I realized last night while watching episode 2 of this season’s “Next Food Network Star” that they are really putting the contestants through the wringer this time. The first two weeks they were thrown into the fire so to speak, having to get in front of a camera and ad lib with almost no time to think about it. That does, however, truly separate those who have it from those who don’t.
Has any season of television seemed to go by quite as fast as this run of “Breaking Bad” did?
You hear critics throw around phrases like “the best show on television” so often that it barely seems to mean anything anymore, so in addition to making that particular declaration of “Breaking Bad,” I feel like I should offer a bit more, in order to give it some extra heft. Now, obviously, I’m a TV critic, so I watch television day in and day out. Indeed, to borrow a phrase from one of my peers, TV feeds my family. (Hi, Bill!) But while that’s a far cry from being a hardship when you love the small screen as much as I do, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve watched so much television that it takes a hell of a lot to lead me from saying “I like this show” to “I fucking love this show.” “Breaking Bad,” however, has done that, by taking the time to intricately build the characterizations of its major players, developing plots which never seem to stop unfolding, and – perhaps most impressively – zigging when I think they’re going to zag and unabashedly defying me whenever I say, “Oh, no, they wouldn’t dare do that!”
Man, I haven’t even finished writing about the Season 3 finale, and already I’m longing for Season 4…
We start tonight’s episode with…an empty house? That’s right: it’s a flashback to when Walt and Skyler were first buying their house. Okay, to be honest, this wasn’t a surprise for Jamey or I, since we were there when they were filming the season finale. In fact, there’s a portion of this scene that we’ve seen and you haven’t yet, with Walt and Skyler wrapping up their walk-through of the place and stepping outside, then hopping into their convertible and driving away into what they perceive to be a perfect future. Presumably, this will turn up on the Season 3 DVD, but what we all got to see was more than enough to show that, once upon a time, the Whites were not only happy but in a position to see the world as their oyster. (“Why be cautious? We’ve got nowhere to go but up!”) Hell, back then, they were even talking about having a third kid, something that probably isn’t going to happen anytime soon, based on the current state of their marriage.
Cut to the present, with the disconcerting sight of the windshield and front bumper of Walt’s car showing the residual effects of the previous night’s events. There’s no sign of Jesse as Walt looks across the horizon, watching the headlights of a car roll ever closer, but if he’s suffering from any nervousness, the return of the Heisenberg hat seems to be displacing it. Mike gets in several great lines, including his version of “assurances” and a momentary musing on how words can be “so open to interpretation” (I love the way you can hear the smirk in Jonathan Banks’ delivery), but Walt scores a point when Mike suggests that he get his car fixed: “Let’s see how this goes first.”
Gus is not a happy man…and, really, who can blame him? This scene was, as has become par for the course with any scene featuring Giancarlo Esposito, thoroughly gripping, but it was as much so because of the lack of certainty surrounding the actions of both characters. We thought we knew Walt pretty well, but after that move last week, when he mowed down and shot down the dealers, it’s clear that we’re dealing with Heisenberg now, which means that anything can happen. Like the scene last week with Walt and Skyler, this is a back and forth full of constant oneupsmanship.
Walt: I’m quite well.
Gus: Clearly, you are not.
Gus: Are you asking me if I ordered the murder of a child?
Walt: I would never ask you that.
I find it fascinating that Walt’s life has taken this turn where, after years of suffering through the public school system, he’s had to start making meth to find himself back in a career where he’s on something approximating even intellectual footing with his co-workers.
Hey, everybody, “True Blood” is back! And, man, when that show comes back, it doesn’t waste any time, does it? I can’t think of the last season premiere that was quite so action-packed. Whether it’s a response to the complaints over the way Season 2 limped to a conclusion after Maryann was finally taken down in the first half of the season finale or simply a conscious effort by the producers to make sure that the viewers are given plenty to keep ’em coming back, I don’t know…and, frankly, I don’t care. At the very least, I have to say that, although the amount of activity was somewhat dizzying at first (possibly because the advance screener I received wasn’t preceded by a “Previously on ‘True Blood'” segment to get me back up to speed), so much happened that I definitely found myself in a position of thinking, “Okay, I reckon it was worth coming back for Season 3.”
I mean, seriously, here’s what happened in the first two minutes (!) of the episode:
• Sookie runs out of the restaurant, frantic that Bill’s been kidnapped, leading the French woman to decry the world’s vampire population.
• Sam’s on the road, heading for Magnolia, Arkansas, looking for some folks named Melinda and Joe Lee Mickens…who are, as it happens, his folks.
• Jason’s having an anxiety attack over shooting Eggs.
• Tara is beside herself with grief, but Lafayette’s trying to console her.
• Hoyt makes Jessica’s heart momentarily melt with the flowers she’s left for him, but although she’s touched, she’s can’t just leave her trucker lying on the porch.
• Bill’s kidnappers are a bunch of rednecks who tell him that he can call them the Fuck You Crew.
Talk about making quick work of playing catch-up, huh?
On Sunday, June 13, the blood will once again be flowing on HBO as “True Blood,” the series based on “The Southern Vampire Mysteries” novels by Charlaine Harris, rises from its hiatus and returns for Season 3. Since the show made its debut in 2008, the “Twilight” films have become a full-fledged pop culture phenomenon, and The CW piggybacked on their success by adapting L.J. Smith’s “The Vampire Diaries” into a weekly drama for a fang-friendly demo, but neither offers quite the same blend of sex, blood, and beauty with a decidedly dark sense of humor quite like “True Blood” does.
As you may or may not remember, I blogged my way through Season 2 of the series, but while I enjoyed it as often as not, man, was I annoyed by the finale. In fact, I’d forgotten quite how annoyed I was until I went back read my last blog of the season, which closed with these lines:
Obviously, I’ll be back for Season 3, but when I return, I’ll probably still remember how disappointed I was with the way Season 2 ended. It wasn’t bad, but given how great the majority of the preceding episodes had been, it should’ve been a hell of a lot more gripping from start to finish than it actually was.
Ah, yes, it’s all starting to come back to me now…both the memories of the episode and the aforementioned disappointment.
One of the greatest strengths of the first half of Season Two became one of its most profound weaknesses by the end of the 12-episode run: the character of Maryann Forrester, played by Michelle Forbes. There’s no question that Maryann was a great villain when she arrived, but it soon reached a point where it felt like she was only sticking around to keep other storylines moving along. Given that this point occurred well before the season finale, it got to be a bit of a drag. How odd, then, that it should have felt utterly wrong to have killed her in the middle of the season finale, but it’s true: killing her at that point only served to make the remainder of the episode feel thoroughly anticlimactic.
Still, when “True Blood” wrapped up its second season, it did so by unabashedly leaving several storylines fluttering in the breeze, two of which struck me at the time as being more prominent than the others: Sam’s visit to his foster parents, a trip which sends him on a quest to find his real parents, and Sookie and Bill’s date, which kinda sorta results in their engagement but, more importantly, sees Bill captured with a silver chain and kidnapped. When I blogged the season finale, I referred to the latter event as “arguably the least satisfying cliffhanger of the year, since there’s absolutely no reason to think that Season 3 will kick off with the revelation that Bill’s dead,” and although I pride myself on avoiding spoilers, I don’t think it necessarily qualifies as such if I tell you that the season premiere finds Bill still very much undead. As for Sam…well, he’s still on the road, but that’s all I’m willing to say at this point.
We shouldn’t forget, however, about some of the other residents on Bon Temps, LA. You remember, of course, that Jason Stackhouse, in a well intentioned but poorly informed moment, shot Eggs stone dead. Detective Andy, however, covers for him and basically says, “You weren’t here, you didn’t see anything, now move your ass,” but that’s not going to stop Jason’s guilt, nor is it going to serve as a salve for poor Tara’s emotional wounds. Remember, too, that Jessica made the very unfortunate decision to step out on Hoyt in favor of a one night stand…boy, vampires really give that phrase a whole new level of meaning, don’t they?…with a truck driver. Poor bastard. He’s got about as much chance at having a happy ending as Eggs does. And Eric…? I rather expect that he and Sophie-Ann are going to have a serious talk in the very near future.
So what can we expect to see on “True Blood” in its third season, aside from picking up where these stories left off? Well, given that things are reportedly supposed to follow Harris’s Club Dead, it’ll be no surprise to fans of the books to hear that fur will fly in the very near future…werewolf fur, to be precise. I don’t know how much of Sam’s family we’ll end up seeing, but at the very least, actors have been cast to play his father and younger brother; also on the familiar side of things, Alfre Woodard is going to be popping up as Lafayette’s mother. Lastly, there’ll be a bit of royalty this season as well, with Denis O’Hare portraying Russel Edgington, the Vampire King of Mississippi.
Yes, I was disappointed with Season 2, and, no, I haven’t been nearly as excited about Season 3…but, dammit, the closer it gets, the more interested I find myself in wanting to see how things are going to play out, and this trailer upped my curiosity level considerably.
Are you feeling the same way? Feel free to comment below…and, starting on Sunday night, don’t forget to pop back by after each episode and check out the latest entry in our “True Blood” blog.
(Still not sufficiently jazzed about Season 3? Check out our “True Blood” fan hub!)
Over the course of my time at Bullz-Eye and, by extension, Premium Hollywood, I’ve slowly but surely reached a point where I do so many one-on-one interviews almost never sign up to do conference-call interviews anymore, but when you’re pitched a “Breaking Bad” call that features Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, and series creator Vince Gilligan…hey, there are some offers that you just can’t refuse. It was a packed house, but I managed to sneak onto the call twice during the course of the hour that these three gentlemen held court. Here’s some of the wisdom that they imparted upon me…
First of all, I’m curious what percentage of the “Breaking Bad” budget goes to replacing the windshields of Walt’s vehicles.
Vince Gilligan: (Laughs) That is a good question. It has to be a huge percentage. That has turned into a running gag, hasn’t it? We didn’t intend for that to happen at the beginning. There was no long-term plan to keep breaking Walt’s windshield. But it sure does happen a lot. We keep the tape on there to remind everybody.
Aaron Paul: You love the tape.
This has been a fantastic season, especially for Jesse. Aaron, you really soared with the character, trying to go clean, going at it alone, finding out that your new girlfriend’s brother killed one of his associates. Can you talk about adapting your performance to meet each of Jesse’s challenges in life?
Aaron Paul: I thought I had a grasp of who this kid was by the second season. I had an idea about where he was going before we started the third season. But as always is the case, we went in the complete opposite direction. It was a little tough. Now Jesse is convinced that he is officially the bad guy. He has all of this guilt on his shoulders. He is making a valiant effort to stay on a clean and sober path. It’s like playing a different character within the character itself. Which presents a different challenge. But its so much fun to play.
Talking about character transformation, Skyler went through a major transformation over the course of the season, first making decisions in desperation, then becoming empowered. Was that development planned way, way in advance, or was it something that came about as a result of you guys deciding to have her discover Walt’s secret at the beginning of the season?
Vince Gilligan: Good question! You know, I guess…there’s always an exception to every rule, and this going to the lie slightly to some stuff I was saying earlier, but we try very hard to keep our storytelling organic and to let the characters let us know where they intend to head. Having said that, Anna Gunn is such an integral part of our show, and the character of Skyler is such an integral part of our show and is a character that I would surely hate to lose from our series, and there was a crossroads early on this season when we realized that she had to find out about her husband’s illicit activities. We couldn’t keep that lie going very much longer, because she’s a very smart character and she knows he’s up to something. So we’re at a crossroads at a moment like that, storywise, my writers and I, because she has three very believable routes or forks in the road to take. She could call the police, and that’d be very believable, and it’s definitely an option when you find out that your significant other is dealing large quantities of meth and putting your whole family at risk that way. Or she could divorce him, definitely, or she could take the kids and flee and get the hell out of Dodge.
I mean, these are all possibilities, but we wanted to keep her around, so in kind of a moment of wanting the character to tell us where she wanted to go but… (Starts to laugh) …trying to steer her a little bit into sticking around and not leaving the show entirely, we decided at that point that we want her to go through sort of a process this season. If it’s not coming to sort of a sympathy for Walt throughout the course of the season, at least she comes to some sort of an understanding whereby she doesn’t side with him necessarily, she doesn’t think that he did the right thing here, but she gets to kind of a pragmatic place where she says to herself, “Well, there is this money, and we’re going to need it for Hanks’ rehabilitation and recovery, now that he’s been shot four times. Let’s be pragmatic about this. Let’s make the best out of a very bad situation.” And that’s sort of what we’re working toward with Skyler all season: the idea of her slowly, as organically as possible, as believably as possible, getting her head around a very big concept, which is that her husband is a criminal. And it took 13 solid episodes to get there, and it will perhaps continue in Season 4 because she’s a wonderful character… (Laughs) …and, on a very mercenary level, I want to keep her around, because she’s a great actress and a great character. So that’s my long-winded way of saying, “Yes, that was intentional.”
Obviously, Walt is no longer Mr. Chips, but nor is he quite Scarface yet. Where are we on the sliding scale, and will the final transformation into Scarface take place in Season 4?
Vince Gilligan: You want to take that one, Brian? That’s a good question.
Bryan Cranston: Oh, you’re dishing off, and I’m going to put it back to you, because I’m kind of along for the ride, just like Walt is. Walt has no idea that this transition is happening to him. He’s just experiencing it as it goes, and that’s what so much for me as an actor to play this, because it’s so immediate. It’s so in the now. He has very little thought on the future because he doesn’t have much of a future. The past has completely destroyed him. All he has is the now, so he’s living right here and now. So as an actor approaching that, I like to do the same thing. I knew the larger picture, just as all you had, from Vince’s very colorful way of explaining what he wanted to do four years ago, when we first started talking about this journey, and that fascinated me, because I knew it had never been done in the history of television.
But with that being said, as the actor, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know what’s in the back of Vince’s brain. It’s dark and ugly… (Laughs) …and I would rather have him delight me with his story as we go along, because in this case, it just couldn’t help me. And, y’know, to me, it’s like someone telling you the ending of a movie, and then saying, “Oh, let’s go see the movie,” and you’re, like, “Well, it’s kind of blown for me now!” In that sense, I like not knowing, and wherever that line is, we don’t know. I think it’s safe to say that this is not a series that was constructed to last like “Gunsmoke.” It’s not going to be, “Wow you’re in remission!” “Yeah, it’s been 20 years now!” (Laughs) Nor do we want it to be. I think we’re all very proud of this show and proud of the collective work that goes into it from all fields, but like the prideful athletes that we see, I think that Vince and I and Aaron and everyone else connected would rather have an amalgam of years that make sense and end it at the right time, as opposed to going and extending our welcome and having people wonder when we’re going to die already. I think we’d like to wrap it up in a… (Hesitates) It’s hard to say, because it’s kind of a moving target, but in the right amount of episodes to tell the story and to do it justice, and then go home.
Vince Gilligan: That’s a great answer. And to add to that…and I’m not being coy here… it is very well described by Bryan as a moving target. I don’t quite know where we are on the spectrum of Mr. Chips and Scarface myself, and, again, I’m not being coy. I don’t know how much farther we can take it. In some sense, we’ve already taken it farther than I would’ve thought possible way back when I was writing the pilot, and it’s a credit to our actors and certainly first and foremost to Bryan…when we’re speaking about Walt, it’s a credit to Bryan’s ability to continue to let an audience sympathize with his character, despite his character’s terrible behavior. You still sense the underlying humanity. You realize he’s not a monster, even though he very often does monstrous, cold, evil things. He behaves that way, and yet he is not necessarily that person. He hasn’t lost completely his moral compass yet. He continues to remain…his character continues to remain interesting and relatable, or at least understandable, if not sympathizable, and so much of that credit goes to Bryan.
It is very much a moving target. If you held my feet to the fire right now, I can’t really see beyond one or two more seasons, but having said that, there was a time way back when when I thought that three would probably be the total amount we could do, and I think we easily could do another season, if not more. But as Bryan says, this will not be “Gunsmoke,” and I can’t forsee it… (Trails off) It’s better to leave the party early than late. You’d rather leave people wanting more from you than saying, “Jesus, is that show still on the air?” So it’s a tricky equation and one I hope we will get right, as far as, “When’s the time to take the final bow with a show like this?”
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