10 10 / 2011
I wrote this. It is filled with spoilers. This is the best show on television.
Things not mentioned in this piece, but certainly thought about: Gilmore Girls season 6 (when they break up), A Simple Plan, Coen Bros, The Godfather, and whether there’s a line between Buggin’ Out in Do the Right Thing and Gus Fring. Both are fastidious!
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19 7 / 2011
Pretty sure it’s time to just become a Breaking Bad blog. (It is, actually, one of the most unsatisfyingly “recapped” shows on the internet. Not that recapping is an art by any means - maybe? - but most people talking about Breaking Bad can’t contextualize it.) Don’t you love it when a work of art respects your intelligence?
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22 2 / 2011
Today I realized that Breaking Bad should, technically, be coming back on the air soon - but unfortunately, AMC delayed it to July 2011. So curious about where season 4 will go. It could be amazing, it could jump the shark. Did you ever notice that classy cable shows tend to show their wear and tear right around the 4th season? But, since season 1 was so truncated, in some ways, it’s kind of like the 3rd season.
This delay means that the Best Actor Emmy won’t go to Bryan Cranston for the first time in three years, but that’s it. Jon Hamm is probably pretty excited.
Miss you, Walter White! Miss you forever, Jesse Pinkman!
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24 5 / 2010
Breaking Bad, “Fly”
I found this week’s episode of Breaking Bad to be frustrating. I do think that it would play well within a DVD set, but self-contained, as the episode for the week, I had to admit that I was kind of left sputtering Comic Book Guy-style.
Even though it wasn’t completely awful, there were some things in there - truly sloppy, metaphor-laden writing for one, the type of self-contained episode that had no real stakes and was just based on irrationality, for another - that just didn’t work and I really hope that they don’t go with that in future episodes. (Kind of like how The Royal Tenenbaums is a decent movie, but you could see Wes Anderson going further into his dollhouse until he actually makes a stop-motion film, you know? Another story entirely, though.)
The fact that the episode was centered around killing a fly in the lab and the slapstick of that, well, that was simply tiring. “4 Days Out” was self-contained as well, but also interesting, because they thought that they were going to die. There were stakes. This was just metaphor spinning in circles.
Walt’s speech about the “perfect time to die” was wonderful. Went with the character. (I buy Cranston’s speeches a little bit more than Aaron Paul’s. Cranston makes them sound more natural. You forget about the writing.) The speech from Walt - doped up on Jesse sneaking Truth Serum Sleeping Pills in his coffee - summarizing most of the series up to that point? It didn’t seem natural. The showy direction by the guy who did Brick and the Brothers Bloom didn’t really add anything significant, and it was terribly paced, even boring.
Whatever plot I got out of the episode, as they were leaving the lab, that was well-done. But this episode was pretty much Breaking Bad doing Mad Men - heavy and slow, laden with metaphor that something may happen but probably won’t - and that’s not where the show’s strengths lie, I think. Let that symbolism serve life and death and plot.
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18 4 / 2010
On Breaking Bad
I just finished Season 2 of Breaking Bad. I think the show is wonderful. And one thing I like in particular is its satisfactory plotting. (Because when it comes to Matt Weiner, I don’t get that feeling at all…) Even when it’s an episode about Walt and a water-pump, it ends with a crushing moment. There’s something creepy, real, and awfully unsettling about the show. And the cinematography is so gorgeous. (The episode with the junkies and the little boy is one of the most excruciating hours of TV. Remember, if you haven’t watched Breaking Bad before: don’t do it before bed. You will thank me.)
1) Thank god for Bryan Cranston’s wrinkled, unbotox-ed face. Can you imagine what the show would be like if he couldn’t emote with the worried folds of his skin? Thank goodness he was a journeyman TV actor that got a shot and not a fading movie star. If he was the latter, or the role was for a lady, I’m afraid that the complexities would be lost in the Botox.
1A) Cranston’s awesome, isn’t he? I love that guy.
2) The show sticks with you in awful ways. Last Sunday my SO and I were driving to a waterfall and we got lost. He ends up pulling over in front of this motel with some big bros sitting on the front porch. He’s looking at a map, trying to figure out where we went wrong, and this wiry tattooed dude in no shirt and jeans starts stalking down the front walk towards our car. I tell Stu to go and we speed away. It just didn’t seem like a good scene - and I thought that maybe he could’ve been trying to be a good neighbor, or whatnot, but I feared the worst, and for that, I blame Walter White.
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