Category Archives: Bryan Cranston

Analog This: It’s Not Just About Walt This Time

Just in case this wasn’t the first thing to cross your mind: SPOILER ALERT

“Breaking Bad” is the closest thing to must see TV that exists during a time where seeing a program live doesn’t really matter to most people anymore. While watching it live is not mandatory, it is certainly an event. To me, watching live television has often felt like finding out some amazing secret before anyone else does. And finding it out at the same time as a certain chunk of the country that I’ve never met before felt like a strange bonding experience.

This right there is the beauty of television, and with TV changing so rapidly, “Breaking Bad” deserves to be the poster boy for a new era. It earned it long ago, and it certainly looks like it has no intention of ever giving that title up. It is not earned by Nielsen ratings, but rather by pure quality. Just like Walter White, it has crushed its competition just by being the best at what it does.

This past Sunday’s episode, entitled “Say My Name,” was the culmination of Walt’s infinitely expanding ego, which has been on the fritz since he first uttered “stay out of my territory” in season two. “Say My Name” began with Walt making the deal that would get his two business partners (the brain trust) out of the business for good. But for Walt, no deal could go down so easily. He told the man who tried to rip off his product that he had to say his name. With confusion yet no hesitation, the man answers “Heisenberg.” It seems like something a smug psychopath would say before murdering someone. But as we found out last week in his soliloquy about his employment history, Heisenberg really needs the validation. And he could go home happy, knowing that he is still the greatest cook in America. But, as the therapist he never had would probably say*, he made some great strides when he gave Jesse some credit for their blue meth creation. And of course, Jesse responded with a simple, modest grin.

The unpredictability of “Breaking Bad” that I have always talked about showed itself well this week. “Breaking Bad” is a slow burning kind of show. Every episode moves along at a creeping pace and by the end, either nothing significant or a game-changing turn of events will occur. And then when the moment comes that you realize something major is about to happen, it is absolutely terrifying. “Breaking Bad” plays off of the ability to either be totally predictable or unpredictable better than any other show I have ever seen.

Perhaps the most surprising part of “Say My Name” was the way it turned Walt into someone we haven’t seen in a long time. Even after committing what is quite possibly one of his most atrocious acts ever (competing with poisoning a child and letting Jesse’s girlfriend choke on her own vomit), there was a flash of the old Walter White there. Heisenberg, the man who never hesitated in pulling the trigger, seemed to vanish momentarily. The man who just wanted to protect his family may still be alive underneath all of that evil.

But as much as this episode and every single one before it is most importantly about Heisenberg, this episode will forever be notable as the last appearance of Mike (unless we are treated to flashbacks). Mike, the only one who really knew about drug distribution, was always memorable in earlier seasons as a great minor player, but this season he flourished with much more screen time. The fact that I nearly shed a tear as Mike died is a testament to how good “Breaking Bad” is at making bad guys likable without necessarily making us root for them.

While Mike’s death could have been dramatically over-the-top, it was rightfully toned down. The fact that his body falling is indicated only by a shaking bush in the foreground shows that in this world, people move on quick from death. One chess piece topples another. Or in this case, one chess piece may have toppled itself. Mike’s motive for killing himself remains unclear. I wouldn’t be surprise if it was his way of sticking up his middle finger at Walt one last time by not giving Walt yet another reason to boast. As Mike, Jonathan Banks scored a very high note so late in his career. It is a shame he never got any bigger roles before this, but his best days seem yet to come.

“Shut the f**k up and let me die in peace.” There is no other way Mike could have left this world.

*You couldn’t pay any therapist enough money to take Heisenberg as a patient.

Side Observations:

-That moment when Saul opens up a drawer filled with cellphones made me realize there are so many more stories to tell with this character than I ever imagined. Let’s make this spinoff happen.

-The Breakfast King was absent this week.

-The opening scene marked the return of the music which has graced multiple showdowns that Walter has gotten himself into. Every time I hear that music playing, I get chills in the same way I do when listening to the score of a Sergio Leone film.

-This may be Walt’s first showdown in the middle of the desert where he truly was the danger.

-Skyler’s constant scowling at Walt during dinner prompted this Tweet from “Lost” mastermind Damon Lindelof, which may be one of the funniest things I’ve ever read on Twitter: “I’m gonna open a theme restaurant called SKYLER’S where the waitresses sit across the table and fucking hate you. #BreakingBad“

-That final scene made me think of several great modern westerns, such as “The Proposition” and “No Country for Old Men.” It looked very similar to the river bank in “No Country” where Llewelyn was chased by that rabid dog.

-Gomez (Steven Michael Quezada) for the comic relief win:

Analog This: Breaking Bad a.k.a. The One Where They Rob a Train

Leave a reply

SPOILERS AHEAD!

This week’s episode of “Breaking Bad,” entitled “Dead Freight,” once again proved that the show that is never bad just keeps on getting better.

Obviously, somebody had to pull out the Jesse James comparison once the only solution to the methylamine shortage turned out to be a train robbery. This is not surprising, as Walt is starting to believe more and more that he is Jesse James. Here is someone who will push it to the very end without the fear of death. Maybe it’s time something bad happened to him, something that will finally make Heisenberg cease to exist. And that final straw may have come loose tonight.

Each season of “Breaking Bad” reminds me of the Tortoise: slow to start, taking its time at the beginning, and then taking off and not stopping. Tonight was like the taking off point kicking things into high gear. This momentum should get us through the remainder of this final season.

In one of tonight’s first scenes, Walt paid an unexpected visit to Hank’s (Dean Norris) new office. Walt breaks down and opens up about his fears that he is not a good father and a bad influence, as Skyler (Anna Gunn) told him in last week’s episode. The fact that I bought it for a quick second shows either my naivety as a viewer or Walt’s now uncanny ability to fool others. Of course, it was a rouse, and when Hank gets up to get Walt a cup of coffee, Walt hastily bugs the place. As Heisenberg, Walt is no longer guided by a need to protect his family but rather as a need to keep his business going. As he notes in the preview for next week’s episode, he’s in the empire business. In season one, he talked about leaving his family money to survive long after he died. Now, all he wants is a legacy for himself.

The one thing that currently makes Walt and Hank similar is that they are both good at hiding information that the other has no clue about. There have been many subtle hints so far this season that Hank knows about Walt’s secret criminal life. Hank’s words of wisdom to Walt seemed almost strained. This could foreshadow that Hank’s kindness toward Walt was an act, as Hank is probably the only genuinely good character on the show. Look how good he was with Walt and Skyler’s baby. The “Breaking Bad” team is slowly, slyly building up to a showdown between Walt and Hank. Bloody or not, I’m sure it will be one of the most memorable moments in television history.

But let’s get back to the heist at hand. With all of the methylamine barrels being tracked, Walt, Jesse, and Mike needed to find the miracle chemical elsewhere. So Lydia (the basket case who might be the most irritating character in the show’s history) suggests that they rob a freight train where they can find all the methylamine they need. At first, it seems like a suicide mission. But then, Jesse comes up with a way they can rob the train and not get caught. And while it’s kind of insane, it actually works.

This season, Jesse has become the man with the brilliant plans. Walt always talks about leverage and in case Walt ever wants to dispose of Jesse, Jesse has this leverage over him: Walt has the crazy needs and demands, and Jesse has the plausible execution. In an earlier episode, Jesse finds an old test of his from when he was Mr. White’s student. The words “NOT APPLYING YOURSELF” were scrawled across it. Jesse may not want to be a criminal, but when he applies himself, he is actually a pretty good one.

This is not the first time “Breaking Bad” has taken form of a heist film. They did it earlier this season, when they absconded evidence using magnets. During season two, in one of my favorite episodes of the entire series, they staged a drug bust and hired a fake Heisenberg to go to jail for them. Now, they were using a broken down truck to stop a train. That works. The next step for them is to drain the train of just enough methylamine for them to start their new business, but not too much so no one would notice that any of it was gone.

I hope “Breaking Bad” keeps doing heist episodes every once in a while, because they show off the absolute best and worst of the characters, as well as the best of the creative team behind the show. By setting the stakes so unrealistically high, the characters must think in ways they would usually never think. While most heists onscreen usually unfold with the predictability of the plan, “Breaking Bad” always draws its heists out and adds in unexpected obstacles. In the aforementioned false-Heisenberg scheme, another bald man accidentally gets involved in the middle of the crime. In “Dead Fright,” the unexpected obstacle is Walt’s hubris, which becomes more frightening and unpredictable with every passing week.

Part of the robbery involved Vamonos Pest Control’s (this season’s Los Pollos Hermanos) Todd (Jesse Plemons) pumping water into the barrels as Jesse pumped methylamine out of the freight car. Meanwhile, Saul’s henchman (Bill Burr) blocked the train with his truck. Once the truck diversion can hold no longer, Walt still doesn’t have enough methylamine. Instead of settling for what he has, he insists that they keep pumping, despite the fact that Jesse is under the train and the train has started to move. We now know that Walt will sacrifice the people who care for him so he can get exactly what he wants. It’s not so much that Walt thinks he will get exactly what he wants, but that he will do anything for it. Surprisingly, this isn’t so different from the Walter White of season one. Remember the “I’ll do anything for my family” mantra? Well, now it’s just “I’ll do anything for myself.”

The second the phrase “train robbery” was mentioned, I got giddy in the kind of way that a twenty-year-old probably shouldn’t. John Ford would be proud of those stunning shots of the railroad slicing through the wide open desert. The cowboys of the old frontier would rob trains for money and any other supplies they needed to live off of. That is what Walter was doing. But then again, they could have cooked with cough syrup. Clearly, Walt is still a man who thrives off of the idea of danger.

Speaking of western motifs, the Jesse James comparison came up once again. A few weeks ago, Mike tells Walt, “just because you shot Jesse James, doesn’t mean you are Jesse James.” But with this train robbery, Jesse James comes back once again. If anything, comparing Gus to Jesse James and Walt to Robert Ford might make a little more sense. If “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” taught me anything (besides the fact that snow looks pretty), it’s that Jesse James was still a hero despite being an outlaw, and even if his death would be better for the country’s safety, he would be missed by many. However, at this point I doubt that Walter White will be missed by anyone if someone pulls the trigger on him. If that was to happen, I am still betting that Jesse will take on the role of Robert Ford in this modern western folktale.

As the train passes over Jesse, barely missing him, I squirmed in fear that the show might off him in that moment. Because that’s how good “Breaking Bad” is: even when you know it’s not the right moment to kill a character off, you still get the feeling that any moment could lead to their demise. But after the robbery turns out to be a success, Jesse gets to yell “yeah, bitch!” This is his equivalent of a battle call of victory.

The celebration couldn’t last long. The episode began with a boy we never met scooping up a tarantula in the desert and then riding off on his dirt bike. Knowing this show, I should have known this was another instance of Chekhov’s Gun. The boy from the beginning appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Everyone on “Breaking Bad” has the ability to commit murder. Without a moment’s hesitation, Todd takes out his gun and shoots the little boy. Mike told them that every successful heist leaves no witnesses, but he never said what to do with children. It was a tragic moment, and one that brought Jesse to tears, while Walt just stood there silently. Past Walt would never have allowed that to happen. Next week, Heisenberg will probably conclude that it was “either him or us.”

“Dead Fright” ended with a very “Breaking Bad” shot in which the tarantula that the little boy had collected in a jar struggled to get out of the jar which lay next to the boy’s lifeless body. Perhaps it shows that Walt’s evil is becoming an inhuman force of nature itself, which drags in and kills anyone that gets in its way. As the tagline for “The Dark Knight” touted, welcome to a world without rules.

Side Observations:

-Anna Gunn is killing it this season. In earlier seasons, she got a lot of the same flack January Jones got on “Mad Men” after Jones’s Betty decided to kick her adulterous husband out of the house. Gunn’s Skyler was also faced with the tough choice of tearing her own family apart in order to protect her children. However, the difference between Gunn and Jones is that Jones has the personality of a doorstop. Gunn has gotten to show her true colors ever since Skyler broke bad. In season five, she is proving herself to be one of the few people who can stand up to Walt. She claims to be Walt’s hostage, but she acts like anything but that.

-Lydia tells Walt that there’s an “ocean of methylamine” on the train. Maybe I’m the only one who felt this way, but I was immediately reminded of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) proclaiming, “there’s a whole ocean of oil under our feet, and I’m the only one who can get to it!” in “There Will Be Blood.” These two pioneers of the American West have a lot in common, including an unstoppable desire to build empires while putting their families at risk. Based on the flash forward that opened this season up, Walt is likely going to end up in a similar, lonely place that Daniel Plainview ended up in. In a perfect world, Paul Thomas Anderson will be asked to direct an upcoming episode.

-Once again, everyone was addressing Walt Junior (R.J. Mitte) by his old nickname of Flynn. This time, he didn’t seem too pleased about it, and it had nothing to do with the fact that he didn’t get to visit an omelette bar like I had wrongly predicted would happen this week. Perhaps the nickname was made to totally separate him from his father. The poor kid didn’t even understand why he couldn’t see his father anymore. When the secret finally comes out, I don’t think Flynn will be standing at his father’s side.

-Saul Goodman, who was absent this week, must have felt pretty left out. As the guy who always knows a guy, Saul is usually an instrumental part of helping Walt and Jesse get out of the messes that they create.

-Walt, Jesse, and Mike make an awesome team. Their dynamic is very clear at this point: Walt and Mike fight over who’s right, and then Jesse comes up with the idea that saves them. I hope next time Jesse comes up with a great idea, it is accompanied with one of the graphics that included a bunch of light bulbs and the word IDEA that used to appear on “Rocket Power” anytime someone thought of something.

How Jesse comes up with his best ideas.

Analog This: Live Free or Die, Breaking Bad Season 5 Premiere

1 Reply

You’re not the boss of me now.

Warning: Spoilers ahead! So if you don’t like spoilers (and based on the Internet buzz around “The Dark Knight Rises,” I can tell that people really don’t), read on with caution.

It is fitting that the first episode of the final season of “Breaking Bad” would begin the same way that the pilot did. In the pilot, Walter White (Bryan Cranston) looks at the number 50 spelled out in his bacon. In the season five premiere, entitled “Live Free Or Die,” Walt was digging on swine and turning his bacon strips into the number 52. During this mysterious flash forward, Walt had aged two years and since that time, he has gone from caring, mild-mannered chemistry teacher to downright evil meth cooker Heisenberg.

I may not be qualified to say that “Breaking Bad” is the best drama ever on television. After all, I still haven’t seen “The Wire,” and I’ve only seen “Sopranos” and “Six Feet Under” episodes here and there. However, I can say this: “Breaking Bad” is the best drama I have ever seen on television, and it shows no signs of slowing down.
While “Breaking Bad” shows no signs of slowing down, the season premiere was rightfully toned back after the heart-stopping season four finale. The stakes were high, but not as high. This was classic “Breaking Bad”: Walt had to clear his name, and Jesse (Aaron Paul) got one very memorable declaration of his favorite five letter word that begins with a “b.”

However, things are noticeably different. Now that Gus is gone, moral ambiguity doesn’t stand as strong. Walt is officially the show’s villain. He officially earned this title after breaking the one moral he had left by poisoning a child (to be fair, he also let Jesse’s girlfriend die in season two). Jesse, meanwhile, is somewhat starting to become the man Walt once was. He’s now just as good of a cook as he is, and he’s even getting into science. He comes up with ideas, such as that magnet one, right off the top of his head the way Walt used to be able to. Now, Walt’s ego is too high to let that brilliant brain of his actually work.

But before I go further, I have to go back. Or should I say forward. No show since the glory days of “Lost” has used the concept of flashbacks and flash forwards as effectively as “Breaking Bad” does. Based on this flash forward, we now know that “Breaking Bad” takes place over a period of at least two years. We also know that something bad enough will happen that will draw Walt to change his identity. I believe this is part of the last resort plan that Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) told Walt about in the season three finale. Walt is now a man from New Hampshire. A close up of the state’s license plate focuses in on the state motto, “Live Free or Die.” This motto is basically the declaration of Walter White and eventually Heisenberg. This is a man who will do anything as long as it allows him to keep his freedom, even if that means constantly shifting his identity. This is a man who once gave up money for cancer treatment because he didn’t want charity. Walter White wasn’t always evil, but he has always been filled with the hubris that is leading to his downfall.

Classic “Breaking Bad” shot

“Live Free or Die” was essentially a heist film condensed into one hour. As far as heist films go, it was a very good one. This caper involved Jesse, Walt, and Mike (Jonathan Banks) trying to get a hold of a laptop found in Gus’s office containing hours of security footage. Even with Gus gone, his cold and ever watchful presence is always felt. It was locked up in a DEA evidence room and since they couldn’t get it from the inside, they instead got it from the outside using a giant magnet. Walt gets away safely, for now.

Seeing as even the show’s own creator doesn’t feel sympathy for the character, I think Walt’s luck will eventually run out. Hank (Dean Norris) looked pretty sure of something we didn’t know while searching through the remnants of the meth lab. Did he already look at those security tapes and know who Heisenberg really is. Maybe he, like many have already proposed, switched out the laptop and has the real one in his possession. It’s a move that only Hank could pull off.

The posters promoting the latest seasons touted the tagline, “All Hail the King.” This can now be seen as somewhat ironic, because despite all of his wealth, Walt isn’t quite on top of the world. It makes more sense to say that he thinks he is king. At one point in “Live Free or Die,” he claims he is right simply because “he says so” and later he tells Saul that “it’s not over until he says it’s over.” And there Walt is again, too stubborn to ever let someone try and tell him how to live his life.

And as much as I liked this episode, it just felt a tad too short. This might have to do with the fact that this is the first time I’ve ever watched an episode of “Breaking Bad” live with commercials as opposed to streaming on Netflix. I am sure that I am not the only one who feels this way so next time Gilligan, don’t be afraid to go long. But as far as setting up the next two years goes, we have a hell of a lot to look forward to from the most intense drama on television.

Side Observation:

I feel as if every character on “Breaking Bad” is worthy of their own spin-off. Maybe with the exception of Marie (Betsy Brandt), just because I don’t think I can sit through another spoon stealing ordeal. And while I always thought the spin-off would go to Saul, I think Mike deserves his own at all. He kills it with his many deadpan zingers (“Keys scumbag. It’s the universal sign for keys”) and his mysterious way of living. Seriously, I actually want to see more of his friendship with those chickens.

And in case you were wondering, this is what it said behind Gus’s picture in the cracked frame: