SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT

* I took a break from Breaking Bad during the holidays — my train-commute viewing time was no longer a going concern, after all. Looking back, I think I skipped out on writing about the last episode I saw prior to the break, S02E04. From what I recall you had some pretty intense rock-bottom character work in that: Jesse gets thrown out of his aunt’s house and ends up crying on the floor of the RV, literally covered in shit. Walt lies to Skyler just about as brutally as he possibly could — lying about having no idea what he’s supposed to have been lying about; those living-room confrontations are pretty much always dynamite. And Skyler smokes a cigarette while pregnant, testing our tolerance for bad behavior even on a show like this (it’s pretty amazing what audiences will and won’t forgive) and exercising a shitty form of control over one of the few aspects of her life left for her to control.

* But even with all of that filed away in my brain, I was unprepared for how disorientingly good the show was right away upon returning to it a couple days ago with episode 5. (This is the episode where Walt and Jesse decide to go into business for themselves, while Hank has a panic attack following his promotion to the El Paso bureau.) And I think “disorienting” is the word that occurred to me because of the actual filmmaking, the way in which the show took images and abstracted them. The overhead shot of the river as two immigrants swim across it and a shot swooping down the hospital exterior as Walt exits following his last round of chemo were the most dramatic examples at first.

* But throughout the episode, inanimate objects became near-abstract containers of information, a la this David Bordwell essay. Lingering close-ups on the glass cube with the teeth inside, on the endlessly long bill printed out at the cancer clinic, on the pack of cigarettes Walter retrieves from the toilet, on the “hope is the best medicine” button he receives, on the food prepared by both Skyler and Jesse in separate attempts to pass off an abnormal situation as anything but — all of these items mean something to the narrative simply by existing, and all the show needs to do is show them for us to understand what that meaning is. Thoughtful and fun filmmaking.

* Nice character bits in this one too, of course. I really loved the question mark added by Walt when he says “thank you?” to the woman behind the counter at the clinic after she wishes him well, for example. And I loved “Jesse Comes Alive,” which is how I mentally referred to his competent, enthusiastic, clear-eyed behavior at the meeting with his meth friends when he directs them in the logistics of the new operation, in contrast to how pro forma all the “word up, yo” talk between all of them felt beforehand.

* But then.

* I want to be clear here: I was not IN ANY WAY prepared for that poor little boy to appear in the next episode, when Jesse raided the meth-heads’ house to get his money and meth back. Not in any way. I can’t recall the last time a show so dramatically raised its stakes, transforming a really well-done crime thriller into a brutally depressing meditation on the central crime’s effects at the drop of a hat.

* Oh wait, yes I can: “University” from Season Three of The Sopranos. Seriously, that wasn’t a rhetorical device just then — I realized at this very moment that really was the last time I felt the ground open up beneath a crime show that completely. Not even the best moments of Boardwalk Empire season two pulled it off like this, because those moments felt personal, not directed at, more or less, all of humanity like that beautiful little red-headed boy covered in filth did.

* The fact that he looked a bit like my daughter in terms of his facial features? I’d be lying if I said that didn’t have anything to do with how knocked out I was by this episode. By the end, as Jesse raced to round up his money, call 911, and rescue the little boy before the cops came, I had my hands in my hair, staring bug-eyed and slackjawed like a Brian Bolland drawing of the Joker. That was enormously powerful television. The business with Walt unleashing decades of fury at Gretchen was just icing, as was the fact that he’d essentially ordered a pair of murders the episode before. Suddenly the show proved itself willing to look something very, very ugly right in the face. Thrilling.

Tags: breaking bad, reviews, TV, TV reviews

This entry was posted on Friday, January 6th, 2012 at 5:12 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.