Breaking Bad – “Shotgun”
“You are not the guy.”
This is going to be kind of quick since I don’t have much to say, I don’t know the episode warrants a lot of commentary, and I’m sure a good chunk of it has been expressed elsewhere.
I will say that I was very jealous of Nick last week. After “Open House” (an episode I’m more and more convinced may be the I’ve enjoyed most so far since the premiere) and seeing the preview for “Bullet Points”, I thought, “Man. Nick gets the exciting episodes.” And then I realized that I would get an exciting episode as I would get to write about whatever the hell happened to Jesse and Mike on their little road trip.
I’m still jealous of Nick, but he didn’t get that great dinner scene to talk about, so I’ll say we’re even-ish.
I’ve seen grumbling in comments on other sites (not this one, since we only get comments on Game of Thrones) that this season of Breaking Bad has been kind of boring. I see where these people are coming from, but the show has always seemed to focus more on the domestic side of things at the start of the season and then escalating slowly into larger concerns about the criminal side of things as threads between those two parts of Walter’s life begin to come together.
What has shifted in this season, however, is that these two threads of Walter’s life are already fairly interwoven with Skyler taking on a business role in Walter’s life. If you couple that with the fact that Gus has officially vacuum-sealed Walter away from him (and is in the process of isolating him further by giving Jesse more responsibility), it’s no wonder that, with a little help from vino veritas, he exercises some form of power by making it clear to Hank that Gale is not Heisenberg.
It’s such a stupid move on Walter’s part, as it endangers him and his family and his livelihood, but he just can’t help himself. Everything is drifting further and further from his control, and he sees a prime opportunity to step away from being a punch-card employee and be the criminal mastermind he fancies himself. He’s swirling wine around in a glass while monologuing, for Pete’s sake!
But it had to be done, narratively speaking. Hank’s arc had hit something of a cul-de-sac, and he couldn’t have kept his head up his minerals the entire season. Walter’s speech, since Hank truly isn’t a dummy, rings true to someone with his instincts, and Hank does respect Walter, so maybe there is something more to that folder than he originally thought. I’ll admit that I’m happy to see Hank out of his bed and being pleasant to Marie, since this is the Hank I like, the Hank I kind of want to see edge closer and closer to catching Walter.
Speaking of “it had to be done”, Jesse and Mike’s trip to the drop-offs nicely showcases, as my on-line viewing partner pointed out, the drudgery of drug dealing. And boy does it. But not before the show engages in one of its little delights as Mike takes his damn sweet time collecting the first bag. While the scene is expertly paced and staged, the tension is a lessened by the fact that, well, I never really thought that Jesse was in danger (and if he had been, I know that even the most spoiler-phobic of the critics I follow on Twitter wouldn’t be able to resist building up the episode). So the sequence was a little flat in that sense.
But the rest of it worked nicely. I enjoyed the montage and time-elapse sequence as Mike and Jesse to to all the individual points, and particularly how Jesse reverts back to being something of a child, bored out of his mind on a long car trip (“It’s to bore me to death. Mission accomplished, because it’s totally working. great job.”). It’s nice to Jesse behave in a way other than his detached, drown out the emotions with loud music, meth heads, and video games.
And then the show just, again, says, “Here’s why we needed to do this”, and it is a little frustrating. Gus’s explanation does serve to give Jesse some sense of purpose that was missing from his life after killing Gale, and it does, like with Hank, provide the show a new avenue to bring a character that was trapped in a loop out of it, but to spell it out like that for us? Kind of surprised the show did that.
But, on the upside, we’re moving forward, and perhaps those grumblings about boredom will soon be a thing of the past.
FINAL THOUGHTS
- Man. Is there anything that Aztek can’t do? Knock down dealers? Check. Zip through traffic? Check.
- “Driving? Driving where?” “I don’t know. North?”
- Loved the sound work in at the first drop-off site. That windmill mimicking labored breathing sounds. Really dug it.
- “Like Scarface had sex with Mr. Rogers.” I see we haven’t lost our meta vibe from last week.
- Walt, Jr.’s face upon realizing his parents were having sex? CLASSIC.
- No discussion of that whole development, by the way, because I’m not entirely sure what to make of it just yet.
- BOOM: “Since when do vegans eat fried chicken?”
- August 15, 2011
- Noel
- Episode Review
- Breaking Bad
