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?
No time to waste and, fortunately, it’s a bit slower than usual tonight.
* I admit it, a lot of the financial/stock market terminology used in Carl Icahn’s letter to Lionsgate stockholders, as carried by Nikki Finke and summarized by THR, eludes me. However, the gist seems to be that it’s all out war now.
* I was out covering the red carpet at the Mike Nichols AFI tribute last night — you’ll be seeing something about it here closer to when the show will actually air in a couple of weeks. Although I had the opportunity to speak very briefly with some genuinely great people, I was a bit disappointed there was no opportunity to watch the presentation on CCTV while I was there. Still, looks like the show that’ll air on TV Land should be something.
* As an English major and someone who has actually read Cervantes, Joel Silver’s apparent approach to “Don Quixote” — which is not to be confused with Terry Gilliam’s ever-dicey “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” — makes me want to slash my wrists just a little.
* Some better news, also from the Playlist, which is that uninhobbited Guillermo del Toro is going back to his vampiric roots and doing a Van Helsing film that will, it safe to say, be much better than the last one, if it ever happens.
* Speaking of good directors who could use a gig, the Vulture claims that Sam Raimi has been offered the gig on the “Wizard of Oz” prequel, “Oz, the Great and Powerful.” I’ve no idea if it’s true, of course, but I’m reasonably sure he’d do a better and more imaginative job than either Sam Mendes or Adam Shankman, which is not really a knock on them.
* Re: talk of a “Taken” sequel. I know the movie did well, but I have a feeling that Liam Neeson just wants to keep working right now.
* Jim Emerson examines the notion of the movies that killed the movies, in the sense that sometimes the success of a particular film, or a type of film, you personally dislike a great deal can make a person actually loose interest in all films that come after, to some degree or another. For Francois Truffuat, it was 1962’s “Dr. No.” Yes, the first James Bond flick. Of course, his own career was really just still starting.
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!)
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