Breaking Bad: The junkman cometh

Brief spoilers for the "Breaking Bad" finale coming up just as soon as I bake cookies for my open house...

I'll be honest: I watched this episode on Friday morning on a review screener, enjoyed it well enough, and made a mental note to find time to write a blog entry to go up in time for the end of the episode. But one thing led to another, and I got so caught up in all my coverage of "The Wire," that "Breaking Bad" eluded my mind altogether until I saw the finale on my DVR's hard drive.

Which, again is not a knock on the episode. I've just had my brain on 24/7 focus on the end of the best drama series of my lifetime, and so almost anything else would seem somewhat forgettable in comparison. So I'll be quick and then get out of the way to let people with less clouded minds offer up their thoughts on Walt and Jesse's junkyard adventure.

A week or two ago, I talked about how the show was finally finding its footing just as its strike-abbreviated season was coming to an end. The finale definitely felt abrupt, like a middle chapter of the story rather than something to tide us over until the second season comes (if it comes; I have no idea how the ratings have been or what AMC considers the bar for success, post-"Mad Men"). That's not Vince Gilligan's fault -- a number of other scripted shows that got shut down by the strike ended abruptly, whether they'll be continuing ("Pushing Daisies") or not ("Las Vegas"). It happens. It's frustrating, but what can you do?

I liked several moments, notably Walt once again using imminent death to boost his sex life (though wouldn't the treatment at some point impair his libido?) and Walt and Hank's conversation about where to draw the line on drug laws. Hank's been a good comic relief character, but this is the first time he felt like more than a clown.

The real stand-out, though, was Walt on the video at the baby shower. It's an obvious tear-jerker moment -- the dying father recording a message for the daughter he may never get to know -- but the amazing frigging Bryan Cranston plays it so quietly, with such dignity (no way Walt's going to let Skyler's annoying friends see him lose his composure) and with such sincerity that it earned whatever tears it may have jerked.

Walt and Jesse's caper was fun, and yet another reminder that you really don't want to mess with your local chemistry teacher, lest he blow you up real good, but those boys seem beyond screwed with their association with Tuco. (And am I the only one who wonders if Tuco's name is a tribute to the Eli Wallach character from "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly"?) That man is a sackful of crazy.

What did everybody else think? If the show continues, what would you like to see from season two?

Breaking Bad: The bald and the badass

Spoilers for the penultimate episode of "Breaking Bad" season one coming up just as soon as I see what the river card is...

Now here's the first show that I can honestly say is suffering because of the writers strike. The first few episodes of "Breaking Bad" were interesting, but they were going at a very measured pace and clearly building to something, and just as we're getting there, everything's about to stop because Vince Gilligan and company only finished 7 scripts before the strike began. I'm not remotely ready to put this show in the same league as "The Wire," but the pace of this season is beginning to feel similar; try to imagine a "Wire" season being cut short just as all the stories began coming together. It's very frustrating.

That said, I thought this was easily the strongest episode of the run so far. Now, any episode that climaxes with a bald, clean-shaven Walt using explosive crystals to negotiate a fair deal with a scary meth distributor is going to be high on the "wow" factor. But the really interesting part of the episode, to me, was how Walt's finding it increasingly difficult to justify the meth-cooking plan. Sure, he's taking control of his own destiny, feeling more alive, blah blah blah, but he's already getting too sick to cook and therefore has to swap jobs with Jesse, the money is proving harder to come by then he first thought, and Hank's investigation into the ventilator mask winds up ruining the life of one of the few decent people at Hank's school. There's no way Hank is ever going to be able to wipe away the guilt of killing Crazy 8 and Emilio, but the longer he stays in this game, the more damage he's going to do to himself and everyone around him.

And, as always, Bryan Cranston is terrific. I know it goes without saying, but with only one more episode, gotta say it while I can.

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad episode 5 open thread

I had some requests for a filler post about the fifth episode of "Breaking Bad," so you can talk about it even though I don't have time for a full review. I've seen it, so I may pop into the comments tomorrow morning to offer up some thoughts.

Breaking Bad, "Cancer Man": The Bluetooth meanie

Spoilers for the latest episode of "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I skim my pool...

I don't know if it's just that the Crazy 8 story is done, or that Walt has finally fessed up -- about the cancer, but not the meth -- to his family, or simply that I'm more used to its rhythms, but after being interested in but not necessarily riveted by the first three episodes, I'm finally starting to feel engrossed by this show.

In addition to the reasons stated above, "Cancer Man" was boosted by some insight into Jesse, who had previously just been comic relief. We knew he went to the high school where Walt teaches, which seems to be in a relatively well-to-do district, and now we know what kind of family Jesse came from, and that his parents mean well but somehow have both their sons convinced the other one is the favorite. And for the first time, we see Jesse do something semi-noble in taking the fall for his kid brother's joint. Aaron Paul has played very well off of Bryan Cranston in the first three episodes, but it was about time that we got a sense of who Pinkman is and where he comes from.

Meanwhile, after being in denial and spending the first three episodes on his crazy, homicidal scheme, Walt has to face the music and deal with the reality of his condition by telling his wife -- and, eventually, son and in-laws -- about it. I liked everyone's reaction to it -- how Skyler's sister suddenly turns out to be helpful, how Hank makes the well-meaning but depressing offer to take care of everyone after Walt dies -- but especially liked Walt Jr. not giving his dad any slack on his pragmatic plan to die cheaply. "Just give up and die!" is exactly the venom Walt needs to hear right now. (It's just too bad that the scene was written under the belief that AMC would allow Gilligan to use Words You Can't Say On Basic Cable, because the bleeping gets really distracting in an emotional moment like that.)

But just because Skyler and Walt Jr. know, and just because the new oncologist is holding out some hope (of managing the cancer, if not curing it) doesn't mean Walt can put the genie back in the bottle. Not only does he have two deaths on his conscience, but now he has an even greater need to cook meth for Jesse. And, just as he did in the pilot, his tolerance for bullies and the other irritations of daily life has ceased to exist, as shown by him using his chemistry knowledge to blow up Ken the Bluetooth d-bag's car with a squeegee. (Someone want to explain to me how that works? Is it the water, or the soap and water together?) Jerks talking loudly on their Bluetooths (Blueteeth?) have become an obvious symbol of all that's wrong with Western civilization, and I'm glad certain writers -- Vince Gilligan here, Larry David in the amazing "Curb" scene where he decides to carry on an imaginary conversation next to a Bluetooth moron in a restaurant -- have decided enough is enough with this.

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad open thread

Ordinarily, this would be the place where I'd offer some kind of detailed analysis of "Breaking Bad" episode 3, but I'll be honest with you: I've spent the last week and a half coughing so much that I'm empathizing with Walt a little too much, you know? Also, it's been so long since I watched this episode and my opinion on the series overall is the same, so I'm gonna take a sick day on this one and come back next week with clearer lungs and a clearer mind. Fire away with any thoughts you have, of course.

Breaking Bad: A big old messy-mess

Spoilers for "Breaking Bad" episode two coming up just as soon as I flip a coin...

When you have an offbeat drama that ends its first episode with an unexpected murder or two, chances are your second episode is going to be about disposing of the corpse(s). "The Black Donnellys," for instance, followed that pattern last season, but at least they had solved the dead body problem by the end of show two, where here "Breaking Bad" is stretching out the problem -- with the wrinkle of a body that should be dead but isn't -- into next week.

I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad idea in this case. You hear a premise like "chemistry teacher starts cooking crystal meth," you might think wacky hijinks (even with the whole lung cancer issue), something as relatively lightweight as "Weeds." Clearly, Walt thought something similar: he'd hang out with his ex-student, cook some meth and make money for Skyler and Walter Jr., no fuss, no muss. The show and Walt's life of crime are both turning out to be a lot uglier than that, and so spending a few episodes depicting the inefficiency of corpse disposal -- and, more importantly, the ethical dilemma of what to do with a man who once tried to kill you but isn't an immediate threat right this second -- doesn't seem like a bad idea.

But, man, is it dark. And slow. Vince Gilligan has adequately put me into Walt's head to experience the horror of all this, but there's a part of me that wishes he would take the easy way out and just tell a lot of jokes about Bryan Cranston in his tightie-whities, you know?

In fairness, Gilligan mixed in some very funny moments, like Jesse's obnoxious ghetto boy answering machine message (which got more amusing the second time), or Jesse ranting about the sanctity of the coin flip, or (my favorite) Walt sliding their prisoner an entire bathroom's worth of stuff. (That gag reminded me, oddly, of Ned Flanders' elaborate hot chocolate making scene in "The Simpsons Movie.") Cranston and Aaron Paul have very quickly established a comic rhythm -- see also the "Because somehow it seemed preferable to telling her I cook crystal meth and killed a man" argument -- and Cranston was superb again in the darker scenes, like Walt at the ultrasound appointment realizing that he wouldn't be around for his daughter's life.

I just feel very adrift when I watch the show. I recognize that's the point. I just don't know if it's a feeling I'm ready to experience on a weekly basis.

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad: This guy walks into an oncologist's office...

Spoilers for the debut episode of "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I check eBay...

I talked in general about the series in my column on Friday -- short version: I love Bryan Cranston, here and elsewhere, and found the show overall interesting but not really engrossing or fully-formed yet -- so I'll hit the usual bullet points and then open it up to anybody who watched:

• As rote, lifeless sex scenes go, the eBay/birthday gift thing was especially mortifying (and funny), and of course worked as a nice counterpoint to Walt being sexually aggressive with Skyler in the final scene. Being diagnosed with terminal cancer and getting caught up in the meth world is 95 percent awful for Walt, but there's five percent positive, as he's been woken up from a long slumber.
• The scene where he confronted the bullies at the clothing store reminded me a bit of George Costanza in "The Opposite," where he acts so obviously crazy with the guys behind him that they didn't even dare finding out if he could fight. Obviously, Walt took it a step further by assaulting the biggest guy first, but I wouldn't have been surprised at all if he had finished his rant with, "We're gonna take it outside and I will show you what it's like!"
  
• I like how chemicals are omnipresent in Walt's life -- not just in his class or cooking meth in the RV with Jesse, but in all the cleaning products and fumes he has to deal with at the car wash, or the way he tries to calm himself after getting the bad news by lighting a series of matches and just appreciating the combustion reaction of it.
  
• There are a few different scenes where Gilligan trying to make a grand point gets undercut by the reality of the situation. For instance, Walt's big speech to his disinterested class about why he loves chemistry is followed by the revelation that they're already on Chapter 6; isn't that monologue something for earlier in the semester? And even though Walt is saved by the fact that the sirens represent fire trucks and not cops (and by his ineptitude with firearms), wouldn't at least one of the trucks have stopped, even for a second, to see if there were any people injured in what looked like a bad car crash?
  
• "Mad Men" is pretty much a PG-13 kind of show, in terms of language, skin, etc. The screener version I watched of the "Breaking Bad" pilot was definitely R, with the naked woman helping Jesse escape, Walt and Jesse arguing over the s--t he cooks, etc. But it's still the "Shield" version of R, which means no F-words, as the sound drops out quite noticeably when Walt tries to drop an F-bomb on his car wash boss when he quits.
  
• Walt literally launders the drug money. Nice.
  

What did everybody else think?

andreikirilenkotattoo on TV: An experiment that's part comedy, part tragedy

Today's column previews the new AMC drama, "Breaking Bad":

Walter White, the anti-hero of the new AMC series "Breaking Bad," is a chemist, and always defines himself as such. Twenty years earlier, he was part of a Nobel Prize-winning research team, and though he's down on his luck now and teaches science to bored high-schoolers, his voice still breaks a little as he describes the wonders of chemistry, how it features "growth, then decay, then transformation." And when he discovers he has inoperable lung cancer, he decides the only way to care for his wife and disabled son after he's gone is to put his lab skills to use cooking crystal meth.

"Breaking Bad" is itself a chemistry experiment, an attempt to combine several unstable compounds - one part "Weeds," one part "The Bucket List," one part "Falling Down" and 12 parts Coen Brothers - to see whether they lead to synthesis or combustion. I've seen three episodes, and while the show hasn't blown up yet, I still have no idea what it's going to look like when all the elements fully mix together.

To read the full thing, click here.