Breaking Bad, Season 2
Feb. 25th, 2012 04:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which John de Lancie guest stars and gives a heart breaking performance, and that's just a minor virtue of the fascinating trainwreck going on there.
So, I just finished the second season, and continue to be very, very impressed. First and foreomost on the actions have consequences front, of course, but let me start with one of my few complaints from last season which has been partially settled this season: to wit, the female characters not being as fleshed out as the male ones. While Marie still continues to be on the shallow side (the writing, I mean), especially compared with the treatment her husband is getting, the scene between her and Skyler in which Skyler finally gets Marie to apologize was superb and brought across so much of their relationship. It also addressed the seasonal and ongoing theme of lies. S1 had already established that Skyler a) is good at noting when Walter is lying to her, and b) reacts badly to it. In s2 in addition to the big issue of Walter's lies there are the two minor subplots also revolving around Skyler and people who deceive. What maddens her about Marie is the non-admittance and pretense nothing is wrong, more than the actual shoplifting, but when Marie is put on the spot and given the prospect that continuing lying could end the relationship altogether, she picks the truth and so the relationship is saved. Then there's Ted, who is falsifying his records; like Marie's lies, his are a more harmless echo of Walter's far more damaging untruths, and so again it's fascinating to observe how Sky responds. First of all, she's not a saint; while her initial impulse is to leave the firm, she eventually decides to stay (and thus implicitly cover for/go along with Ted's bookkeeping, despite knowing, as she herself points out, that people can go to prison for this kind of fraud). And in addition to her (perceived) financial situation - i.e. the need for a job -, I think what makes the difference is that Ted, when asked, does not lie to her but confesses. (And doesn't threaten her or exert other pressure.) By contrast, Walter in the course of the season lies to her at every opportunity he gets and digs himself in further, so her decision to leave him at the end of the season (even without knowing the exact nature of what he's been doing) was not really a surprise but the culmination of their ongoing enstragement. What I appreciate most is that it's as much shown as a result of who SKy is as who Walter is, not only as a part of Walter's storyline. Sky really came into her own this season.
Then there's the new character, Jane, and oh, that was gut wrenching. The show, on a level with the best television sadists, made her really likeable in her quirky, confident way, and used her just right, making her more and more present in the course of the season, and the eventually unfolding romance with Jesse was not only believable but sweet without being sacharine (and who'd have thought it when we first met Jesse). So the moment when she turned back from the door and you knew she'd join depressed!Jesse in his drug use was such a horrible emotional blow. (And a fairly set up one, too; we knew Jane was a recovering addict herself, we knew that Jesse would use again.) Now this s how has its share of scary physical violence (Tucco beating his henchman to death in the season 1 finale, the explosion amidst the DEA agents after they saw the head of their snitch on a turtle, the female addict decapitating her husband), but for my money, the most brutal, cruel scene was one completely without physical violence: Walter watching Jane convulse, checking his first impulse to help as he realises if she dies this solves his problems with Jesse, and watching her die.
When I saw the first scene with Jane's father, I thought, hang on, I know that voice (I hadn't paid attention to the credits), can it really be...., and yes, it was. I think that's the first role I've seen John de Lancie in where he's neither the villain nor the ambiguous smartass, and his performance as Jane's first supportive-yet-firm and then grieving father was amazing. In ties in with one of the show's virtues; despite the fact we're firmly focused on Walter and Jesse as the protagonists, it never loses sight of keeping the victims of the drug trade real by individualizing them - and their families. When Jesse sees the child of the two heroin/meth-addictions in the squalor of their flat, he's horrified (and sorry for the kid), but doesn't yet make the emotional connection between his income and the consequences this has for other people; when Jane dies, he makes that connection immediately. It's a fascinating contrast to Walter who despite having come to care for Jesse as a person (which brings with it heigtened concern about Jesse's own addiction) seems to have a complete emotional disconnect to/disinterest in what his pure meth production results in, other than money (and the consequences for his own family); when he steps through the zombie-like addicts in search of Jesse in the season finale there is no sense of him feeling any kind of connection between what he did, and the state these people are in.
And yet the show is careful not to make Walter completely lacking in empathy. He's at his best when trying to help his brother-in-law deal with the consequences of the DEA massacre, despite his resentment of Hank's relationship with his son; and both at his worst and best with Jesse, whom as Gus points out he doesn't need anymore from a pragmatic point of view, but by now needs emotionally, and worries for as much as he's irritated by him. The lovely irony of him sharing his worries with Jane's father is painfully sharp.
It continues to be an amazing performance by Bryan Cranston. You can see the dark side and edges brought out ever sharper and yet it never feels like something that was never there in Walter to begin with, more like something that used to be buried and is now emerging. With his intelligence and ability to improvise with his back on the wall as the ongoing traits from Walter the chemistry teacher to Walter the drug producer. I love that the show makes the teacher thing so engrained (as for example even dehydrated Walter automatically getting into lecturing mode with Jesse when he creates an emergency battery to jump start their car in the desert), just as Jesse's default mode towards Walter, unless he's angry, remains that of student (complete with still calling him "Mr. White", again except when angry). It's illuminating to compare their scenes with Walter's attempts at interaction with his son, whom he loves but can't really communicate with (not least because he's lying to him as well as to his wife).
Another thing: giving the protagonist a double life and making the people from his/her normal life try to reach him/her via phone in the middle of suspensful situations she/he can't tell them the truth about is a tried and true device from various shows. Alias in its first season comes to mind, when Sydney was inevitably called by Francie or Will in the middle of a dangerous mission, or Dexter in its first four seasons when it mostly was Rita on the phone in the middle of a serial killing expedition, or, more rarely, Deb. It's mostly used as a black humour effect. Breaking Bad does the black humour thing sometimes, too, but the phone device also is employed to make some deadly serious dramatic points: as one of the key clues for Skyler to discover the extent of Walter's lies to her, and as a turning point when Walter, caught between closing a drug deal with millions on one side and the birth of his daughter on the other, goes for the drug deal. Not that Walter's "I'm doing this all for my family" rationale isn't falling apart the further the show progresses anyway, but here it's brought into sharp focus.
Lastly: before watching season 1, I read somewhere in an article praising the show that they have the support of the Alburque police, and given what I knew of the premise, this surprised me somewhat. Not any longer, because in addition to never glamourizing the drug trade, the D.E.A. by and large are shown as a dedicated bunch (despite having their biases), not stupid, and given a show regular as a representative who is a very sympathetic character. I like, too, that we get to see the effects shooting people has on Hank just as we see how killing affects (or not) Walter and Jesse. Now I have no idea whether cancer will kill Walter at the end of the show or whether he'll be caught by Hank & Co., but in their scenes together, both the tense, hostile ones as when Walter has that contest over Walter Jr. involving martini with Hank and the friendly ones as when Walter gave the circumvential version of a pep talk to Hank in which he can't reveal just why he knows how Hank feels but does a good job of helping anyway it occured to me that they are the closest the show has to traditional protagonist and arch nemesis, only with the protagonist simultanously fulfilling the villain function while the nemesis does the traditional hero thing.
So, I just finished the second season, and continue to be very, very impressed. First and foreomost on the actions have consequences front, of course, but let me start with one of my few complaints from last season which has been partially settled this season: to wit, the female characters not being as fleshed out as the male ones. While Marie still continues to be on the shallow side (the writing, I mean), especially compared with the treatment her husband is getting, the scene between her and Skyler in which Skyler finally gets Marie to apologize was superb and brought across so much of their relationship. It also addressed the seasonal and ongoing theme of lies. S1 had already established that Skyler a) is good at noting when Walter is lying to her, and b) reacts badly to it. In s2 in addition to the big issue of Walter's lies there are the two minor subplots also revolving around Skyler and people who deceive. What maddens her about Marie is the non-admittance and pretense nothing is wrong, more than the actual shoplifting, but when Marie is put on the spot and given the prospect that continuing lying could end the relationship altogether, she picks the truth and so the relationship is saved. Then there's Ted, who is falsifying his records; like Marie's lies, his are a more harmless echo of Walter's far more damaging untruths, and so again it's fascinating to observe how Sky responds. First of all, she's not a saint; while her initial impulse is to leave the firm, she eventually decides to stay (and thus implicitly cover for/go along with Ted's bookkeeping, despite knowing, as she herself points out, that people can go to prison for this kind of fraud). And in addition to her (perceived) financial situation - i.e. the need for a job -, I think what makes the difference is that Ted, when asked, does not lie to her but confesses. (And doesn't threaten her or exert other pressure.) By contrast, Walter in the course of the season lies to her at every opportunity he gets and digs himself in further, so her decision to leave him at the end of the season (even without knowing the exact nature of what he's been doing) was not really a surprise but the culmination of their ongoing enstragement. What I appreciate most is that it's as much shown as a result of who SKy is as who Walter is, not only as a part of Walter's storyline. Sky really came into her own this season.
Then there's the new character, Jane, and oh, that was gut wrenching. The show, on a level with the best television sadists, made her really likeable in her quirky, confident way, and used her just right, making her more and more present in the course of the season, and the eventually unfolding romance with Jesse was not only believable but sweet without being sacharine (and who'd have thought it when we first met Jesse). So the moment when she turned back from the door and you knew she'd join depressed!Jesse in his drug use was such a horrible emotional blow. (And a fairly set up one, too; we knew Jane was a recovering addict herself, we knew that Jesse would use again.) Now this s how has its share of scary physical violence (Tucco beating his henchman to death in the season 1 finale, the explosion amidst the DEA agents after they saw the head of their snitch on a turtle, the female addict decapitating her husband), but for my money, the most brutal, cruel scene was one completely without physical violence: Walter watching Jane convulse, checking his first impulse to help as he realises if she dies this solves his problems with Jesse, and watching her die.
When I saw the first scene with Jane's father, I thought, hang on, I know that voice (I hadn't paid attention to the credits), can it really be...., and yes, it was. I think that's the first role I've seen John de Lancie in where he's neither the villain nor the ambiguous smartass, and his performance as Jane's first supportive-yet-firm and then grieving father was amazing. In ties in with one of the show's virtues; despite the fact we're firmly focused on Walter and Jesse as the protagonists, it never loses sight of keeping the victims of the drug trade real by individualizing them - and their families. When Jesse sees the child of the two heroin/meth-addictions in the squalor of their flat, he's horrified (and sorry for the kid), but doesn't yet make the emotional connection between his income and the consequences this has for other people; when Jane dies, he makes that connection immediately. It's a fascinating contrast to Walter who despite having come to care for Jesse as a person (which brings with it heigtened concern about Jesse's own addiction) seems to have a complete emotional disconnect to/disinterest in what his pure meth production results in, other than money (and the consequences for his own family); when he steps through the zombie-like addicts in search of Jesse in the season finale there is no sense of him feeling any kind of connection between what he did, and the state these people are in.
And yet the show is careful not to make Walter completely lacking in empathy. He's at his best when trying to help his brother-in-law deal with the consequences of the DEA massacre, despite his resentment of Hank's relationship with his son; and both at his worst and best with Jesse, whom as Gus points out he doesn't need anymore from a pragmatic point of view, but by now needs emotionally, and worries for as much as he's irritated by him. The lovely irony of him sharing his worries with Jane's father is painfully sharp.
It continues to be an amazing performance by Bryan Cranston. You can see the dark side and edges brought out ever sharper and yet it never feels like something that was never there in Walter to begin with, more like something that used to be buried and is now emerging. With his intelligence and ability to improvise with his back on the wall as the ongoing traits from Walter the chemistry teacher to Walter the drug producer. I love that the show makes the teacher thing so engrained (as for example even dehydrated Walter automatically getting into lecturing mode with Jesse when he creates an emergency battery to jump start their car in the desert), just as Jesse's default mode towards Walter, unless he's angry, remains that of student (complete with still calling him "Mr. White", again except when angry). It's illuminating to compare their scenes with Walter's attempts at interaction with his son, whom he loves but can't really communicate with (not least because he's lying to him as well as to his wife).
Another thing: giving the protagonist a double life and making the people from his/her normal life try to reach him/her via phone in the middle of suspensful situations she/he can't tell them the truth about is a tried and true device from various shows. Alias in its first season comes to mind, when Sydney was inevitably called by Francie or Will in the middle of a dangerous mission, or Dexter in its first four seasons when it mostly was Rita on the phone in the middle of a serial killing expedition, or, more rarely, Deb. It's mostly used as a black humour effect. Breaking Bad does the black humour thing sometimes, too, but the phone device also is employed to make some deadly serious dramatic points: as one of the key clues for Skyler to discover the extent of Walter's lies to her, and as a turning point when Walter, caught between closing a drug deal with millions on one side and the birth of his daughter on the other, goes for the drug deal. Not that Walter's "I'm doing this all for my family" rationale isn't falling apart the further the show progresses anyway, but here it's brought into sharp focus.
Lastly: before watching season 1, I read somewhere in an article praising the show that they have the support of the Alburque police, and given what I knew of the premise, this surprised me somewhat. Not any longer, because in addition to never glamourizing the drug trade, the D.E.A. by and large are shown as a dedicated bunch (despite having their biases), not stupid, and given a show regular as a representative who is a very sympathetic character. I like, too, that we get to see the effects shooting people has on Hank just as we see how killing affects (or not) Walter and Jesse. Now I have no idea whether cancer will kill Walter at the end of the show or whether he'll be caught by Hank & Co., but in their scenes together, both the tense, hostile ones as when Walter has that contest over Walter Jr. involving martini with Hank and the friendly ones as when Walter gave the circumvential version of a pep talk to Hank in which he can't reveal just why he knows how Hank feels but does a good job of helping anyway it occured to me that they are the closest the show has to traditional protagonist and arch nemesis, only with the protagonist simultanously fulfilling the villain function while the nemesis does the traditional hero thing.
