Breaking Bad- Going Half Way

I can definitely see why some people think that Breaking Bad is the best series currently on tv. I completely disagree with them, but it makes sense. It is extremely well written, directed and acted. But there is something to be said for pure entertainment value, and sometimes Breaking Bad just doesn't have it. That was not the case this week during the penultimate episode of the third season, which was awesome.

Breaking Bad has become the king of leaving episodes with a bang. Earlier in the season it was the ridiculousness that was 'One Minute' and this week it was a fantastic finish for Walter White, Sr. There really is something to be said for this strategy. Even though a lot of Breaking Bad can be really slow, finishing eps with such energy makes people think the episode was better than it actually was. Even now I'm thinking that this entire 45 minutes was fantastic, when maybe it was just that the final three were so good.

When Walt finds out about the kid getting killed by Gus's trusted employees he leaves his family immediately so that he can go help out his buddy, Jesse. As we watch Jesse get out of his car and creep closer and closer to the two gangsters the tension was crazy high. I had no idea what was going to happen but I was not ruling out Jesse getting killed and him being off the show. What I was not expecting was for Walt to pull his best Hugo Reyes impression and drive in out of nowhere and run over the bad guys in his Aztec. One was straight up dead and Walt straight up shot the other in the head before telling Jesse to run.

I guess Mike the Cleaner's speech to Walter earlier in the episode paid off. He definitely didn't use a half measure when he mirked those two dudes. Going halfway, in putting Jesse in jail, would have been a mistake by Walter. But so was the halfway move by Gus in just telling his employees to stop using kids to sell their drugs. All that accomplished was the employees capping the 11 year old kid in the middle of the street. And kudos to Jesse for sticking up for both the kid and his own opinion when he went toe to toe with big Gus Chiggins.

Only one more episode in the season and I heard it got extended by some minutes. Always an exciting factor.

Breaking Bad- Walt's In. Jesse's Out.

Walter White- "I'm in. You're out."

Breaking Bad has used different types of story telling structures throughout its first three seasons. They've done flash forwards of scenes we would see down the road. They've done flashbacks to moments far back in the history of the characters' lives. This week we started the episode with a flash back to a time period that we knew very well. A new way of executing great story telling. They used both 1)old footage that we had already seen (Walt with a full head of hair giving Jesse a bunch of money to buy an RV) and 2)new scenes that we had not scene before (Jesse and Combo stealing the RV from his mom and living it up at the strip club). After the cold open ended and the opening credits began to roll, I knew it was all going to come back to Hank finding out about that same story one way or another.

It took a heck of a lot of stuff in the middle of the episode before we saw Hank take a look at the picture of Combo, Jesse and a stripper. Hank is now on Jesse's tail and seems to be the beginning of the end for our favorite meth cooking duo (of course something will trip Hank up).

But Walt and Jesse aren't much of a duo at this point, which both saddens me and detracts a bit from the show. I know you can't do the same thing over and over again, but the buddy buddy give and take between Walt and Jesse are what made the show good in the early going. With Walt going nutso selfish with is meth and kicking Jesse out of the meth scene by way of Gus Chiggins, we are forced to deal with the two of them separately.

Sure they're both great characters on their own, but no where near as good as together. Jesse giving it to Walt over the phone was fantastic. He has gotten back to his old self. We had lost him to depression for the first few episodes of this season and he was not nearly as enjoyable to watch. The amped up, ready to brawl Jesse is the Jesse I learned to love in season one.

Meanwhile, Walt on his own was good only because he slowly but surely was lured back into the meth game. Thanks to Gus Chiggins pronouncement that, "A man provides...And he does it even if he's not appreciated...or respected...or even loved. He simply bears up and does it because he's a man." After that Walt went home, signed the divorce papers and figuratively put his apron back on. His showdown with Jesse at Saul's office (where he let Jesse know that he was back in the game) "I'm in. You're out" was both chilling and a sad state of affairs on the relationship of Walt and Jesse.