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‘Breaking Bad’ Review: The Rise (And Fall?) Of Walter White

Posted by on February 22, 2013 at 9:44 am

Building The Empire

The first two seasons of Breaking Bad are the pinnacle of the show’s concept. Jesse and Walt – Walt particularly – lead two lives that rub against each other far too often for comfort. Walt still has a family at home, Hank has the hots for tracking down whoever’s making this new purer meth that’s hitting the streets, and the two are out inspiring the ire of the local drug lords. Walt shaves his head when it’s obvious that the chemotherapy will slowly take it all eventually, dons a porkpie, and calls himself Heisenberg, a clever, but lazy name that echoes through the halls of law enforcement throughout the American southwest. They manage to topple the smaller drug lords in Albuquerque and become confident enough to build their own operation. Jesse enlists his friends as dealers and they become the exclusive vendor of this incredible drug.

This is the most exciting part of the show: watching the tent go up.

Walt, as the mysterious Heisenberg, produces the drug and Jesse distributes it. Money is coming in and with Walt out of the house so often, it begins to frighten his bright-eyed wife Skyler, who doesn’t have quite enough evidence to uncover what’s going on. We watch as the druggy duo operate by the seat of their pants, keeping an available eye on the actions outside in case retribution is rolling up the street. It’s here that they’re at their most cautious and I found myself at the edge of my seat most often. Introducing what may be the show’s best secondary character, Walt and Jesse inadvertently enlist Albuquerque’s sleaziest lawyer, Saul Goodman (portrayed pitch-perfectly by Bob Odenkirk) to protect their assets and be their own Tom Hagen. It’s through Goodman that they’re able to expand their umbrella and get their drugs into the hands of Gustavo Fring, a man who presents himself as the charming owner of a local chicken restaurant chain. Gus is played by Giancarlo Esposito, whom I knew first from J.J. Abrams’s Revolution, so the dickish m.o. was believable from the get-go. As the second season closed in an abrupt conclusion worthy of the best of shows – and the show needed a few more good framing devices like this – their fiefdom comes undone and they find themselves, for the next two seasons, under glass.

Gus Stops The Bus

At this point, the show shifts down a gear or two. After a brief stretch where Walt is exiled from his own home by Skyler, who has now given birth to their daughter, Gus convinces Walt to work for him, luring him in with a large lab hidden under a laundry. Gus is well-established and Walt stands to make millions by cooking his meth under his banner. It’s neat to see a meth operation of such a large scale working, but Walt working under someone else’s superiority, or rather, operating in the confines of a clean and shiny kitchen, gets tedious.

Tensions come to a sizzling boil as Jesse begins to act up. Gus always had his suspicions, especially as Walt ditches the irritatingly perfect Gale as his lab assistance in favor of his old boy, Jesse. When Jesse takes the act of revenge into his own hands, the Cartel encroaches on Gus’s north-of-the-border operation, and an investigation by the strongly-willed, meat-headed Hank, Gus makes some drastic moves. He operates fine under these various pressures, which allows you to appreciate Giancarlo’s performance and Gus’s management abilities, but it ensures that there is no sense of dread during this tenure. Walt finally assembles a plan to destroy Gus once and for all in the final moments, but by now we’ve spent half the show’s narrative not worrying about much. A once strong and expansionist Walt becomes a whiny bitch when he has to operate in the lab alone and squeals constantly under the constant threat of being wiped out entirely when another cook is maneuvered to replace him. A secondary plot in which Skyler gets in on the deal and begins to launder his money through the car wash he once quit is intriguing and while the tension of Skyler having to balance her life at the car wash with that of her former boss who has been cooking his company’s books and failing to pay taxes, again, little tension is raised here.

By the time we get past Gus and Walt begins his empire-building anew, it feels like we’ve been here before. A daring trip to rob a train of methylamine works out great and Lauren Fraser’s ultra-paranoid Madrigal executive Lydia is a darling addition to the cast, the stacks get higher and the threats are old and worn down, failing to scare when they do snap, which leads us to now.

Get Me Some Of That Blue

Even at its most sluggish, Breaking Bad is a fantastic drama that I only started to put down as the show ground down its fangs. Secondary characters like Hank and his ditsy kleptomaniac wife are cute and both characters are given some room to breathe. Odenkirk as Goodman, again, can’t be beat. Bill Burr marching around on Goodman’s dollars is a delight and I wish he were around more often. There’s not a flat performance around and even though I was only slightly familiar with Bryan Cranston’s work outside of the show, he turns into one mean motherfucker in this show, disappearing into his role entirely. Even when he wants to make you hate him, you’ll always have a soft spot for Mike Ehrmantrout, Gus’s – and later Walt’s – wet works guy. While never becoming supremely trippy or out-of-bounds, the filming of the show lends a lot of character as well, whether it’s the use of colors, minimal usage of special effects, time lapses or prop-mounted cameras for unique perspective shots, there’s always something clever in how they present the show. Another catch: using transparent objects to present action as if there was normally a board, table, or desk in the way. Transparent maps instead of paper ones show the actors, pegs suspended in air with string running between them with an invisible corkboard let you see the DEA grinding its gears, so on. Of course, having guest directors like Rian Johnson or Jon Favreau on board help things as well.

It’s going to be something else to watch these final eight episodes roll down and conclude the already-teased ‘year later’ storyline. One thing’s for sure, with Hank’s new findings, I hope they bring back some danger.


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