. We should see more follow up on the DEA investigation, as well. It’s likely to be more of a character development episode, as opposed to an action packed one, but there might be the introduction of a new “big problem” sub-plot to replace the Emilio/Krazy 8 issue now that that has been resolved.

Breaking Bad – Season 1, Episode 3

June 3, 2019 / / 0 Comments

An interesting turn of events, this. Many of the questions I had about Walter’s character remain unanswered, or answered in ways I wasn’t expecting.

He still hasn’t murdered anyone in cold blood. I wonder, though, that even after he knew that Krazy 8 had the piece of plate, he still maneuvered the situation around to where killing him was an act of self preservation.

On the plus side, Walter gets to maintain his moral ambiguity. He’s still doing bad things that harm people, but the harm is indirect and can be justified as being self-inflicted for the most part (I realise this contradicts the current popular view on drug addiction but fuck it, either we’re responsible for all of our own actions, or we’re responsible for none of them). He is also still doing those bad things for good reasons. as flimsy as that justification is.

On the negative side, we are left with a protagonist who still hasn’t completely committed himself to a course of action. He still hasn’t taken any steps that can’t be untaken or forgiven. Had he walked down there and used the hammer on the back of Krazy 8’s skull or sliced his throat open – even knowing that it was to protect his family from the possibility of murder – we would have looked at Walter differently. He would no longer have been out of place in “this line of work”.

I guess where I’m left dissatisfied is that I like my characters to be more clearly defined, and Walter White is not yet clearly defined. He is certainly not a hero, but nor is he truly an anti-hero. He is a sort of quasi-proto-hero, and that leaves me feeling vaguely unfulfilled.

Perhaps the conversation he’s about to have with Skyler about the cancer will give him the push he needs to hold the strength of his convictions. I’m still holding out hope for my theory about him taking over the drug industry and eliminating all rivals.

He just seems like that kind of guy.

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