Hi! My name is Scotto. You might know me as that guy who likes music. You might also know me as that guy who really likes Doctor Who and LOST. But that's work I do for other people, so I like to think of myself as being a guy who talks about music.
A problem I was having a while ago was that I just didn't have time to listen to all the music I wanted (my life routine has changed and nobody is paying me to do it. Wah.) It was getting harder to run the site in the way I wanted to, so I broached the idea of starting this blog, as a way of getting some content out of something I was already going to do anyway: sit on my ass watching TV. It was a good thought, and hey, I've been writing about TV on the side for a while. Problem is, I had this idea during the summer, when the only thing I was watching was MasterChef and Degrassi. So I did one post about each and then thought "Hm, this really isn't enough. Better go back to music." The other thing was that, with super-popular AMC series Breaking Bad set to finish, that's all anyone is interested in thinking about. And I hadn't watched it.
I'm terrible, okay? I get it. But it wasn't because I didn't want to. I watched the first two episodes years ago, and was quite taken with it, but I was in University at the time, life got in the way, and I had to put it on the backburner for other projects (like watching LOST for the 10th time. I really like LOST.) Then a few months ago, in preparation for the new season of Arrested Development, we finally joined the 21st century in my house and got Netflix. One thing leads to another and now here we are.
While watching the first season, my main thought was, "Well, this is exactly what I figured." Which is to say, the show has an interesting premise, a great cast, and the promise of violence and mayhem. There's the immediate threat of rival drug lords and unpredictable drug types set against the slow-burning drama of the lies and machinations of Walt's double-life, which threatens to come crashing down at any minute. It's not slow to start, either, putting Walt right in the thick of things in the first few episodes. The tweakers, gangsters and thugs on the show (as well as the bro-y DEA agents) can be a bit broadly drawn at times, but people in both worlds can lend themselves to being cartoonish. In general, it's great TV to watch this mild-mannered suburbanite dive head-first into this world he knows nothing about, assuming he can apply his sense of order to it, and watch it blow up in his face, making small gains then losing ground just as quickly. The show becomes a push-pull between Walt's desperation to build up a nestegg to leave his family, and his limitations as a drug peddler. "We need to make more, Jesse, and we need a way to sell it!" No duh.
For the bulk of season 2, then, they attempt to run their own operation, with Jesse's hilariously inadequate crew of Badger, Skinny Pete and Combo. This leads to one of my favourite episodes, "Peekaboo," where Jesse has to intimidate a junkie couple into giving back the meth and money they took from Skinny Pete. We learn that there's a difference between the Tucos and 8-Balls of the world, who are built to intimidate and kill, and small-time hustlers like Jesse who can't even scare a few bucks out of some junkies. What ensues is black comedy, as Jesse loses more and more control over the situation, to the point where it just resolves himself when she kills her husband by crushing his head with the ATM he's trying to break into (For a punchline, the ATM pops open anyway and Jesse walks away with the cash after calling 9-1-1 on them. All's well that ends well.)
Perhaps the most artful episode of the season, though, when I sat up and really took notice, was "4 Days Out," where Walt, concerned about his worsening condition, forces Jesse out to the desert for a four-day marathon meth cooking session, which results in them being stranded. The set-up isn't exactly smooth - from the moment Jesse puts those keys in the ignition, you know what's going to happen. But to watch it play out fairly unflinchingly is another thing, as they get dehydrated and desperate to power their vehicle any way they can. (As has been the cases in other dire times times on the show, science comes to the rescue.)
The series levels up with the introduction of Bob Odenkirk Saul Goodman, the slimy lawyer with all the connections, who wants to be Walt's consigliare. Ordenkirk is amazing in his part, as it's just a degree or two dialed down from one of his fast-talking Mr. Show characters, or his "angry boss" character from How I Met Your Mother. He's an ambulance chasing "criminal lawyer" (accent on the criminal, per Jesse,) in the tradition of Lionel Hutz, in the context of a violent AMC drama, and it works.
With the introduction of Saul Goodman, the show's possibilities really open up. Previously, their circle of influence was limited to who Jesse knows and who they know. They weren't going to escape being small-time street dealers no matter how many times Walt insisted they needed "Footsoldiers." With the productive weekend having built up their inventory to the tune of $1M in meth, they need a way to sell it, and Saul knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who might be able to pull that off, if he's willing.
I really liked the meeting between Gus and Walt. Gus is everything Walt sees himself as: a rigid, cautious, forward-thinking participant in a game normally played by over-excited street toughs. Gus knows this is not the case. Walt is not like him: he's a scrambler, a man who doesn't know what his next move is going to have to be, only that he has to make it somehow. Gus is understandably unenthusiastic about bringing someone like that into his fold. But there's no way anything Walt wants can happen without Gus. I'm not sure if people like Gus really exist in the drug trade, or if it's just a fantasy extrapolation by the show's writers, but it works.
So he tests Walt, and Walt makes the score, to the tune of $1.2M split two ways, less Saul's cut, in a scene that is glossed over while Skylar goes into labour (because as soon as she started planning a c-section, you knew that was happening.) Walt, however, wants to hold onto Jesse's cut because his drug problem is worsening under the influence of Jane, his heroin-addicted girlfriend who has fallen back into the life seemingly just by living next to Jesse. That sentence isn't a criticism of the show, by the way: I think Jane's story is one of the truest things yet depicted, her sad backslide into use that escalates Jesse's problems from weed and meth to heroin.
I feel like I've known characters like Jane, and Krysten Ritter plays her with a real heart that I've never seen her bring to a role before (or technically "since" because everything I've seen her in was made after this.) She's a woman of contradictions, the way she sizes Jesse up, seems to want to reform him, and then ends up showing him how to inject. She's that druggie contradiction of both wanting to go straight and desperately wanting to be able to keep getting fixes. She'll say anything to anyone, including her father (a charmingly overwhelmed John de Lancie) to stave off rehab.
There's a sadness to it. A real human sadness.
And then Walt lets her die, watches as she asphyxiates on her own vomit, because he's a cold man, and he knows she's a threat or at least a problem.
What happens after that is fascinating to me, and while I mentioned that I was starting to see how the show could be "artful" with "4 Days Out," the threads really tie together exquisitely here. Walt's life is now coming apart at the hinges, with Skylar having become convinced that something is amiss. There's also an interesting subplot where Walt Jr. sets up a Paypal donation site for Walt's final surgery, to Walt's dismay, which signifies the emasculation he feels at letting other people help him.
Then it comes together in an odd way. The John de Lancie character doesn't leave the show, not immediately. We follow him, watch him grieve, he shares a weighty scene with Walt, not knowing their fates are intertwined, and we watch him try to get back to work as an air traffic controller of all things. We see him guiding to planes on a collision course (I assume this was an accident, but maybe it wasn't, maybe I've been watching too much LOST.) And they impact each other in midair right over Walt's house, sending a charred teddy bear into his pool, a scene we have seen foreshadowed in the cold open of the show.
I'm fascinated that the show did this. The scene where de Lancie sees his daughter off in a body bag could've easily been the last we see of him. I doubt the plane becomes a major plot point for season 3 (and if it does, then sure,) but it's a bit of symbolism that I wasn't counting on, a way of actualizing the effects Walt's actions are starting to have on the world out there. It's a literary flourish that adds to the storytelling factor of the show and made me really take notice. I entered the show expecting only "a good show about a science teacher who cooks meth." It still is that, but the presentation gives far more than I could have asked. I'm digging this.
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