"Look On My Works, Ye Mighty..."

I haven't written about Breaking Bad in a while but I started watching the final episodes when they came to Netflix. I've just watched  the third to last show, "Ozymandias"...

I know that "binge watching" where you devour a entire season worth's of TV episodes in a day or two is the thing these days, but if anyone could watch that program and merrily race ahead to the last two episodes, they have no soul.

This series is full of gruesome and shocking scenes of violence but one of the most gut-wrenching moments just concerns a simple phone call.

Break

I know that most of the world has already found out the final fates of Walter White, Jesse Pinkman and the other people in their world but I'm still slowly making my way through Breaking Bad. Some people seem to like to watch TV shows in one big gulp now, devouring entire seasons either on DVD or online in one or two days. Not me. This show, in particular, deserves to be savored one episode at a time. Getting into a rhythm of no more than one a day gives me the opportunity to reflect on the plot twists and overall majesty of the series. This thing is shaping up to be a Shakespearean-style tragedy and I just hope the end lives up to the buildup.

One thing I'm particularly appreciating now is how all the supporting characters are turning out to have many facets beyond what they initially show.  Hank, Walt's blowhard DEA agent brother-in-law, has turned out to be a dogged cop with great reasoning skill. Skyler, Walt's wife, becomes chillingly pragmatic when faced with the facts about her husband's drug activities. Then, there's Gus, Walt's drug kingpin boss. His back story is still being revealed but it's become very clear that he can be monstrously cold-blooded and vengeful on one side and quietly practical on the other.

I've managed to stay clear of most spoilers, outside of the fact that Walt and Jessie do seem to live at least into the last episode, which lessens the tension whenever they get into a potentially deadly situation now.  I do know that Marty Robbins' song "El Paso" shows up in the final episode and provides it with its title, "Felina" and that Badfinger's "Baby Blue" comes up over the closing credits performing the function "Don't Stop Believin''" did in The Sopranos. I'm also intrigued by the vague references everywhere to how evil Walt becomes since I'm really not at that point yet. Where I've left off he has just had an emomtrinal talk with his son while recovering from the beatdown Jesse gave him at the same time that Gus, Mike and Jesse are escaping from the Mexican drug cartel. There would seem to still be a lot of fun times ahead of me.

Breaking Slowly

I'm still slowly making my way through Breaking Bad on Netflix. I'm now up to the halfway point of Season 3 and I'm constantly amazed by the plot twists and intricate character psychologies of this series.

I don't get the concept of binge-watching. I would think that in watching any really good TV show you would want to take time to savor each episode instead of burning through a bunch of shows in one sitting. That's especially true with a show like this where every installment has some sort of twist or revelation that I need to think about after I watch. The writers of this show are particularly brilliant at misdirection. You think you know where a plotline is going but then presto! it goes somewhere completely unexpected. And these turns never feel forced or contrived. As crazy as they can sometimes be, they always so far turn out to have a logical if occasionally bizarre progression.

The whole of Season 2 was a great example of misdirection. Throughout several episodes there were flash forwards to scenes of a hazmat team retrieving burned debris from the White swimming pool.  Considering that this show is about an ordinary high school teacher slipping deeper and deeper into the drug trade you think these scenes indicate one thing.  Then in the final episode of the season, "ABQ", they pull the rug out and those shots turn out to mean something completely different. Similarly in Season 3 so far, one of the background plotlines has been about twin Mexican hit men out to kill Walt. In the episode I just saw, "Sunset",  that story takes a sudden detour that makes me even more curious about what happens next.

I know that the final episodes have begun airing on AMC and I'm trying like hell to avoid reading anything about the show online. I ignore anyting about it on the Grantland website and stay away from posts on other blogs. I know that all the main characters, Walt, Skyler, Jesse, Walt Jr, Hank and Marie survive into Season 5. Other than that I don't want to know anything that happens before I actually watch the episodes. I'm just enjoying the uniformly great acting and writing of this amazingly creepy saga about a man's fall into darkness. Also I know Bryan Cranston has won several Emmys for this show but he also deserves some kind of award for his pizza tossing.

Bad Company

Walter White, schoolteacher

I have an instinctive aversion to hype. Many times when I start reading about how some new TV show is the most awesome thing in the history of mankind, I'm immediately skeptical and avoid it for a long time, catching up long after the initial fuss has died down if then.  I've heard such things about the show Breaking Bad over the years and I paid little attention. It seemed as though every other new show coming out on cable the last few years shared this one's storyline of a decent person being corrupted by something or other. The very plot line of this show, a suburban parent getting mixed up in the drug trade, was paralleled by another program, Weeds. Still I saw that Breaking Bad seemed to scoop up awards every year so there looked to be something to it.  Recently I noticed that the show was available on Netflix Instant so a few days ago I finally sat down and began to watch the first episodes. My initial impression is...Holy Crap!

This show is about Walter White, a chemistry teacher living quietly in a New Mexico suburb with his pregnant wife and disabled teenage son. He is diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and immediately starts worrying about what he's going to leave for his family when he dies. When his brother, a DEA agent, starts telling him about how lucrative the local drug trade is,  he decides to join forces with Jesse Pinkman, one of his former students who's now a small time drug dealer, to make and sell crystal meth. They try to sell the stuff to a bigger local dealer and things go very badly with Walter ending responsible for the deaths of two people  and an hitherto pent-up dark side starting to emerge.

I'm only four episodes into the first season so far and I'm really impressed by the focus of the storytelling and the depth of the characters.  I can already tell that Bryan Cranston deserved every acting award he's gotten for playing Walter White. Without often saying anything he expresses through his face and body a world of swirling emotions like horror, anguish, and rage. He looks like a man totally out of his depth most of the time but when pressed, there's an anger and potential for violence that takes less and less prompting to emerge. It's probably going to be significant that so far he has gone from beating up a high school jock making fun of his son and killing a drug dealer in self defense to destroying a man's car just because he's an obnoxious loudmouth. All the scripts so far have been by creator Vince Gilligan and I love the way that he has neither Walter nor any of the other characters give long soliloquies explaining their actions and thoughts. Most of their inner feelings are conveyed through gesture and expression.

This also applies to the Jesse Pinkman character played by Aaron Paul.  At first the guy is practically comic relief, a white suburban B-boy wannabe who talks in thick hip-hop slang and has a whacked out response to everything Walter says or does. As the episodes go on though, he starts to ripen into a real person.  In the last program I watched "Cancer Man"  he spends some time in his parents' house after running from his own place in a paranoiac, drug-fueled panic and it's poignant to see his futile attempts to connect with his parents and highly achieving kid brother.  You get the feeling there is basically a good man inside him and I have a feeling that knowledge is going to become wrenching as things go along.

I know I'm catching up with this show late. I'm just up to the point where Walter has told his family and friends about the cancer and he starts using the money from his one (and supposedly only) drug deal for his treatment.  Five seasons have been broadcast and the sixth and last starts in August, so I've got a ways to go.  I've heard a couple of general plot developments, that Walter gets deeper and deeper into the drug trade, his cancer goes into remission and his wife finds out what's he's doing.  Other than that I don't know any of the rest of the story and I don't want to yet. I have no idea what happens to the son, the drug cop brother-in-law or anyone else who comes into the plot.  I'm just very confident this show is going to be one hell of a ride.