Mad Men | 4x01 | Public Relations

The question “Who is Don Draper?” has always to some extent been Mad Men’s bread and butter. Fourth season opener Public Relations makes no attempt to answer this question – rather, it goes some way to muddying the waters as Don learns to adapt “who he is” in order to suit his new circumstances.

On the subject of new circumstances we pick up in 1964, a little less than a year after season 3’s conclusion. The newly formed Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce have moved on up from their cosy hotel suite (a little disappointing not to see that setup in action) to small but swanky new digs inside the Time-Life building. They’re still ironing out some issues with the space– namely its fictional second floor and lack of a conference table – and struggling to compete with bigger fish for accounts.

Hence the need for Don to endear himself to the press; unlike at Sterling Cooper where the reticent, enigmatic persona worked for him, he’s now effectively the public face of a company that’s in desperate need of promotion. In other words, Don Draper has become a human ad campaign for SCDP. Like the high profile Glo-Coat campaign he masterminded, his role is to look convincingly enough like something else that the public forget they’re being sold to at all.

Unfortunately he’s not very good at it initially, for ironically the very same reason that he dismisses the Jantzen clients: prudishness. He, just like them, wants to “find a way through without playing in the gutter”, in other words courting the press. Pete and Peggy, though, are young and go-getting and have none of the same qualms about grabbing headlines, and hence cook up a scheme whereby two women fight publicly over a meat client’s branded ham to create a buzz around the product. Admittedly, there are one or two hiccups along the way – most notably a bail charge Peggy’s forced to ask Don to front – but Sugarberry sell more hams, and that’s ultimately all that matters. And so Don is forced to learn his own lesson, and accepts the need to figuratively whore himself out to the press. The episode ends with a second interview, now to the Wall Street Journal, Don narrating the victorious story of SCDP’s founding like a seasoned pro, embellishing here, throwing in Western-inspired metaphors there, transforming their "scrappy upstart" into something altogether more attractive for potential clients.

It’s not just Don who’s adapted to his surroundings - Peggy, sporting a bouncy new ‘do and an artistic assistant with whom she shares both office space and in-jokes, is tangibly more confident. There’s a self-assurance in the way she casually admonishes Joey, perches atop her desk sipping malt on the rocks, stands up to Don’s posturing, that is entirely new and suits her very well. But there are still chinks in her armour; in her phone call to Don, Elisabeth Moss played very subtly the almost childlike fear of admonishment, her little “…hello?” as she’s afraid he’s hung up. As she tells him, no matter how much any of them have changed, all they want is to please him.

Pete, who’s probably been more defined by a desire to please Don than any other character, has also matured noticeably. Though still on classic obsequious form (telling Don other companies can't compete “because you don’t work there”) he’s also sharp, attentive and very, very good at his job. He was the only person to really handle the HoHo situation calmly, Roger seemed confident that he could talk the Jantzen guys into meeting again, and he even seems to have developed an amicable working relationship with Don. Don’s weary “You don’t say that to the clients, do you?” spoke of a comfort and familiarity that hasn’t existed between these two before.

Pete and Peggy, too, are now working effectively as a team - being chosen for the new company seems to have reshuffled both of their priorities, and they’re both ambitious enough to put their history aside for the good of SCDP. Whether this will last remains to be seen, and there’s still a part of me that wonders whether the baby storyline won’t rear its ugly head again.

Roger and Don’s relationship also seemed a little different, with Roger coming down much harder on Don than he has in the past. Compared to last season where Roger barely had any stake at all in the company, now he cares what happens, and by extent he cares what Don does. You know things are bad when Roger Sterling is telling you that your behaviour “isn’t appropriate”. It's interesting to see the sheen coming off Don a little bit – instead of sitting in awe after his latest inspired pitch, this episode saw everybody cringing after he lost them the Hi-Li account, with only Joan staying back to reassure him that the crisis will pass.

Similarly, his date with Jane’s friend initially goes well but his advances in the car come off as “grabby”. His downtown apartment is drab and dark, he’s not eating properly despite his stoical housekeeper’s efforts, and he seems to work constantly even when his children visit. In an especially low moment, he hires a prostitute to slap him around, even asking her to do it "harder", and it's pretty clear that this isn't the first time. There’s all kinds of ways this moment could be read, and aside from clearly tapping into Don’s deep, deep self-loathing issues, it recalled the idea of him as a “whore child”. The fact that he enjoys being beaten and dominated by a prostitute, when his own prostitute mother named him after her wish to emasculate him, probably isn’t a coincidence. Although Dick Whitman wasn’t referenced in the episode his shadow was writ large – the reporter who asked “Who is Don Draper?” lost his leg in the same war the real Don Draper died in.

Last and quite possibly least, we caught up with Betty late on in the episode, whose new hair and costume choices have aged her by roughly ten years. She's married Henry Francis, is living with him rent-free in the Draper house, and is still contending for Mother Of The Year with her treatment of an increasingly rebellious Sally. Interesting that the cracks are already beginning to show in the new marriage – Henry’s mother seems to have Betty’s number from the get-go, telling him that the children are terrified of her and that he could have got what he wanted from her without marrying. Ouch. Henry himself, by the way, is shaping up to be a decent enough guy and actually sides with Don on the totally unreasonable house situation, though Don’s “Believe me, everybody thinks this is temporary” was mighty enjoyable nonetheless. Betty’s insistence on staying in the house seems to be more about punishing Don than anything, and it can’t be too long before Henry starts to question her feelings for him, which to me are based very much on an idea rather than a reality. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Other thoughts:
- So Roger’s writing a book? Intriguing. Can’t wait to hear the title.
- Speaking of Roger, he was on form this episode - I counted seven Sterling patented zingers in this episode alone. “They can’t even afford a whole reporter” was up there with his ‘foot in the door’ line from last season: terrible, but hilarious. Nothing like missing body part humour.
- Did anyone else think Don’s secretary looked like a brown-haired Anne Dudek, a.k.a. Betty’s BFF Francine? Now THAT would be an interesting dynamic.
- Pete had a couple of great lines, too, notably “I can use my expense account if I say they’re whores!” and Vincent K’s great delivery when he mentioned he thought Ho Ho was crying. Heh.
- Much as I’m sure he can indeed do a button, I just can’t picture Don Draper sewing anything. Doesn’t sit right.
- Harry’s “I wish we really had a second floor so I could jump off it”, is possibly a reference to the dropped first season plotline which would have had Harry committing suicide from an office window, mirroring the credit sequence.

Mad Men | Season 4 Tidbits

Okay. So, I have finished mourning Breaking Bad. I've gone through the five stages of grief, from denial to anger to depression, and have finally come to accept that there will be no new episodes for MORE THAN A YEAR. Ahem. Really, I'm fine. And with exactly a month to go until the return of Mad Men, I'm finally equipped to move on.

Fortunately, AMC have eased the process this week by releasing a few snapshots from fourth season opener Public Relations. There's also a rather snazzy new poster image for the season, pictured above.

In typically tight-lipped fashion, Matthew Weiner & co have revealed next to nothing else about the season so far. In typically over-analytical fashion, I'm going to see what scraps of speculation I can wring from these photos.

Let's start with That Poster.

It's not quite up there with last season's image of Don in a water-filled office, but it's striking and emotive and feels almost like a still from the credit sequence. What's interesting is that Don appears to be standing in a very upmarket, several-storeys-high office, very much along the lines of Sterling Cooper's - definitely a far cry from the hotel suite set-up where we left the newly-formed Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Does this mean we're in for a significant jump forwards in time, enough to allow SCDP to have moved up in the world into an office of this type?

Personally I'm still hoping we pick up relatively soon after Shut The Door, Have A Seat, because I'd be super sad not to see the fledgling company's early days, and see how the new group dynamic begin to take shape. Not to mention the dramatic potential of watching these characters thrust together in such an enclosed space - Pete and Peggy sharing a desk? Too good to pass up, surely. 

But most of all, I keep recalling this exchange between Don and Roger:
R: "How long do you think it'll take us to be in a place like this again?"
D: "I never saw myself working in a place like this."
I don't think that line was tossed out casually, and as such I have to think
that the empty office shown in the poster is a figurative space that's meant to reflect the imagery of the credit sequence, rather than an actual set used in the show. SCDP won't be in a place like that again for a good while, I'm thinking, which makes the fact that they used such a place for the season's defining image sort of interesting. 

Moving on, then, to These Photos.

Again the setting here is very Sterling Cooper-esque, although this looks a little smaller than their office's board room. Joan was very specific in Shut The Door... about not wanting to hold meetings at the Pierre, though, so again this doesn't necessarily mean we won't be seeing the hotel set-up.

I also just need to take a moment to admire the Pete/Don/Roger lineup. I am very, VERY excited for these three guys to share more screen time, and for Pete and Roger to be on screen more in general.

And there they are again. This looks like the end of a lunch between Don and Roger (glad to see that bridge has stayed rebuilt), of which Pete clearly was not a part. Heh. Pete's also wearing a fairly heavy coat, which given the show's attention to wardrobe details makes me think this episode may be set in the winter months. Season 3 ended right before Christmas. Maybe the time jump won't be so huge after all...or else an entire year has passed. Or two. Or Pete just likes wearing his coat all year round, and I'm grasping at increasingly flimsy straws.

Don Draper looking fiiine. Not much else to say here. Finally, though...

Oh. Peggy. Wow.

This seems to be the strongest evidence for a HUGE time jump. Say, fifteen or so years, into a time when Peggy is nearing forty. Not really, since none of the other characters seem to have gone through this traumatic aging process, but SERIOUSLY. WHAT is on her head? She's channeling Margaret Thatcher circa 1979, and that is literally not ever a good thing. Poor Elisabeth Moss just can't catch a break in the hair department, can she? I'll be interested to see what mention (if any) is made of this atrocity in the show. Hopefully Joan at least will have something devastatingly snarky yet helpful to say about it.

And that's it for photos. No sign of Joan, which makes me sad. No sign of Betty, which does not make me sad. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the character, but not when she and her issues are shoved down my throat at the expense of other characters (i.e. everybody on the show not named Draper). I don't want Betty gone, but I'd definitely like her to be absent for a few episodes, and for the office dynamics to be the focus with basically no distractions from the home front. That being said, Trudy Campbell can show up anytime she wants to.

Speaking of domestics, it strikes me that both Betty and Joan were left somewhat up in the air last season with regard to their marital situations. We assume Betty will marry Henry Francis, but she hadn't yet done so. Similarly, Joan's rapey husband Greg was headed off to Vietnam, but hadn't yet gone. Maybe the reason there's no photos of these two is that that photos would give away too much about their new circumstances. God, though, how great would it be if it transpired Greg had met some terrible fate in Vietnam? I can dream.


And that's about all I can eke from these. I'll be recapping the series weekly once it returns, so be sure to check back in if you're a Sterling Cooper devotee. 

Breaking Bad | 3x13 | Full Measure

This shattering finale to Breaking Bad’s third outing is a tense, moving study of loyalties, and how far they can be stretched. It’s a fitting culmination to a season that’s focused very heavily on alliances being forged, bridges being burned and rebuilt.  

We saw Skyler sever ties with Walt, but come to gradually renegotiate their relationship so that they are now business partners, and only nominally husband and wife. Walt and Gus forged a business alliance that seemed to have the makings of a match made in heaven, to the point where Walt sat at his right hand in last week’s episode.  Most crucially, we saw Walt and Jesse’s partnership break down, and reform itself into something that now appears stronger than ever; dangerously so, if this episode is anything to go on.

In Full Measure itself, relations between Walt and Gus fell apart as a direct result of Walt’s loyalty to Jesse – one alliance sacrificed for another. Saul was surprisingly loyal to his alliance with Walt and Jesse by refusing to sell them out. Most significantly, Jesse’s loyalty to (and love for?) Walt ultimately forced him to take his first life. I know it was left somewhat open to interpretation, but there’s no doubt in my mind that he did shoot and kill Gale, because this is not a show that pulls its punches. 

But I’m getting way ahead of myself. 

We begin with a younger Walt and Skyler purchasing their house, some sixteen or so years ago based on Skyler’s heavy pregnancy. It’s clear that Walt is very much not teaching high school at this point; the realtor mentions something about the “fascinating work” he’s doing at the lab, and there’s a sense of youthful hope and ambition about the couple as they playfully argue over the house. Skyler, ever the realist, likes it because it’s within their price range, while Walt doesn’t see the point in buying a “starter home” which they’ll only live in for a year or so. There’s something powerfully sad about his “We’ve got nowhere to go but up,” given what we know the future holds for them.

Post credits, Walt (in full Heisenberg get-up) heads out into the desert and, in a scene straight out of a revisionist western, makes his slow way across the dusty plains to meet Mike and Gus in a Mexican stand-off of sorts. We see a return to the cold, furious Gus witnessed last week with Jesse as he demands that Walt explain himself, and Walt assures him that he and Jesse are done. Reasoning that Jesse is now “a couple of time zones away, at least” and out of the picture, Walt proposes that he continue cooking for Gus with a new assistant, and they both forget about Jesse. 

It’s interesting to note in this scene that even as Walt verbally “denies” Jesse, he subtly takes his side in the discussion of Tomas’s murder, almost accusing Gus outright of ordering the hit. And as magnetic as Giancarlo Esposito is in this role, there is something loathsome in the way he describes Jesse as “a contemptible junkie”, given that Jesse has more moral fibre in his pinkie finger than Gus has likely ever conceived of.

In any case, Walt persuades Gus that his plan is preferable to option A (i.e. he and Jesse being killed) and returns to the lab to find Gale waiting for him. Apparently eager to please, Gale says that he doesn’t want to make the same mistakes as last time, and asks Walt to teach him exactly how he likes things done. Walt accepts, with a strangely haunted look on his face.

Meanwhile Mike – caring grandpa by day, badass fixer by night – drops off his granddaughter after an afternoon at the zoo, before heading off to Gus’s chemical supply company to thwart an attempted raid from the cartel. Great work from Jonathan Banks in the first scene especially, he switches seamlessly from being so convincingly sweet to a stone-cold professional. 

Clearly feeling the heat from the cartel activity, Gus pays a visit to Gale and, with chilling lightness, asks how soon he would feel able to take over running the lab, explaining that Walt’s cancer may mean he’s unable to continue. “I don’t know that he’s fully accepted the reality of it,” he murmurs, and it couldn’t possibly be clearer that the demise he’s talking about has nothing to do with Walt’s health. Gale, off Gus’s meaningful stare, eventually concedes that one more cook with Walt should be enough.

I don’t know how much we’re meant to believe Gale knows in this scene, but all I’ll say is that he’s clearly an intelligent man and he became involved with Gus independently of Walt. I don’t buy that he’s in any way ignorant of the type of people he’s in business with, and Gus’s body language left very little room for ambiguity. Ironically, even if he’s consciously signing Walt’s death warrant, he has no way of knowing that he’s in fact signing his own.

Gus isn’t the only one making visits: Mike turns up at Saul’s office and demands, in no uncertain terms, Jesse’s location. Saul shows a surprising level of backbone as he reasons that he can’t violate attorney-client privilege, but appears to back down pretty quickly under pressure and gives Mike an address for Jesse in Virginia.

Later Walt and Saul go to the laser tag place from Abiquiu, ostensibly for Saul to try and persuade him of its merits once again, but actually so that they can talk without being overheard. Saul’s fuming: his car’s now bugged, he’s being followed, and he swears that if they make it out of this alive, he’ll be rethinking his pricing.

“That goes double for you, Hip Hop,” Saul snarks, and as the shot changes we see Jesse! JESSE! Who’s evidently been holed up at the laser tag all along, and not in any way in Virginia. Saul’s got balls, yo. This is the first of two great fake-out double cross moments this episode, where you think a character has sold out another when they’ve actually done something far cleverer.

Saul heads off to “see if they got Tetris or something” and leaves Walt and Jesse alone to talk, which is strangely reminiscent of the realtor giving Walt and Skyler privacy to look around the house.

Walt and Jesse share a sympathetic “how you holding up?” moment, and both seem palpably relieved to be reunited. Walt reveals that he knows exactly what Gus has planned; “So he’s their boy, huh?” Jesse says grimly. He asks what they do, and Walt answers “You know what we do.” Boom.

Jesse is adamant that there has to be another way, trying to persuade Walt that the best option for he and his family is to go to the police, and give them his extensive insider knowledge in exchange for witness protection. It’s endearing how little self-interest he shows here, vaguely saying that he’ll “hit the road” and make his own way provided Walt is covered. “We had a good run…but it’s over,” he says, a little shaky. Walt dismisses this – he knows Gus needs a cook, and with Gale out of the picture he’ll have no choice to let Walt (and by extension, Jesse) live.

Jesse quietly says that he can’t do it – as Walt said, he isn’t a murderer – and Walt replies that he’ll do the bloody deed himself, but he needs Jesse’s help to track Gale down. After that, he thinks he can “make it look like an accident.” Jesus. As a final resort, Walt pulls out the sucker-punch: “I saved your life, Jesse. Are you gonna save mine?” Ouch. Bye, Gale.

Next, a gorgeous silent moment: Walt sitting with Holly in his arms, her playing adorably with his glasses (seriously, how cute was this?) with Skyler and Walt Jr in the background. It’s shot in this warm, honey glow and there’s something so idyllic and sad about it, Walt relishing what feels like one last moment with his family. He knows he’s about to go somewhere they can’t follow.

Jesse calls with Gale’s address, and there’s a great beat from Bryan Cranston as he visibly wilts when asked when he’s going to do it. The reality of it sinking in like a physical weight. Jesse implores him one more time to reconsider, and Walt hangs up on him.

As Walt heads out to his car, Victor the ever-watchful lab attendant rolls up, saying there’s been a chemical leak at the lab and Walt needs to come with him. And there’s an absolutely gut-wrenching sense of dread here, with Walt knowing very well that this is it. This was very reminiscent of Seven Thirty Seven’s end, when Tuco pulled up with a gun to Jesse’s head and ordered Walt to “get in”. 

At the laundry, Mike opens the door to the lab and also orders Walt to get in, though with a more cordial “You first”, approach. Walt, knowing he’s out of options, starts to panic and desperately tells Mike he doesn’t have to do this (echoing Jesse’s words to him earlier). After a few minutes of Walt effectively begging for his life, Mike tells him to shut up, there’s nothing he can do.

“I’ll give you Jesse Pinkman,” Walt gasps, and this viewer’s heart leaps into her throat. Not to go on about how great Cranston is (because, duh) but he really pulls off this totally undignified moment where Walt is absolutely coming apart, and apparently resorting to every cowardly measure to save his own skin. He persuades Mike to let him call Jesse and get him to meet.

Still at the laser tag and about to smoke up a pipe of somethin’ (I’m assuming meth, but who knows), Jesse answers Walt’s call and asks if he did it. Walt answers in the negative, and before Mike can react he tells Jesse “It’s going to have to be you…They’ve got me at the laundry and they’re going to kill me.” As the phone is snatched away Walt screams out to Jesse to do it quickly, and Jesse runs for the door without a moment’s hesitation. OH. YES. That’s more like it, Walt. Awesome bluff. So that’s the second faux double-cross moment, and thank god. I didn’t want to live in a fictional world where Walter White would ever sell out Jesse Pinkman.

Although what happened next was unbearable, I was cheering hard for Walt and his badassery here. He recites Gale’s address and watches the colour drain from Mike’s face with a steely “Yeah.” Victor dashes out, but we know it’s way too late.

Cut to Gale at his apartment, dorkily singing along to more dorky music and making a dorky cup of tea with his laser thermometer. Poor Gale. Upon opening the door to a shaking, gun-toting Jesse, he tries to offer him money before begging for his life. “Please don’t do this,” he says, marking the third and most wrenching use of the phrase. “You don’t have to do this.” Crying, gun trembling violently in his hand, Jesse pulls the trigger and fires.

Fade to black.

Oh, god.

And so we’ve come full circle from last week, when Walt prevented Jesse from becoming a murderer. He didn’t just save his life, he also saved his soul. Which makes it all the more tragic that it was Walt, or Jesse’s feelings of loyalty and love for Walt, that drove him to finally become a murderer and compromise his soul this week.  

When this show began, it was about the lengths one man will go to to save his family. To a great extent, it’s now a show about the lengths two men will go to to save each other. Theirs is the most destructive, co-dependent bond on television, and yet there’s something so absolutely moving about it that I just can’t root for Jesse to run far, far away from Walt, much as I know it would be best for him. As damaging as their relationship is, this season’s closing arc has cemented the fact that these two love each other, and would do anything for each other. As Walt said: “When it comes down to you and me versus him, I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry. But it’s gonna be him.” 

Other thoughts:
-       Even if Jesse doesn’t get away from Gale’s before Victor arrives, I’m not worried for him – the whole point is that with Gale dead, they need Walt, and they know they don’t have Walt unless Jesse is alive. I’m way more worried about Jesse’s mental state following that ending. Just…oh. Jesse.
-       “I trust the hole in the desert I’d leave you in.” “Yeah, that’s…an argument.” Gotta love Saul.
-       Being pragmatic a la Gus for a second here: exactly how much leverage has Gale’s death really bought Walt? I know Walt is now their only chemist, and he can refuse to teach anyone besides Jesse his methods, but how long before Gus starts threatening Walt’s family to make him comply? It’s amazing they’ve escaped for this long, IMO.
-       One last thought on the “what lengths they’ll go to save each other” thing. This has always been there, right from the moment when Walt half blew up Tuco’s den in retribution for beating up Jesse. But Jane’s death is the most powerful example up to this point; Walt let her die almost solely because she posed too great a risk to Jesse. It was only a matter of time before these two killed for each other.
-       Now we know why Jesse was the one holding the gun in this promo image.

Breaking Bad | 3x11 | Abiquiu

This was a pretty low-key episode, a definite calm before the storm with groundwork being laid for the final two. That being said we did get the fairly huge step of Skylar taking on a role in Walt’s business, which doesn’t seem like finale setup to me so much as something that will only begin to pay off next season. 

Very exciting to see Jane again in the opener. Krysten Ritter had hinted on Twitter that she’d be back, so I’d been imagining some kind of dream sequence or hallucination, maybe where Walt was tormented by an accusatory, smart-talking Jane a la the dead folks on Six Feet Under, or Amber on House. The latter's sort of an interesting parallel – House, feeling responsible for the death of his best friend’s girlfriend, began to hallucinate her everywhere. If Walt gets a little more unhinged, maybe we’ll see Jane again before too long.

Anyway, it’s nice to see that Jesse and Jane made it to the Georgia O’Keefe exhibit after Jesse’s four-day desert detour. Their conversation in the car brought up a lot of interesting parallels to future stuff – maybe most obvious was Jane’s “I just threw up a little bit in my mouth” line, made fairly horrific considering the way she ultimately died. 

Jane talking about fixation, and the idea of wanting to make a feeling last, plays really powerfully into episode 303 with Jesse playing her voicemail recording over and over, clinging to what little he had left. And fixation was central to Fly, with Walt’s seemingly inexplicable obsession gradually giving way to deeper meaning: “Sometimes you get fixated on something, and you might not even get why.”

Moving onto Jesse…it is a sad day when Badger and Skinny Pete are giving you moral lessons; “There’s like, positivity and stuff goin’ on here.” We saw a return of the predatory, seductive Jesse from the gas station scene earlier this season in the way he maneuvered Andrea. And yet what this episode ultimately showed is that no matter how much he claims to be “the bad guy”, he simply isn’t unscrupulous and has a powerful internal sense of right and wrong.  There are certain lines that are absolutes for him (children being one), which is interesting as one of the things that’s really scary about Walt, by contrast, is his ability to blur those moral lines in his own mind. 

If there is one absolute Walt seems to have held onto, it’s family and the need to protect them at all costs. When it came to the revelation that Skylar hadn’t divorced Walt, it struck me that she’d probably had time to really think about the reality of what he had done, and it maybe didn’t repel her as much as she would have liked. In contrast to the downtrodden husband from the pilot, he’s now shown himself to be a man who will stop at absolutely nothing to provide for his family, and there’s something very attractive about that on a sort of primal level. Especially as Skylar has had the luxury of hearing only Walt’s sanitized version of events - I doubt the possibility of his having killed, for example, has even crossed her mind. His “Do you really want to know? Really?” was very telling in this sense, because there’s a whole lot she is better off not knowing.

When Gus talked about the “mistake” Walt shouldn’t make twice, there was some ambiguity in terms of whether he meant Jesse or Skylar. My guess is Jesse, because although bringing Skylar into the business may well prove to be a mistake, it’s not one Walt has made before, whereas Gus has warned Walt before about his attachment to Jesse. I’d be tempted to say that Gus is someone who sees almost all attachments as weaknesses or mistakes, since he seems to be so permanently alone himself, but he did mention “the kids” not eating the recipe he cooked.  Does he have family?  It would make sense in order to keep up the “responsible local business owner” front, but where the heck are they?

Finally, Jesse’s sudden desire to go after the guys who killed Combo is, to me, heavily linked to his feelings about Jane. The decision to open the episode with that flashback felt very deliberate – Jesse stated last week that Jane’s death was nobody’s fault, but that means he has nobody to strike out at, nothing to direct his rage towards. So again we’re back to the idea of fixation, with Jesse desperate to avenge Combo because he has no way to avenge Jane. Thoughts?

Other thoughts:
-  “I once convinced a woman that I was Kevin Costner, and it worked because I believed it.”
-  While Hank’s bad temper is understandable, there was something ferociously irrational about the way he reacted to the hospital bed in his room.  Marie handled him with so much grace, but I’m wondering whether his PTSD will soon progress to the point where he becomes genuinely frightening to be around. 
-  “My name is Brandon.  And this is, I believe, Peter.”  Heh.  

Breaking Bad | 3x10 | Fly

One day, I will be a timely, efficient television blogger. One day, my posts will arrive hot on the heels of each new episode, rather than crawling lethargically in their wake. But it is not this day. 

So, Fly was a tiny slice of television genius, y/y?

When I first saw it, I think I tweeted that it was Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul’s long awaited two-hander. This episode could very easily have been a play, with the claustrophobic set and precise structure and characters revealing themselves through monologue. I’m still surprised by how divisive it’s proved to be, as I thought it was just a brilliantly constructed hour; tense, layered, emotionally charged, and an answer to every prayer from viewers who have missed Walt-Jesse time this season. I genuinely, genuinely loved every second of it and wanted to marry it and have its surreal, Kafkaesque babies. 

Just so we’re clear.

This episode struck me as very self-contained, structurally – several elements were set up in the early scenes, and all of them were resolved or paid off by the end – or, if to get a bit pretentious and Chekhovian about it, several guns appeared in the first act and went off in the last.

The first of these came with the fly-with-lullaby-soundtrack opener, which rivals last season’s Pink Bear Of Floating Ambiguity in its disorienting, creepifying WTF factor. But it paid off during the much later scene where Walt, in a semi-drugged state, movingly describes to Jesse the “perfect moment” at which he wishes his life had ended. 

It’s insane to me that anybody could say nothing happened in this episode after this scene alone; it’s such a powerful insight into Walt’s state of mind this season. His entire plan was built on the assumption that he would die within months, and so his new life was strictly on a time-limit basis with an end date set. Now suddenly there’s no end in sight and he’s left with a whole lot of consequences which he never planned for, stuck in a living nightmare which is spiralling further and further out of his control. And if that’s not Kafkaesque, I don’t know what is. (Seriously, this is the episode that deserved that title.)

Also set up in the first act and resolved in the third: Walt’s realisation that Jesse is skimming meth off the top. What surprised me about this is that Walt didn’t actually seem to care about the stealing per se. His concern was for Jesse’s safety if, and when, Gus cottons on, which makes it extra aggravating that Jesse completely shut him down at the end. You don’t need Walt’s protection? Really? I love me some Jesse, but he’s being staggeringly naïve and clearly doesn’t take Gus seriously at all.

I’m still trying to decide exactly what the “contamination” was meant to represent, but I think it boiled down to unspoken things that were stewing between Walt and Jesse – the stealing, but also Walt’s guilt over Jane. The fly in the room was the elephant in the room. So once Walt had apologised for Jane’s death, the fly ceased to matter, and he told Jesse to “let it go”. This is probably reductionist, but to me the fly was a plot device to get to a situation where these two guys are forced to open up with one another.

Watching Jesse’s expression transform as Walt described meeting Jane’s father was so sad, too, the desperation for answers. I just can’t say enough about these two actors. They are immense.  And of course, Walt still left the most crucial fact about Jane’s death unspoken, which is just fine as far as I’m concerned. I don’t want to see their dynamic annihilated in the way that revelation would anytime soon. 

The other idea that was set up early in the episode for later resolution was Jesse’s concern for Walt’s health. I’m glad somebody in the show raised this, and it makes sense for it to be poor Jesse, who if I remember correctly nursed his aunt pretty singlehandedly through to the end. However fractious their relationship has been, Walt is the closest thing Jesse has to an active parental figure, so the very real possibility of losing him in such a familiar way must be sort of awful to live with. 

It was nice to see a sweeter, gentler Jesse this episode, since he’s seemed pretty close to losing his soul lately. He took good care of Walt and dealt with his weirdness in a smart, mature way, playing along with the fly obsession and quietly slipping him sleeping pills rather than continuing to argue pointlessly with someone who clearly wasn’t firing on all cylinders. Not that I’m advocating slipping pills into people’s coffee as a rule, but y’know, it worked for House and Wilson.

One last note on Jesse: he seems to have reached a surprisingly healthy perspective on Jane’s death. His matter-of-fact “It’s not your fault, it’s not mine either” is a million miles from “I killed her” in ABQ, or his obvious feelings of responsibility in No Mas. He even acknowledged that he and Jane, junkies with a duffel bag full of cash, wouldn’t have lasted a week in any case. He’s matured in so many ways, but at the same time he’s acting more recklessly and naively than he ever has with this meth business. First season Jesse was all about caution, with Walt pushing him to take more risks – now the dynamic is reversed and I can’t see it ending well. 

Other thoughts:
-  Is Walt’s skeleton made of titanium? That fall from the second storey did not look fun. In fact, it looked like the rib-cracking, temporary-paralysis-inducing opposite of fun. Expected Jesse to find him on the floor the next morning.
-  “This is a swatter. And it happens to work quite well, thank you.”
-  Jesse tucking Walt up with his jacket? Aww.
-  Walt’s resigned comment that “It’s all contaminated” is sort of haunting. I’m not totally sure what he meant, but wonder if it relates to the idea that the lab is bugged. Walt’s personal guilt aside, their entire operation is contaminated now that they’re effectively under the thumb of someone they don’t fully understand. And who is fairly scary. 
-  Jesse had some classic stream-of-consciousness moments this episode, between hyenas licking each other and Ebola and opossums (“Makes it sound like he’s Irish, or something.”) But the one that cracked me up was his bitching about Gus’s “pecking order”. Because he’s the chicken man.  Pecking order. Heh. Just me?
-  When Walt talked about his family-themed conversation with Donald, he didn’t tell Jesse that he spoke specifically about him as family. Which makes me wonder what Jesse thought he meant by “I took his advice.” I’m pretty sure he didn’t think he meant “I let your girlfriend die so she wouldn’t drag you any further into an ill-fated spiral of heroin addiction”, though. Pretty sure.

Breaking Bad | 3x07 | One Minute

So, I'm finally taking a shot at this blogging thing, and where better to start than my current Favourite Show Of All Time, Breaking Bad? I had actually meant to begin this at the start of the third season, as would seem logical, but life and other annoyances got in the way, so here we are at episode 7.

It probably goes without saying that there will be SPOILERS within for pretty much everything that's aired so far. So for the two or three people who may be reading this (that's pretty optimistic, actually), go away if you haven't seen the show! But if you haven't seen the show...seriously, do something about that.

Even more than the drug underworld or the Jekyll & Hyde story, Breaking Bad has always been primarily about family – what defines it, what shapes it, and how far people will go to protect it. This week’s teaser, with Tio teaching the cousins to appreciate one another and intoning “Family is all,” made it clear this was going to be especially pivotal this week.

For these characters, family is off-limits. It’s the one thing that can’t be threatened. Hank beat Jesse half to death not because he escaped arrest, but because he crossed a line by bringing Marie into the situation. It’s the same line Hank crossed for the cousins when he killed Tuco. It’s the same line Jane crossed for Walt when she started to drag Jesse down with her. In each situation characters respond in exceptionally violent ways when their families are put under threat, so that the life of the threatening party becomes, to some extent, forfeit.

One of this episode’s most interesting lines was Walt’s “Not currently,” in reference to Hank being his family. That could have just been passive-aggression towards Skylar, but I don’t quite buy that from him at this stage. I think he likely felt some resentment towards Hank for beating up Jesse (he certainly didn’t respond too well to that in Crazy Handful Of Nothin’), and last episode’s RV situation reinforced for him the fact that Hank is now, on a basic level, the enemy. It’ll be interesting to see how Walt reacts to Hank being seriously injured next week, as right now I believe he truly doesn’t see him as “family” in the show’s sense – that is, as someone whose interests must be protected at all costs.

So if saving Hank wasn’t a priority, what were Walt’s motivations for bringing Jesse back in? As always, they’re murky. Self-interest was doubtless a factor – it was the best way he could see to save his own ass. It struck me this week that Walt doesn’t seem to see caring for someone and exploiting them for his own ends as mutually exclusive ideas. Case in point: earlier this season we saw him forcibly re-insert himself back into the family house and refuse to leave, in spite of how obviously uncomfortable it made Skylar. Rather than respecting her very valid feelings, he did what was necessary to get the outcome he wanted. So while Jesse is clearly wrong to say that Walt doesn’t care about him (more on that brilliant scene later), his motives were, as always, pretty far from pure.

That said, I thought it was interesting how the writers went to great pains to show Walt and Gale’s partnership deteriorating, entirely independent of the Jesse storyline. I totally had poor Gale pegged as bad news, but now I just feel bad for him after being so unceremoniously dumped for really no good reason at all. Although it was a jarring 360 turn from their meeting of minds last week, this isn’t new behaviour for Walt. It’s the same impulse that made him dismiss Jesse’s very high-quality meth a few weeks ago; in part it’s an egocentric control issue, but to give Walt the benefit of the doubt I think it’s also about being a teacher. He still sees himself in that role, and with Jesse he always will be on some level (hell, he still calls him “Mr White”) whereas Gale really had nothing to learn from him.

All this got me to thinking about that great scene back in season one, where Jesse goes home and finds the old test papers graded by Walt, complete with encouraging messages like “Ridiculous. Apply yourself.” and so on. The family idea is crucial to Walt and Jesse, too - Walt verbally “claimed” Jesse as his family in Phoenix, and despite their recent rift this episode really showcased that, with Jesse as the wayward, bereft son lashing out at the neglectful father figure whose approval he desperately seeks. Their relationship is SUCH a twisted bastardisation of these dynamics - teacher/student, father/son - and it has no right whatsoever to be as strangely touching as it is.

Which brings us to the second hospital scene. Aaron Paul is such a committed performer, I loved the way he delivered each line as though it was a physical effort, like the words were actually tearing themselves out of him because he was in so much internal pain. Amazing. I do think that if there’s any justice, this year’s Best Supporting Actor Emmy will be a two horse race, said horses being named Paul and Norris. It was an enormously satisfying scene, too, quite cathartic in the way it summarised so many things that had needed to be said really since the show began. One defining idea through the series has been Walt trying to do things for the good of his family which end up hurting them. Jesse is no exception, and in fact may be the most extreme example. I'm still dreading the scene when he eventually learns the truth about Jane.

It would be criminal to end a discussion of family without mentioning Hank and Marie’s marriage. I don’t feel like their relationship has been given much depth before this season, they often functioned as a comedic, slightly mismatched counterpoint to Walt and Skylar’s drama. But these last couple of episodes have really showcased the reasons why their marriage works – there’s mutual respect, mutual trust, and a really moving, understated connection between them. It’s interesting to compare them now to Walt and Skylar, who I’m not really sure were ever a good fit even before all the external drama the show’s thrust upon them. Mutual respect and trust are two things we certainly haven’t seen between them, and it’s very hard to imagine Walt ever leaning on Skylar the way Hank did Marie this week.

Also, Dean Norris owned that scene on the bed so, so much. I can’t even. He’s always been solid, but he is something else this season.

Finally, the last and most deadly example of family loyalty came with the cousins. And...damn, did anyone know Hank had that in him? What a badass! I can't even imagine what kind of an impact this is going to have on his already raging PTSD. Will this drive him even further away from his old job, or reignite his passion for the work and make him fight to regain his position? This is all assuming he won't be permanently injured, which I'm praying he won't. If this were a sitcom, he and Jesse would so end up in a conjoined ICU room, a la that trippy episode of House where he's in the next hospital bed over from his attacker. Alas, I don't see it happening.

Presumably the car-sandwich brother will live, as it’d be awfully anticlimactic to have both taken out this early in the game. Will he and Tio be in twin wheelchairs, plotting Hank and Walt’s demise? Or will Gus be their new target, since they went after Hank on his advice? And surely Walt can’t be out of the woods either?

So many unanswered questions. Good thing I'm getting around to posting this a mere few hours before the new episode airs - the wait's almost over! Here's to another flawless hour.