So, Breaking Bad came back last night for its 8th to last episode. I'm already dreading the show reaching its conclusion. Breaking Bad is by far the best TV I've watched while it is going on. In my personal rankings, it isn't quite 'The Wire' but is about as close as any show probably will ever be for me. They do multiple things better than 'The Wire', like cinematography and suspense, but it can't match 'The Wire' in much of anything else. Not a huge knock, really. Anyway, I started watching Breaking Bad late in Season 2, after one of Alan Sepinwall's review headers called it the Best Show on Television. I quickly caught up, and watched the last two episodes of Season 2 live. That seems like a lifetime ago. It really was. Anyway, here are some brief thoughts on the premier of the 2nd Half of Season 5.
- To me, the biggest surprise of the episode was the last scene, with Walt and Hank having their confrontation in the first episode. I was expecting it in about Episode 3, but I guess there isn't too much time to waste. As for the scene, it was brilliantly staged. Right until Walt pulled out the bug, I really was not expecting the confrontation to come. The calculated dialogue and temperment of both Hank and Walt was perfect. Each trying to figure out how much the other one knew. Walt's plea for silent forgiveness, his plea to Hank to help not embarrass a dying man. All of it felt so real. I could not have imagined the first confrontation between Hank and Heisenberg going any better than that.
- Of course, this leaves a few questions of what will happen from now until the 'Hello, Carol' moment from the pre-credit scene. We now that Walt's real identity has been found out. We don't know how much, since he is still free well after the police locked up his house, but enough is known that there is a spray-painted Heisenberg on the wall. Considering the hair that adorns Walt's head, it is fair to say he is in quite good shape on the cancer front, off Chemo and possibly in remission. So either he was saved by a miracle, or Walt's plea to Hank was just to by time and another one of his bald-faced lies.
- Speaking of bald-faced lies, that scene with Hank and Jesse, and Jesse silently, terrifyingly accepting Walter's lie, knowing it is a lie, was unbelievable. I do miss the more congenial Walt and Jesse scenes, but ever since Todd shot that boy, we haven't gotten one and probably won't again. The fun scenes were fun, but these are incredible. Jesse barely said ten sentences in this episode, but Aaron Paul conveyed his emotions just perfectly.
- The biggest wild card for me that was shown in that episode is the brief Lydia appearance. Walt, for once, didn't seem the least bit interested in going back, even when Lydia told him that the reputation of his once blue-as-the-sky meth was being tainted. The appeal to Walt's pride did not even work. Now, since Walt knows Hank is on to him, I can't see him going back again. The one area that I can see Lydia helping is to help Walt beat Hank, but her appearance definitley raised more questions that a scene that short should have.
- Breaking Bad remains extremely confident of itself and its space, which I love so much. They still are confident enough to be as inventive and creative with their camera work as ever, using close-up frame shots of cockroaches rummaging around dirt and a 30-second skateboard scene from a POV camera. Also, they're confident enough to keep what was, I'm guessing, a 90-second monologue of Badger explaining his fan-fiction Star Trek world. The scene was absolutely hilarious, but is the type of thing that few shows can get away with. Even Parks and Rec shortened Patton Oswalt's similar Star Wars monologue to about 30 seconds on the show. Breaking Bad has all the balls of its main character.
- Finally, what is Hank's next move. On one side, this is the case of his life, the case he's been on for the entire length of the show. He was one of the few who thought Gus wasn't 'Heisenberg', that it was someone else. He was finally proven right, he knows who the meth mastermind is. Yet, he is tied by the fact that if he admits that his own brother-in-law is the wanted 'Heisenberg', his career is effectively over (much like his previous boss's was when Gus was revealed to be a meth tycoon). I love these little internal battles inside Breaking Bad. Every move for Hank is a bad one. Every move for all of the characters seems like the wrong one.
