Breaking Bad- Two Suits Don't Look at Explosions

Hank Schrader- "Whatcha got in there, cinder blocks?"

Walter White- "Half million in cash."

What makes a show like Breaking Bad so good is that any true television enthusiast is forced to pay super close attention to every second that it is on because you have so much confidence in the story telling of the series. Unlike Flash Forward, who has gone through three or four showrunners in half a season, I have the utmost belief that Vince Gilligan and his crew have a reason for every second of footage that gets on the air.

The cold open to tonight's season three premier, No Mas, had no characters that the audience had ever seen before and managed to keep my eyeballs glued to the screen throughout. A bunch of Mexican dudes, including a couple of suit wearing bad asses, were crawling towards what could be called a church. Inside we saw the two suits worshiping a skeleton that was placed in front of what seemed to be a sketch of Heisenberg himself.

The entire time I wondered if this was a look ahead at something we would eventually get to at the end of the episode or the end of the season, like we've seen in the past. As the plot continued to come back to these two characters a couple more times during the ep, it seems that we are dealing with parallel storylines that will no doubt converge early in the season.

Speaking of these two suits...when's the last time we had a couple of dudes that were this hard and flat out this cool, without saying a single word during an entire episode. Seriously they must be big fans of Andy Samberg, or just have had some cool guy errands that they had to walk to, because not many people could have walked away from that gigantic explosion without looking back at it.

Back in the ABQ we had Walt in denial about his wife leaving him, Walt Jr. not taking it so well, and Jesse in his last few days of rehab. The quote at the top shows how Walt's complete dryness continues to get laughs out of me. He simply tells his DEA brother in law the truth and Hank thinks the guy is fooling with him.

Walt had a couple other crucial moments in this first ep. He finally got the nerve up to tell Skylar that he actually cooks meth and she didn't even give him a second to explain any of his reasoning for doing so. My thought...good riddance. She said she'll keep your secret Walt! That's all you need from her. You can do better than this chick.

We also got to see Walt take out his frustration with the plane crash that happened at the end of last season on the entirety of his high school. Because he let Jane die in her sleep at the end of last season, which led to her air traffic control father mistakenly killing 100 odd people in a couple of airplanes, Walt seems to feel responsible. He releases his frustration to 500 high school students in a way of a passionate speech about moving on after tragedy. Why did the teachers and students seem so weirded out by it? I thought it was rather moving.

And finally, Jesse Pinkman. At the end of last season, and the start of this episode, I was worried that we were going to have to deal with half a season worth of rehab episodes. Thankfully Jesse was in his last stretch of rehab when this ep started and he left by the end of the 45 minutes. I wouldn't have been happy with more than one ep worth of rehab stories. We're now back where everyone is comfortable...Walt and Jesse living in a hotel room together. Bring on ep two.