Ending Bad

Inevitably, the ending of Breaking Bad turns out to be disappointing, in part because we have set unreasonable expectations for any great series and in particular for this one, which literally seemed to improve and mature with almost every episode. These conclusions are also disappointing because we don't want to let the characters go, and wish they could live on - but the writers and creators know, as a convention, that they lead has to die - otherwise, there's always that slight possibility of another season. But the conclusion to BB was also disappointing because, thought Vince Gilligan wrapped up all of the strands of the series pretty effectively, he did so by granting Walter White almost superhuman powers - or luck. Did anyone else wonder how in hell he managed to sneak into the house of the wealthy couple? Or how they would manage to distribute millions in cash to Walt's children? And how did he manage to build that weird contraption in the Cadillac trunk that mowed down the whole rival gang? Even the assassination of the Chicken King in the nursing home seemed more possible, if not more credible. In other words, in this last episode Walt stepped out of the boundaries of ordinariness that made his character, and the show, so intriguing. I didn't buy into it, and thought an accidental or unexpected death would be a more likely and more satisfying conclusion. (BTW, I always thought it was a mistake to kill Tony in the final episode, and that he should have been left as the last one standing, with his family and his crew all gone.) Despite these quibbles about the final episode, Breaking Bad takes a deserved place among the great American TV dramatic series, maybe just a notch below The Wire and The Sopranos, but certainly on a level with Mad Men, Friday Night Lights, Homeland, and even the surprising Battlestar Gallactica - each different in style and genre but each just a great contribution and a high point in American culture and to popular, commercial entertainment.

Breaking Bad: The End is Near

I've noted a # of times that no show has consistently become better episode by episode than Breaking Bad. This week's episode - is it the penultimate? - carries that observation forward, still intact, as it's one of the finest and most dramatically intense episode every seen on TV, IMHO. From the very strange opening sequence - a flashback to a time when Walt and Jesse were first cooking meth in a trailer, and W. is trying to maintain a bizarre facade of normalcy with the then-pregnant Skyler - long cell phone conversation suggesting they take a drive up to Taos over the weekend, enjoy some family time - while he's cooking meth in the background! - to the very tense confrontation with the new meth gang when they discover that the now-captive Hank is a DEA agent, Walt's desperate attempts to negotiate for Hank's release, Hank's trenchant remark that W. is so smart and so stupid - he doesn't see that Hank's a dead man either way - the capture of Jesse and his abduction, the final face-ff between Skyler and Marie, the revelation at long last to "Junior," the violent confrontation at home between the bossy and now totally insane Walt and Skyler (and Junior), and finally Walter's revenge and this very strange phone call back to S., when he must know police are listening. What's his motive for that call? To pose as the only bad guy and take the heat of Skyler? Or something else more devious. The end is near.

Breaking Bad - the only series to get consistently better episode by episode

I will join the chorus and sing in praise of the final season of AMC's Breaking Bad - if there was ever a series that got consistently better season by season and even episode by episode it's this one. This final season once again contains great drama, with all the characters in crisis - as Hank moves in on Walt and tries to arrest him while protecting his sister-in-law Skylar, not realizing, at least yet, how deeply involved Skylar is in the crimes. Each of the first three episodes has tremendous surprises - e.g., the DVD "confession" that Walt records, which has everyone, I'm sure, completely fooled until Hank and Marie play it at home and we see Walt's message, or threat - and scenes that could be studied and played out in any acting workshop anywhere: a great example being the long diner scene with just Skylar and Hank - he doing most of the talk, trying to convince her that he can protect her if she'll just tell him about Hank's crimes, and we just watch her face go through a transformation as she croaks out that she thinks she needs a lawyer, and Hank just can't understand - tremendous scene. It would be a great scene to improvise of course - give the two actors their basic condition and motivation and see if he can persuade her and if she can resist without drawing down too much suspicion. Clearly, over the course of the season, we are seeing Walt (and Skylar) as increasingly monstrous, but in that crazy way of this series also as utterly conventional and fiercely protective family. As M pointed out, it's the counterpoint to the Sopranos, in which in this case an ordinary, good, high-minded, somewhat nebishy man becomes increasingly evil - a villain in sheepish clothing.

Breaking Bad gets on back on track : Season 5

It has taken a while for the current season (5?) of "Breaking Bad" to find its footing, but the current episode was very strong and has gotten the season on track. The first two or three we very slow and incremental, despite a few fine scenes the excellent writing and acting by the leads that we've come to expect from this strong series. It's as if they felt they had to move slow and recap a lot of material for the many new viewers they inevitably pick up thanks to the strong reviews. Only in this week's episode did the tensions really build and the vise-grip of the narrative take hold. First episodes showed Walter and Jesse getting back into the meth business - setting up a portable lab, with help of tough-guy Mike, the lone survivor from the Mexican-based drug ring now wiped out. He's a great, compelling character and I'm glad they've retained him: one of the best scenes in earlier episodes was his confrontation with the various other survivors of the defunct meth lab and "convincing" them to keep silent. In current episode, we get at last to the heart of the story: the tension between Walter's commitment to his family and his ever-deeper involvement in the big $ of drugs. Terrific scenes showing Skyler's growing alienation and estrangement, culminating in her plunge into a pool - obviously not a serious suicide attempt, but very deranged behavior. This followed by a torrential scene in which she (the excellent Anna Gunn) says she will do anything to get her children out of the household and away from Walter, whom she sees as increasingly dangerous. He (the equally excellent Bryan Cranston) is cool and placid through most of the episode - strangely oblivious to how much his wife is ignoring him - but he explodes in this scene, and you can see and feel that danger that Skyler is beginning to feel in his presence. All the while, the brother-in-law drug agent continues his pursuit of the drug mastermind, and we know - we've been building toward this for 5 seasons (which, oddly, seem to cover only a year in story time) - the ultimate confrontation between Hank and Walter, and what that will do to their entwined families.

Is Breaking Bad Shakespearean?

Someone on the radio was talking about the greatness of Season 4 of "Breaking Bad," particularly the last several episodes, and he said these episodes are practically Shakespearean. That overstates the case by a wide measure - go back and read or see a production of Hamlet of King Lear and then tell me whether Breaking Bad or anything on TV measures up, even though I believe that if Sh. were alive today he would write for series television, which offers the greatest possible range for a brilliant writer to use and explore his or her talent and vision - O, for a muse of fire! - but Breaking Bad Season 4 is highly entertaining, very tense, some finely crafted dramatic scenes, and a deepening sense of the character and the complexity, even the sinister aspects, of Walter White (Bryan Crandall) in particular but also his partner in crime, Jesse (Aaron Paul). The ending, like the end of Season 3, is puzzling and eerie and mysterious and will have you talking and thinking back and trying to figure things out. I would say that, as with many high-drama series that carry a plot over several seasons the final episodes of the season are a little too tied tight to the mast of plot mechanics: a lot of strings to draw together, random plot elements to explain, etc. The plotting that moves the season to its conclusion is a bit preposterous, once you think about it (which you don't while watching) - in fact it depends on so many unlikelihoods that it could never play out in reality as it does on the screen - but we, or at least I, am very forgiving because of the high entertainment value and the building depth and complexity of the characters that creator Vince Gilligan has mastered over the course of 4 seasons, and I eagerly await the 5th.

A few notes on the excellence of Breaking Bad Season 4

Nearing the end of Season 4 of "Breaking Bad," and will post on the completed season, but have to make a note here along the way about the extraordinary quality of this season, the writing especially. I've posted before about the writing in this series, but Season 4 is especially strong - no series on TV has used extended monologue as effectively as Breaking Bad - and in almost every episode there is a long scene in which characters truly open up in ways that are very moving and unexpected - and that feel very natural, true to life. Early on in Breaking Bad I had so much trouble buying the unlikely premise of s science teacher diagnosed with cancer who embarks cooking meth to provide for his family - but as the series has moved along the premise has become just a given and I have come to accept the characters and to come to know them. And I just think the whole program has gotten more sure-footed with time: Walter White/Bryan Cranston of course makes the show with his understated, deliberate style - that conceals an incredibly wide range of emotions and expressions. The secondary characters are also very good and by and large grow beyond "types"; though they're not as well-rounded as the characters in the great Sopranos or The Wire, some of the characters (particularly Cranston's wife Skylar/Anna Gunn) seem to have a life of their own beyond the confines of the script. Season has a lot of humor and - especially in the episodes toward the end of Season 4 - a lot of dramatic tension as well. So I have joined the chorus of critics in praise of the excellence of Season 4 of BB.

Breaking Bad gets better with each episode

Last night finished Season 3 of "Breaking Bad," and find it's a series that gets better with each episode. Initially I had some trouble buying into the premise - Walt is a high-school chem teacher diagnosed with terminal cancer who gets into cooking meth to raise a great deal of cash for the family he will leave behind, and then inevitably gets in way over his head with various drug runners and gangs - but over time came to care less about the likelihood of the premise and more about Walt and the other characters and what will happen to them. Walt (Bryan Crandall) is an underplayed, serious, analytic guy - not the typical protagonist of a TV series, especially a drug/crime series (and it's not a "comedy," despite the weird genre labeling sometimes attached). Other characters are adequate or better, but the series is really his. What's most striking of all, to me, is the writing - highly smart, literary, some very long monologues that are almost unique in TV, in any medium. Many of these episodes could be stage plays, and certainly some of the dialogs/monologues could be used very well for auditions or for acting workshops. One episode in particular, Fly, is a classic in that the entire 47-minute episode has only two speaking characters, most of the time in a meth lab, and it's completely captivating - again, could be done very effectively on stage. A strong series, and we await availability of Season 4.

Should you watch Season 1 after you've seen Season 3? : Breaking Bad

Watched the first season pilot for "Breaking Bad" last night for some reason; had already seen most of Season 3 (but none of seasons 1 or 2). M. is always curious about how these shows (which we sometimes pick up later in their runs) began, but I'm not, once I see where it's going have little interest in looking back. Someone once asked me: If you only had read the last act of Romeo and Juliet, wouldn't you want to see the beginning? Yes, but Breaking Bad is not Shakespeare. In fact, we enjoy reading/seeing great dramas multiple times, but even the best of television, for me, serves for only one round. Nevertheless, the pilot for Breaking Bad is quite well done and I can certainly see why the show was picked up and renewed. Amazing how most of the characters that I'd seen in Season 3 are introduced here; also surprising how little they change - even really good TV is mostly about types and characteristics, not about subtle character development. Pilot starts off with a very exciting and for first-time viewers bewildering scene of van careening through the desert, driver wearing mask, half-naked, bodies rolling around in the back - then we flash back 3 weeks and by end of pilot understand the scene: a meth lab on wheels. Personality and dilemma of main character established well. Friend Andy has noted to me that he could never buy into the premise of Breaking Bad, and I agree - idea that he would keep his cancer diagnosis secret from family and that he would embark on this crime path is not made credible in the pilot - and in that way I think it's almost better to begin watching Breaking Bad at a later point, when the crime history is a given, rather than a choice.

Bad is good but not why not great? : Breaking Bad

Haven't watched a lot lately but now have seen most of season 3 of "Breaking Bad" and Bad is good. Not great, but a big step above the many formulaic oddball concept series out there: what if a woman had to raise money by growing pot (weeds), e.g. Breaking Bad (what if a teacher thought he was dying and raised money by cooking meth?) rises above the cheap concept level by treating the characters and their anxieties with real insight and sympathy. The chem teacher, Walt White, is a good guy who's made a bad decision. His wife is a good person trying to do the right thing. It doesn't, however, rise to the level of the greatest series like Sopranos, Wire, maybe Friday Night Lights, because the main characters are not grand enough to carry the whole show (cf Damages, The Shield) and the secondary characters are more like sketches, interchangeable. The plot is good, pretty tense, nicely paced, and the dialogue is generally strong, but again it falls short of greatness - it doesn't give you a sense of a whole world, it doesn't have the assured inside knowledge of the underlife of the drug dealer's world. It flirts a bit with cornball staginess, as the two sinister dealers (twin brothers, apparently) pursue Walt, coming closer to him in each episode, but they're characters out of a comic book or a dumb movie - nobody in real life behaves that way, with silent cruelty. On the plus side, the noose tightens very slowly around Walt, and he's increasingly driven to do crazy things to keep his family together, and it's interesting to see his brother-in-law, a DEA agent, very gradually piece together the truth about the meth manufacturer he's pursuing.