(Wrapping up my assessment of Breaking Bad‘s fourth season. Find the first installment here.)
13. “FACE OFF”
Oh, Breaking Bad. So clever with those episode titles!
Let me start this review by repurposing some familiar song lyrics:
“Ding dong, the Fring is dead…”
(Continuing my assessment of Breaking Bad‘s fourth season. Find the first installment here.)
11. “CRAWL SPACE”
So this is it. Three episodes to go, and with ominous titles like “Crawl Space” and “End Times” and “Face Off,” you know it won’t be a trio of light-hearted comedies about everyone making nice over a bucket of chicken at Los Pollos Hermanos. These titles make it pretty explicit — shit’s gonna go down.
(Continuing my assessment of Breaking Bad‘s fourth season. Find the first installment here.)
9. “BUG”
After last week’s tense, cinematic Gus-centric flashback episode, “Bug” gets the forward momentum back on track, focusing on the series’ core characters and the central relationship of Breaking Bad — Walt and Jesse’s. For the entirety of Season Four, Walt and Jesse have been operating on completely different wavelengths, both physically and emotionally. Walt is acting out like a reckless rebellious teenager at work, while maintaining his mild-mannered “normal” persona for his family; after a drug-addled flirtation with apathy and self-destruction, Jesse cleaned up his act and became a key player in whatever plan Gus is cooking up (in addition to all that meth).
(Continuing my assessment of Breaking Bad‘s fourth season. Find the first installment here.)
7. “PROBLEM DOG”
In my last installment, I bemoaned Walt’s twin stupid choices — letting some Honduran maids into the meth lab, and buying his son a flashy new sports car. In “Problem Dog,” Walt makes a decision that’s ten times stupider and more reckless than either of those. It’s the kind of moment Walter White and Breaking Bad do so well — Walt decides to take the new car for a joy ride before taking it back, and, naturally, wrecks it. Rather than do any one of ten more sensible things, he decides to blow up the car. This in no way solves the problem — there’s still a record of him buying it, and it also gets him in trouble with the law (briefly, before Saul makes it all go away). I groaned and gnashed my teeth when Walt took the car for a spin, knowing he was fucking himself over yet again, but this behavior felt more in character than what happened last week in “Cornered.” When Walt makes a stupid move, it tends to be colossally stupid. Not the kind of dumb thing any parent or husband or meth dealer would do, but the sort of thing only Walter White, a man at the end of his rope, would do. Blowing up a brand new car definitely falls into that category.
(Continuing my assessment of Breaking Bad‘s fourth season. Find the first installment here.)
5. “SHOTGUN”
“Walter!!”
That’s me, screaming at my TV set in fury at the end of “Shotgun,” which contains the most jaw-dropping “I can’t believe he just did that!” moment of the season to date. And it’s not a violent life-or-death situation, like when Walt let Jane die in Season Two or ran over Jesse’s nemesis in Season Three. It’s just Walt getting drunk and loose-lipped. But that’s what’s so good about this show — the most indelible moments are often the quietest, most everyday occurrences. (Or, sometimes, a plane crash.)
(Continuing my assessment of Breaking Bad‘s fourth season. Find the first installment here.)
3. “OPEN HOUSE”
Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. In my last post, I emphasized the stark bleakness of Breaking Bad. And bleak it is. When you think Breaking Bad, you think of those shocking bursts of violence and mayhem, the nail-biting tension, or the overall scuzzy feel of the world these characters inhabit — the way you may need to take a shower after certain episodes.
I’ve been a Breaking Bad fan since the beginning. I got in on the ground floor, not knowing what I was in for.
When it debuted, Breaking Bad sounded a bit like a twist on Weeds — maybe even a rip-off. A nice suburban person hits some bad luck and turns to the drug trade for a financial assist. And like the trials an tribulations of Nancy Botwin, Breaking Bad‘s early episodes did play a lot of that for comedy.
Except this show was about meth. So there seemed an inherent flaw in its premise — because even if he has cancer, and even if he’s doing it to provide for his family, how do you make a guy who manufactures and sells methamphetamine palatable for a mainstream viewing audience? And likeable?
As it turns out, you don’t.
(Movies discussed in this post: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Point Blank, The Lincoln Lawyer, The Source Code, Unknown, The Adjustment Bureau, Limitless.)
Admit it: the suspense is killing you. You’re just dying to know what I thought of the year’s thrillers, aren’t you?
Well, wait no longer. The mystery is unearthed below.
Continue reading
(Films discussed in this post: The Skin I Live In, Contagion, and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.)
There are two kinds of filmmakers in this world: those that suck, and those that do not. And when it comes to taking risks, the former group tends to play it safe, while the latter category pushes the envelope.
(Movies discussed in this post: Shame, Hunger, and Drive.)
In film criticism, it is trendy to champion the smallest of movies. Micro-budgeted, artsy, foreign language — any or all of these qualities will do. The more bare-bones and stripped down a film is, the better. Basically, the less a movie has going for it to appeal to a mass audience, the more a tried-and-true film critic is going to love.
I’m going to admit something that makes me a bad film critic. (I use the term “critic” loosely, in that “everybody’s a critic” way; never would I imply that I’m a real film critic. Alas, I’m just a guy with great taste.)
