Breaking Bad has unexpectedly grown in popularity over the past two seasons, and as such this season premiere has quite a bit to live up to—following up last season’s superb finale and being a good first impression for people trying out the show. What we get is something very different from what we expected: witty quips, lighthearted humor, and magnets!
Recap:
A disheveled Walt sits in a Denny’s, now sporting a full head of hair (!), full beard (!!) and thick black-rimmed glasses (!!!) spelling out “52” in his bacon. We learn through his conversation with the waitress that it’s his birthday, he’s spending it alone, and he’s now got a driver’s license for New Hampshire now. He meets with Lawson (Supernatural‘s Jim Beaver returning from last season) in the bathroom, now buying an assault rifle.
Flashing back to last season’s finale, Walt calls Skyler, telling her they’re safe and “I won.” Continuing from there, Walt returns home and cleans up pieces of evidence for making the bomb, as well as the Lily of the Valley plant. Skyler and Walt Jr. return home; it seems the DEA determined that Gus was the drug lord, the one who put the hit out on Hank, and has now declared the family is safe, and Walt Jr. feels Hank should be regarded as a hero for having figured it all out. Skyler is distant towards Walt, and (understandably) says she’s scared of him. After thinking for a moment, Walt has an “oh s***” moment—Gus kept cameras on he and Jesse. At the same time, Hank investigates the burned Laundromat, and sees a scorched camera.
Meanwhile, Mike is still recovering from his gunshot wound, and gets word of Gus’s death. He angrily meets with Jesse and Walt in the desert, hellbent on killing Walt. Jesse manages to calm him down enough to let Walt explain—he, Jesse, and Mike would be on Gus’s cameras, meaning they could all be in trouble if the police get to a recording. Mike reluctantly agrees, and after a clever call to the police station posing as an inspector with the USPS, he determines that Gus’s computer (where he has footage) is locked up in an evidence locker with no way of getting it out. Mike plans to leave, but Walt is intent on destroying it. Jesse, in a rare moment of brilliance, suggests using a magnet to erase the laptop. They visit Old Joe (from season 3’s “Sunset”) to buy a the car magnet, which he’s unwilling to sell; Walt instead decides to get the moving truck. Jesse pays for the truck (since Walt’s money was tangled up with Ted and the IRS from back in “Crawl Space”) and Walt fashions the truck into an incredibly powerful electromagnet by attaching a bunch of car batteries to it.
Saul shows up at the carwash to see Skyler to tell her about Ted and the “act of God”—which Skyler, like the rest of us, assumes is Ted’s death. However, Saul drops a bomb—“he just woke up.” Skyler goes to see Ted, who’s paralyzed in bed with a huge back brace for an injured spin, and a shaved head, barely eating solid food. Ted tells Skyler he didn’t say anything other than “he tripped” and will never breathe a word of it to anyone—because he has a family and children and fears for their safety. Skyler responds, “good.”
Mike deactivates the gate next to the police station so Walt and Jesse can park the magnet-truck next to the evidence locker. The magnet works—erasing the nearby computers and snatching all the metal to the wall—but Walt turns it too high. The truck to gets attached to the wall as well, meaning Jesse and Walt have to leave it in order to get away. As Mike drives them away, he chastises the two of them for leaving behind the truck and asks how they know it worked. Walt simply says, “Because I say so.” When the cops go through the evidence, the laptop is destroyed—but in the photo frame, there is a written list of information behind the photo that they can now see.
Walt meets with Saul, who explains the situation with Ted. Saul tries to tell him about how he did try to get Walt involved, but Walt feels it isn’t enough and gets increasingly agitated. Through their conversation, it’s revealed that Saul had Huell steal the Ricin cigarette from Jesse, and because of the constant precarious situations Walt has put him in, Saul decides to quit being his lawyer. Walt, however, gets in his face and intimidates him—“We’re done when I say we’re done.” Walt goes back home to Skyler and comforts her, telling her “I forgive you” about the Ted situation.
Review:
It’s rare to call an episode of Breaking Bad “fun,” particularly when after the ever-increasing intensity got to its boiling point at the end of last season. But what ultimately amounts to a breather episode still moves along the plot, establishes new character angles, and sets up a very clear arc for the season: the fall of Walt after his rise to the top. And while it’s intriguing seeing exactly what events will lead Walt to Denny’s and an assault rifle, it’s incredibly entertaining seeing him strut around and exert his power…in an uncomfortable, “I should not enjoy this but I do” kind of way. Walt hasn’t reached the point of full-on villain yet, but he’s creeping ever-closer, and Bryan Cranston plays this newfound superiority and hyper-overconfidence exceedingly well.
What makes this episode so unique is the sheer amount of comedy. It’s not all even dark humor, either—there’s lots of genuinely cheeky, witty lines and moments. This was no doubt because of this new Walt/Jesse/Mike dynamic. There’s a clear pattern here that can be milked for a while: Walt has one of his schemes, Mike disagrees and they argue angrily, and Jesse breaks in with the obvious-yet-wisest answer.
Having Mike back after he was MIA at the end of season 4 is a total joy, and he had some of the best lines of the episode—the “universal symbol for keys” gag, and “I can think of a number of possible outcomes to this, and not one of them is Miller Time,” among others. Jonathan Banks is a bit of an unsung hero in the cast, this week delivering a range of old grandfather qualities to extreme (and entertaining) rage to becoming the comical snarker.
Old Joe’s return brought plenty of humor too, what with the penis ring discussion (and everyone looking to Jesse about it.) And of course, Jesse’s magnet interjections. Sure, it’s ridiculous that Walt didn’t think of that solution (all of us did!) but the moment was so golden that it was worth it. And if nothing else, could we perhaps consider it a hint of Walt’s growing blindness because of his overconfidence? Even if we didn’t, it’s a hilarious moment.
That said, having a plot with a giant magnetic rental truck pretty much proves how skewed Breaking Bad‘s reality has become. It’s not bad necessarily—there were shades of its abstract “this is obviously a TV show” side since the plane crash stuff as early as season 2—but it does have me wondering just how far the show will take it. And like that plane crash, Walt inadvertently revealing what may be an important piece of evidence in Gus’s photo frame is a big karma-coincidence moment that this show likes to pull out from time to time. While it worked just fine here, it can easily become heavy-handed (like many feel the season 2 plane crash was.) Then again, one of the most ridiculous examples of this skewed reality would be Gus fixing his tie after having his face blown off in “Face Off,” and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t consider that one of the best moments in the show’s history. So there’s probably nothing to worry about.
There was also some—dare I say—cute moments here: Mike feeding the chickens, Walt leaving his server a $100 tip. Again, a big strength of this episode is a distinct lightheartedness that’s been missing from the show since, well, probably around the first episode. But this only makes the darker elements stand out even more, particularly Walt’s darker ego and what’s happened to Ted.
On that note, the Ted reveal was superb. In writing, saying “Ted isn’t dead, he was in a coma all along” sounds very cheap, but the show genuinely fooled us last year while simultaneously keeping the situation open enough that it’s perfectly acceptable to have him survive. So much went on after what might have been a rather fitting, darkly humorous demise in “Crawl Space” that we forgot about it. Seeing Ted in his terrible state is not only a big shocker, but it’s also very conflicting; the guy’s flip-flopped from likeable to frustrating so many times, but you can’t help but feel bad for him. It’s even worse that he’s apparently scared of Skyler for the sake of his family. And it seems Walt might be rubbing off on Skyler, consider she went with it. It’s an interesting development for her growing ambiguity. And while her telling Walt she was scared of him wasn’t exactly new territory, it might be a different scenario when she sees this “winner” version of Walt in action.
Nevertheless, the episode belonged to the new Walt/Jesse/Mike trio, and it was loads of fun because of it. And while it felt oddly formulaic for a Breaking Bad season premiere (in that it resolved some loose threads, set-up new dynamics, and showed a clear path for the character arcs like most traditional premieres) it wasn’t any less enjoyable. The show brought its A-Game, not to mention loads of unexpected comedy, and a wealth of stuff to be excited about for this summer’s half-season.
Some stray tidbits
- It’s awesome that the thing Walt picks out about the town in the teaser is its “great science museum.”
- An extremely minor nitpick, but Skyler’s hair is a completely different length between the two seasons, despite this episode taking place a day or so after the last one. It wouldn’t have been a big deal if we didn’t see a flashback to her different hair at the beginning of the episode.
- The only time Walt’s pride is hurt in the entire episode is when his son calls Hank “a hero” regarding the Gus situation. Just an observation.
- As fun as Hank is when he’s being all Hank-like, Dean Norris does the best contemplative stares.
- “Apparently the teeth do this popcorn thing when they get too hot.”
- “What is it with you guys? Honest to god…”
- “Nursing home full of old folks only wettin’ your appetite, now you wanna kill a bunch a’ cops?”
- “We’re in the time of string theories and god particles…feasible, doable, sure? But expensive.”
