Breaking Bad: Season 2 DVD today, season premiere Sunday

Just a friendly reminder that Sunday brings the return of "Breaking Bad," one of the best dramas on television (you can read my reviews of last season here). I've seen the first three episodes of season three, and they're very strong.

Meanwhile, today is the release of "Breaking Bad: The Complete Second Season" on DVD. Giving potential new viewers only five days to catch up isn't ideal (and unlike the similarly-tight window between the "Chuck" season two DVD release and season three premiere, can't be blamed on the TV premiere date moving up unexpectedly), but the episodes really hold up (and look gorgeous on DVD), and with DVRs and On Demand, you can let season three episodes pile up until you finish.

A fairly healthy dose of extras, too: at least one commentary on each of the four discs (and Bryan Cranston and Vince Gilligan keep things very light but informative), behind-the-scenes documentaries on every episode, 11 other featurettes, deleted scenes, and a bunch of hilarious webisodes from last season. (Warning: the one involving Hank and Marie's love life may have scarred me a little.)

Column review coming Friday, blog review of the premiere coming Sunday. Get pumped.

Breaking Bad, "ABQ": Seven thirty-seven coming out of the sky

Spoilers for the "Breaking Bad" season two finale coming up just as soon as I underwrite a fun run...

"If I tell you the truth, will you stay? Stay, and I will tell you everything." -Walt
"Whatever it is, I'm afraid to know." -Skyler

I was half-tempted to eschew a finale review altogether and just post my lengthy season post-mortem interview with Vince Gilligan. As it is, I strongly suggest you start reading that first, because Vince and I talk for a while about the meaning of that final scene, how they tried to tease it out over the course of the season (starting with the titles of all the episodes featuring the teddy bear flash-forward, which combined spell out "Seven Thirty-Seven Down Over ABQ"), whether Vince feels they've played fair with the audience, etc. So go read that -- at least through the part where Vince says we shouldn't expect Walt to get crushed to death by a falling jet engine -- and I'll wait.

You're back? Good.

Now, given all the speculation about the cartel coming to get revenge on Heisenberg and/or or Gus Frings taking out an unreliable element, about which combination of characters would be in the body bags on the driveway, who the teddy bear belongs to, etc., I imagine some of you will feel disappointed, if not outright mad, to find that none of your guesses were right -- and that all of this seems the result of an act of God.

But as Vince talks about, and as the finale makes clear, if it's an act of God, it's the act of a vengeful God who wants to make "a cosmic indictment of Walt's life choices of late." Walt has brought this on himself, not just in terms of karma, but in terms of setting in motion the chain of events that led to this crash. Walt recruited Jesse as his partner, which led to Jesse losing his grandmother's house, which led to him moving in next door to Jane. Walt is the one who pressured Jesse to expand their operation, which led to Combo's death, which led to Jesse luring Jane off the wagon, and in turn to Jane introducing Jesse to heroin. Walt is the one who, in trying to shake Jesse awake, caused Jane to roll over onto her back before she began to vomit, and he's the one who declined to save her life when given the opportunity, which in turn led to Jane's father being too consumed by grief to properly do his job as an air-traffic controller...

... which led to those two planes colliding more or less directly above Walt's pool.

This is on Walt's head, every last bit of it, and so it feels right for fiery judgment to be rained down on that head.

Walt will likely never truly understand how he caused this particular catastrophe, but after the events of this finale -- after Jesse beats himself up for a death that Walt knows is really his fault, after Skyler confronts him about all she's learned (and all she doesn't want to learn) about his double life and orders him out of their house and out of his family's life -- you have to think that even Walter White, the king of denial, would be able to recognize some of the pain he's unleashed on the world.

You can see some of that recognition earlier in "ABQ," in that wonderfully squirmy scene where the TV news crew comes to film the feature on Flynn and SaveWalterWhite.com(*). Walt already hates all of this: the attention, as well as the realization that these reports will lead to actual donations from strangers, as opposed to the money-laundering operation Saul Goodman set up. But as Flynn begins to extol his father's virtues in the kind of hero-worship language every dad hopes to hear from his kids -- "He's just decent, and he always does the right thing, and that's how he teaches me to be." -- you can see how much it pains Walt, who at least has the clarity to recognize that he's not decent, that he's doing a whole lot of wrong things, and that over the course of this season (notably during the tequila incident in "Over"), he's been teaching Flynn all sorts of bad ways to be. Just a brilliant acting moment, in an episode -- and a season -- full of them for Bryan Cranston.

(*) As many people pointed out last week, the site went live after the episode aired, and actually funnels its donations to the National Cancer Coalition. Nicely-done, "Breaking Bad" people.

Just as amazing with their own showcase moments were Anna Gunn and Aaron Paul, who both got to do a lot with volume. Paul got to be big and loud and anguished at the shooting gallery, and then quiet and empty and haunting at the chi-chi rehab facility, and the quieter Gunn got in the scene where Skyler confronted Walt, the scarier and more focused her anger became.

Again, Walt's not in danger of being killed by an airplane -- I can't see the show transforming halfway through its run into a buddy cop show about a DEA agent who bottles his own beer and the sidekick who reluctantly puts up with his ethnic barbs -- but Walt finds himself in a bad place going into next season. And based on the genius that was apparent throughout this year, I can't wait for more.

Some other thoughts on "ABQ":

• Speaking of ol' Hank, he continues to be much smarter than any of us wanted to give him credit for at the start of the series. He knows Jimmy isn't Heisenberg, and sooner or later he's going to find the blue meth in another town, and maybe find a way to trace it all the way back to Gus Frings -- that is, assuming Gus the genius isn't constantly paying visits to the Albuquerque field office to go over the details of that fun run. I was alarmed when Gus got a look at Walt's picture on the cancer fund kitty, but as Vince astutely points out in our interview, a guy as clever and careful as Gus would have known Walt's brother-in-law was in the DEA a long time ago. At most, he now knows about Walt's cancer -- which, for now, seems to be a non-factor.

• And speaking of that photo, I thought it was a lovely touch by director Adam Bernstein to first show Hank holding it right in front of the Wanted posters at the field office -- which is exactly where Walt's picture should belong.

• Great casting, as usual, on both the big parts, like Jonathan Banks from "Wiseguy" as Saul's jaded investigator/fixer, and on the extras, like the bald guy Walt bumps into -- basically a shrunken, skin-and-bones funhouse mirror image of Walt himself -- while entering the shooting gallery to look for Jesse.

• Straw poll: do you want Walt's goatee to stay, or would you rather he go back to the dead caterpillar mustache? Either way, I thought the Van Dyke was a clever way to illustrate how much time had passed since the surgery -- the first notable time jump since the series began.

• The song playing over the surgery montage was "Life," by Chocolate Genius.

Well, that's it for another season of "Breaking Bad." I imagine we won't see the show back again until early 2010. I look forward to watching, and talking about it with you all.

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad: Vince Gilligan post-mortems season two

As we come to the end of "Breaking Bad" season two, it's time to talk to series creator Vince Gilligan about the implications of the teddy bear, the journey Walt has taken, and how much longer Vince sees the story going. (My review of the finale is here.) Spoilers coming up immediately, so click through carefully...

I want to start with the ending, with the planes colliding over Walt's house. When I saw that the season premiere was called "Seven Thirty-Seven," my initial thought was, "Well, this must have something to do with an airliner." And then instead it turns out to be the amount he thinks he needs to leave behind for Skyler. But now we have an actual 737, or something like it, crashing in Walt's backyard. Was that intentional?

Yes it is. And you are the first person to make that connection. Not only that, but if you look at the names of all the episodes, in particular the episodes that have the strange black and white teaser, they spell out a hidden message.

What's that?

Seven Thirty-Seven Down Over ABQ.

Wow. That's cool.

We came up with the number $737,000 dollars, then we reverse-engineered the math. And then the next episode where you have the same black and white teaser, it was called "Down."

When I saw "Over," I just assumed the title referred to Walt assuming his career as a drug dealer was over.

We worked very hard to give them proper dual meanings. So "Over" was over, and in "Down," Jesse was down and out, that's the one where he fell through the blue stuff in the toilet. "ABQ," I don't know what (else) that means, but you go with it.

So what's the point of the ending, in your mind? Why is judgment falling from the sky onto Walt?

In simple terms, we just wanted a giant moment of showmanship to end the season. And what better way than to have a rain of fire coming down around our protagnoist's ears, sort of like the judgment of God? It seemed like a big showmanship moment, and to visualize, in one fell swoop, all the terrible grief that Walt has wrought upon his loved ones, and the community at large.

And it could seem like a deus ex machina moment, but of course Walt has created that moment by letting Jane die and sending her father over the edge.

In that moment, at the end of season two, he doesn't realize it, but he's responsible for the whole world figuratively coming to an end around him. It's not deus ex machina, there's another term we were talking about, Lucifer ex machina, "Devil from the machine" -- it's the opposite. It almost could feel kind of random, but it's not. It's a butterfly effect. All these gears have been turning, this particular outcome was stuff Walt put into motion a long time ago by choosing to cook crystal meth.

In reading all the speculation on what the teddy bear sequence might mean, nobody has come close to guessing this.

Good. (evil laughter) I figured somebody was going to guess it, but I'm glad nobody has. It's not about fooling people. It's about surprising people, and delighting them. "Delight" is a weird word to use with such awful plot twists. But people like to be surprised.

Let me play devil's advocate for a moment. I liked the ending, but I can imagine some people � who had built it up in their minds that the Mexican cartel was coming for Walt, and/or that the bodies in the bags were Skyler and Ted Beneke, or whatever -- feeling cheated that it's not remotely what they thought it was going to be.

There may be some folks who feel that way. By and large I hope they don't feel that way. If folks figure it out for themselves, or learn about the meaning of the names of the episodes, they'd realize we were planning this for a very long time. It's not a random event, but in fact a cosmic indictment of Walt's life choices of late. And my philosophy is if you can guess it's the cartel, and it turns out to be the cartel � well, as a viewer, I'd rather be surprised.

Is this the ending you didn't get to do at the end of season one because of the strike?

We never dreamed of this way back in season one. This is something that came to us in the first few weeks of mapping out season two. The big ending we were going to do (back then), it involved bad things happening to Hank and his partner, but I don't want to give away much more than that, because we may go back to that well later on. It was a lot of death and destruction and personal suffering on Hank's part and Walt's part.

Is it a safe assumption that the bodies in those bags on the driveway are just random airplane passengers?

Yes.

And is it also a safe assumption that you're not going to kill off your leading man midway through the series by dropping an airplane on him?

We're back in the writers' room now, plotting out season three. I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say Walt is front and center, as always. The way I see it, if a jet engine fell on his head and crushed him, he'd be getting off too easy. He's not getting off nearly that easy.

Well, let's talk about that. When the series started, Walt was the sympathetic one, and Jesse was, if not the bad one, then the one we didn't really trust or relate to. And now the roles have reversed, and Walt's the monster in need of judgment, and Jesse is more and more his victim.

We want to be as honest as we can be about a character who chooses a life of crime, who actively chooses to do bad instead of good. This character takes us where he takes us. I noticed in one of your postings where you quoted me about how this show is going to take Mr. Chips and turn him into Scarface. That's where it takes us. You can't be Scarface just on the surface. You have to be Scarface all the way through, right to your core. Otherwise, you're just pretending to be Scarface.

The character continues to surprise us, the writers, in the writer's room. "What would he do now?" "I think he would do this." "Maybe he should do this instead." It's a little hard to believe for folks who don't spend every waking moment in the writer's room plotting out a fictional character's life, but they do kind of come to life for us. They become, in a sense, separate from us. They demand certain moments and bits of behavior that we, in a sense, don't want to give them. It sounds a little precious to put it that way, but they do. If we're going to be honest about a guy who sets out to be a criminal, we have to see where it takes itself.

Walt really has, in our minds, too, turned into something of a monster, throughout this whole 20 episodes we've done so far. The conceit that he's doing this all for his family, has gone by the wayside quite a long time ago. To me, that's what's interesting about the show, and makes me get out of bed every morning, enthused to be a part of it, is we're not leaving this character static. We're changing him in increments, sometimes small, sometimes large, and we don't know exactly where he's going to end up. If you leave aside the cancer storyline, the incremental changes Walt makes week in and week out, tells us that the show can't go indefinitely. It has to wrap up in X number of seasons. It can't go on like "Law & Order," which is a great show, but not the same kind of show as our show.

When we spoke before this season, you said you envisioned the show running four seasons, which would put us at the halfway point now. Did anything about this season change that estimation in your mind?

I haven't added to that. We appreciate the kind reviews, and anecdotally the folks we hear from who are watching, but that doesn't change my mind: "Oh, we can go five seasons." You don't want to leave anything on the table, but you don't want to overstay your welcome, either. You want to leave 'em wanting more. I think we can get through four. That's my hope. I'm not speaking for the company, for AMC or Sony, just for myself.

When you say the characters do things that you as writers don't always expect or want them to do, were there any moments this year where their behavior was particularly surprising or troubling?

There were two moments. The biggest was Walt watching Jane choke to death. I've gotta say, AMC and Sony are ballsy. AMC particularly, they don't ever second-guess us. They don't ever say, "Gee, is this too out there? Is this too raw-boned or rough-edged?" Having said that, the one time this season they were a little freaked out was when we sent them the outline, they went, "Wait, Walt lets her choke to death on her own vomit?" They were right to worry about the audience losing their desire to want to watch the guy: "Are they going to lose their empathy for him forever?" I said, "I don't know." We danced around it, talked about shooting multiple endings where he leaves and she chokes to death out of his sight. But then we said, "Go big or go home." That was our ethos for last season: go big or go home. We figured in for a penny, in for a pound. We've come this far, let's be honest about it. I give 'em great credit. We talked about it and talked about it, and they almost convinced us not to do it. They didn't give us any grief about it, they raised their concerns, we said, "This is the way we want to go," and they said, "Go for it."

The other moment was in the episode before that, written by George Mastras, he's the father of two little girls. That was his episode, and the way it works is we break the outline in the room together, and the individual writer goes off and writes it. We got to the ending of that episode, and we said, "He should be ready to go to the biggest drug deal of his life, and that's when the baby comes, because Murphy's Law says it's going to be at the most inconvenient moment, and he decides to go through with the drug deal." George really was, "I hate this guy! I don't want to write that!" I kinda sorta cajoled him into writing it. I think it was a great ending for Walt and for that episode, but the writer of it wasn't too sure of writing it that way. But he wrote it, and did a great job at it.

Some people said they spotted the teddy bear at the abandoned motel where Walt does the deal with Gus's people.

People have got amazing eyes. That's why I'm surprised nobody figured out the plane crash thing. I'm told the teddy bear was in one shot there. I think the writer and director of the episode took it upon themselves to tuck it into a corner, in a "Where's Waldo?" way.

So there's no deeper meaning to its presence there?

No. Just a little Easter Egg for the people who notice things on that level.

In the finale, Skyler finally puts enough of what Walt is doing together to want him out of her life. But what's she telling Flynn about why his dad can't live at home anymore?

Good question, and that's been a big focus of conversation in the writers room here in season three. I can't tell you too much. It's stuff you'll see in the first episode, but I can give you this: I don't think she's telling folks too much. You're asking the right question, let me put it that way. When a woman is going to leave her husband, everybody needs to hear a reason. What reason do you give if the reason you're leaving is that you don't know what he's involved in, and you don't want to know. What do you tell folks?

One of the interesting things about Skyler was that she seemed to be more morally upright than Walt, but then we get these implications that she had something going on with Ted Beneke, and then she continues to work with him after finding out he's been cooking the books.

I have a real penchant for starting the obvious, but what's great about human nature is we have an infinite capacity to rationalize our behavior. It's at the heart of "Breaking Bad." -- what makes (these characters) empathetic to an audience. If we're being honest with ourselves, we know we rationalize things we do, thoughts we have, hundreds of times a day. "I ran a red light, but nobody got hurt, and I have to get to work to feed my family." We all rationalize things. "I didn't tell the truth to my best friend, because it's a white lie, it's not a dark lie." Name anything. But those who are capable of rationalizing little can also rationalize big. There are a lot of evil Nazis, but then there were a lot of morally weak Germans who said they were just following orders. "I was part of the killing fields in Cambodia, but if I didn't do it, somebody else would have, and they would have killed me for refusing." Where do you draw the line?

It interests me how people can sort of explain things away to themselves in order to be able to sleep at night. Walt is a version of this writ very large and writ very dramatically. He really is one of us. To my way of thinking, I understand why folks might find him uncomfortable to watch. his behavior's getting worse. People may have tuned in assuming he was just sticking it to the man, trying to help his family. But more and more, it's not that.

Well, does this leave Flynn as the only morally uncompromised character left on the show?

I guess you could put it that way. And who knows what season three will bring? But I'd like to refine it a little more. It's not about us wanting to compromise our characters. It's about us wanting to deepen the audience's understanding of them, to make them more three-dimensional. Skyler was never a balloon of moral rectitude that we wished to pop. Rather, we wanted to know more about her, and surprise the audience and herself, when she agreed to go back to work with Ted Beneke after she found out he was cooking the books.

Walt's cancer hasn't been cured, but thanks to the treatment and the surgery, he's doing a lot better than he was at the start of the series. Why did you decide to do that?

It's two things. One is a somewhat mechanical element, which is, we're having fun telling this story and we want to milk it for everything that's worth. As is often the case in real life, sometimes cancer treatments are efficacious. They do some good, some folks get a diagnosis and die within two months, or they live eight years. I'm not saying Walt will go that route, but it happens.

The more interesting aspect, story-wise, is that when you take Walt's biggest reason for what he's doing off the table, then you're left with a character who needs to be looking at himself very closely, and why he continues to do these bad things that he does. That he continues to do these things says a lot about him. I always said from the get-go, if we had a character who was simply doing what he does for his family -- he cooks a big load of meth this week, and then leaves the money in the dryer too long, it burns up, and he's back at square one -- you can't put him back at square one for too long. You have to go the whole nine yards and look at this guy closely. Once he gets his 737,000 dollars, he'll rationalize the need to have more. Once cancer isn't first and foremost in his mind, he still continues to cook. Why does he do this? He becomes in some ways, less and less likable, but to my mind, more and more fascinating. Why does he do the things he does?

And you have Cranston to play that transition from sympathetic family guy to monster.

God, yeah. There's a lot of great actors out there who could do all the technical aspects of acting that are called for in this show, but they wouldn't have the likability. You wouldn't want to watch him after some point. Bryan allows us to stay on the air because people want to keep watching him.

Can you talk about what the additions of Saul and Gus have brought to the show this year?

The more (the show goes along), the more that Walt loses his soul. I liken it to him taking a hammer and chisel and chipping away at his own soul. The darker things potentially get, the more I feel a desire to have more humor. I want humor in the show, as much as it can reasonably exist. Saul Goodman is a good outlet for that. He's not a clown -- he's a character who seems clownish on the surface but is better than that. He's a character who doesn't lie to himself. He knows he's a dirty lawyer, he knows he's in it for the money. He doesn't have any illusions that some day he's going to chuck all this and make it to the Supreme Court. That is such a 180 degree difference from a guy like Walt who does nothing but lie to himself. To me, it's refreshing on two levels: the humor is refreshing, and that he doesn't lie to himself.

Gus is, I think, going to be a similar guy to Saul. I don't mean to say he's funny or doesn't possess gravitas, because he does. But he knows his place in the universe. It's a different thing, in a sense, though, because he presents a very different face to the rest of the world than the one he possesses. Gus seems like a pillar of the community, good businessman, honest as the day is long. Like Walt, he pretends to be somebody he's not. But unlike Walt, I think he really knows who he is. He can lie to anybody else in his life, but he can never lie to himself.

And in the finale, we see him finding out a whole lot about Walt during his visit to Hank's office.

The way we see it, in the writer's room, is that was not a surprise. Gus is, in our minds, like Bobby Fishcer. He's a master chess player, always thinking 12 or 20 moves ahead. He would never have gotten into business with Walt in the first place without doing due diligence: "Oh, he's a high school chemistry teacher, he has a brother-in-law in the DEA," etc. In my mind, Gus would be less than he is if he was to be surprised by that. It was interesting for us, putting those two worlds together.

While I enjoyed the first season of the show, it feels like there was a significant jump up in quality this year. What lessons did you learn from that first year that helped you this year?

I'd never run my own TV show before. I'd been a good number two or number three on a well-run TV show and learned from observation. But being in the captain's chair, as it were, a lot of season one was spent with me nervous all the time. I'm nervous all the time still, but it derives from me being nervous about making the show as good as possible, where last year it was nervousness about whether I could do the job. That anxiety kind of goes away at some point.

Everybody knows the job better now, my writers know the characters and the job better. The crew is running like a well-oiled machine. In season one, as with any new show, these things happen with fits and starts. I think there's a lot of good reasons. And the actors, as wonderful as they were from day one, everything gets better the more you do it.

Alan andreikirilenkotattoo can be reached at aandreikirilenkotattoo@starledger.com

'Breaking Bad' ends killer second season - andreikirilenkotattoo on TV

In today's column, I look back on the brilliance of this season of "Breaking Bad," which you would know all about if you've been reading my episode reviews.

Back Sunday night with a review of the finale, and a Vince Gilligan interview.

Breaking Bad, "Phoenix": There's no real way to dust for vomit

Abbreviated, holiday-length spoilers for the penultimate episode of "Breaking Bad" season two coming up just as soon as I move to New Zealand...

"Want to see what your daddy did for you? That's right: Daddy did that. Daddy did that for you." -Walt

I spend a lot of time in these "Breaking Bad" reviews making comparisons to other movies and TV shows about crime and the drug trade, because creator Vince Gilligan openly invites them. His pitch for the show was and is "We're going to take Mr. Chips and turn him into Scarface." Various storylines and moments have echoes of "The Godfather," or "The Wire," or "The Sopranos," not least of which was Saul Goodman offering to be Walt's Tom Hagen a few weeks back.

The scene at the end of "Phoenix" wasn't quite as overt in its homage as the Hagen scene. For all I know, it may not have been intended as homage at all. But if you've seen "The Sopranos" (and if you haven't but plan to at some point, you may want to stop reading this review immediately) it's impossible to watch and not think of Tony snuffing out Christopher's life after their car accident in "Kennedy and Heidi."

Now, Tony actively chooses to smother Christopher, while Walt simply lets Jane choke on her own vomit rather than turn her on her side (as Jane had done for Jesse earlier in the episode), but beyond that, it's the same scene: our crime lord protagonist doesn't go into the scene intending to kill anyone (or let anyone die through inaction), but when an opportunity presents itself to eliminate a troublesome junkie acquaintance -- someone who doesn't even pose a current threat, but who might one day be a problem -- he can't resist taking advantage of it.

The Tony/Christopher scene was notable as the moment when even the most devout Tony worshippers could no longer deny that they had been rooting for the bad guy all these years, and I imagine Walt's moment here will have a similarly clarifying effect about the monster that Walt has become.

One person who remains firmly in denial, though, is Walt himself. Just listen to how tenderly he speaks as he shows baby Holly the money he's acquired through such unspeakable crimes, or the look of horrified self-pity on Walt's face after he lets Jane die(*). In his mind, Walt is still the hero of his own story, making hard but necessary decisions to protect his family.

(*) Insert boilerplate "Bryan Cranston is an acting god" commentary here.

At the same time, "Phoenix" (written by John Shiban and directed by Colin Bucksey) gives us a stinging reminder of just how unnecessary this has all been, with the subplot about "Flynn" setting up a website to get PayPal donations to help pay for his dad's expensive cancer surgery. When Walt tells Skyler that "It's charity," the disgust in his voice at that word brings back how much Walt's pride has driven all of this. He could have just gone to Gretchen and Elliott himself, or at least dropped out of the drug game once they made their offer, but he refused, because Walter White is too damn proud to accept help from outsiders. And because of that pride, a lot of people are dead -- and, I imagine, a lot more will be dead soon.

Some other thoughts on "Phoenix":

• Two notes on SaveWalterWhite.com: first, the site design looks like something you might have seen on Geocities in 1999. Second, at the time I write this, the URL directs you back to AMC's official "Breaking Bad" page, but for all I know, they have a fake version of Flynn's site that went live once the episode aired.

• Another "Sopranos" parallel, intentional or not: when Walt is drinking with Jane's dad at the bar, he refers to Jesse as his "nephew," which is the same term Tony always used to describe Christopher, even though they were more like distant cousins. And, like Tony with Christopher, Walt really is starting to think of Jesse like a surrogate son, which makes his frustration with Jesse -- and his horror at what he just did to him -- that much greater. For all the terrible things Walt does in this episode, and in the series as a whole, I believe he really did mean to do right by Jesse by denying him the cash until he got clean.

• John DeLancie got quite a bit more to do after little more than a cameo a few episodes back. One thing to keep in mind about guest stars on this show: Vince Gilligan talks a lot on the podcasts about how the show can't afford to bring in actors from Los Angeles unless the part is significant. So if you see a guest star you recognize, chances are they're going to be doing something of note.

• Speaking of Jane's dad, are we to assume that he's also a recovering addict -- which means that his recent struggles with Jane had kicked him off the wagon? Or is it customary for sober family members to escort loved ones to 12-step meetings? From what little I know of that world, it seems that if you need to be dragged to them, you're not really ready to work the program.

• I like how, when Jesse comes back to his old classroom to confront Walt and demand his money, Walt deals with him the same way he dealt with the student trying to con his way into a higher test score a few episodes back.

• Check out the way Walt reacts to the realization that Ted Beneke is in Skyler's hospital room, and that he was there the whole time while Walt was off selling meth to Gus Frings. Walt knows there's something between his wife and Beneke, and he doesn't like it one bit.

Season finale next week. I'm not ready for this to be over just yet.

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad, "Mandala": Jane's addiction

Spoilers for tonight's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I refer you to our website...

"You can never trust a drug addict." -Gus

Three times in "Mandala," a character (first Jane, then Skyler, then Walt) is faced with a decision between what is right and what will feed their craving (for Jane, using drugs; for Skyler, Ted Beneke; for Walt, the chance to keep dealing drugs and making money). Three times, that character closes their eyes for a moment and tries to convince him or herself to resist temptation and do the right thing.

And three times, they give in.

Jane walks back to Jesse's bedroom, smokes some crystal with him, and eventually introduces him to the joys of heroin. Skyler gets out of her car and returns to work at Beneke. Walt ignores Skyler's text about going into labor, hoists a garbage bag full of meth, and goes to meet the mysterious Gus for the biggest sale of his career.

Drug dealers prey on human weakness, and in becoming a dealer, Walt has inadvertently attacked the weaknesses of the people all around him. He pushed Jesse into expanding their territory, which led to a rival drug gang murdering Jesse's buddy Combo, which led to Jesse wanting to get lost smoking meth -- and, after dragging Jane down with him, shooting up. He made Skyler feel so alienated that she would seek out Ted Beneke's company, even though she doesn't want to cheat on her husband, and even though she doesn't want to work for a man who cheats on his bookkeeping. And for Walt, the dealing itself has become like a drug, one that makes him feel more powerful and alive than he has in years, if ever, and so he's even willing to choose a drug deal over witnessing the birth of his daughter.

It would seem impossible for anyone within the circle of influence of this drug world to make smart, careful choices -- or, it would, if in the same episode we weren't also introduced to the mysterious Gus.

Played by Giancarlo Esposito, Gus (aka Gustavo) appears to be everything Walt aspires to be: a careful, successful drug lord who not only acts like a legitimate businessman, but owns a series of legitimate businesses. (This week in "The Wire"-to-"Breaking Bad" translation would have Gus as the best parts of Stringer Bell and Prop Joe.) Walt believes he and Gus are kindred spirits, but Gus knows better, telling him, "I don't think we're alike at all, Mr. White." Between Walt's ignorance of the drug game, his reliance on Jesse and his own stubborn pride and need to make money as fast as possible, Walt has repeatedly made the kind of mistakes that could end a career -- or a life. He may be careful and have a plan when he cooks the blue meth, but the rest of the time, he's improvising -- and usually badly.

It's curious, I thought, that after Gus decided to do business with Walt, he would give him a first assignment with such a tight time window that it would make nearly any man get sloppy. Maybe the idea is that only a man as careful and organized as Gus would be able to get his hands on that much supply so quickly. Or is there a chance this is all a set-up -- that Gus has determined Walt is a man he can get over on, and get ahold of a large supply of quality meth for nothing? (I'm guessing not; seems like too much potential risk for a relatively small reward.)

We're reaching a point with this series where it feels like praising the actors is almost unnecessary -- that the brilliance of Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul and the rest is so obvious that it can go without saying. But one of the trickiest things an actor can do is to simply show the audience what their character is thinking, and in "Mandala," the cast -- Cranston in the kitchen, Paul while Jesse is floating above his bedroom while high on dope, Anna Gunn in the car, and Krysten Ritter at the doorway -- all nailed those moments. (Ritter in particular, since we have so little to work with on Jane and she still told me a very long story during that pause.)

Even if Walt somehow pulls off this deal, I think we all know things are falling apart -- and would know it even without the Teddy Bear of Doom imagery. As Walt himself finally admits to Saul Goodman, "This entire process has been so... it's always been one step forward, and two steps back." And so long as each character is consumed with feeding his or her addiction, no real progress can be made.

Some other thoughts on "Mandala":

• I like that Skyler is, yet again, drawn to a man who commits a crime for what he claims to be a selfless reason, though at least she knows about it in Ted's case. And her performance of Marilyn Monroe's version of "Happy Birthday" -- reprising something she did the last time she worked for Beneke -- provides even more evidence that what went on wasn't sexual harassment, but some kind of mutual-consent flirtation, if not a full-blown affair.

• Dazzling work on the entire heroin sequence, with Jesse appearing to float up to the ceiling of his bedroom, as "Enchanted" by The Platters plays. Check that look of pure bliss (and relief) on Aaron Paul's face and you can see that Jesse is not going to want to stop doing this anytime soon.

• Shows like "House" and "Six Feet Under" (where the victim was never who it seemed to be at first) have conditioned me to look for twists in pre-credits sequences, but I have to admit to being completely suckered in by this one. I thought for sure that all the shots of the little boy on his bike meant he was going to be collateral damage in the hit on Combo, but instead, he was the killer. Nicely done.

• Now that Walt has told Skyler that Gretchen and Elliot have cut off the money tap, how does he intend to explain his ability to pay for the $200,000 surgery? Also, note how the roles have now reversed: where before it was Skyler who had to push Walt to get any kind of treatment, now he's the one aggressively pursuing it while she wants to at least think. Now that Walt knows he has a chance to live -- and has accepted that he can live as a drug dealer -- he's embracing it.

• The surgeon was played by veteran character actor Sam McMurray -- who, coincidentally or not, played Uncle Junior's brilliant oncologist (named John Kennedy) in a latter-era "Sopranos" episode.

• Saul Goodman's helpfulness proves to not be unlimited here -- he needs to reach out to "a guy who knows a guy who... knows another guy" to get ahold of Gus, and he has no Plan B when that meeting fails -- but he's still funny, telling a bickering Walt and Jesse, "Who do I look like, Maury Povich? I Am not your marriage counselor."

• Would the reveal that the fast food manager was really Walt and Jesse's contact have worked better with a less recognizable actor? Or was the point supposed to be that we identified the guy but it took Walt longer to do so?

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad, "Over": Let it rot

Spoilers for tonight's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I do tequila shots with my kid...

"I'm not exactly sure who that was yesterday, but it wasn't me." -Walt

Oh yes it was, Walt. Yes it was.

After giving us our most extended tease yet of what I've taken to calling The Curious Incident of the Burnt Teddybear in the Daytime(*), "Over" dials back on the action and shows Walt struggling to deal with a longer life than he expected before the good news he got at the end of "4 Days Out."

(*) So in addition to the charred bear and Walt's glasses, we now have the smashed-up windshield to his car, not to mention two corpses laid out on his driveway. Should we assume the cartel shows up on his doorstep? Or is there a chance this could all be the result of an accident? Might Walt have done an uncharacteristically sloppy job installing the new water heater?

As you might expect him to, Walt tries to leave the world of crystal meth behind (other than accepting his share of the profits from the last batch they cooked in the desert), trying to be a more attentive husband and father, and even doing some long-overdue repair work on the house.

But this is not who Walt really wants to be. He wrecks the party Skyler throws to celebrate his remission by pouring one drink of tequila after another into Walter Jr., finally stepping to Hank for the sin of daring to play surrogate father figure to Jr. while Walt's been distracted these past months. And as Jr. vomits into the pool and Skyler, Hank and the other guests look hurt, Walt looks like he's been bathing in schadenfreude, like he can only enjoy the party if everyone else feels as miserable as he does to live this straight life.

(Good lord, does Bryan Cranston make a good/bad mean drunk.)

The remainder of the episode wears its subtext on its sleeve, as Walt gets around to replacing the decaying water heater. Just as his meth career seemed to be more about damage control than cooking meth, he finds that fixing the water heater only exposes another problem, in the rotted foundation that only he can see.

"Just cut it out and start fresh," he says, but that's easier to do with floor boards than with the rot in his soul. And as Walt makes yet another trip to the hardware store and stumbles across an aspiring meth cooker loading up on supplies, he recognizes once and for all that the only thing that gives him personal satisfaction -- that makes this extended life he's gotten worth living -- is playing drug lord, and he chases the cook and his partner away with a menacing threat to "Stay out of my territory."

When Walt announces his plans for retirement, Jesse takes it very well, understandably. First, he was expecting Walt to be dead, and is simply happy that the guy's still alive. Second, where Walt feels more vital the deeper he gets into this drug empire, Jesse is still a little scared of it, and he can understand why someone might want to get out. Both of these attitudes, by the way, put him one up on Walt, I fear; were the roles reversed, Walt wouldn't take kindly to Jesse's attempt to get out of the business if it inconvenienced him.

And with Walt spending the episode in semi-retirement, and the drug operation apparently running itself well for the moment, Jesse gets to focus on the state of his relationship with Jane -- and the realization that he's more invested in it than she is.

While I like Krysten Ritter's addition to the show, this subplot was the least compelling part of "Over." It provided some more hints about Jane, and about her dad (who was more than ready to use a key to go into Jane's house on his own), but it mainly felt like set-up for something coming down the road.

We have three more episodes to go this season, and where last year the show was only starting to find itself when the strike shut things down ahead of schedule, this year the show has been brilliant from the start, and I feel confident that it's all building to something explosive -- regardless of what happens to that poor teddy bear.

Some other thoughts on "Over":

• Skyler and Walt have been getting on much better ever since he lied to her about Gretchen and Elliot, but part of that was predicated on her belief that, if Walt ever got better, he'd become happier, and easier to live with. But that's not what he's about, and as his ceaseless misery becomes more obvious to her, she starts going after Ted Beneke, even knocking over her pencil cup to lure him into her office at the end of a shift. How do you think Walt will react if he finds out another man's been invading his personal turf?

• Jane's dad was played by John de Lancie, probably best known as Q from "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

• Dean Norris always gets off one or two hilarious lines an episode. This week, it was his deadpan delivery of "Wow. Inspirational." in response to Walt's depressing toast at the party.

• Loved Jesse quoting the infamous"This is your drugs. This is your brain on drugs." commercial while cooking eggs. (I prefer that ad's simplicity to the sequel with Rachael Leigh Cook.)

• I talked about director of photography Michael Slovis' gorgeous work in my review of "4 Days Out." Phil Abraham, the director of "Over," was himself a longtime DP (notably on "The Sopranos"), and between the two of them, we get a number of the requisite haunting shots, whether it's Walt hanging upside down in the crawl space like an alien invader, or the light of the sunset oscillating like a UFO beacon. (Possibly piloted by Walt?)

• I liked Jesse's superhero sketches, particularly Kanga-Man (who, as Jane points out, is kind of a Kanga-She-Male), and Rewindo, whose power is to run away really fast. Jesse may want to invoke that power the next time Walt proposes an exponential expansion plan.

• Walt's money literally has blood on it. Maybe he needs to literally launder it again, like he did in the first season. That, or ask Saul Goodman where he can get some clean, crisp bills.

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad, "4 Days Out": Flight of the RV

Spoilers for tonight's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I enjoy some Funions...

"Why couldn't I have just gone to Santa Fe? Why?" -Jesse

"All the lies -- I can't even keep them straight in my head anymore." -Walt

"4 Days Out" -- another winner in a season full of them -- is the "Breaking Bad" take on "Flight of the Phoenix" (travelers trapped in desert have to find a way to get their wrecked vehicle working again) by way of the "Pine Barrens" episode of "The Sopranos" (bumbling criminals bicker while stranded in the wilderness). It strands Walt and Jesse in the middle of the desert, the battery of their mobile meth lab drained, and nothing to do but dwell on what they've allowed themselves to become -- and what role, if any, the other man played in that transformation.

Jesse should have just gone to Santa Fe to admire "vagina pictures" with Jane instead of facing death by dehydration with his hated former chemistry teacher/current partner. But then, he should never have let Walt talk him into stepping up his game from being low-level Cap'n Cook. When he was Cap'n Cook, the profits were meager, but so was the risk. There was a way out. Now the stakes are too high, the attention (from the DEA and, eventually, from the cartel) too big, and his partner is too arrogant and reckless. Though they managed to avoid dying in the RV with $1.34 million (after expenses) worth of crystal, this isn't the first time that Jesse's association with Walt has brought him close to death, nor will it be the last.

Walt, meanwhile, is usually too busy cleaning up the latest mess he and/or Jesse has made for self-reflection. But stuck in that RV, fearing imminent death twice over -- even if they can get the battery going, he assumes he has only a short time left to live, based on his (mis)reading of the PET scan -- Walt has this moment of clarity where he realizes all he's done, all the lies he's told, all the people who have been and will be hurt by his actions. But because Walt's ultimately more selfish than he tells himself he is, it turns from a moment of self-realization to one of self-pity, and he's prepared to lie there and wallow and let the chemical engine that is his body slowly and painfully stop working.

But then Jesse is able to rouse Walt from his stupor, and we're reminded that, for all his many faults, he's still a genius chemist(*), and he finds a way to cobble together keys, spare change and sponges into making a battery strong enough to jump-start the RV.

(*) He is not, however, a genius chemistry teacher. He tries to turn the battery-building process into a science lesson for Jesse, who never quite gets it, thinking that "a wire" is the elemental answer Walt's looking for.

And having evaded the first kind of death -- and then discovering, to his amazement (and lack of relief), that the experimental cancer treatment has succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations -- Walt's left to wonder, what now? He and Jesse come to an understanding, but it seems predicated on Jesse's assumption that Walt will die soon. For that matter, his entire criminal career was predicated on that same assumption -- that Walt wouldn't survive long enough to ever have to live with the things he was doing.

In the final scene of the episode -- brilliantly played, as always, by Bryan Cranston -- Walt studies his reflection in the bathroom mirror, than in the gleaming paper towel dispenser. He does not like any of what he sees, so much so that he begins systematically pounding on the dispenser until it's so badly dented that all he can see is a warped reflection, completely unrecognizable as the man he was, or the man he's become.

Sam Catlin's script overplayed the foreshadowing of how Walt and Jesse would be stranded -- there's a fine line between introducing Chekhov's gun in the first act and introducing his gun, his bazooka, his machete, and his surface-to-air missile collection -- but once we got past that point, Catlin very wisely placed his trust in his actors, and in director Michelle MacLaren and director of photography Michael Slovis to capture the harsh beauty of the desert and the direness of the situation.

I've commented a lot this season on how beautiful the episodes look, and "4 Days Out" felt like a cut above even that. Image after image -- the glowing orange light of the desert, the cool blues of the chemicals mixing together, the tableaux of the RV resting in the tall grass or Walt and Jesse enjoying the night air after a hard day's work -- looked absolutely gorgeous, and captured the dual-edged nature of what's happening here. The meth itself is destructive, both to its users and to Walt and Jesse's lives for making it, but the actual process of making it is a work of art. The desert could kill them without fuel or adequate supplies, but there are far, far uglier resting places. Even the clinic where Walt gets the good news -- so shiny and clean and modern (and with a fountain overflowing with the kind of water Walt will badly need a few days later -- isn't quite what it seems, in that he really, really doesn't want the treatment to work.

But it has -- enough that he actually has a realistic shot at beating the cancer. Now what the hell does he do?

Some other thoughts on "4 Days Out":

• Saul Goodman is obviously still in the picture, now introducing him to the world of money-laundering, as well as snark: "Congratulations, you just left your family a second-hand Subaru." That scene was also a nice reminder that nothing ever goes quite as planned for Walt and Jesse, and that maybe they should wait before spending that 600 grand apiece.

• Did Jesse have that tattoo on his chest before he met Jane, or are we supposed to assume she gave it to him? And what are the chances she got a look at that incriminating pizza box?

• Speaking of Jane, I thought it was a very nice touch that she was eating Cap'n Crunch cereal in Jesse's kitchen. Of course The Artist Formerly Known As Capn'n Cook would eat Cap'N Crunch.

• Two notable songs on the soundtrack this week: "Good Morning Freedom" by Blue Mink as Walt and Jesse drove out to the desert, then "One By One" by The Black Seeds over the montage of Walt and Jesse cooking like a well-oiled machine.

• Meta humor in action: the oncologist jokes with Skyler, "Is that baby ever going to come out, you think?" Sky's pregnancy is an easy way to chart how much (or how little) time has passed since the start of the series, but because of the hiatus between seasons, it really does feel like she's been pregnant forever, doesn't it?

• That scene also provided a rare moment where we got to see all of Walt's family happy at the same time, even though Walt himself wasn't so much happy as stunned.

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad, "Better Call Saul": The cost of doing business

Spoilers for tonight's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I put a dollar in your pocket...

"You don't want a criminal lawyer. You want a criminal lawyer." -Jesse

"Breaking Bad" is a show that's usually driven far more by character than plot, but every now and then we get an episode like "Better Call Saul" that moves the storyline dramatically forward. But what's great about it is how the plot is still motivated by what the characters want.

Badger, Jesse's knucklehead chief dealer, gets busted by an undercover cop (guest star DJ Qualls) -- after falling victim to the urban legend about cops having to identify themselves if asked -- and aspiring but largely clueless criminal masterminds Jesse and Walt have to turn to the city's most prominent sleazebag defense lawyer, the titular Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk, sporting a spectacularly ugly combover) to sort out the mess, which includes Hank trying to pressure Badger to flip on the mysterious Mr. Heisenberg.

When Walt and Jesse don ski masks and try to threaten Saul into getting Badger off without letting him rat on them, Saul asks the question anyone might ask of the drug lords these two claim to be: "Why don't you just kill Badger?"

In a traditional criminal enterprise of the scope that Walt wants to achieve, that'd be the simple answer: much less expensive than the scam Saul eventually puts together for them, and less complicated, too. And you can see Walt -- who, after all, has killed before, and who's been pushing the business expansion -- considering it, where Jesse -- who has yet to kill anyone, and who's been pushed into this by Walt -- will absolutely not have his friend killed, stupid or not. And because Walt needs Jesse -- and because he does, on some level, feel guilty for what he's done to the kid (specifically the Spooge incident), Walt yields, even though it wipes out virtually all of their profits to date.

But having helped them pull off this convoluted plan, Saul tries to insert himself as Tom Hagen to Walt's Vito Corleone, which could be either the best or worst thing to happen to Walt's criminal career to date. Saul knows how to get things done -- or at least gives the appearance that he does -- and could certainly point out all the mistakes we've all noticed Walt and Jesse making, in the same way that Maury Levy on "The Wire" was essentially the third leader of the Barksdale/Bell empire. But he also believes they're soft touches -- and has no idea that Walt killed Emilio and Krazy 8 -- and as Spooge's former lawyer he knows that Jesse's street rep is built on a lie. So he could view them as easy marks to bleed, in the same way (to continue "The Wire" comparison) Clay Davis swindled Stringer Bell.

And whether Saul turns out to be savior or scam artist, there's the larger matter of Hank. I was mistaken when I suggested last week that he would rise high in the El Paso office after surviving the exploding tortoise attack. Clearly, the survivors pointed out that Hank was having a freak-out right before the turtle shell blew, and so he's been sent back to the less dangerous -- but, for Hank, far more comfortable -- environs of Albuquerque. And even though he's still faking his way through the job (his psych-up routine in the elevator looked an awful lot like Jesse standing on Spooge's porch and rehearsing his threats), Hank's not stupid; he sees that something's all wrong with this Jimmy character being Heisenberg. Even if it's unfathomable to him that his goofy brother-in-law without the "experiential overlap" could be the drug lord he's looking for, I doubt he's going to stop looking, and unless Saul is as good as he claims, sooner or later Hank's going to cross Walt's path when Walt doesn't want him to, instead of vice versa.

Some other thoughts on "Better Call Saul":

• The scene where Walt shows up to help talk Hank out of the bedroom was very nicely-played by both Bryan Cranston and Dean Norris (and scripted by Peter Gould). The show keeps doing these moments where it seems like Walt is on the verge of confessing his criminal life to someone (the shrink, Skyler, Hank), and instead he manages to find a version of the truth that somehow doesn't include crystal meth but proves applicable to the situation. Though he's inexperienced at the crime game, in some ways, Saul Goodman could learn a lot from Walt when it comes to BS.

• Another call I was wrong on: that Skank would in some way be able to implicate Jesse in Spooge's murder. Instead, Saul calls it an open and shut case, so either she was so high she forgot "Diesel" was even there at all, or the cops decided it was so obvious she killed him that they didn't much care about her alternate theory of the crime.

• We get a major piece of the Jane puzzle when she tosses Jesse her 18-month sobriety chip. That both explains her initial reticence and her eventual attraction: she knows Jesse is bad for her, but her willpower only goes so far.

• I loved the return of the coin flip as the ultimate decider in any Walt/Jesse dispute. One of my favorite comic scenes from season one was Jesse ranting about the sanctity of the coin flip when they were arguing over who had to kill Krazy 8 and who had to dispose of Emilio.

• Skyler's largely off-screen this week, other than a glimpse of her showing off a lot of pregnant cleavage while preparing for a weekend business meeting with new/old boss Ted. I know there was some speculation last week that the thing with Ted was less sexual harassment than mutual flirtation (if not a full-blown affair); does that outfit send any kind of signal, or would it be logistically challenging for a woman in Skyler's condition to not put the girls on display a little?

• If you haven't already seen it, last week the LA Times had a story about the fake narcocorrido music video that opened "Negro Y Azul."

• James Poniewozik argued that "Breaking Bad" consistently has the best pre-credits sequence of any show on television right now, and I'd have to agree. The undercover sting on Badger was more low-key than things like the narcocorrido song, or all our glimpses of the burned teddy bear, but I admired how, in typical "Breaking Bad" fashion, it took its sweet time getting to the punchline, lingering forever (in a single shot) on Badger letting himself get outsmarted by the cop.

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad, "Negro Y Azul": Walter and the Blowfish

Spoilers for tonight's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I order a few items from the SkyMall catalog...

"Tortuga means 'Turtle.' That's me: I take my time, but I always win." -Tortuga

"Breaking Bad" is a show that takes its time. We know this. The pacing that seemed (to me, at least) a drawback in the early going of season one has turned out to be one of the series' greatest assets. Because we spend so much time on moments that similar shows and movies would gloss over, because we live with these characters at a much more measured pace than you can find most anywhere else, we feel the impact of them at a deeper level. And now that we're at the halfway point of season 2, all those slow turtle steps are starting to turn into victorious strides.

Much of "Negro Y Azul" deals with Walt talking Jesse into greatly expanding the reach of their operation, largely on the basis of the rep Jesse has developed because the greater Albuquerque meth community believes he's the one who dropped the ATM on Spooge's head. And because we spent most of last week's episode watching how events really unfolded at Skank and Spooge's house, using those events as the misleading foundation of a criminal empire is both sadder and funnier than if Jesse's visit had been just one of many events in a busier episode.

Despite Jesse's newfound reputation as a literal head-crusher, he and Walt have no idea how in over their heads they are. Even if they haven't watched the hilarious pre-credits sequence with the fake Spanish-language music video about how the Mexican cartel is getting mad at this Heisenberg fellow, they have to realize that what they need as much as additional dealers is muscle. Jesse's reputation will only get them so far, particularly if he's ever challenged on that rep. And even though Walt's far more bad-ass than his more feared partner, he's also in danger of collapsing from a coughing fit at any moment. As some commenters have been joking for the last few weeks, these guys desperately need to rent the complete "The Wire" on DVD, learn some lessons about security, counter-surveillance, plausible deniability, etc. Making the likes of Badger and Skinny Pete into the top lieutenants (or "knights") is just asking for trouble.

Will that trouble come from the cartel folks who decapitated Tortuga (well-played, in his one and only scene, by stone-faced character actor Danny Trejo), and then took out the bulk of the DEA's El Paso field office with a booby-trapped, exploding tortoise? Let me repeat that: these people put the decapitated head of a guy nicknamed "Turtle" on the back of an actual turtle that they then wired to blow. These people are relentless and evil on a scale that Walt can't begin to comprehend, let alone prepare to defend himself against. The only thing that may save him would be the thing that was going to save him with Tuco: he's too valuable as a cook to kill.

And in killing or maiming the other El Paso field agents, the cartel inadvertently continued Hank's climb up the ladder -- not that he's going to want to move up those rungs. The only reason he avoided the turtle-bomb is because he was so freaked out by the sight of Tortuga's head that he had to run away to get some air and compose himself. Like Jesse, Hank seems to be someone who was never that prepared for the deadly side of his chosen profession, and who's now forced to confront it because (in his case unwittingly) his relationship to Walt.

And while Hank may have just puked his way from laughingstock into a major promotion, all Skyler had to do to get her old job back was smile a little at former boss Ted Beneke. It's clear that she quit four years ago to get away from him: she keeps giving different explanations to everyone else, she winces when she sees what she thinks is a wine stain on his shirt, and of course Marie is worried about the guy who sexually harassed her there once upon a time. But is she just going back there because the family is so desperate for money, or has Walt made her feel so alienated that she'd welcome this guy's attentions now?

There's a lot still to find out, not least of which is what happened with the charred teddy bear. But I trust the show to get us there. Like Jesse in the final scene with his new flatscreen searching for a satellite signal, we're still waiting for the picture to come in. And just as Jane takes Jesse's hand as they sit there, we know that the wait is going to be at least as fulfilling as when we get to see the picture itself.

Some other thoughts on "Negro Y Azul" (translated as "black and blue"):

• We've all been talking lately about how completely the show has flipped its sympathies away from Walt and towards Jesse. This one finally pulls Walt a bit off the monster ledge, at least in the way he finally begins to understand what he's done to Jesse -- how he's dragged Jesse down into Hell with him. The first scene in Jesse's darkened living room was so amazing in the way that we could see, even in shadow, Walt's mood change as he realized what had happened. He was sympathetic to Jesse, and even after he realized that Jesse had screwed up with Skank -- and even after he shifted into all-business mode -- he's no longer yelling at and talking over his partner at every turn.

• On the other hand, Walt's not such a sweetheart that he can let Barry try to get over on him about the failed science test, but I got a kick out of the pleasure he got in stringing Barry along for a moment before smacking him down.

• The Atomic Museum where Walt, and later Jesse, met with Badger and friends, is now technically known as The National Museum of Nuclear Science & History.

• Note that Walt's still learning on the job as he goes. After the fiasco with Skyler finding out about the second cell phone, he's now keeping his new drug phone hidden in the ceiling of his classroom, only turning it on when he needs to call Jesse.

• What do you suppose Jane's story is? In her first appearance, she seemed pretty no-nonsense and not interested in having any kind of troublemaker living next door, but now she doesn't mind that Jesse lied about his name, or even that it seems he's involved in something criminal. I like having Krysten Ritter around, and it's good to show Jesse having someone to deal with who isn't Walt or one of his meth-head friends.

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad, "Peekaboo": Bad debt

Spoilers for last night's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I order some knives from one of the shopping channels...

"What happened to you? Really, Walt -- what happened? Because this isn't you." -Gretchen
"What would you know about me, Gretchen?" -Walt

A lot of bills come due in "Peekaboo," another outstanding episode in what's turning out to be a stellar season two of "Breaking Bad." Some are financial, like Jesse trying to get his money back from the two tweakers, or Gretchen finding out that Walt has been lying to his family about where the money's coming from. Some are emotional, like Walt finally unloading on Gretchen for what he feels she owes him (in every sense), or Jesse having to confront the realities of his new career during his nightmarish day at Spooge and Skank's house(*). And while Walt and Jesse more or less get what they need by the end of the episode -- Gretchen inadvertently gives Walt the means to repair his rift with Skyler, while Jesse walks away with an ATM-ful of cash -- their own karmic debts are getting bigger and bigger all the time.

(*) And since J. Roberts and Vince Gilligan's script deliberately didn't name the female tweaker, I think we're supposed to think of her as Skank -- even if we're never supposed to call her that to her face, as poor Spooge learned way too late.

Let's start with Jesse's ordeal, which was right in the series' wheelhouse. What should have been a simple task -- hold a gun on two pathetic tweakers and get back the money and drugs they stole -- instead turned into an all-day mess that nearly got Jesse killed and brought him face-to-face with one of the victims of his operation: Skank's filthy, underfed, horribly neglected little boy.

When we talk about the terrible things Walt and Jesse are doing, it's generally in the context of how they're hurting their loved ones, as opposed to the people who actually use their product. And that makes sense. We know Skyler and Jesse's family, while the tweakers of the greater Albuquerque area are a faceless abstraction. But in not only taking us into Spooge and Skank's home, but showing us the poor kid they neglect because they're too busy working the next scam and getting high, we see the cost of all of this. The moment when Jesse plays the titular game of Peekaboo and the boy has no idea how to react -- because, clearly, Skank's not the kind of mom who would ever play such a routine and simple game like that with her son -- was heartbreaking, and so well-played by Aaron Paul.

Now, I don't expect this to change Jesse's career plans. He's in too deep now, and as we saw a few weeks ago, he doesn't have better options out there. But even though he managed to get in and out of this mess without actually killing anyone -- a crime he still has yet to commit -- I can see this experience weighing on him going forward, maybe making him even more miserable than before about what he's doing with his life, and what he's let Walt push him into doing.

And even if he doesn't, there's still the matter of Spooge's dead body, isn't there? If this was "The Sopranos" -- a show where the main characters routinely left gallons of DNA evidence behind, but never got in trouble because law-enforcement was even more incompetent than they were -- I would assume Skank gets charged with Spooge's murder and that's the end of it. But this is "Breaking Bad," where nothing is ever that simple -- see all the complication's from Walt's "fugue state" story -- and between the broken window, the friendly postal carrier, and Skank herself (who's going to be looking to pin this on somebody else), I have a good feeling that the local cops will be on the lookout for "Diesel."(**)

(**) A reminder, once again, about the No Spoilers policy, which includes the previews for next week's episode.

As for Walt... damn it if Gilligan, Bryan Cranston and company aren't continuing to go full-speed ahead in showing what a monster he's becoming. The Walt who took Gretchen to dinner, then unloaded on her about decades' worth of resentment, is terrifying, because, despite what Gretchen thought, this is him. This has always been him. He has a history of walking away from situations because of some slight -- real or perceived -- and then making himself into the victim, and nobody close to him has any idea just how much anger he's holding in, and how he's letting that anger guide his every decision. He walked away from his relationship with Gretchen -- and the fortune that might have come from his work. And now he's decided that, rather than accept Gretchen and Elliott's charity -- which he could have easily viewed as payment for services rendered at the start of their careers -- he'll continue down this insane, dangerous path cooking crystal meth. And not only will he do that, but he'll lie to Skyler and tell her to feel beholden to The Rich Girl Who Got Away, and who makes Skyler feel inadequate every time her name is mentioned.

And Gretchen, in trying to hurt Walt for the way he just hurt her (and/or trying to remove herself from this terrible lie Walt's perpetrating), inadvertently makes his life better for now, by bringing him and Skyler closer. If he requires further treatment, he's going to have some 'splaining to do about how he pays for it, but for the moment, his lies are preserved and he doesn't have to in any way face the consequences of his actions the way that Jesse does.

What an unbelievable bastard. What a great show.

Some other thoughts:

• We see Walt's first day back at work, where he starts off enthusiastic about teaching again (as opposed to going through the motions the way he did in the pilot), then quickly gets sidetracked into the tale of H. Tracy Hall, another scientist who may or may not have been screwed out of money and credit he felt he deserved. One question: now that Walt's teaching again, when is he going to find the time to cook?

• Last year, the show occasionally featured Walt or another character uttering a profanity, only the sound dropped out. At the time, I wrote it off to AMC being new to the series television thing and uncertain about what type of content their advertisers would tolerate. (Basic cable isn't regulated by the FCC, but they do have to answer to sponsors, which is why, for instance, "The Shield" could never use the F-word.) I noticed that they hadn't done any of that this season and figured that, with a year under their belts, everyone involved knew what they could and couldn't get away with, and the episodes were being written accordingly. But then we got Walt's dropped-out F-bomb to Gretchen at the end of that riveting restaurant scene. Really, it was the only retort available to Walt after Gretchen said she felt sorry for him, and it was delivered with so much contempt and self-loathing by Cranston that I almost didn't notice that it was muted. But I'm still trying to get to the bottom of what the rules are for profanity this season.

• In returning to work, Walt also gets to reconnect with "Flynn" as they cook up fantasies about how to deliver justice to the kids who defaced the "Missing" posters from episode two.

• I love that Jesse was offended that Spooge had stolen an ATM machine owned by Jesse's bank.

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad, "Breakage": Bottled up tight

Spoilers for tonight's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I print the labels for my Sepin-brau microbrew line...

"We do things my way this time. Or I walk. You need me more than I need you... Walt." -Jesse

First thing's first: in case you missed the news earlier in the week, AMC has ordered a third season of "Breaking Bad," to premiere sometime in 2010. Between Bryan Cranston's Emmy win, the recent Peabody Award and the increased ratings this season, I think most of us assumed renewal was a foregone conclusion, but it's still nice to have one less worry hanging over my head...

...which is more than can be said for most of the characters in "Breakage." Walt has mounting medical bills and still can't get through to Skyler -- even after he thinks the cigarette pack gives hm leverage for a game of Moral Superiority -- and now he has to deal with Jesse astutely changing the dynamics of their partnership. Jesse seems to be doing well for himself, but now he has responsibilities: rent for the apartment, (and a landlady he wants to impress enough to have sex with, it seems), rent for the RV (and how many episodes before Clovis tries to sell the meth lab out from under him?), employees and, as Walt points out, a street rep to maintain. Skyler's miserable and alone and has to bully Marie into apologizing for the tiara incident. And Hank is having panic attacks about his killing of Tuco, and he can't tell anyone about it because of the macho culture of the DEA field office. Instead, he bottles up his feelings as tight as the caps on his DIY microbrews.

So the question is, which character will be the first to let their emotions burst out in dangerous fashion like the exploding bottles in Hank's garage?

Episodes like "Breakage" are important from a story standpoint -- the bigger Jesse's street operation gets, the closer the DEA's going to come to finding it, and/or to us finding out about the burnt teddy bear in Walt's pool -- but also for helping to deepen the supporting cast and make it clear just how many people Walt is hurting in his idiotic quest to die on his own terms. Jesse's been plunged deeper into the drug world than he was ever expecting to go, which will make it that much harder if he ever really tries to get out. Skyler's smoking -- and I loved that she had kept count of the "three and a half cigarettes" she had consumed -- while pregnant because Walt has her so stressed and isolated. And Hank only wound up in a position where he had to kill Tuco because Walt was missing, and involved with that psychopath to begin with.

This was another terrific episode, showcasing not only the supporting actors (Dean Norris in particular), but also the directing, production design, sound editing, etc. I loved the sequence of Walt sitting still in his chemo chair, his world all slowed down and tedious while everyone else moved at double speed (an effect echoed later on when we saw Jesse out collecting money from his guys), and all of the sound design involving liquids, whether the spot in the Rio Grande where the two Mexican illegals crossed and found Tuco's grill, or the chemo entering Walt's IV, or Hank bottling his beers. You don't usually think of fancy sound work on television, but for a show about chemistry, and the transformation of solids into liquids, inert liquids into volatile ones, etc., it's fitting, and pretty cool.

What did everyone else think?

Breaking Bad, "Down": Lies and the lying liars who tell them

Spoilers for episode four of "Breaking Bad" season two coming up just as soon as I signal for a left-hand turn...

"Shut up and say something that isn't complete bulls--t." -Skyler

Vince Gilligan likes to talk about how "Breaking Bad" is a show about metamorphosis, "a guy transforming from a good, law-abiding citizen to a drug kingpin." And as we watch that transformation in progress, we also see him changing from a fairly sympathetic leading character into a loathsome bastard, someone who's not just a villain in the sense of cops vs. crooks, but in terms of actively (if not always intentionally) inflicting misery on the people around him.

We got signs all through the first season that Walt isn't quite the innocent victim he first appeared to be, most notably the episode involving his ex-partner and ex-girlfriend. But an episode like "Down," in which Walt tries and fails spectacularly to mend fences with Skyler, and in which he continually shouts over Jesse's attempts to explain his dire circumstances, show that his faults have expanded from simple stubborn pride to a dangerous level of willful ignorance. He can't fix things with his wife, and he can't listen to his partner, because he can't even begin to contemplate where they're really coming from.

What's also fascinating about this one -- other than the great work by Cranston, Anna Gunn and Aaron Paul -- is the way that Walt has already crossed the line of no return. When he told Jesse last week that nothing had changed, that they had no choice but to keep cooking, my heart broke a little bit, because Tuco's death should have given him the opportunity to get out clean. But he's been skulking around too long for Skyler to not want answers, and he can't give them to her. Even if he were to say, "I cooked meth for a few months but I've stopped now," they'd be over as a couple, if they aren't already. It's so monstrous what he's done -- even before you factor in the deaths of Crazy 8, Tuco, et al -- that Skyler wouldn't be able to get past it, and her BS detector is too well-honed for him to slip anything short of the awful truth past her. His choice has already damned him, so he might as well keep on going and hope he can come up with enough money(*) to provide for Skyler and "Flynn" after he's gone(**).

(*) Note that, when he's counting the rolls of banded money and realizes there's an odd number, he thinks for only half a moment before keeping the extra one for himself, rather than splitting it between himself and Jesse.

(**) As others have pointed out, it's hard not to notice how relatively healthy Walt has seemed for the last few episodes, moving around easily and with a minimum of coughing. Wouldn't it be just the right sick touch for the treatment to work and the cancer to go into remission after Walt's already charged this unbreakable course towards Hell?

Jesse's storyline, moving in parallel to Walt's, was of the so-sad-it's-funny (or vice versa) variety. The moment where Jesse slammed the phone down on the counter, only to see it immediately scooped up by the mover, was the funniest thing on TV in the last week to not involve Liz Lemon as a Muppet. I thought the glimpse of his old bandmate, now clean-cut with a wife and a kid while Jesse's a dirtball who sells drugs and falls into outdoor toilets, brought home how far he's fallen even more than our previous glimpses of his normal suburban family. Jesse, like Walt, has had opportunities to do something other than get sucked deeper into the drug game, and he hasn't taken them. And even though you can tell he wants nothing more than to get away from his surprisingly dangerous old science teacher and maybe pursue the life his parents always had in mind for him, he's just as stuck, too. No house, minimal money, and nothing going for him except a mobile drug lab. Poor bastard; he's just as trapped as Walt.

Great episode. Dark episode, but what else do you expect at this point?

What did everybody else think?