Chrys Buckley

Live Chat for “Ozymandias” (Breaking Bad)

September 15, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

Hey everyone!

As mentioned in this post, there will now be a “live chat” post for each new episode. Feel free to post thoughts before, during and after the episode here. This will be a place for all the discussion on the new episode before the review post goes up.

I’m actually holding off till the second showing of the episode (people will be coming over for that one but not the first) so I’ll check back in in a few hours.

I don’t know about anyone else but I already feel all anxious and have butterflies in my stomach.

If you want to get even more excited, check out what Vince Gilligan has to say about this episode. Warning though, there is a small spoiler in that this article gives away one character who definitely makes it to 515. Kinda wish I hadn’t read for that reason. So read at your own risk.

Have at it!

The post for “Ozymandias” is now up!

~Chrys

Samples, Writing

From Secret Passages to Aliens – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 8

September 13, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

This is another installment of a rough draft of a memoir chapter that covers fourth grade.

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

Mom was going to counseling a lot, or some type of meetings. It was all hush-hush and grown-up talk but I had surmised that much. And that it had something to do with her parents. One day she took me with her.

The therapist was named Diana and she was really friendly. They always were. This was not my first therapy rodeo. I knew all the tricks, how to charm them the way I charmed Mom sometimes by pretending to agree with her, or maybe temporarily really agreeing with her on the way home from that visit to Mrs. Domaracki the day before school.

I knew how to pretend to be good. Talk about bad things other kids do, even if you’re really the one who does them more than anyone else. Use logic. Be interesting. Maybe mention quirky things like the flagrant love you had for the blood red octagons of stop signs as a three-year-old. If they can tell you’re smart, that you read a lot, that you think and feel deeply, they’re less likely to blame you. If you can infuse some Dad into your voice, speak with his bland cheerful optimism about topics like the weather, then maybe they’ll think you’re normal, let you draw pictures or play games. You have to not show all your smarts though, so then you can beat them in Battleship.

Continue reading “From Secret Passages to Aliens – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 8” →

Breaking Bad Episode 513 “To’hajiilee”

September 10, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

“Hank, why is there what looks like brains in our garbage can?”

ICE IN MY VEINS

WOW. Just…WOW. What an episode. Surprisingly, I had a strange sense of calm after last night’s episode. Much moreso than last week. Slept better too and I’ve been feeling calm all day. Maybe I have more bloodlust than I thought and just need a desert shootout every now and then. Or maybe it’s because this is the first episode in awhile that felt like it included just a smidge of release instead of all buildup, despite the excruciating cliffhanger. Maybe it’s that whole staying cool in a crisis thing, which I’ve definitely experienced before in real life, and the fallout will come later. The situation on this show is definitely a crisis. Threat Level Midnight, yo.

Anyway, on to the actual content of the episode. It’s hard to know where to start. This was one jam-packed hour. Almost stuck in too much awe to write about it. A calm awe, mind you, but still.

Continue reading “Breaking Bad Episode 513 “To’hajiilee”” →

Live Chat for “To’hajiilee” (Breaking Bad)

September 8, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

Hey everyone!

Have at it!

The episode post for “To’hajiilee” is now up!

~Chrys

Samples, Writing

Dark Winter Chill – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 7

September 6, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

This is another installment of a rough draft of a memoir chapter that covers fourth grade. This one’s a little dark.

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

As winter deepened, Mom’s bad moods got worse. I didn’t want to come home from school. Every time I walked inside the front door on days that Randy and I didn’t have Centerstream, there was something in the way the low winter sun fell through the big wide living-room window and onto the wall across the room, across from the front door. Something about the way the light fell on that off-white wall that I saw as soon as I opened the door made me feel sick to my stomach, like it reminded me of something bad I couldn’t quite remember. It made me feel haunted.

I felt so unsettled as I ate my afternoon snack each day, then went upstairs to play Barbies murder mysteries and write my little “books.” I was amassing a collection by then, a handful of stories that were about twenty pages each handwritten. I wasn’t really happy with any of them; I always felt they couldn’t quite capture the darkness of my soul. So I kept writing more.

Continue reading “Dark Winter Chill – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 7” →

A Bummer, A New Feature, An Opportunity and Quick Updates (all Breaking Bad Related)

September 5, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

BUMMER

Let’s do the sad news first.

Yesterday tickets went onsale for the Breaking Bad series finale event at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and I couldn’t get tickets. I had two browsers going, but it just went from “not onsale yet” to “none available” with one click of the refresh button. I’m having a hard time shaking how bummed I felt after that. I’ve actually been keeping track of details about the event since the first whispers about it came out in February, and during this summer when more info was coming out, I always kept a page on my phone open to a google search for updates.

I imagined watching the finale under the stars in a cemetery (I mean can you get any cooler than that?) with a good friend in LA I haven’t seen in years, maybe meeting up with some of the AMC forum folks I’ve been chatting and discussing episodes with for all this time. It all sounded so magical. And when I found out there would be a Q&A with the cast and writers, it couldn’t get any better. I could picture it all, then coming home to write all about it here. It would be the perfect icing to writing about the final episode. Continue reading “A Bummer, A New Feature, An Opportunity and Quick Updates (all Breaking Bad Related)” →

Breaking Bad Episode 512 “Rabid Dog”

September 3, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

“Whatever you think’s supposed to happen, the exact reverse opposite of that is gonna happen.”

We finally meet Marie’s therapist, Dave.

And Jesse finally gets some lasagna sans scabs. Marie says she’ll heat some up.

This was a tough episode. It’s funny, in my big Predictions post, when I updated after “Confessions,” I was going to write (and at this point I’m not even sure I didn’t) that I had a feeling that “Rabid Dog” might be a bit of a low point, but that everything after (and I’m especially looking forward to “Ozymandias”) is just going to rock. And I’ve seen a lot of complaints already about “Rabid Dog”–and people are upset for a whole variety of reasons–and for me as a viewer, as a fan, it made me uncomfortable. It’s not a fun wild ride like some. It’s unsettling. I couldn’t sleep at all afterward. But after watching it a second time, I see it differently. I appreciated so many things about this hour of television. It’s a bitter wine, but good nonetheless

In a way, that title should’ve been plural. I look at the main characters who were featured in this episode–Walt, Skyler, Hank, Marie, Jesse and Saul–and almost all of them could be described as a rabid dog about something. In a twist, the only one who wasn’t rabid was Walt. That was a surprise.

Continue reading “Breaking Bad Episode 512 “Rabid Dog”” →

Blindness and Disability, Samples, Writing

Light as a Feather – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 6

August 30, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

Early that winter, I went on my first overnight Girl Scout camping trip. My mom was working more at the newspaper, so for once, she wasn’t one of the troop leaders. We arrived at a big cabin called Hammond House. The walls were the color of wood and little cots lined the walls. The cabin was a long rectangle. One of the girls had recently learned the “Light as a Feather” game and we played it incessantly. One girl would lie in the middle and we would all surround her, purring two fingers from each hand under her. The person at the head gave a fake eulogy and then we all intoned, “Dead as a doornail, stiff as a board, light as a feather” over and over slowly lifting the scout in the middle up off the floor and up, up, over our heads. There were a lot of us, girls and girls and girls lifting, and it felt magic. We even did it on our troop leaders. I only got to be in the middle once.

Continue reading “Light as a Feather – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 6” →

Breaking Bad Episode 511 “Confessions”

August 27, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

“Eat me.” Jesse’s first words.

This was my favorite episode so far this summer. Holy shit. So much to discuss. But first:

I gotta do it. I TOLD YOU SO in last week’s predictions that Jesse would find out about Brock and the poisoning. Yeah bitch!

So, are we getting ourselves into a Chekhov’s Disappearer situation now? That’s the second time that someone on the show has tried to use Saul’s last resort and the second time it hasn’t worked out. Walt was going to do it back in 411 “Crawl Space” but then he went to the crawl space to get the money and Skyler had given it to Ted for his IRS fiasco.

Now Jesse gets even closer to using this “out.” Saul tells Jesse, “This is it. Once I make the call, no take-backs.” Saul makes the call and asks for “a new dust filter for a Hoover Max Extract Pressure Pro Model 60,” Jesse’s at the pickup site, it’s all good to go…and then he just wants to smoke a little pot and the whole plan goes up in smoke. (Much more on that coming up.) So a second attempt to use the disappearer is thwarted. Will the third time be the charm? Will Walt (and family?) end up using the guy later on? Is that how Walt ends up in New Hampshire? Will this “gun” ever go off?

Continue reading “Breaking Bad Episode 511 “Confessions”” →

Blindness and Disability, Samples, Writing

Caught in the Act – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 5

August 23, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

“What on Earth were you doing?” Mrs. Domaracki asked when she caught me slithering out under a bathroom stall door. She ushered me out into the hallway.