Breaking Bad 1.05 - Gray Matter

These middle episodes of season 1, "Gray Matter" and "Cancer Man" feel a bit like they are in a different show than what the rest of Breaking Bad would become. One of the main properties of Breaking Bad as a series, and the main reason I believe most people have it in the discussion of best shows of all time, is its propulsive momentum. There is constantly a sense that something is about to happen, and that can create enormous tension all the time. At its best, Breaking Bad can leave people slack jawed and unable to breathe for minutes at a time, if not for an entire hour.

"Gray Matter" doesn't have that sense of tension. There's no noose hanging over Walt and Jesse's neck like there will be for the rest of the series. As it turns out, that's for the best. This episode turns out to be possibly the most important episode of this season, if not one of the most important in the whole series. Walt turning down the money from Gretchen and Elliot directly leads to him entering back into the meth cooking trade, which will hold its grasp on him for the rest of the series, even when he thinks he's finished with it in Season 3. The episode leaves us with a question that is essential to our knowledge of Walt as a character. Why does Walt do this? Is it because it would make him a charity case? Is it because he is still bitter than Elliot "stole" Gretchen from him? Is it some combination of the two?

My honest opinion is I think that the idea that "Walt doesn't want to accept the money because it would be a charity" is a smokescreen for the real problem. I think Walt would be able to convince himself he has a right to that money based on what he did for that company. One of Walt's defining traits is that he feels entitled. That's why he gets involved with Tuco in the first place in the next episode, he feels like he should be adequately compensated for the amount of brilliance he's putting into the street, and selling through Jesse is not sufficient. That's why he has the guts to raise the price in the explosive scene next episode. Walt almost certainly feels he deserves that money Elliot's offering.

The Gretchen factor is just too much. What the writers are doing a clever job of hiding here is the levels of bitterness that Walt carries. They need to hide it because it's still too early for the sympathizing audience to see too much of Walt's unseemly qualities. He cannot accept help from Elliot and Gretchen because it would require an implicit apology from Walt's part. Accepting Elliot's charity would mean that Walt acknowledges he is still their friend, and offering money is something friends do for one another. Walt cannot bear to forgive them. That's what it comes down to. This is confirmed in "Peekaboo," where Walt once again addresses with Gretchen all the wrongs that he believes she and Elliot had done to him.

This is the man we're dealing with. It takes a while to accept it, but Walt is a sad, bitter, stubborn and proud man who is willing to do anything to get properly recompensed for his talents. If we were introduced to him in any other circumstance we would be repulsed by him. Instead, we are taken in by him and ready to follow him through the mire that he soon gets himself into. In some ways, Walt is a salesman who's trying to sell you his view of the world by obscuring the ugly things about it. And we buy it, until that ugliness is revealed.

A perfect example is his speech in the intervention scene. The intervention scene is the best scene the show has done to this point, partly because it finally makes all the supporting characters likable and agreeable, and partly because of Walt's speech. According to Walt, he doesn't want his last few months to be being a shell of himself because of the cancer treatments, he wants to be able to actually live them, and savour the time he gets with his family. It's a wonderful speech that is hard to argue with while you are listening. He's selling his opinion of things to Skylar and to the viewers, and even after seeing more of who Walt truly is, it is tempting to make the purchase. Sadly though, given the evidence of what we know about Walt, it is just as likely an excuse to not have his life put into the hands of others; it's a way he can have some measure of control over a life he's let get so far away from him.

Jesse finally wants to take some measure of control over his life as well. I was hard on the storyline with Jesse and his parents in the previous episode, but it is important for the change in enacts in Jesse. He doesn't want to let his life go to waste, he wants to be more like the son his parents want him to be. That leads to him seeking a job; trying to get himself cleaned up and make a career for himself. Sadly, he gives up all too easily. If Jesse could persevere and really try to make a legitimate life for himself there would be a chance of success, and certainly he would end up better in the long run than the path he takes. Unfortunately, Badger shows up at exactly the wrong time praising his meth cooking acumen, and it's too easy for Jesse to get trapped into thinking that's all he's good for.

It's all very tragic, because the Jesse we see in this episode is no doubt different from the Jesse we started with. He's driven, he is concerned with demonstrating the same quality in his cooking that Walt had. These traits that he starts to demonstrate are exactly what Walt is able to manipulate. He becomes Walt's dog throughout the series, constantly seeking approval and almost never getting it. The same traits that would help him in a legitimate business environment crush him in this partnership.

"Gray Matter" seems like an episode out of a different show, but it is nonetheless a great episode, establishing the direction the series is going to go from this point forward. It establishes Jesse's new direction as the driven partner trying to be good at something and trying to succeed in life, and it presents Walt as what he is more clearly that any episode to this point: bitter, regretful and domineering. It finally establishes the supporting characters as likable people rather than simply Walt's obstacles. If an episode can do all that as well as "Gray Matter" does, tension is not required.

Notes

·        The look on Skylar's face when she first sees Gretchen tells us all we need to know about her feelings of Walt and Gretchen's relationship

·        The helicopter move Badger uses while advertising comes back when he's fighting Jesse in a hilarious manner

·        Badger also fires his crossbow at Jesse's departing RV, which works about as well as you would expect it to

·        The talking pillow

·        Hank's constant sport metaphors in trying to relay his feelings to Walt. I actually think the baseball metaphor is really an accurate analysis of the situation.

·       You'd think Skylar would have a better idea after all their years of marriage the kind of techniques that will work with Walt and the kind that won't. Setting up interventions and trying to get help from others are two things guaranteed to get Walt's hackles rising.

Breaking Bad 1.06 - A Crazy Handful of Nothin'

An explosion occurs in this episode. I'm not talking about the piece of fulminated mercury that Walt threw to the ground causing Tuco's the windows of Tuco's office to shatter. I'm talking about the sudden change we get from Walt. Walt's decision to go from mild-mannered chemistry teacher to crystal meth cook is so abrupt a left turn it definitely doesn't fall into the car rusting category of chemical change. This is the equivalent of fulminated mercury hitting the ground.

Nothing changed in the composition of the fulminated mercury in Walt's hand that caused it to explode. It had the same molecular structure when it hit the ground as it did when it was in Walt's hand. It needed a catalyst, in this case hitting the ground hard, to detonate. This is true of Walt. Nothing changed about Walt to cause him to become Heisenberg. He simply needed to hit rock bottom with enough force to bring that internal energy he had within him out. Walt changes rapidly throughout the series, and particularly in this episode. But it's the change he always had within him, the monster he always had inside of him that shows itself. There's nothing new about the Walt that appears, it's the same atoms. They've just changed arrangement. As Walt likes to say, it's just basic chemistry.

The pre-credits sequence for this episode is unbelievably good. It shows how naive Walt is about what it takes to make money in an illegal business. He doesn't yet understand that when you are dealing with people who are willing to break the law via trafficking drugs, they are also willing to break the law via homicide. To survive with people who play that game, you need to be able to play that game as well. That is always the difference between Walt and Jesse. Jesse can't run with the big guns because he has enough of a conscience that he can't commit the offenses you need to be willing to commit. He doesn't have the same chemical composition that Walt does, there's no catalyst that is going to make Jesse explode into the same type of criminal Walt can be. Jesse gets beaten near the point of death this episode because he tries to play by the rules with people who do not play by the rules. Walt is the one who's willing to go the extra distance, be willing to kill if required. That is why Walt comes out on top time and time again throughout the series.

There's a reason explosions are feared, though. The amount of collateral damage that occurs from a big enough explosion can be devastating. That is what this episode shows, and what Breaking Bad's message is as a whole. It doesn't just show the change that Walt undergoes, it also shows the amount of damage that is done by that change.

Hugo is the first to take a fall for Walt's actions. The kindly janitor who was willing to clean up Walt's mess and offer a stick of gum is undone by the discovery of stolen equipment in the science lab at Walt's school. I don't need to spell out the consequences for Hugo. Not only does he lose his job, not only does he have to spend more time in prison, he is going to find it very difficult to get a job when he gets out. Worse, he's a disgrace to those in the school who hired him, as parents such as Skylar don't look beyond "previous criminal record" and "joint smoking" when they evaluate him. The judgment passed down on Hugo by Hank and Skylar at the poker scene is terrible, but not unrealistic conclusions for any person to arrive at given the information they had.

The other piece of damage is Jesse. This is the second time Jesse's been beaten badly in the series, and he has at least two more beatings still to come, in "One Minute" and "Ozymandias," not to mention the psychological impacts of his time with Walter. In this case, he's pushed into a situation he's not at all adept by Walt's greed and sense of entitlement. $2600 dollars a day (or week, it's not very clear) is apparently not enough for Walt, despite the fact it sometimes can take time to grow a new business. There's no patience here, and Walt shows unnecessary desperation in trying to make deals with dangerous criminal enterprises. Despite Walt's ultimatum at the beginning, he just cannot stand by and let Jesse do his job. He has to interfere.

The dynamic between Walt and Jesse is absolutely toxic. Walt keeps Jesse around through his combination of confidence and disappointment. There's two scenes in this episode really close together. In the first, Walt comes out of the RV coughing up a storm and convinces Jesse that he's a good enough cook to finish the batch. This is huge for the new approval seeking version of Jesse, as it shows him he is good for something and entangles him in Walt's web even more. The next time they're together, Walt is tearing into Jesse for not selling enough of the meth, which is frankly something Walt knows pretty much nothing about. This causes Jesse to feel like he needs to do better to be successful, and ultimately results him falling flat on his face. This cycle continues over and over again. The biggest examples are Walt calling Jesse's meth as good as his in "One Minute" to keying off the fight in "Bug" where he tears into Jesse for not slipping Gus the ricin and assuring him he's going to screw up and end up dead in Mexico without Walt. It's really sad that Jesse doesn't realize how little he needs Walt sooner and escapes before he becomes permanently damaged by the relationship.

As terrible as the Walt explosion (Waltsplosion? No?) is, it sure is satisfying to see. Even on rewatch, even after having the majority of your sympathy towards Walt sapped, it's hard not to stand up and cheer when he says, "this isn't meth" and blows up the piece of mercury right in front of them. Choosing between cheering for Tuco to clean Walt's clock and cheering for Walt to get the better of Tuco, you take Walt every time. The series is so good at generating tension and adrenaline, and the mercury scene is a really good example of that. It is both great and terrible to see Walt coming into his own and using his knowledge of chemistry to get the one up on all the experienced drug dealers.

Walt turning into a drug dealer is so sudden a turn and so momentous, it becomes impossible to keep others from getting caught up in the blast. From Hugo to Jesse to Gale to eventually Hank, Walt's building of a drug empire will leave many casualties in its wake. A Crazy Handful of Nothin' is our first glimpse of that, and while we felt sorry for Jesse and Hugo in this episode, well, we ain't seen nothin' yet.

Notes

·        As noted in previous reviews, anything causing Jesse to look less like an idiot is appreciated in this point in the show. Him figuring out Walt has cancer by connecting him to his aunt falls nicely into that category.

·        Breaking Bad sure likes its montages, and the Jesse dealing montage in this episode in this episode is a good one . We even get a Combo sighting!

·        "Yo man, I'm Skinny Pete!" I have no idea why, but this line always cracks me up in combination with the pose he gives the camera.

·        Food for thought: Was Walt bluffing with the bag of fulminated mercury? It doesn't seem like it, and this isn't really the show that plays with its viewers in that way, but it would connect nicely with Walt bluffing out Hank and the title of this episode.

·       Walter Jr breakfast update: He likes pineapples.

·        Tuco is a little too much of a cartoon. I understand why the show felt he would be an appropriate villain at this point, but he's not one of Breaking Bad's better characters by a long shot.

·        As much as I love the pre-credits sequence, it's the third in media res opening in 6 episodes. Breaking Bad eventually will get more creative with its opening sequences, particularly with the Mexican music video.

Breaking Bad Review 1.07 - A No Rough Stuff Type Deal

The structure of Breaking Bad seasons usually call for pretty explosive season finales. In two instances, the second and fourth season finales, that explosion is a literal one. Depending on whether you feel "Gliding Over All" is a season finale or not, this is definitely the calmest of the finales Breaking Bad does. It's fair to say the lack of any real resolution found in this finale is a direct result of the writer's strike that happened in early 2008. But just because this episode does not play like a season finale doesn't mean it doesn't  conclude an important arc. The season is all about the process of Walt breaking bad. By the time this episode rolls around, Walt is hooked on crime and danger now, and there is no going back from the life he's chosen at this point. He occasionally wobbles, but the confrontation with Tuco at the end of the previous episode has woken a compulsion within him, and he's unable to escape the situation he's put himself in from this point forward.

"A No-Rough-Stuff-Type Deal" is interested in exploring that compulsion Walt has, and how he's able to reconcile it to himself and to others. The newfound addiction to danger is present right from the pre-credits sequence. He's getting off on the fear of being caught, pleasing his wife where anyone may be able to take notice. He has sex with her in the back of a car, in a place where anyone may be able to peek through the window. It's the thrill of danger, the thrill that's present in the risk of being caught. And it's so clear throughout the episode how new this thrill is to Walt and how little he is able to control his compulsion to feed it.

The public fooling around with his wife is harmless enough, but continually pushing the envelope with Tuco is not. First, Walt has the guts to get paid the full amount for his meth even though he's well short of what is promised. Then, he ups what he and Jesse are willing to provide per week without even knowing whether he'd be able to get his hands on the material to mass produce in those sort of quantities. Then, rather than taking the easy road and paying some people off to steal the methylamine for him, he devises a plan to put himself and Jesse in danger instead. His ability to escape danger with his brilliance gives him such a high that he can't help but put himself in worse and worse situations, and if not for the wake-up call at the end of the episode, where Tuco shows just how dangerous he truly is, the result almost certainly would him biting off more than he can chew.

It's a compulsion, and it parallels the kleptomania Marie has. I'm not 100% sure I liked the Marie story this episode, or found it a necessary storyline to parallel what was going on with Walt, but I'm not going to complain about any attempts to flesh out the secondary characters at this point. The part of this storyline that stands out to me is how unapologetic Marie is about her problem. Skylar's caught her red-handed here, and yet she continues to act cool, and she continues to lie and treat her problem as nothing. The reason for this is she probably doesn't even think about it as a problem. She doesn't need Skylar to bug her about this because it's harmless. The jewelry store probably is swimming in money, and one missing tiara won't hurt anyone. Rationalization almost always comes with strong compulsions, and is probably the main reason many people with addiction problems  don't get the help they need. These people can't help themselves, so rather than see themselves as broken they minimize the impact of what they do.

That's what we see with Walt as well in this episode. Twice in the episode he tries to cryptically rationalize his new criminal lifestyle. First, he tells Hank the lines of legality are arbitrary and inconsistent, that they can change at any time. Hank properly calls him out on that, and saying he sounds a lot like the criminals he put behind bars. Then, he does a strange defense of Marie for Skylar, saying that sometimes you have to cross lines if family is involved. This becomes Walt's catchphrase going forward, that he entered the meth cooking life for his family. We know this to be a rationalization, a lie Walt tells himself, a lie Walt knows is false. Walt is in the meth cooking life because he became addicted to the thrill of danger. At multiple points throughout the series, Walt is in a place where he can sit back and (fairly) safely make good money. But he does not, he pushes the envelope further. He needs the threats on his life, and he needs to be able to show that he's smart enough to overcome them.

It's all well and good when you are putting yourself in danger, rock climbing without harnesses on your own, but bringing others into it is crossing a line. The amount of danger Walt puts Jesse in within this episode is astonishing. The fact that Jesse is still sticking around and still letting it happen is a result of the hypnotic hold Walt has on him. Shortly after Walt gives Jesse the shopping list to make the meth with, he does his best job of instilling confidence. "You can do this!" he tells him, and it's probably one of the first times anyone has shown any confidence in Jesse. It's true and sad that Jesse is Walt's dog throughout the series, constantly begging for whatever little crumbs of approval he can get and constantly getting slapped instead. The partnership is terrible for Jesse and great for Walt on all counts, yet it gives Jesse that feeling of competence he can't get anywhere else.  Jesse is trapped by his compulsion to seek approval, the same way as Walt, and the same way as Marie.

I feel terrible for Skylar this episode. She's getting lied to from two directions, one she's fully aware of and one she's not. In a clever bit of foreshadowing, Marie's lie traps her in a place where she has to go along with the scam and lie to the authorities in order to save face and get herself out of a bad situation. She's still pretty blind to what Walt is doing, though his sudden interest in Eastern healing methods probably should have had her suspicious. That does not sound like the scientifically minded Walt in the slightest and she probably should have known that. Walt's reaction to Marie's stealing was awfully suspicious as well. Skylar's no dummy, and she'll figure things out eventually, but it's another lesson how hard it is to look past "CANCER!" and see the problems that Walt has at this point.

The best scene in this episode is without a doubt the scene with the video camera. The family we see in the video camera is irrevocably shaken by the events of the series. This is almost like a "before" picture, and the "after" isn't pretty. That view of Hank and Marie so cheery is going to really hurt those looking at the video in the future. And Walt's speech at the end seems inspiring at the time, and the acting is fantastic, with Walt knowing that he's probably not going to be around to get the know the girl who will be watching this video years down the line. It would be tempting for Bryan Cranston to overplay the scene, have tears building up and his voice faltering as he delivers the message. Instead, he underplays it, instead remaining calm on the exterior when you know there's a struggle going on inside of him. It is heartbreaking to watch this scene knowing how it's going to look years down the line. Instead of being the inspiring words of a dying man knowing he's not going to be there for his daughter, it will be lying words from a villain. Walt ends up with nothing at the end of this series, not his name, not his innocence, and certainly not his family's goodwill.

Though the finale of Season 1 offers us no plot resolutions at all, it does complete the arc of Walt's entrance into the world of cooking meth. At this point Walt is addicted to the thrill of danger and the ability to feel like the brilliant chemist he once was. The next step in his journey is to learn how to be a criminal, and it will be much more costly than he thinks.

Notes

·         The first appearance of the porkpie hat! For that alone, this is an incredibly momentous episode.

·         "Yeah, science!"

·         The wonders of hindsight: You get to look at Walt and Jesse trying to carry the can of methylamine and all you can think of is the DEA's incredulous expressions in a later episode. Why didn't they just roll it? Walt and Jesse do figure out they have to roll the can later in the episode, as they roll it down the stairs. A little too quickly.

·         I love the scene in the Open House where one of the potential buyers complains about the smell, and the real estate agent has some air freshener in hand ready to spray.

·          Tuco is undoubtedly cartoonish, but the scene where he beats the guy to death for absolutely nothing wraps so far into the cartoonish side it passes back into brilliant again. There's off the wall, and then there's being 100% committed to off the wall.

·         Walt and Jesse wear sunglasses in the final scene to try to make them seem like cool customers. It's a nice contrast when they have to react to a man getting beaten to death while wearing those sunglasses. They were not so cool then.

·         The part with the parents reacting to the stolen lab equipment in the cold open is not good at all. First, there's more piling on Hugo, which served its purpose in the last episode, at this point it is overkill. Apparently there is no parent there smart enough to realize stories about LSD in Canada have nothing to do with the subject matter at hand. It's a cliched and wearing portrayal of parents in a show that should know better.

·         Breaking Bad is going to always struggle with plot contrivances, it's just a matter of how much you can turn off your sensitivity to them. The Open House being the same day as Walt and Jesse's big cook doesn't derail the episode in a way we may see in the future, but it is sort of groanworthy.

What Is This Place?

Welcome to Other Scott's TV Blog!

For today, this is going to be the location where I dump some Season 1 episode by episode Breaking Bad reviews. The plan is to see what sort of reception I get to them before moving on to other seasons. It's quite a bit of work, so I don't want to jump into it without knowing that at least a few people are willing to read them.

In more general terms, I've thought of getting something together to post my thoughts for a while now. For me, writing things down is a good way to collect my thoughts on things. For the most part, if a show is interesting to me I'll usually do season retrospectives. It will mostly be for current shows, but there may be some old shows on there. Be warned, I move through old shows extremely slowly. So if I post on Sopranos Season 5 next week, you may be waiting a while to hear anything on season 6.

I may also do short bullet point posts on shows currently airing while in season. For instance, my first non Breaking Bad post will probably be Tuesday, where I'll sum up the series premiere of Gotham and the 2nd season premiere of Sleepy Hollow.

There may be other stuff too, even non TV related. I don't expect you'll see much about movies here, as I typically don't have much to say about them. There may be occasional sports posts where I get angry at the hive mind of the media. There may also be posts on religion, so be warned about that.

So, since I'm not sure how to work this blogger thing, this will probably be the last post you read. So, where I would normally say "Hope you enjoy my Breaking Bad reviews" I'll say, "Hope you enjoyed my Breaking Bad reviews!"

-Scott