Breaking Bad, "One Minute": The magic bullet

A review of tonight's insanely great "Breaking Bad" (aka The Best Show on TV Right Now) coming up just as soon as I look like a TV weatherman...

"I'm just not the man I thought I was." -Hank

Um...

uh...

um...

WOW.

Sorry, just need another minute to pick my jaw up off the floor after that.

What an incredible, bananas finish to the strongest episode yet of this third season. As written by "Breaking Bad" newcomer Thomas Schnauz (another of many "X-Files" vets Vince Gilligan has brought in) and directed by Michelle MacLaren (who joined the staff full-time after last season's gorgeous "4 Days Out"), the parking lot climax was a perfect model of suspense filmmaking. We'd already been primed all episode to fear that the Cousins could hit Hank at any moment (every time the elevator doors opened, I know I gripped my armrest), but then to have someone(*) warn Hank ahead of time kicked things up several levels. Suddenly, we and Hank were in the same mindset, looking around every corner, jumping at shadows (and/or men with squeegees), waiting for the two men to come and wondering if an unarmed Hank possibly had a chance against those two unrelenting figures of death.

(*) So, is there anyone it could have been other than Gus? Gus clearly wanted the Cousins the hell out of his territory, and I can see him warning Hank in the hopes that he might be lucky enough to take them out - or, at least, to bloody them enough that they'd have to re-cross the border in a hurry rather than hanging around in the hopes of also killing Walt. Other than Mike making the call on Gus's behalf, there doesn't seem to be a character in a position to know or do anything about the planned hit. For that matter, I'm not sure how even Gus would have known that Hank had roughly a minute to act, but I'll accept that he could for the sake of what that call added to the scene.

In many ways, the parking lot shootout evoked the failed hit on Tony Soprano from the end of "Sopranos" season one, down to the use of an SUV as a weapon. But I'd argue this scene one-upped that. Violence on "The Sopranos" always had something of a black comic tinge to it (the lead-up to the hit is Tony wandering around in a depressed stupor, and the hitmen were introduced in a scene played for laughs because of Uncle Junior hiding in the back of a car), and these guys didn't have the kind of mythical build-up the Cousins got. And on top of that, Tony Soprano was the star of the show, and it wouldn't work with him dead, whereas "Breaking Bad" would miss Hank but could easily continue without him. So the danger was far more real even without the Cousin factor.

In the end, though Hank is tough and resourceful, he won the only way anyone could against these two: through luck. He was warned in advance and was still in his car. Leonel's(**) gun also happened to fall right where Hank could reach it, and Marco conveniently had an extra, special bullet in his jacket pocket courtesy of the friendly gun dealer, and the duo's flair for the dramatic gave Hank just enough time to find the bullet on the ground and load it and shoot out the back of Marco's skull before the shiny ax could finish its backswing.

(**) Nice of the show to finally give the Cousins names - and a backstory - right before Hank killed one and either crippled or killed the other. The flashback with a middle-aged Tio at the height of his powers was chilling in its portrait of the culture those two grew up in. With Don Salamanca as the dominant male in their lives, and giving them "lessons" like that one, is there any wonder how they grew up to be these two unflappable killing machines? Note also that Leonel, the one who as a boy cries over Marco's destruction of his toy, is the one who's now hardcore enough to tell the other to finish the job rather than staying to help him. Tio made him that way.

But here's the thing: even without those crazy final minutes, "One Minute" still would have been one of the best "Breaking Bad"s to date.

What an amazing showcase for both Aaron Paul (who seems a lock to repeat his Emmy nomination next year, and possibly to win it if he submits this episode) and Dean Norris (who sure deserves to join Paul, but may not in what's always a crowded category).

Hank's beatdown of Jesse brings both men to a crossroads. Having lost his girlfriend, his partner, and now his source of income in the RV, Jesse finally tumbles over the abyss after Hank puts him in the hospital. Acting with half his face hidden by some really convincing prosthetics, Paul showed us a Jesse even colder and angrier than he was in his "I'm the bad guy" phase earlier this season, giving a riveting monologue(***) about all the ways he intended to punish Hank - and the way he'd drag Walt down with him if the DEA came after him.

(***) If the parking lot scene reminded me of "The Sopranos," Jesse's speech was like a more controlled version of Al Capone's speech from "The Untouchables" about what he wanted done to Elliott Ness.

But when Walt returns to Jesse's hospital room later in the episode to try to save his former brother-in-law, Jesse's evil calm is replaced by raw, unbridled pain, as he unloads on Walt with the laundry list of all the ways his life has gotten worse since Mr. White came back into his life. These are words Walt has needed to hear for a long time now - to have someone he can't tune out explain how toxic he's become to everyone in his life - and it's to Walt's credit that he already seemed aware of this after first seeing Jesse's ruined face. When he chews out Gale for screwing up the temperature, it comes in part from his need to feel superior to others (he does this shortly after Gale starts working two steps ahead of him), but also clearly out of guilt for what he saw happen to his previous lab assistant. Walt is a monster, but there's enough humanity left in him to recognize the pain he's caused, and the debts he owes, and so he manages to talk Gus(****) into letting him fire Gale and bring Jesse into the Walt-cave.

(****) And Gus's willingness to go along with that plan torpedoes my theory that he was using Gale to appropriate Walt's methods and then say goodbye to the loose cannon. It's entirely possible he still has that in mind (maybe the Walt-cave is tricked out with surveillance gear?), but could Gus have far grander plans for Walt that extend past the initial three month agreement?

And in the wake of putting Jesse in the hospital and his own career on life-support, Hank finally lets himself open up to Marie. Getting back to my fear of the elevator doors, when Hank got on the elevator the first time with Marie, I was expecting Cousins and was then floored to see husband and wife sobbing in each other's arms (and amused to see them completely composed by the time the doors opened on the ground floor, because there are some things Hank Schrader will not show the world). Even better than that scene, though, was Hank getting ready for his hearing with OPR, where he talked about his PTSD (in terms he could use), and about how much he's been struggling since he killed Tuco.

So here's what I wonder: the shootout with Tuco is what started Hank down this mentally unhealthy road, and the exploding turtle made things worse, but he finally seemed to be at peace by the time he left the DEA field office, knowing he'd probably lost his job but wouldn't go to jail. Now that he's barely survived a horrific ordeal, seen more people killed in front of him (and because of him) and killed one or two more himself, what happens? Does Hank's psyche shut down on him again, or does knowing he overcame two unbelievable bad-asses give him a new sense of invulnerability? And will this give him a road back into the DEA? Surely, the Cousins are in a law-enforcement database somewhere, and the man who took them out is about to become a legend - and someone who perhaps might be put back on the trail of Heisenberg.

It certainly makes sense for the show to have Walt being pursued by a (former) family member, but how will Hank (and Marie) cope with being thrust back into this violent world right when it looked like he was out for good? And now that Hank has taken out three members of the Salamanca family, will the cartel be even hotter for his blood, or might they want to stay far away from the brewer of Schraderbrau?

Damn, damn, damn that was good.

Some other thoughts:

� Of course the only thing Walt could tell Jesse to heal their rift was that his meth was good. That was all Jesse wanted to hear when he showed the stuff to Walt in the high school parking lot - really, it's all he's wanted to hear from the guy since the partnership began. Jesse (whose parents have cast him out) needs a surrogate father even more than Walt (who has a good relationship with Walter Jr.) needs a surrogate son.

� As Hank beat on Jesse and asked how Jesse knew his cell phone number and wife's name, I began to worry that Walt took things too far with that gambit. I understand why Hank has blinders on about Walt, but sooner or later, he has to make the math work, doesn't he?

� Note that the Tio/Cousins flashback also included Tio on the phone discussing the start of the cartel's business relationship with Gus, whom Tio dismissively refers to as "The Chicken Man."

� Saul had a few good funny lines at Jesse's expense (comparing him to Rocky, then Ringo), but the scene in the hallway - shot, appropriately, in half-darkness - where he started preparing Walt for the idea of killing Jesse was a reminder that this guy is not a joke.

� Hands up: who would be happy to go to their local supermarket and buy a "Breaking Bad" brand pre-made PB&J sandwich, cut up Walt-style?

� A few years back I was in a car accident where I broke several ribs, and I am very familiar with that pain assessment chart. After Jesse's half-face stared at it, I may never think of that thing the same way again.

Finally, in case you've missed the news, this is the last "Breaking Bad" review I'll be doing before I relocate to HitFix.com. I'll still be reviewing every episode here the exact way I did here, so just change your bookmarks accordingly.

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad, "Sunset": Partners in crime

A review of tonight's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I do a riverdance...

"Please tell me you got something!" -Jesse

Walt spends much of the first half of "Sunset" in the company of Gale, his new lab assistant in the Walt-cave, and a nail-biting chunk of the second half trapped in the RV with Jesse. And while Walt and Gale seem a perfect match on paper in nearly every way, it's clear by the end of this gripping episode that for all their flaws and incompatibilities, Walt and Jesse are, much to both their chagrins, made for each other.

After Walt tried to ban Jesse from the meth business last week, I assumed it might be a long time before the two might work together again. I of course neglected to factor in two things: 1)Walt and Jesse's tremendous capacity, both separately and together, for screwing up; and 2)The weird gravitational pull that RV held over their relationship.

"Breaking Bad" always seems to find a higher gear whenever those two are in the RV together, and so it shouldn't be a surprise that their final time in that accursed but useful vehicle/domicile would be one of the most memorable yet. I've loved every minute of season three so far as the show has gone in an even darker direction, but the climax to "Sunset" felt very much like old-school "Breaking Bad": Walt and Jesse finding a way to make a bad problem worse, stuck in the RV together, Jesse waiting for Walt's great brain to find a way out of the mess.

From the minute Walt pulled onto Clovis's lot and started barking orders about destroying the RV, I knew things would go pear-shaped, and they did. Where Walt feared that Hank might have tapped Jesse's phone and hung up without explaining the situation, what he should have feared was the exact reaction Jesse had when Badger told him Walt was taking away the RV (Jesse's entire business) to destroy it. And so Jesse led Hank right where Walt didn't want him to be, with those scenes feeling oddly like a desert twist on "Jaws," with Hank as the shark circling the boat, looking for a way in to devour the lives of the men inside. So intense, so well-acted by Cranston and Paul and Dean Norris, and so well-written and directed by John Shiban (behind the camera for an episode of TV for the first time since a 2002 "X-Files").

Walt ultimately recognized the three words that have saved his hash so many times before - "better call Saul" - but the look on Hank's face in the hospital (confusing, then relief, then complete and utter rage) suggests that the hunt from Heisenberg has turned from an excuse to avoid El Paso into an absolute vendetta.

Of course, Hank is now the target of a vendetta himself, as Gus has decided that the headache of a murdered DEA agent is less vexing than losing Walt's genius too soon. (Even though I believe Gus is going to use Gale to copy the Heisenberg formula so he can produce it without this egomaniacal loose cannon.) Hank may be able to win the day in a bar fight, but the only thing that has thus far been able to stop the Cousins is Gus himself. I've been worried for a while that Hank might not survive the season, but is he even going to make it deep into the second half of it?

And what happens to Walt and Jesse now that the RV is gone? Does Walt take pity on Jesse and offer him either money or a job (assuming Gus would allow this) to make up for the mobile meth lab's destruction? Or, without that vehicle to hold them together, will the rift between the two grow wider and nastier?

Incredible episode. My jaw was on the floor for large chunks of it.

Some other thoughts:

• Loved Walt insisting on taking the model home, and then going through a morning ritual (the shirt, and the brown bag lunch with his name on it) as if he were going to a real punch-the-clock job. It's a fake life he's living, and so he needs all the accessories to make it look (and make himself feel) good.

• Badger returns to New Mexico after fleeing the state late last season after Walt and Jesse's business got him into legal trouble. And he busts a few fancy dance moves upon returning.

• Lots of great, off-beat music throughout the episode, but particularly the use of some of Vince Guaraldi's "Peanuts" music for the meth-cooking montage in the Walt-cave.

• You can find the full text of "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" here.

• Two notable guest stars: David Costabile (recently a villain on "Damages," but also the "more with less" newspaper editor in "The Wire" season 5 and Mel's husband on "Flight of the Conchords") as Gale, and Larry Hankin (who, to me, will always be the Kramer from Jerry and George's sitcom pilot on "Seinfeld") as the legally-wise junkyard manager.

• As I watched the Native American cop head towards his demise at the hands of the Cousins in the prologue, I again thought to myself that someone is missing a golden opportunity at giving a spin on the cop drama series by setting one on an Indian reservation. "Mystery!" did a few adaptations of Tony Hillerman's Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee novels in the early '00s, and at one time there was talk of DC Comics trying to turn "Scalped" into a TV show, but that world feels like it has so much untapped potential for a weekly cop show. Am I alone on that?

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad, "Mas": Til meth do us part

A review of tonight's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as the chemistry is respected...

"I can't tell what he wants. He won't talk to me, he hardly even comes home. He works all day, all night, barely eats, barely speaks to me. It's like something's eating him away from inside. He's just not the same. He's not. Facing death, it changes a person. It has to, don't you think?" -Marie

The White marriage comes to an end in "Mas," as Walt finally signs the divorce papers and moves out, apparently to go work in Gus Frings' diabolical underground meth bunker. But before he leaves, we get to see that, for all their irreconcilable differences, Walt and Skyler both have a capacity for denial and self-rationalization in common.

In Walt's talk with Gus, and then in Skyler's talk with her divorce lawyer, we see them adamantly denying what they're so obviously feeling: that Walt is both jealous and offended that Jesse was able to duplicate the Heisenberg formula on his own, and that Skyler would love to be able to justify keeping Walt's drug money after all that his career as Heisenberg has cost her emotionally.

In the end, Gus effectively plays to both Walt's vanity and his belief in himself as a good father, and Skyler in turn unwittingly gives Walt the final nudge out the door. Walter White will do many things out of spite - will, in fact, destroy his own life out of spite if he has to - and had Skyler remained cold to him and kept him from doing anything with the baby, perhaps he would have continued his squatting campaign. But Skyler's quiet offer to let him comfort the crying baby(*) - and the implication that she'd again allow him to be father to his children, if not husband to his wife - played perfectly into Gus's speech about redefining "family" as "children," and gave him the peace of mind to leave the house and, presumably, go to work in the Walt-Cave.

(*) And here is where having someone as talented and versatile as Bryan Cranston comes in especially handy. I think a lot of actors could play the monster that Walt actually is, and that others could play the loving family man he believes himself to be, but very few could play both and make them seem like two sides of the same character. The look of complete vulnerability and sorrow and gratefulness and love in Walt's eyes as Skyler tells him to pick up Holly is worlds away from the man who will later be so cold and arrogant in muscling Jesse Pinkman out of the meth business, but Cranston sells them both.

Walt, of course, doesn't realize that Gus is only giving him a temporary reprieve before the Cousins come calling - that his plan is, I'm guessing, to take those three months to let his own people learn the Heisenberg formula until they have no need of Walt himself - nor does Skyler know that she's tentatively letting Walt back into her life at a moment when his life is becoming more dangerous than ever. All she knows is that she's miserable, has no support system other than Ted Beneke, and would just like to let the conflict die a little bit.

And just as Skyler goes from loving the feel of Ted's heated bathroom floor to becoming uncomfortable with it, I suspect Walt's love of Gus's pimped-out lab will fade over time as he begins to recognize just how dangerous a man he's working for. Walt goes into his meeting with Gus convinced that he's outsmarted him, when in fact the only way to do that would have been to just hand Jesse his half of the money and walk away without ever seeing Gus. Gus played him, and Walt's too arrogant and crazy to see that yet. But he's not stupid, even if he has blind spots, and day after day spent under the laundry facility is going to wear on him, especially without Jesse around to teach and/or bully.

And either way, what happens when the three months are up? At least Skyler should be thankful that Walt's not living in the house anymore, given what the Cousins might do to anyone else they find when they come for their target.

Some other thoughts:

• Skyler with the lawyer reminded me very much of Carmela Soprano going to see the elderly therapist who told her in no uncertain terms to take the kids and walk out on Tony and his "blood money." And, just like Carmela, Skyler didn't want to hear that.

• We open with a hilarious flashback to what Jesse was up to in the pilot in between when Walt gave him the money and when he turned up with the RV. Not only does it give Aaron Paul a chance to slip back into Jesse's clueless but happy old skin, it temporarily brings Combo back to life, and shows how Combo caused his own death a few times over. Not only did he agree to become one of Jesse's dealers, but had he not gotten Jesse the RV in the first place, the White/Pinkman partnership would have been stillborn, and Combo wouldn't have become high-profile enough to attract a hit from a rival crew.

• On another show, Hank's discovery that Jesse (whom he knows is connected to Walt) is connected to the RV that carried the blue meth would ultimately lead to Hank again coming thisclose, but no closer, to discovering Heisenberg's identity. On "Breaking Bad," given that we're in season three of what was conceived of as a four-season series (though it could always run a bit longer), I wouldn't at all be surprised to see Hank keep working his way up the food chain - which would not be a good thing for him, methinks. In the end, maybe going to El Paso instead of Gomey would have been the safer move.

• Love the contrast of Walt using the closet in the nursery as an office - complete with a tiny chair that stuck to his behind when he stood up - to Walt being shown the wonders of the Walt-Cave. Walt's a genius, but he's an amateur. Gus Frings is no amateur.

• Saul Goodman, shameless as always: completely on Jesse's side when it looks like that's where the meth money is coming from, then tosses him over immediately when Walt turns out to be the real cash cow - and caves on his exorbitant fees when Walt finally realizes Saul needs him as much or more than he needs Saul.

• That Aztek windshield is just taking a beating, isn't it? It's like the forces of karma just don't want it to remain intact.

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad, "Green Light": Half-and-half

A review of tonight's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I remember that the dude's name was Mel...

"Sometimes, it doesn't hurt to have someone watching your back." -Mike

"Breaking Bad" has tried to walk a fine line between black comedy and straight drama, and as Walt's heart has gotten darker, so has the show. This season has had its funny moments (roof pizza!) and of course promoted Bob Odenkirk to regular cast status, but on the whole it's felt more serious than before - not less interesting, because Cranston, Paul and company play both sides equally well, but with its feet more firmly planted on one side than the other.

With "Green Light," the funny returns in greater doses. Saul is more at the forefront, Walt is more pathetic than monstrous for most of the hour(*), and the comedy duo of White and Pinkman briefly reunited.

(*) I found it a particularly nice touch that we only heard Walt and Skyler's argument as Mike and Saul were listening to the tape of it in Saul's office. Had we watched it unfold in the White family kitchen, it would have been as ugly as much of the Walt/Skyler interaction has been this year. Seen through Saul and Mike's eyes, though, Walt's a clown with no impulse control.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the show took a darker turn after Jesse turned to heroin, not only because there's not a lot that's funny about that situation, but because it drove a wedge between him and Walt. So much of this show's comedy, even in otherwise bleak episodes like the one at Tuco's house or the one in the desert, comes from seeing these two characters drive each other crazy as they try to solve their latest potentially-fatal problem. And since Jane's death, they've been at peace with each other, but that was largely because neither was cooking meth at the time. No professional friction, just a surrogate father-son dynamic - note Walt telling Jesse, "You're good at a lot of things, son" while trying to talk him out of cooking.

But as soon as Jesse takes out that bag of blue Heisenberg meth, all paternal instincts go out the window. Walt the mentor is overtaken by Walt the aggrieved party, the man whose entire life can be blamed on others, whose stubborn pride eventually poisons every part of his life. Walt should have been proud that he had ultimately turned out to be a good teacher to Jesse - that he had taken the idiotic Cap'n Cook and turned him into an effective Heisenberg substitute. But of course he had just blown up his teaching career by hitting on the principal, and all he could see with that blue bag was that Jesse had stolen from him, in the same way that Gretchen and Elliott made their fortune on his work, and it made Walt go ballistic - and very, very funny.

Cranston's comedy bonafides got a workout in this one, not only in arguing with Jesse, but the whole scene outside Ted Beneke's office (where he assures Skyler everything's fine even as he's hunched over the potted plant he's trying to hurl through Ted's window), his lame brawl with Saul (with Mike picking up Walt like a father might pick up a child throwing a tantrum) and his disastrous attempt to seduce Principal Carmen.

But if Walt was a clown in this episode, he was the sad clown. He's lost his marriage, lost his teaching job, alienated the closest thing he has to a friend in Jesse, and even fired his counsel and money launderer. He's got nothing and no one, and something tells me Gus Frings will never have to tell him about the Cousins (even as the Cousins leave another warning on Walt's street) to get him to resume cooking. Heisenberg is the only thing Walt has left.

Jesse, meanwhile, continues to embrace his inner bad guy, potentially ruining the life of that poor girl at the gas station with his testimonial about the awesome splendor of crystal meth, just because he didn't think to check his wallet before filling up the RV. Aaron Paul has been a revelation as this dead-inside, unapologetic villainous Jesse - we knew he could act, but to be able to take the character to such a different place while still seeming clearly Jesse is no small thing.

And the gas station deal (another one of the show's marvelous short-story-as-teasers) looks like it's going to blow back on Jesse after Hank uses the return of the blue meth as an excuse to get out of his terrifying reassignment to El Paso. Hank struts through the episode being just as self-sabotaging as Walt (talking to Gomey in a similar manner to how Walt treats Jesse), because he's been to the border, and south of it, and he can't do that again - just as he can't admit to that until cornered by his boss(**). He doesn't quite wreck his career the way Walt does, but he's killed any real chance of upward mobility. (And, not that Hank realizes it, but catching Heisenberg won't do him much good, since putting the bracelets on the brother-in-law you didn't realize was the area's most notorious supplier isn't a great resume item.)

(**) Loved the moment where Hank's supervisor forces him to leave aside the macho bluster and confess that he can't go back to El Paso... and how, after a moment, Hank's personality reboots and he tries to act like the confession never even happened.

Walt's got no one, Hank's got no future prospects, Jesse's got no soul, and Skyler may as well put on a scarlet letter at Beneke after Walt's outburst. Not a good place for any of these characters to be, even if "Breaking Bad" rediscovered its sick funny bone while putting them all there.

Some other thoughts:

• What a great addition Jonathan Banks has been as Mike, whose loyalty is again confirmed as to Gus first and everyone else a distant second. His unflappable, completely professional demeanor stands in stark contrast to the excitable, bumbling amateurism of Walt, Jesse, and even Saul, who's only slightly less in-over-his-head than his two favorite clients.

• Is it any surprise that Jane's father would attempt suicide after all he's been through (and caused) over the last few months?

• And is it any surprise that, while Mr. Margolis would respond to the Flight 515 tragedy by trying to kill himself, Saul would try to make a buck off of it?

• Very nice transition between Skyler standing over the copy machine, realizing how much all the women at Beneke hate her, followed by the copy machine's whine intersecting with Skyler and Ted's moans during sex as the camera passes over pictures of Ted's kids.

• A mark of how effective the teaser was: I was actually relieved when Hank went to the gas station and it turned out the girl gave the meth away after sampling a little. On the other hand, it does metaphorically take Jesse off the hook for what he just did. If there's one area the series has shied away from, it's showing the effect of Walt and Jesse's product on its users (unless we count Skank and Spooge). We get to see how their behavior destroys the people immediately around them, but are kept from having to confront the broader destruction they cause. The users of the blue meth are as abstract as the people on the plane.

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad, "I.F.T.": Kiss the cook?

A review of tonight's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I tell you how to fry your chickens...

"All that I've done, all the sacrifices that I have made for this family, all of that will be for nothing if you don't accept what I've earned." -Walt

I didn't put a stopwatch on it, but I would guess that "I.F.T." (the title is an abbreviation for the bombshell Skyler drops on Walt) features the least screentime for Walt of any episode of the series. The only other contender I can think of is season two's Jesse-centric "Peekaboo," but even there, Walt had a prominent subplot with the return of Gretchen. Walt's not absent from "I.F.T.," but more often than not it seems like characters are talking about him rather than interacting with him.

And most of what they're saying about him is that they're waiting for him to be dead.

"I.F.T." lays out two possible outcomes for Walt: either the cancer comes back soon and kills him (which Skyler assumes, and is therefore reluctant to rat him out to the cops), or else Gus Frings finishes his business with Walt and lets the Cousins (here revealed to be actual cousins of Tuco, and nephews of Tio, who turns out to be a former druglord himself called Don Salamanca) do to him what they did to Tortuga(*).

(*) And if the show were, indeed, to end with Walt's decapitated head on top of an exploding tortoise? Instant Top 5 Most Memorable Series Finale Ever. Period.

When you start with a premise like this show has, neither a happy ending nor a long run (Vince Gilligan has said in the past he envisions four seasons) are likely. And if neither of these turn out to be the exact fate Walt suffers, his end will be ugly - and deserved.

Here, even in an episode where Walt largely takes a backseat to Skyler, and Jesse, and Hank, and the cartel, you still get to see the damage he's done to those around him. Once again, he completely checkmates Skyler and makes her the bad guy in their domestic drama. Jesse spends most of the hour doing nothing but calling into Jane's not-yet-deactivated voicemail so he can hear her voice again. And when the phone company finally cuts the line - taking away the last vestige of the woman Jesse loved, and Walt killed - he heads into the desert in the RV to cook on his own, using all the lessons Walt taught him. Tio is still raging over Tuco's death (even though Hank technically fired the killing shot, Tuco was in that situation because of Walt), and that in turn is going to cause all manner of pain and heartache for those associated with Walt. And, of course, Hank's PTSD problems (which here lead to him savagely beating on a pair of tough guys in a biker bar) began not with Tortuga's death, but with him killing Tuco, which only happened because Hank was out looking for Walt.

We talk all the time in these episode discussions about the brilliance of Bryan Cranston, which at this point practically goes without saying, and Aaron Paul did get a deserved Emmy nomination last year, but damn if Anna Gunn isn't kicking ass and taking names so far this season. "I.F.T." was a great showcase for her, between her panic and frustration at the cops' refusal to kick Walt out, then her resentment at how Walt has bended Walter Jr. to his side, then her nervous anticipation as she prepares to seduce Beneke as payback to Walt, then the matter-of-fact-ness of her three-word(**) destruction of Walt's hopes and dreams for their marriage. Walt has an amazing capacity for self-denial, but even he can't ignore anymore what his drug career has done to his family. (Then again, knowing Walt, he'll just put all the blame on Skyler and/or Beneke.)

(**) As we discussed last year when Walt hurled an F-bomb at Gretchen (in the aforementioned "Peekaboo"), that word is one of the few that you can't use even on basic cable, due to agreements the channels have with their advertisers and/or cable operators, and so in both cases the sound drops out for a moment during the word. But I admire AMC's willingness to let Gilligan use it at all, since there are certain scenes - particularly ones like these two, where one character is trying to be incredibly hurtful to another - where no other word would be as effective. And the unbleeped versions will live on forever on DVD.

And how about Dean Norris? It's been a while since we dealt with Hank's emotional problems, post-Tuco and then post-Tortuga, and it felt right that the issue should be revisited in an episode that brought Danny Trejo back to portray Tortuga's very bloody end (and to again establish the Cousins' lethal bonafides). This is a character type you don't often see in American crime fiction: a cop who's good at his job and tough enough to take on and beat two much bigger men by himself, but who can't cope when things rise to a more lethal level. It's unclear exactly what Hank is hoping to achieve here - prove his manhood? get too injured or in too much trouble to go back to El Paso? - but as played by Norris, it was scary to watch, and a problem that's not going away for Hank so long as he remains as in-denial as Walt.

Some other thoughts on "I.F.T.":

• This one was directed by Michelle MacLaren who (along with director of photography Michael Slovis) was responsible for season two's gorgeous desert misadventure "4 Days Out," and it felt right that she should be behind the camera for Jesse's return to both the RV and the desert. I also loved the shot of Gus's chicken facility with its hundreds upon thousands of birds all clustered in on top of each other.

• Mike tells Gus (or one of Gus's people) on the phone, "I'm assuming Saul Goodman doesn't need to know." So does that mean he's an independent operator? Or someone whose loyalty is more to Gus than to Saul (and, by extension, Walt)? Either way, that can't be good.

• What do you suppose the Cousins did to the old woman with the scooter and the wheelchair-accessible minivan? Or am I better off not asking?

• Going forward (assuming he appears in more episodes), do I refer to the character as Tio or Don Salamanca? I'm kind of partial to Tio, even if that's just Spanish for "Uncle."

• When Walt started peeing in the kitchen sink out of spite, I immediately thought of George Costanza's, "It's all pipes!" defense from the episode where he got caught going in the health club shower.

• This is two weeks in a row with a classic rock standard on the soundtrack, this time with ZZ Top's "Tush" playing as Hank has his biker bar showdown.

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad, "Caballo Sin Nombre": House hunters

A review of tonight's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I get dipping sticks...

"I can't be the bad guy." -Walt

An episode after "No Mas," Walt still isn't ready to take Jesse's rehab revelation to heart. He's still denial about how bad he's become, how much he's hurting the people he cares about, and how his actions will be received by the world around him. He's oblivious to how the cop will respond when Walt gets out of the Aztek and begins ranting and raving about his civil rights. He's oblivious to how much he's hurting Skyler by letting her become the bad guy in their separation, when if anything Skyler's doing him (and their children) a kindness by not telling the world that he's a meth cooker. He's oblivious to the fact that the cartel might still be angry with him, and to the presence of the Cousins sitting in his bedroom with an ax, and that his life is only spared because Saul's PI buddy Mike has a direct line to Gus Frings. Walt begins and ends the episode with chemicals in his eyes (first the pepper spray, then the shampoo), but even cleaned up, he's really not seeing the picture of his life very clearly.

We can, however, and "Caballo Sin Nombre"(*) gives us a very vivid picture of how bad Skyler has it because she won't tell the truth about Walt. (And I should say her reasons aren't entirely selfless; as Saul points out to Walt, the truth would have huge blowback for Skyler, too.) While she stays silent, her son turns against her - even ditching the "Flynn" nickname to go back to being Walter Jr. in a show of solidarity with his pop. Hank seems ready to dismiss Walt's mystery transgression as an affair and take Walt's side in what looks from his point of view to be a disproportionate response from Skyler. (Kick the cheating bastard out? Sure, but don't keep him from his kids.) Marie has more suspicions, but that's all she has.

(*) The episode's title is Spanish for "Horse with No Name," which is the song Walt's singing along to when the cop pulls him over.

And because Skyler's out on an island, emotionally and financially, she finds herself forced to become Saul Goodman to Ted Beneke's Walt, showing him how to more effectively cook the books. She doesn't want to, but she doesn't seem to have a choice - which, interestingly, is the justification Walt used for getting into the meth business in the first place. Hmm... Maybe Walt's not the only one too blind to recognize his own badness.

Jesse, as we know from last week, has embraced his own villainous side, not in any kind of cackling, over-the-top fashion, but in a much more compelling, disturbingly matter-of-fact way. He is what he let Walt turn him into, and so he has no problem using Saul to hustle his parents into selling him back his aunt's house at a rock-bottom price. Not only does this give him revenge for how unfairly he feels they've treated him in the past, it allows him to get back at two of the parties who helped contribute to the death of Jane (and then of the people on the planes). If his parents don't kick him out of aunt's house, Jesse doesn't move in next door to Jane, doesn't drag her off the wagon, etc., etc., etc. Aaron Paul's had to play a lot of different faces of this character (clueless comic relief, tragic victim of Walt's greed, etc.), and he's been really good as this empty, evil incarnation. What he does to his parents (and, unwittingly, to his kid brother, whom he does like) is cruel, but unlike his partner, Jesse has no illusions about who he is and what he's doing. He's bad, but he's not a hypocrite.

Neither, of course, is Saul Goodman, with Bob Odenkirk making his very welcome first appearance of the season. As Walt and Jesse's consiglieri (even if the business isn't active at the moment), Saul has clearly moved up in the world. He's dressing better, his combover isn't as tacky, and he has a Bluetooth, status symbol for d-bags everywhere (and fashion accessory for the guy whose car Walt blew up back in season one). But he's still a low-rent lawyer at heart; his glee at getting over on Mr. and Mrs. Pinkman's high-class attorney was palpable. If Jesse's resigned to being the bad guy, Saul loves the role.

While Walt and Jesse are both concerned with getting back into their homes (Walt breaks in via the trap door he made while battling mold last season, while Jesse gets in via more legal means), the Cousins are coming - with a big assist from Tio, whose mind remains sharp and focused even as his body betrays him. The scene in the nursing home where the Cousins realize they can use the ouija board to get the relevant information from Tio left me grinning from ear to ear, it was so diabolical, even as I worried about what hell these two are going to unleash on Walt - or, worse, on the loved ones Walt has exposed to such danger with his second career.

Some other thoughts:

• In more practical terms, Jesse had to move out of his aunt's house because the home's real-life owners sold it. The new owners wound up remodeling it, then agreed to let the show use it again, and so Mr. and Mrs. Pinkman's renovations were written into the script.

• That was one shiny ax the Cousins bought, wasn't it? Also nice to know they have access to the same kind of shiny suits north of the border as they did down in Mexico.

• Saul gives Walt a piece of advice that could pay huge dividends down the road, in pointing out how Hank's career would be ruined if his brother-in-law were discovered to be the area's biggest meth manufacturer. I don't think Walt's yet at a point where he would exploit Skyler's affection for Hank, but that moment's probably gonna come, isn't it?

• Of course Saul's vanity license plate is "LWYRUP." Of course it is.

• SaveWalterWhite.com is still an active website, and still contains a link to the National Cancer Coalition if you want to make a donation to help real (and less despicable) cancer sufferers.

• Walt's so anal and controlling that he has to go and skim the pool at his apartment complex. (And that, in turn, gives the production team an excuse to trot out the pools-eye-view camera again. I love that camera almost as much as they obviously do.)

• God, Mark Margolis is good as Tio. Tio hates Walter so, so much, and it looked like half the veins on Margolis's body were fit to burst as he silently communicated with the Cousins.

• The song playing as Walt breaks back into his own house is "Magic Arrow" by Timber Timbre.

• Walt's flinging of the pizza onto the garage roof seemed so impressive that I asked Vince Gilligan if there was any special work by the crew to aid its flight. Here's what he said:

Our special effects expert did indeed work up some mechanism for getting the pizza out of the box and onto the roof, using fishline or somesuch. However, to the best of my knowledge, his rig was never used. What you see in the finished episode is take one, in which Bryan basically just did a Hail Mary toss and got it up there in one try!

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad, "No Mas": Say hi to the bad guy

"Breaking Bad," one of the best dramas on TV, is back. I reviewed the new season generally in Friday's column, and I have a spoiler-y review of the season premiere coming up just as soon as I give my car keys to a goat...

"People move on. They just move on. And we will move on. We will get past this. Because that is what human beings do. We survive. We survive and we overcome." -Walt

"You either run from things, or you face them, Mr. White... I learned it in rehab, it's all about accepting who you really are. I accept who I am." -Jesse
"And who are you?" -Walt
"I'm the bad guy." -Jesse

"You're a drug dealer." -Skyler

Season two of "Breaking Bad" opened on a bit of macabre imagery (the eyeball floating in the pool) that we needed the whole season to fully understand. Season three's premiere (once again directed by Bryan Cranston, with the usual brilliant assistance from director of photography Michael Slovis) begins with another arresting image, only this time its meaning is apparent within minutes.

We head south of the border again to see an old Mexican man crawling desperately through the dirt. Is he injured? Dying of thirst? And why on earth won't anyone in this small village stop to help him, or even notice him? But then our angle changes, and we see that the old man is just one of many people crawling. (What. The. Hell? Is going on here? I asked myself as I watched this.) They're soon joined by two dangerous-looking men in shiny suits with skulls on their boots, who without comment get down on their bellys and inch their way towards a shrine in the desert, where they say a prayer and pin up a totem of the object of their prayer: a rough pencil sketch of the man the cartel knows as Heisenberg, and that we know as Walter White.

Many of you kept expecting the cartel to be responsible for the carnage at Walt's house and were surprised (and/or disappointed) when the plane crash was revealed. But it turns out the cartel was only delayed, and there is no way this can end especially well for Walt.

But up in Albuquerque, Walt has no idea these two fearsome men (referred to in the scripts as "the Cousins") are on their way. Instead, he and Jesse and Skyler are all grappling with the events from the end of last season: Jane's death, the crash it ultimately caused, and Skyler's astute decision to banish Walt from her life.

One hundred and sixty-seven people died in that crash, to be added to the butcher's bill after Jane, and Combo, and Spooge, and Tuco, and Krazy 8 and Emilio, and all the victims of the blue meth we never see. So many dead, so much pain caused, nearly all of it traced back to Walt's decision to enter the drug trade...

... and Walt still doesn't get it. He stands in front of that school assembly (in a scene that's just unbearable to get through, for all the right reasons) and makes everyone there feel horrible just to alleviate his own guilt. He tells Jesse to blame the government.

Even when he's not lying to others, he's lying to himself. In the riveting scene where Skyler confronts Walt about the drug-dealing - which, in that "Breaking Bad" way, becomes simultaneously hilarious because of how she keeps underestimating the depth of the situation (and because Bryan Cranston's reactions are priceless) - Walt has no choice but to finally lay everything out for her. But at the end of the confession, he assumes the honesty will finally start to repair things between them, when in fact it's only made things worse.

Jesse gets it. He comes out of rehab having accepted that he's the bad guy: that Jane would still be alive if she'd never crossed his path, and that in turn the planes wouldn't have crashed. And if he can't forgive himself, he can at least take the rehab counselor's advice to be "good enough to be okay with who and what you are." But Jesse can do this because he's never had Walt's capacity for self-deception, nor the obsessive pride that keeps Walt from opening up emotionally to others. Walt could never have the conversation that Jesse has with the counselor, nor could he have ever accepted the man's advice. His only method of coping is to deny and power through - to survive and overcome, no matter the emotional cost to those around him.

And if Walt's trying to escape his drug-dealing past (even refusing a "Godfather"-level offer Gus Frings couldn't have expected him to refuse), something tells me the Cousins (and whoever sent them) won't let him. And then survival becomes a very, very open question.

Some other thoughts on "No Mas":

• Vince Gilligan, who wrote this one, gave Cranston plenty of cool material to shoot with the Cousins (who very much come off like a silent pair of Anton Chigurhs from "No Country For Old Men"): not just the opening crawl, but them silently stealing the farmer's clothes (which surprisingly fit them, since they both look bigger than him), and then blowing up the coyote truck because that one poor bastard recognized what the skulls on their boots meant (and could therefore identify them later to law-enforcement). And speaking of which...

• The Cousins are played, in fact, by a pair of brothers, only one of whom had any acting experience: Luis Moncada (the actor) and his brother Daniel (the rookie). Basically, they loved Luis's audition and asked if he had any relatives who looked like him. Both have screen presence to burn, as well as the self-possession to not flinch when the truck blew up. I asked Gilligan about that scene, just to confirm my assumption that it was a practical special effect and not something created later by computers. Vince wrote:

No CG! That was definitely a practical effect, Alan -- the two Cousins were sixty feet from the truck when it blew up (although it looks like they were even closer than that due to the long lens which was used on the camera). All that flaming stuff you see raining down around them -- and even in FRONT of them, if you look closely enough -- was truly there, and not added in afterwards. I'm so proud of Luis and Daniel Moncada for the way they pulled that off. Bryan Cranston, their director, told them we'd get only one take at it, so they'd better not flinch... and by God, they didn't!

• Between the matches Walt likes to light and then toss, the teddy bear and other airplane debris, and now the barbecue full of burning drug money, it seems like there's always something flaming landing in the White family pool, isn't there? Walt's guilt-ridden attempt to burn the money was one of his few moments of non-denial in the hour, but of course he wimped out, because burning the money would mean everything he did was for nothing.

• Loved Skyler's reaction when her new divorce lawyer tells her that spouses are adept at hiding all kinds of insane things from each other. If she only knew...

• Because Walt was so convincingly established at the start of this series as this milquetoast guy that no one would ever suspect of being a drug lord, we can have those occasional comic moments when he tells the absolute truth about himself to someone else (in this case, telling Hank that the duffel bag is full of cash) and have the other person laugh it off as Walt making a funny.

• Because this show is shot on a modest cable budget, I'm always amazed at the scope the directors and Slovis are able to create. I don't know if the school assembly scene was full of real students/extras, or if most of them were computer-generated, but it effectively conveyed how many people were affected by the airplane tragedy.

• That was Jere Burns as the rehab counselor. He's best-known as a sitcom actor. but like many comedy types, he can pretty easily make the transition to drama (see also the fella with two Emmys on his shelf for playing Walter White). The monologue about how he killed his daughter while hungry for cocaine was a very nice moment, and a reminder that Walt and Jesse aren't the only characters in this world to have caused pain, suffering and death for others.

• As Walt tried to tell Skyler, then Jesse, how complicated certain scenarios were ("there were many factors at play"), I got a real "Big Lebowski" vibe: "This is a very complicated case, Maude. You know, a lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what-have-yous."

What did everybody else think?

'Breaking Bad' season 3 review: andreikirilenkotattoo on TV

In today's column, I review "Breaking Bad" season three, which is incredibly strong in how it picks up on the events of last season. (Even if you didn't particularly like the season 2 cliffhanger, they deal with it very well.) Season 2 spoilers come up really quick, so if you're still catching up on the show - and you should be, because it kicks ass - read at your own peril.

Season premiere blog post going up Sunday at 11.