Tag: Walter White

TV

Breaking Bad Episode 204 “Down”

Chrys Buckley

204indexI think this episode can be summed up by something Skyler says: “Obvious, desperate breakfasts” just about does it. This is actually one of my favorite episodes of Season Two.

It’s no secret that I’m a huge Jesse fan (freakin’ <3 that dude, totally Team Jesse) and whenever I think of this episode, and how much I love it, I think of my friend Lissa. When we were like thirteen or fourteen and first starting to hang out, she was telling me about TV shows she used to be really into, and how she was an “Evil Lucas Fan.” Now I don’t know what show it was, or who the fuck is Lucas (maybe Lissa can come by and clarify), but I remember her telling me that being an evil fan had something to do with loving the episodes where your favorite character is in peril, or as it applies to this case, having the shittiest (literally) day you can imagine. I’m kind of an Evil Jesse Fan here, not because I want bad things to happen to Jesse (not at all) but because I really love this episode. I think it has to do with how freakin’ brilliant Aaron Paul is at making the character of Jesse so compelling, especially when he’s crying into a gas mask in a methmobile RV and covered in blue porta-potty goo.

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TV

Breaking Bad Episode 203 “Bit by a Dead Bee”

Chrys Buckley

203imagesThis is the episode in which the mess from the last one is cleaned and covered up. Even before he gets out of the hospital, Walt establishes that he wants to go back to cooking (he has extra hospital bills now, yo), and this surprises Jesse. In just a few days’ time they’ve watched a guy getting beaten to death, were kidnapped and kept in a trunk and were almost killed by Tuco. It might make some people want to take pause, but Walt wants to get back on that crystal blue horse. I think this is another turning point for Walt. It’s the second time where he really could’ve gotten out of the game but chooses instead to get back in. They have no distributor; they’ve just barely escaped their last distributor alive, but he’s itching to get back at it.

But of course, first, both Walt and Jesse have to account for their absences. This teaser is the first one this season that doesn’t play with time. One thing I like about this teaser is how it takes its time. That’s something this show does really well. Things aren’t rushed. Walt and Jesse’s desert trek takes up time on screen, and there are a variety of shots of them walking from different angles and perspectives. The time and the varied shots evoke the feeling of a lot of time passing for Walt and Jesse. Another cool thing is that when Walt gets in the truck, and when Jesse questions if he really wants to follow through with his plan, the actual plan isn’t revealed. Walt never reveals it. Instead we see it through the eyes of the bewildered woman who finds Walt’s shoes and clothes strewn around the drugstore. We get to discover Walt’s plan along with her. And Jesse was right, it’s a bold plan.

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TV

Breaking Bad Episode 202 “Grilled”

Chrys Buckley

202imagesThis has to be one of the most dramatic and sit-on-edge-of-seat-biting-nails episode of Breaking Bad, although there is hot competition for that category. There’s just such high drama here. Walt and Jesse have been kidnapped by the crazy enigmatic Tuco.

And the writers make us wait. Walt and Jesse and Tuco don’t even appear until more than ten minutes into the episode. How genius is that? We’re dying to know what happens, and they just draw it out, slow, a little like torture, but in a beautiful way.

Even the scenes that do involve our dynamic duo are drawn out at the start. In the teaser, where all we really get to see is Jesse’s bouncing Monte Carlo and some blood and bullet casings, the scene opens on a wide view of the landscape with its low greenery, then moves onto other odd things, including that creepy smiley face, before focusing on the car. This is another teaser that plays with time, a flash-forward to the end of the episode, but this time there’s no lingering mystery.

Then later, when we finally get back to our boys in the desert, the opening shot is the sky. Finally we see Tuco, and then realize that Walt and Jesse are in the trunk. Even in the movement when they transition from car to inside Tuco’s place, there are a lot of wide shots, then the TV, then Hector Salamanca’s face before it gets to Walt and Jesse sitting on the couch. This lingering, building the tension slowly, making us wait? It’s very effective. Tension: Threat Level Midnight.

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TV

Breaking Bad Episode 201 “Seven Thirty-Seven”

Chrys Buckley

201aimages Before I even start this post, I want to give a shout out to @Jesus Jr (Gonzo) and @Steven Michael Quesada (Gomez), who are both in this episode, and who have both followed me on Twitter – thanks guys! Click on the links to follow them.

So, Season Two. Visually, it starts out really differently from anything we’ve seen so far, setting this season distinctly apart from the previous one. The teaser is a total mystery. Black and white. Water, and more water. The sound of sirens. A floating plastic eyeball. A pink stuffed bear that slowly turns to reveal it’s singed side. What the hell is going on here? I won’t say, in case anyone reads this before getting to the part in the show where it’s all revealed. I will say I find this teaser artistically pleasing. I like the mystery, the starkness. And I totally want a pink bear like that, but not burnt.

Another thing that sets Season Two apart from the others is that this one was planned out in exquisite detail before it started. So there’s a lot of advanced planning going on this season. And there is so much that actually comes back, from this episode and others in this season, in future seasons. Lots of reverberation.

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TV

Breaking Bad Episode 107 “A No-Rough-Stuff-Type Deal”

Chrys Buckley

Watching this episode, I was struck with the thought that this is maybe the happiest time we see for Skyler and Walter. Of course, there’s the getting frisky at the school board meeting, a board meeting which is about the lab equipment Walt stole. And then they get it on in the car. But it’s not just that. Later, there’s the scene in the bedroom that’s just so…normal. Well, except the fact that Walt is lying to her about going to a sweat lodge, but aside from that, it almost seems like they’re any normal couple. There’s something familiar and not quite sweet but warm in the room.

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TV

Breaking Bad Episode 106 “Crazy Handful of Nothin'”

Chrys Buckley

Soooo much happens in this episode!

Heisenberg emerges.

Walt starts his treatment and shaves his head.

We get one of Hank’s most famous lines: “Chick’s got an ass like an onion, makes me wanna cry.”

Jesse finds out about Walt’s cancer.

We meet Tuco.

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TV

Breaking Bad Episode 105 “Gray Matter”

Chrys Buckley

In which Walt and Jesse “see their way clear to, ya know, cooking again,” as Jesse put it in the previous episode.

There’s been a clear progression here. Walt broke bad and he and Jesse cooked their first batch and encountered their first rivals, defeated them, then had to deal with some of the fallout and the messy remains (literally). After going through that, they both were in a place, Walt moreso than Jesse, of feeling like they were never going to do this again. But something has to bring them back to cooking or the show would be over and the story wouldn’t be that interesting. So plotwise, that’s the real point of this episode, to provide the impetus for each of our guys to get back to cooking meth. Their journeys are separate, but end in the same place.

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TV

Breaking Bad Episode 104 “Cancer Man”

Chrys Buckley

After all of Walt’s internal battling, pros and cons listing and indecision, he murdered Krazy-8, cleaned it (and him to such pristine perfection that you almost didn’t know Krazy-8 was even there, then went home to his wife and told her he has lung cancer.

We don’t see a lot of internal struggle on Walt’s part after this first murder of his. It’s nothing like what we will see a few seasons later when Jesse kills someone. Of course, the person Jesse kills is more innocent than Krazy-8, so there’s that, but I also think that internally, even just going into this whole business endeavor together, Walt and Jesse are two very different people, with different moral compasses, tendencies to violence, and all that.

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TV

Breaking Bad Episode 103 “…And the Bag’s in the River”

Chrys Buckley

What a pivotal episode. It’s downright crucial for the rest of the season, even the entire series. Turns and developments occur here that set the tone and establish the groundwork for a lot of what’s to come.

It starts out with red. Rich, deep red of Emilio’s blood and guts as Walter and Jesse clean up his acidified remains and dump buckets and buckets of him down the toilet. We open on a great POV shot–not the first one we’ve seen, but maybe the most emphasized so far. The aesthetic appeal of the opening is striking, the red is so red, saturated, almost leaning more towards the pink part of the spectrum than the brown of stale blood. It plays up the idea that Emilio was, up until recently, very much alive.

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Science, TV

Breaking Bad Episode 102 “Cat’s In the Bag…”

Chrys Buckley

Walter White and Jesse Pinkman survived their first cook, their first drug deal (barely), and are escaping with their lives intact and two dead bodies in the back. So they think at first.

This episode is all about aftermath, about the natural and unnatural consequences of what comes next and cleaning up the mess.

And let’s talk about that for a moment, because Breaking Bad takes a turn here that a lot of shows wouldn’t. The pilot episode was fast-paced with lots of dramatic action. It had pants falling from the sky, a fire, a cancer diagnosis, a meth lab bust, blackmail, a meth cook in an RV, a drug deal, two “bad guys” coming after our “heroes,” Jesse getting knocked unconscious, Walt’s ingenuous plot to kill those bad guys with some chemistry, and then a near-miss almost getting caught (not to mention Walt’s almost suicide in the process). And then we get a nice conclusive ending with Walt and Skyler in bed together.

And I think a lot of shows would’ve left it there. The next episode would go on to the next drama of the next cook and the next drug deal. The fact that Breaking Bad doesn’t do that and instead goes back to look at how they deal with getting the RV towed, and how they deal with the two bodies (and later with the fact that Krazy-8 is still alive), shows that it’s going to be a different kind of show. It’s going to hyperserialized, for one thing, novelistic. And the aftermaths of events won’t be swept under the rug or ignored, but rather explored in detail. This is a world of cause and effect. This is a show that’s going to take it’s time and deal with the high dramatics and the internal struggles.

This episode is slower than the pilot, for sure. It’s a different type of episode, and the balance and play of all these aspects is one of the things that makes BrBa so good. I mean, this episode isn’t so much high drama as it is phone calls and coin flips and ultrasounds.

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