Category: Review (Page 2 of 4)

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.

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.

Holy shit, how is that guy still alive?

So, hey… remember last post when I wondered if Walter would be up to killing someone in cold blood? Turns out, no – at least not easily and not yet.

There wasn’t a lot happening in this episode compared to the last one. Not in terms of action and plot, anyway, but there’s a whole lot of character building and exposition going on, and most of it was pretty cool.

I like the way they handled the tension between Walter and Skyler. Their marriage is under an enormous amount of stress but there are still moments of joy and it all rings true. Plot-wise, I’m still not sure how he would have managed to withdraw all of their savings to buy that RV and have Skyler (the tech-literate ebay seller who also manages their finances) remain unaware of it, but the emotional back and forth come across as absolutely believable.

Walters turmoil (and waffling) over the killing of Krazy 8 is a good thing. A necessary thing, in my opinion. If he were capable of just ending a man’s life, even this man, he would become less interesting. It’s the juxtaposition of the absolutely moral Walter White, who Jessie describes as “an absolute straight with a stick up his ass”, and the crooked, morally bankrupt world in which he’s chosen to involve himself that gives the show (thus far) it’s momentum.

He has promised Jessie that he will do it tomorrow, and I suspect that Walter White is the kind of man who keeps his promises. I haven’t checked IMDB, but I suspect that the actor who plays Krazy 8 only has three episodes credited to him.

Jessie is a bit more problematic from a storytelling perspective. I’m not sure how he fits in to the moral narrative. He’s not particularly moral, but nor is he particularly amoral. He was no more comfortable with the idea of killing Krazy 8 than Walter was, at any rate. If he was a complete dirt bag, I might expect some sort of Walter White led redemption story, but as Jessie himself pointed out – this ain’t no Welcome Back Kotter (though how a kid his age would even know that reference…). I guess it’s possible that, as a standard denizen of this world, he’s there to contrast against Walter and make sure we don’t lose sight of Walter’s underlying morality (??).

They just didn’t seem to do much with him in this episode, and his character direction seems a bit confused so far. I hope they develop him more in the next few episodes. He has potential and could become interesting if handled properly.

Ok, so umm… wow.

First off, let me say that the bleakness of Walter White’s life is absolutely breathtaking in both its scope and its degree. Done less carefully, a character this down on his luck, a character whose life is this irredeemably shitty, would have no choice but to be taken as caricature.

Far from being a self-parody, though, Walter White is absolutely 100% believable and sympathetic. (It should disturb me a lot more than it does how much this guy resonates with me, but that’s another issue entirely.) Here is a man who is passionate about his field, passionate about trying to pass that on, and who struggles mightily every day to just keep going, keep his head above water, and keep his family afloat at the same time.

What makes the setup for this show believable is, knowing a number of teachers from the US, I know that Walter’s situation is all too common. He has to work multiple jobs to earn a living wage, gets no respect from anyone for what he does, and (because ‘Merika) has next to no health coverage should things go south.

What makes it horrific is how absolutely mundane the show makes it all seem. How commonplace and acceptable.

*shudder*

I really enjoyed how all the pieces fell into place to get Walter into a position that would have seemed impossible at the outset. I particularly enjoyed the fact that none of it was by accident. Every step was the result of a conscious (though often ill-informed) decision that Walter made and, so far at least, he owns it all.

If this episode is indicative of what’s to come, I’m in for a treat. The writers have done a wonderful job of getting Mr. White to set up house in a moral abyss while keeping him relatively moral. He’s doing a very bad thing but, as he has always done, he’s also doing the right thing (in a narrower sense). He’s taking care of his family – or trying to – in the best way he knows how. The only way available to him, really.

I’m sure there are going to be some very big decisions in Walter’s immediate future. I’m interested to see how far he ‘breaks bad’ and how difficult he finds those decisions. He killed two guys, but that was in self-defense. Would he have killed them in cold-blood? How is he going to reconcile himself to some of his students inevitably doing the drugs he made?

I’m going to wait until tomorrow night to watch episode 2, but I’m really tempted to watch it now.

The problem with maintaining a blog, at least for me, is consistently having something to write about. Not even having something interesting to write about – just having anything at all to write.

I’ve toyed with a few ideas over the years but, as you can see from my backlog of posts, nothing has really stuck.

Then, last night, my wife and I sat down to start watching a new TV series. Well, new to us, anyway. Now that Game of Thrones is finished, we were looking for something to watch. We want something interesting, well-written, well-acted and that has several seasons available so that we can watch our one episode a night for a long time.

We have just started watching Breaking Bad.

And it occured to me that I might finally have something I can write regularly about, at least for a while.

So, I dusted off the ol’ blog here, deleted the thousands of spam comments awaiting the approval they were never going to receive, boggled at the fact that my last post was 2 years ago, and here we are.

We’ll watch one episode a night, most nights, and when we do I will write a little blog post about the episode. If you are like me and never got around to watching the show, you can watch along with me. That will be fun.

If you have watched it before, it was probably a long time ago – you could watch it again. That will also be fun.

**full disclosure, I’m not completely in the dark about the show. I know things don’t end well for Walter White, and I know about some of the more memorable plot points having heard the odd comment from people, and having watched the several Mythbusters Breaking Bad specials. I’ve also written this post having already watched the first episode last night and, holy shit am I looking forward to the rest of the show.