Tag: Giancarlo Esposito (Page 2 of 2)

Breaking Bad 3.11 – I Don’t Understand How The Last Card Is Played (But Somehow The Vital Connection Is Made)

May 30, 2010 /

I said this on Facebook this morning after watching my screener of this week’s episode, and I’m saying it again now for all of the readers of this blog: not only is “Breaking Bad” the best show on AMC (which is a hell of an accomplishment, given how much I enjoy “Mad Men”), but it is now officially my favorite show on television, period. Not even having to blog it every week can kill my love for it…and that’s saying something. Watching this week’s episode, though, really served as a turning point for me. I’m someone who, when faced with a plot development which involves a ridiculous amount of coincidence, often finds himself whispering under his breath, “Oh, give me a break…” Tonight’s episode effectively tied new characters from this season into events from last season in a way that, on another show, might have left me feeling the same way. Instead, I was left in awe.

Let us begin, however, at the beginning, with a flashback that allowed Krysten Ritter to return from the dead and play Jane once again. That Jesse was left less than impressed by a trip to an art gallery is hardly surprising, but being reintroduced to Jane after so long served to remind me of a question that occurred to me a few times last season: why is a girl as deep as this involved with a tool like Jesse? Her rap about how “sometimes you get fixated on something and you might not even get why” struck me as a suspiciously on-the-nose callback to Walt’s obsession with the fly, but I could watch Ritter recite from the phone book, so I have no real complaints about that. Besides, if nothing else, the scene provided us with the origin of the lipstick-encrusted cigarette in the car’s ashtray.

Hank didn’t have a huge amount of screen time this week, but his brief appearances in the episode nonetheless served to underline how much he’s struggling with his recovery…and by “struggling,” I mean that he’s kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place: he refuses to leave the hospital until he can do so on his own two feet, but he’s barely willing to participate in the physical therapy that’s being provided. I loved his back and forth with Marie on the matter of pain (“Pain is weakness leaving your body.” “Pain is my foot in your ass, Marie!”), but it shows the depths of his anger about his situation that he should be giving shit to Walt, Jr., a kid who has to use his own crutches to walk out of the room. Gee, you don’t suppose his nephew’s condition serves as a constant reminder about his own physical limitations, do you? Nahhhhhhh…

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Breaking Bad, External Entertainment, External TV, Reviews, TV, TV Dramas

Breaking Bad 3.9 – What’s The Point In Being An Outlaw When You’ve Got Responsibilities?

May 16, 2010 /

Who wants chicken? I know *I* did after watching the awesome commercial that opened tonight’s episode, but…did anyone else happen to read the tiny credit that ran across the bottom of the screen toward the beginning of the ad? “Los Pollos Hermanos, Inc. is a registered trademark of Madrigal Electromotive.” I don’t think we’ve ever heard anything about this parent company before, but I’m suddenly beginning to wonder if this means that we’re going to see Walt working his way even higher up the chain of command in this operation. One thing’s for certain: he and Jesse are making up for lost time with their production. I loved the cut from the chicken in the commercial to the meth in the lab, and seeing them put the baggies into the contains of batter made me realize what a well-oiled machine Gus has going for him. Indeed, for one brief moment, I allowed myself to think, “Walt and Jesse are finally back on track and proving once again that, when they actually roll up their sleeves and get down to business, they’re capable of big things.”

It didn’t last, of course.

Chalk it up to being drug-free, but Jesse’s been more than a little schizo lately. Last week, I referred to him as being “about as loud, obnoxious, and useless as any human being can be,” but this week, in addition to working perfectly alongside Walt, he’s suddenly talking about how he’s been checking the numbers and has now decided that the deal they have with Gus is, in his words, “bullshit.” Walt seems astonished by this change in attitude (“You’re now a millionaire, and you’re complaining…?”) and can’t even be bothered to discuss the matter with Jesse, who asks outright, mostly to himself, “What’s more important than money?” Not therapy, apparently. He’s continuing to attend his meetings, which is something, I suppose, and they clearly still serve as opportunity for him to get a few things out of his system, as evidenced by blending of a fictional job at a laundromat with shards of reality (“My boss is a dick, the owner a super-dick”) and his highly illuminating story about the wooden box. But after he made the very foolish decision to step out into his own dealership and allowed Badger and Skinny hijack the therapy session in order to promote the return of the blue meth to the area…? That’s a brand new low.

That reminds me: was anyone else having “Superman III” / “Office Space” flashbacks tonight? Jesse’s clearly planning to skim the excess meth from Walt’s haphazardly measured containers, which immediately brought to mind Richard Pryor’s character’s plan to skim half-cents off the paychecks at Webscoe Industries. And what was the name of that character?

Gus.

We’re through the looking glass here, people…

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Breaking Bad, External Entertainment, External TV, Reviews, TV, TV Dramas

Breaking Bad 3.3 – Scenes from the Power Struggle in Albuquerque

April 4, 2010 /

There is a theorem within the entertainment industry which states that there is no television series or motion picture, no matter how good it may be, which cannot be made at least a little bit better by the additional presence of Danny Trejo, and the accuracy of this theory was once again proven with tonight’s episode of “Breaking Bad.” You may recall Mr. Trejo rearing his head…pun totally intended…during Season 2, but tonight we got a bit more insight into his character…including, most importantly, why he’s called Tortuga. Never has someone who works in the criminal underworld ever suggested that you “come around back” and seen it result in something good happening, and, unsurprisingly, this was no exception to that rule, particularly since it was a flashback, but now we know how far back the Cousins have been involved in Walt’s affairs.

But let’s be honest: although they may have played a key part, tonight’s episode wasn’t really about the Cousins. It was about the power struggle within the White house. We’d seen this coming, with Skyler demanding that Walt stay not only out of the house but, indeed, out of her life altogether, while Walt was refusing to accept this position and offering dipping sticks as a peace offering. It wasn’t until good ol’ Saul Goodman’s pep talk last week, though, that the little light bulb above Walt’s head suddenly went off, leading him to decide that she was bluffing in her claims that she’d call the police on him. So what does he do? Well, first, he gets the pizza off the roof, then he ensconces himself inside and declares that he’s not leaving. It’s an intense war of wills between the two of them, and it’s rough going for us viewers, too, because, hell, who knows where the hell this is going? They’ll do any damned thing on this show!

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Breaking Bad, External Entertainment, External TV, Reviews, TV, TV Dramas

Breaking Bad 3.2 – For There Ain’t No One For To Give You No Pain

March 28, 2010 /

Say what you will about the band America, but hearing the strains of their song “A Horse With No Name” kick off this week’s episode of “Breaking Bad” was a perfect way to remind us that, although Walter White may have begun his transition from Mr. Chips to Scarface, when it comes to his taste in music, he’s still got a looooooong way to go. Given everything he’s done since the beginning of this series, it’s no wonder that he’s looking more than a little twitchy when the cop pulls him over, but how typically Walt to try and use the plane crash as an excuse to get out of a ticket, then getting huffy when the cop doesn’t accept it as valid. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who groaned audibly when he got out of the car to approach the officer. Seriously, who does that? Apparently, the man who’s expressing his First Amendment rights does that, which is why he quite deservedly got pepper-sprayed for his belligerence.

Once Walt found himself being thrown into the back of the squad car, it was only inevitable that Hank would find his way into the proceedings, and so he did, though his first appearance finds him in mid-discussion about the investigation of Olive Oil and his brethren, who went up in smoke at the end of last week’s episodes. Gomez’s less-than-casual comment about Hank’s “famous blue meth” having not been seen in 29 days leads me to suspect that we won’t go much beyond 30 before there’s a change on that front. After Walt rescues Hank from his clink (kids, remember: no matter how legitimate it may sound when you’re delivering it, nothing makes an apology seem less sincere than staring at your feet the entire time you’re delivering it), the two have some approximation of a heart-to-heart talk, and I feel certain that Hank’s uncertainty about Skyler’s refusal to let Walt see the kids is going to resurface again, especially since she shut Hank down the moment he tried to bring it up at dinner.

By the way, having Hank once again underline his belief that Walt is a textbook underachiever only serves to make me anxious…and not necessarily in a good way…about how he’ll react when he inevitably finds out that his brother-in-law is Heisenberg. I’m reminded of how one of Lex Luthor’s computers took all the facts available to it and deduced that Superman’s secret identity was Clark Kent, but Luthor declared it to be an impossibility because the computer didn’t know Superman the way he did, and he couldn’t accept that Superman would ever deign to take on such a lowly persona. Mark my words: Marie’s going to be in on it before Hank is.

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Breaking Bad, External Entertainment, External TV, Reviews, TV, TV Dramas

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