Breaking Bad

[©brad]

Excellent stuff Jeremy, I'm so glad you watch this.

This premiere was all kinds of awesome. A few thoughts:

- Loved the cold open. It was shocking to see Gale right away. Did anyone else notice Gale had that lab note booklet in this scene?
- Freakin' Gus man. The scene with him putting on the lab coat already lives in the pantheon of ridiculously intense Breaking Bad scenes, along with the final moments of both Half and Full Measures and about a billion other scenes. This show is the ultimate master of slow-burn tension.
- Skylar becoming more comfortable with deceit in that scene with the cop. Surely she's on the path to breaking bad in her own way. By the way, what is up with all the Skyler hate? Is it just lunatic fringe message board misogyny? When I read AV Club and other message boards it's non-stop.
- Jesse's look after Gus kills Victor was unbelievably chilling. That diner scene afterwards was so revealing too, not just for Jesse's great line about "at least we're all on the same page now." You just felt that they've both embraced who they are, and maybe on some subconscious level, were even a little excited about what was to come.
- I wonder if Walt and Jessee will continue to get paid for their work? Or if their "contract" will get renegotiated. I don't see any reason for Gus to continue paying the full amount now after everything that's happened.

[RegularKarate]

SPOILERS!!

Watched this at the Drafthouse last night (they showed it paired with the season 3 finale) and it makes it quite a bit more intense seeing it on the big screen.

They showed Gale's phone a number of times.  I get the feeling that's going to be a big piece of evidence for the DEA (or homicide). 

Cbrad, I think that Walt and Jesse will continue to get paid, but Gus will continue to plan to replace them.

[ono]

http://www.amctv.com/breaking-bad/videos/breaking-bad-sneak-peek-episode-402-thirty-eight-snub

"You're so historically retarded!"

[MacGuffin]

By the way, what is up with all the Skyler hate? Is it just lunatic fringe message board misogyny? When I read AV Club and other message boards it's non-stop.

She cheated on Walter.

[tpfkabi]

By the way, what is up with all the Skyler hate? Is it just lunatic fringe message board misogyny? When I read AV Club and other message boards it's non-stop.

She cheated on Walter.

A lot of people on IMDB were talking about her weight (very childishly).
I don't remember, does she look heavier than the end of last season?

Could it be possible she could be pregnant with the boss' child?
If Walt began considering doing bad things to a child, that's about as evil as he could get.

[cronopio 2]

i don't remember breaking bad being as cinematographically ambitious as it has been in the past two episodes. has anyone noticed this?
some stuff looks like it's being helmed by david fincher.

[Stefen]

I don't have cable so I've been watching crappy downloads and it looks like crap so I can't tell.

This was a typical second episode of a season. Not much going on. A lot of set up, etc. Still fun. I like the Hank storyline. I didn't know Jesse was using again. He's lonely!

[Jeremy Blackman]

I think Cronopio is mostly talking about the scenes with Jesse. Definitely ambitious. I think it mostly worked. Also, I guess this is the episode where we have to be embarrassed for Walt for pretty much the entire duration. He did such stupid things, especially what he said to Mike. I thought he'd know better, but apparently he still has a lot to learn. And I wonder how they're going to buy a carwash. Maybe Skylar will find something to blackmail him with. They wouldn't buy a different carwash, would they?

My first download of E2 was utter crap, but I found a much better one.

For those of us who have to watch BB on a computer:

http://www.scnsrc.me/?s=%22breaking+bad%22&x=0&y=0
http://www.rlslog.net/?s=%22breaking+bad%22&sbutt=Go

[Stefen]

I pass by that car wash everyday on my way to work. I should take pics for you guys of all the locations in the series. They're all within miles of my house.

[picolas]

i would say breaking bad has always been this cinematographically ambitious. jesse's floating, the airplane explosion, numerous object-based povs (eg. the grill where the money's set on fire, literally laundering money) and cooking montages come to mind. even conversations that could be covered in a conventional manner often aren't.

i'm a little divided on the season thus far. they're definitely going for a less-is-more, minimalist kind of thing. it's not all working for me. the zombie conversation, for example. did that have to be five minutes long? breaking bad used to be the king of moving stuff forward, totally changing the stakes every episode.. don't get me wrong. i'm not against watching paint dry, but i don't know if bb is justifying this pace. still better than 95% of television but i hope they change things up.

[Jeremy Blackman]

It's true... There wasn't one super intense scene, which unfortunately we've come to expect. I feel like there might have been opportunities, but maybe not.

The dialogue was not very good. It was one of those episodes where whoever wrote the dialogue tried really hard to use a dialect. It was especially noticeable with the gun dealer ("If you're all fingers, well it might could be him keepin' a piece instead of you. Catch my drift?") and one of Jesse's friends' lines ("Think on it, bro"). The actors almost pull it off, though. (Yes, I felt the need to go back and look those up.)

BB is not above weak episodes. "Fly" for example was a bad episode. Probably the series' worst.

That episode aside, I think it's better to view Breaking Bad as one continuous movie. It doesn't necessarily make sense to judge or grade each individual episode. This episode (E2) is just that part of the movie that moves a few things forward.

[picolas]

good call on colloquialisms. i'm okay with no particularly intense scenes in an episode. i actually thought fly was minimalism done right. nothing happened, but it worked as a reflection of how far jesse and walt had come. sort of like an anti clip show. i half agree with you about watching the show as a long movie. it's definitely more powerful on that level, but especially in season 3 i felt every episode stood on its own as awesome. season 2 was the furthest from an episodic structure, but gilligan has talked about how they were conscious about making season 3 less structured/not a massive arc. maybe the pendulum is swinging back for this season? i dunno.

[Jeremy Blackman]

Even S2 wasn't a proper arc, though. It picked up right where S1 left off. I guess you could think of S1+S2 as one season. I think the end of S2 is probably the closest we've come to a dividing point in the series so far.

I didn't like "Fly" at all. Everything about it was too heavy-handed for me; in fact I don't think it was minimalistic at all. I might have accepted the premise with better dialogue, but the writing was not good. Walter was out of character. I didn't believe his fly-chasing, and that broke the fourth wall because all I could see was what the writers were trying to do. It was boring and unsubtle, which is exactly the opposite of what you want from this show. "Fly" reminded me of the House episode One Day, One Room. Okay... that one's worse, but it's a very good corollary, in the way that it tries to philosophize through an intensely boring premise, relying on dialogue that turns out to be horrible, all the while bringing its chief protagonist out of character.

[diggler]

Fly wasn't the strongest episode, but I love Walt's monologue about "that perfect moment" when he wished he would've died. That's a great scene and really sums up the tragedy of where Walt's life has taken him.

[Jeremy Blackman]

Good call... that was my favorite part of the episode.