So, to pass the time between now and next summer, I’ll be going back through the old episodes of Breaking Bad and just giving little commentaries and whatnot.
THE PILOT
That beautiful hour of television that, somehow or other, got us all hooked. That first little taste of what would one day become Crystal Blue Persuasion. While watching, I was trying to remember what it felt like the first time I saw it, back when I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I mean, before this, I never would’ve imagined that I would be blogging so heavily about a TV show, writing posts about poisons, restraining the urge to include chemistry lessons on the difference between meth and methylamine or starting posts with, “Hey yo, bitches.”
When did you first watch? Who or what got you to try this first episode?
I feel like Stanley at the end of the pretzel day episode (“Initiation”) of The Office. 313 days until the next episode of Breaking Bad, assuming they start at the same time next year that they did this year. Three hundred and thirteen days. A lot can happen in that time.
I am planning on going back, starting with the pilot and posting about all the previous episodes, doing one each Sunday until it’s back on. 44 Sundays and 46 episodes, so there will have to be a tiny bit of doubling up, but I want to keep the BrBa love alive and really dig into the series while waiting for it to come back next year.
So, this week’s episode. Holy shit. HANK KNOWS. And it happened through Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. How freaking cool is that? It’s cool that a book of poetry was Walt’s undoing. It’s also poetry that is just so different than Walt’s Heisenberg persona. I haven’t read all of Leaves of Grass, but “Song of Myself,” which takes up a large part of LoG is just so, so flowy, free associative, full of fragments and so freakin’ right-brained it’s not even funny. I liked that Gale got a little bit of revenge from beyond the grave.
Wow. Can’t believe there’s only one more to go. What will I do without my weekly fix?
This episode left us with some burning thoughts and questions. First, would you rather eat bacon banana cookies or cake pops? And would you dare to dip either in some Franch?
Okay, that’s just gross, but seriously that shit looked pretty tasty in this episode. Is it me or has there been more focus on food this season than most? The dressings at Madrigal, the bacon in 501 and 504, the whole thing about green beans and frozen scabby lasagna, Hank’s thing about Miracle Whip, Skyler’s whipped potatoes and double chocolate cake, and now Dan’s treats for the bank lady.
Also, what’s up with Saul’s outfits in the last two eps not being as awesomely colorful and eye-catching as usual? I mean really, give him a psychedelic tie next time or I’m out yo.
Speaking of time, the last week was real light on posts–I had an out of town guest for several days–but will now resume the regular schedule. Lots of catching up to do with comments and with adding links.
In other news, I’m taking on writing spec scripts for existing TV series and of course I’m doing Breaking Bad so my head is all full of episode ideas (as of now, planning to do one that would fit between episodes 3 and 4 of this season) and thoughts on the most recent ep.
What a powerful teaser. Wow, that was so well done. It set up the perfect emotional impact by being very understated. They start with the bike, dismantling it with such surgical precision, putting it, piece by piece, into the barrel. There’s something slow and sad and beautiful about that sequence, and the music that went with it. And the lack of dialogue. It doesn’t let up, the bike seems to have endless parts to be disassembled. Jesse’s absence is so present. Then Todd uncovers just the kid’s hand in the dirt and you see they’ve readied another barrel. It’s enough to let the viewers know exactly what’s going to happen to the kid’s body, even though it’s never shown, which is just so, so powerful. Difficult to watch, but that speaks to its power.
And then the first line of the episode is Todd to Jesse, “You guys didn’t tell me the stuff (hydrofluoric acid) smells like cat piss.” You can read everything on Jesse’s face. Todd can’t. “Shit happens, huh?” And then Jesse hauls off and punches him in the face. I don’t know about anyone else, but I found that really satisfying as a viewer.
And why I’m worried about Jesse. But that will come later.
I don’t know about anyone else, but this episode made me really, really, really want a Breaking Bad movie. More than I ever have before. It’s been said so many times how cinematic this show is, but this week’s episode just took that to a new level. That opening scene with the boy riding his dirt bike through the desert, all those shots of the train and from the train–it all felt like a movie to me and made me want to write some sort of open letter to Vince Gilligan asking him to please seriously consider making a movie. It was just a gorgeous episode, breathtakingly so. And what an amazing use of color. If last week’s episode was blue, this week’s was orange and red.
Another comment about the episode overall: It was a little hard to calm down afterwards. It was such an adrenaline rush followed by such a chilling ending that it left me all riled up. I’m also having a much harder time than ever resisting spoilers. Usually I don’t even watch the previews because I don’t want to know anything and they’re often misleading, but these last two days, I’ve been seeking them out.
This was one of my favorite episodes this season. It was one of those slower episodes where the emotional drama takes center stage and things bubble to the surface. Really excellent writing, with lots of little details to dig into.
I don’t know if anyone else felt this, but I had a sense of the end being near. Of course there’s that ticking watch at the end, but more than that, I got this feeling when Skyler was looking at the pool. When all you see is the bright blue water taking up the whole screen, and that eerie music plays, it just felt ominous. It felt like, if I didn’t already know this was the last season, it would’ve been clear in that moment. I just really felt that this story and normal life for these people can’t last much longer.
This was a very blue episode, with the pool, Skyler’s dress and the watch at the end. From the beginning, blue was Skyler’s color (look at just about anything she wears in Season 1) and in this episode, we got to see a lot more dimensions of Skyler, and of the relationship between her and Walt.
I think this episode could unofficially be titled, “Walt’s Ego is Bigger Than Jupiter.”
On Breaking Bad, there is always so much attention paid to visuals, colors and sound, and all of this seemed especially true in this episode, starting with the sound of the metal detector wand thingy in the first shot of the teaser.
The teaser for this episode was the most straightforward we’ve seen this season. It was pretty great to see Mike dressed as a paralegal. And we meet another one of the guys on Mike’s list, Dennis, who was mentioned in last week’s episode during the conversation between Mike and Lydia–he’s the manager of the laundry. That lawyer, Dan, seems pretty nervous, what with the way he taps his fingers and the way he’s looking down and not making eye contact when he says he has his paralegal with him.
All of Dennis’ money was taken by the feds, just like the money Mike had set aside for his granddaughter Kaylee. Â Like I mentioned last week, a lot of this happened because of the magnet vs. laptop heist that Walt, Jesse and Mike pulled off in 501 that broke the frame, revealing the account info that gave the DEA the money trail. But that’s in the past, no way to get that money back, so Mike wants to move forward, and as for his guys, he’s promising to “make ’em whole.” Love that phrase!
UPDATE AUGUST 26: After last night’s episode, there are a lot of questions about Jesse’s desert revelation and how it all fits together, so I updated this post to include that toward the end, to keep it chronological. You can skip to that part here.
I’ve noticed that a lot of people come across my blog from googling something like, “How did Walter White poison Brock?” or “What happened to the ricin cigarette?” or “what happened berries Walter Brock” or something similar. On the Breaking Bad message boards, questions about these topics still rage. While watching the latest episode on Sunday night, some friends were asking the the same questions. This storyline definitely has to be one of the most complex–maybe even convoluted–plotlines on the show. Some of it is more left to assumption than explicitly shown. So I thought I’d try to elucidate with my understanding of what happened, start to finish.
In episode 407 “Problem Dog,” Walt makes some ricin in the superlab. He gives it to Jesse, who puts it in a “lucky cigarette” that he keeps upside down in his cigarette pack. The ricin cigarette is born.
Walt, his revolver and lily of the valley
In episode 412 “End Times,” Walt is despondent and doesn’t know what to do. Gus has just threatened his wife, son, infant daughter and brother-in-law. Walt knows that Gus could be close to turning Jesse against him and that Jesse’s flagging loyalty is the only thing keeping Gus from killing him. Since Skyler gave a big chunk of Walt’s drug money to the IRS for the Ted thing, Walt doesn’t have the money to get himself and his family out of town through Saul’s disappeaerer “vacuum guy.” He sits out back behind his house and spins a revolver. The first two times, it points at him. The third time though, it points to a potted plant, which (we will later come to see) is a lily of the valley plant. Here is where Walter White gets his idea.
Is it me or is this season already flying by way too fast?
Walt comforts Jesse
So let’s get to Season 5, Episode 2, “Madrigal.”
The opening shot is a perfectly swirled blob of mustard. I’m not sure if this was intended or not, but I immediately thought of the pilot episode, when Walt first finds out he has cancer and all he can focus on is the mustard stain on the doctor’s coat.
It looks like we are in for some unexpected teasers this season. This one went from Madrigal Electromotive exec Schuler taste-testing such flavors as “Franch” and “Cajun Kick-Ass” with a look of dread (he knows what’s coming) to killing himself with a defibrillator. I think the most compelling moment of that whole sequence was when he put the lead under his tongue. If he was the least bit unsure about what he was doing before, that was *the* decisive moment.
When he first starts taking off his jacket to perform his suicidal task, I immediately thought of Gus exquisitely taking off his jacket and folding it before making himself vomit the poisoned tequila in “Salud.” Schuler does have a level of care in that scene, removing clothes layer by layer, but he’s not as meticulous as Gus (could anyone ever be?) and in an interview about “Madrigal” Vince Gilligan says the connection wasn’t intentional, even though many fans and critics had the same thoughts. Even the pristine clinical feel of the lab feels a little like Gus.
Other notes from the teaser:
They were taking down the Los Pollos Hermanos sign, wow.
Was that Lydia in the background during the taste-testing? Because of my blindness, I sometimes have trouble distinguishing faces, especially in the background, but a few people to the right behind the guy presenting “Franch” and the other flavors, was a woman who looked a lot like Lydia, with her hair parted in the exact same place. Can anyone confirm or deny?
Contains some spoilers (relating to the end of Seasons 2 and 4).
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Walter White’s actions at the end of Season 2 and the end of Season 4. In both cases, he causes harm to someone close to Jesse, and I’ve been thinking about how these two acts of Walt’s alone tell us so much about the dark turns his character has taken. Even though what happens to Jane is worse (she dies) than what happens to Brock (he’s fine, as far as we know), the progression of Walt’s moral demise is still evident because what Walt does to Brock is in some ways worse, for Walt’s part anyway.
At the end of Season 2, Walt watches as Jesse’s girlfriend Jane chokes to death on her own vomit. When Walt goes over to Jesse’s apartment and finds Jesse and Jane passed out in a heroin stupor, he shakes Jesse which causes Jane to roll from her side onto her back and start choking. Walt mumbles, “No, no, no” to himself and you think he’s going to go over and save her but then he stops himself and lets her die.
At the end of Season 4, Walt poisons Brock, the son of Jesse’s girlfriend Andrea, a boy whom Jesse has become very close to. Walt does this as an elaborate plan to manipulate Jesse into thinking that Gus Fring has done it (Gus has used kids in the drug trade before, as well as allowing his guys to kill Andrea’s little brother, both points that Walt uses to convince Jesse that Gus would poison Brock) and win Jesse back on his side so they can work together to kill Gus.
THE PILOT
Chrys Buckley 