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"Breaking Bad" - Season 2 - Sundays on AMC

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M

Mindlog

Member
Cornballer said:
True. I'm very happy that people are deciding to tune in.
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Very very happy.

I hope it lends some more credibility to whoever is in charge of programming at AMC. Mad Men and Breaking Bad in quick succession is the greatest coup I've ever seen on television. It turned AMC from cable 'flyover country' into one of my favorite stations.
 
C

Cornballer

Member
New episode tonight.
TV.com said:
Season 2, Episode 5 – Aired: 4/5/2009

Breakage
Hank suffers from the aftermath of his encounter with Tuco. Meanwhile, Jesse hires a crew to get their product out on the streets.
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F

Fatalah

Member
I had an argument with my friend over last week's episode. He said it was weak, and the way Skylar acted toward Hal was absurd, immature, and not realistic.

I don't agree with my friend at all-- Last week was damn good. The episode showed us that Walt is as vulnerable as Jesse to having his life go sour. The actress playing Skylar is fantastic, and if her reaction to Hal's "distance" isn't real, I don't know what is.

Her smoking while pregant is pretty insane though. I thought her sister was the crazy one. The sister should pop back into the show this week, she's been kinda removed since the tiara incident.
 
T

Tyrone Slothrop

Banned
i don't know about the last episode in particular but the show can get a little hokey sometimes.

that said, this show makes me want to live. watching it is literally my favorite part of the week
 
F

FrenchMovieTheme

Member
i dont know about skylar being unrealistic since i have had girlfriends that do the same type of shit she does "oh fine if thats how you're going to be then thats how im going to be"

anyhow, as stated before the showing can get a little unrealistic or have plot holes (why was tucos house not dusted for princes or the surrounding area searched? they would have found something linking walt) but it's still the best show on television!
 
V

Vlad

Member
Fatalah said:
I had an argument with my friend over last week's episode. He said it was weak, and the way Skylar acted toward Hal was absurd, immature, and not realistic.

I don't agree with my friend at all-- Last week was damn good. The episode showed us that Walt is as vulnerable as Jesse to having his life go sour. The actress playing Skylar is fantastic, and if her reaction to Hal's "distance" isn't real, I don't know what is.

Her smoking while pregant is pretty insane though. I thought her sister was the crazy one. The sister should pop back into the show this week, she's been kinda removed since the tiara incident.
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I completely agree with you on this one. If someone watched last week's episode as their first, then I could see how it could be considered a little bit slow, but for the people who've watched all the episodes so far (and boy, does it feel like it's been on for more than eleven episodes), it was not only a nice quiet episode compared to the insanity of the last few, but it's really showing the consequences of everybody's actions. Hal's family isn't buying his lies at all (except for Hank), and Jesse's far worse off than he was when we first saw him. Way back in the pilot, Jesse made a point about how he won't cook at his own house, and doing just that cost him his home.

And whether or not you agree with Skyler's actions, they're perfectly understandable for someone in the situation she's in.
 
S

Spectral Glider

Member
Fatalah said:
I had an argument with my friend over last week's episode. He said it was weak, and the way Skylar acted toward Hal was absurd, immature, and not realistic.

I don't agree with my friend at all-- Last week was damn good. The episode showed us that Walt is as vulnerable as Jesse to having his life go sour. The actress playing Skylar is fantastic, and if her reaction to Hal's "distance" isn't real, I don't know what is.

Her smoking while pregant is pretty insane though. I thought her sister was the crazy one. The sister should pop back into the show this week, she's been kinda removed since the tiara incident.
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My brother had similar complaints about the last two episodes. But he's cut from the mold that if the episode doesn't have somebody getting blown up, shot, arrested, or some kind of "action" then the episode wasn't that good. I don't have that problem. I just enjoy getting sucked into the show's world every week. I also don't think Skylar's reaction was absurd. Honestly, what woman wouldn't call out bullshit there?

There was that one review last week that compared the show to the Soprano's. I really liked the Soprano's but freely admit that there were several episodes of that show were nothing important or relevant really happened. On the other end of the spectrum was my other favorite show, The Shield, where things came at you 100mph all the time. I think Breaking Bad is a nice blend of the two with very little wasted screen time.
 
F

Fatalah

Member
Oh crap, I just noticed that I referred to Walt as Hal! I've been watching MiTM far too much lately...

Spectral Glider said:
I think Breaking Bad is a nice blend of the two with very little wasted screen time.
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I feel the same way, I love being sucked into the show. I haven't been wrapped into a show this much since Six Feet Under. Oh yeah-- and In Treatment too, who's season 2 started tonight.
 
F

Fatalah

Member
Bggns said:
Damn.. i looked away for a second.
What did Hank throw in the water?
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The award given to him by his department that encased Tuco's diamond dental "grill".
Looks like he's regretting getting that job done. This week we saw a new element in Hank's life-- his wife is pushing her pursuit of an upper class lifestyle onto him.
 
S

seat

Member
Karma Kramer said:
Biggest episode of the season
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Seriously? Watching it I thought it was a set-up episode for bigger things to come later in the season. Nothing significant really happened in this episode.
 
F

FrenchMovieTheme

Member
i was watching an episode of Cops the other day and they pulled this dude over who had a bunch of stuff to cook meth in his truck. i couldn't help but think of breaking bad!
 
M

MightyHealthy

Banned
I have just finally watched the first episode of the second season...but I have a prediction, and I hope I'm wrong...

Someone may have to kill Hank in the future. He's moving from a 2.5D character to Walt's foil, damn near.
 
V

Ventrue

Member
The sound in this show continues to amaze. Everything seems so real and so weighty. I just get so completely immersed in this show unlike any other.

It's nice to see Jesse finally get a break. The depressing stuff became almost too much early in this episode with the medical bills. It's also interesting to see how Jesse is actually becoming much more 'professional' and Walt is becoming much more bloodthirsty.

Oh, and they really did some nice expansion of Hank.
 
M

Meliorism

Member
Was the very first scene of the episode a flashforward of people finding
Tuco's grill
that Hank threw in the water or was it something else?
 
V

Vlad

Member
Ventrue said:
The sound in this show continues to amaze. Everything seems so real and so weighty. I just get so completely immersed in this show unlike any other.

It's nice to see Jesse finally get a break. The depressing stuff became almost too much early in this episode with the medical bills. It's also interesting to see how Jesse is actually becoming much more 'professional' and Walt is becoming much more bloodthirsty.

Oh, and they really did some nice expansion of Hank.
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Indeed. I think tonight was the first time Jesse called Walt by his first name instead of "Mr. White".

Walt's behavior is becoming a vicious cycle. His dissatisfaction with his life (his desire to "break bad") caused him to to turn to cooking meth, which caused his rift with his family. Now the frustration with his family situation is causing him to act even more irrationally when it comes to his life of crime.
 
D

dave is ok

aztek is ok
Spectral Glider said:
What was with Hank in the elevator though, just a panic attack or a possible serious health issue?
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Panic attack. Killing someone for the first time really fucked him up - and the promotion based on the fact that he's something he's not. He found Tuco by accident, and killing him caused him great anxiety. Walt is more of a "killer" than Hank, though no one would ever guess it.
 
K

KingGondo

Banned
Man this show is depressing as fuck. Walt's home situation is spiraling further out of control--the scene where he finds the
flushed cigs
was a big "oh shit" moment, and whoever they got to play the
stick-up junkies
were perfect. That cackle will haunt my dreams :lol

And Jesse is becoming much more likable by the episode--hope he gets with that hot landlord chick, he deserves some good luck for once! :)
 
C

Cornballer

Member
Great episode. The acting is always good, and I liked the direction/camerawork this week. Not sure if it was somebody new or if they just wanted to try out a few different things.

Episode reviews/analysis:
James Poniewozik @ Time.com said:
Mini Breaking Bad Watch

Quick thoughts on last night's installment of Breaking Bad (mild spoilers below):

* "I'll admit to a certain learning curve." I'm enjoying the role reversal between Jesse and Walt here, with Walter admitting that he's responsible for the fact that his nest-egg scheme has gone nowhere, and Jesse reasserting himself as manager of their crystal-meth operation. It's not that Jesse has suddenly become smarter. In a way, it's the opposite; Jesse is dumb, but knows his limitations, and thus--as he points out--knew well enough not to overreach before Walter came along. He may just be dumb enough to succeed, as we see when he scams himself into an apartment, giving the fake name "Jesse Jackson," and yet suggesting that he may not actually know who Jesse Jackson is.

* Conversely, Walter's brother-in-law works much better as an overstressed, conflicted human being than the macho jerk he started out as, and I'm glad the series has fleshed out his character this season.

* We tend to look a lot at Walter's choices and deceptions as being the result of his illness and his financial circumstances. But are they really? The more I see how he relates to other people, the more it seems that his decisions are an outgrowth f the character he already had. Walter is a very decent guy in many ways, but he's also bitter, and seems to have contempt for much of the world outside his immediate family—the way he speaks to Jesse being just one example of that. If that's how he sees much of the rest of the world, is it surprising that he would decide to take care of his own and not care about the larger effects of his drug dealing?

* Not that the irony was lost on anyone, but seeing Walt get righteously angry at Skyler's tiny lapse—three and a half cigarettes—was perfect. If only she knew.
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Ken Tucker @ EW.com said:
'Breaking Bad' was so good

There are times when I watch Breaking Bad that I hold my breath because I don't want to miss an instant of this series' utterly original mixture of humor, danger, despair, and thrilling freedom. It seems an odd thing to say about a show chronicling the inevitable death of an ordinary guy, doesn't it? But that's what it was like last night, as Bryan Cranston's Walt completed his first round of chemotherapy and received a fresh round of medical bills that pretty much depleted his meth-stash cash profits. Cranston does desperation as well as any actor alive, and now that his head is shaved, you can almost see Walt's brain working furiously, trying to figure out his impossibly complicated existence.

Last night it was bad enough (for Walt -- great for us as viewers) that Jesse decided to take charge of his and Walt's drug-making and -dealing. "You need me more than I need you, Walt," he said, and unfortunately, he was correct.

But even more agonizing for Walt is the continuing alienation felt by his wife. (I swear, if Anna Gunn doesn't get an Emmy nomination this year, I'm gonna petition big Bad fan Stephen King to put a curse on the nominating committee.) This portrait of a marriage crumbling under the weight of distrust is as good as anything in modern print fiction.

The overarching thrill and tragedy of Breaking Bad is, of course, that Walt is expending what strength he has to help his family after he dies. Last night, once again, we saw some of the consequences of trying to break free from a hopeless life.
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Alan Sepinwall said:
Breaking Bad, "Breakage": Bottled up tight

Spoilers for tonight's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I print the labels for my Sepin-brau microbrew line...

"We do things my way this time. Or I walk. You need me more than I need you... Walt." -Jesse

First thing's first: in case you missed the news earlier in the week, AMC has ordered a third season of "Breaking Bad," to premiere sometime in 2010. Between Bryan Cranston's Emmy win, the recent Peabody Award and the increased ratings this season, I think most of us assumed renewal was a foregone conclusion, but it's still nice to have one less worry hanging over my head...

...which is more than can be said for most of the characters in "Breakage." Walt has mounting medical bills and still can't get through to Skyler -- even after he thinks the cigarette pack gives hm leverage for a game of Moral Superiority -- and now he has to deal with Jesse astutely changing the dynamics of their partnership. Jesse seems to be doing well for himself, but now he has responsibilities: rent for the apartment, (and a landlady he wants to impress enough to have sex with, it seems), rent for the RV (and how many episodes before Clovis tries to sell the meth lab out from under him?), employees and, as Walt points out, a street rep to maintain. Skyler's miserable and alone and has to bully Marie into apologizing for the tiara incident. And Hank is having panic attacks about his killing of Tuco, and he can't tell anyone about it because of the macho culture of the DEA field office. Instead, he bottles up his feelings as tight as the caps on his DIY microbrews.

So the question is, which character will be the first to let their emotions burst out in dangerous fashion like the exploding bottles in Hank's garage?

Episodes like "Breakage" are important from a story standpoint -- the bigger Jesse's street operation gets, the closer the DEA's going to come to finding it, and/or to us finding out about the burnt teddy bear in Walt's pool -- but also for helping to deepen the supporting cast and make it clear just how many people Walt is hurting in his idiotic quest to die on his own terms. Jesse's been plunged deeper into the drug world than he was ever expecting to go, which will make it that much harder if he ever really tries to get out. Skyler's smoking -- and I loved that she had kept count of the "three and a half cigarettes" she had consumed -- while pregnant because Walt has her so stressed and isolated. And Hank only wound up in a position where he had to kill Tuco because Walt was missing, and involved with that psychopath to begin with.

This was another terrific episode, showcasing not only the supporting actors (Dean Norris in particular), but also the directing, production design, sound editing, etc. I loved the sequence of Walt sitting still in his chemo chair, his world all slowed down and tedious while everyone else moved at double speed (an effect echoed later on when we saw Jesse out collecting money from his guys), and all of the sound design involving liquids, whether the spot in the Rio Grande where the two Mexican illegals crossed and found Tuco's grill, or the chemo entering Walt's IV, or Hank bottling his beers. You don't usually think of fancy sound work on television, but for a show about chemistry, and the transformation of solids into liquids, inert liquids into volatile ones, etc., it's fitting, and pretty cool.
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J

joshcryer

it's ok, you're all right now
Unbelievavly brilliant episode as usual.

However, the tack they seem to be taking is worrysome. I don't want Walt to wind up being a psychopathic murderer / dictator / drug lord. I like his rationality, and I hope he is in fact testing Jesse, especially given the basement scenes in the first season about killing people.
 
V

Ventrue

Member
joshcryer said:
Unbelievavly brilliant episode as usual.

However, the tack they seem to be taking is worrysome. I don't want Walt to wind up being a psychopathic murderer / dictator / drug lord. I like his rationality, and I hope he is in fact testing Jesse, especially given the basement scenes in the first season about killing people.
Click to expand...

He's still rational though. He made it extremely clear he didn't want to go down this path, but he also realised that Jesse's threat is a very real one. But now that he's in it, he's going to do it in the best way; he doesn't want a 'non-sustainable business model,' he doesn't want more thugs taking away his cash. It's just like when they were planning to kill Tuco; he didn't want to do it, but once they were planning it he was very calculating with the number of bullets and the timing etc and eventually arrived at a much more calculated means of murder.

Or, for that matter, the situation in S1 with disposing of the body. The way he matter of factly informs Jesse that their best approach would be 'chemical disincorporation.' Walt can be extremely clinical and calculating.

Also, I'm not sure he wants Jesse to kill the junkies, I took from it that he wanted Jesse to get the money/meth back, not necessarily actually killing anyone.

I like that they are making Walt less sympathetic while making Jesse more so. It changes things around a bit.

Great news that there is a S3 coming.
 
B

big_z

Member
joshcryer said:
Unbelievavly brilliant episode as usual.

However, the tack they seem to be taking is worrysome. I don't want Walt to wind up being a psychopathic murderer / dictator / drug lord. I like his rationality, and I hope he is in fact testing Jesse, especially given the basement scenes in the first season about killing people.
Click to expand...

my theory is that walt is going to become so crazed his wife will pack up with the son and leave him until he gets his shit together. then with the family gone jesse and him will cook in his house which leads to an explosion explaining the guy in the hazmat suit picking up burnt shit at the beginning of a few episodes.
 
J

joshcryer

it's ok, you're all right now
Ventrue said:
He's still rational though. He made it extremely clear he didn't want to go down this path, but he also realised that Jesse's threat is a very real one. But now that he's in it, he's going to do it in the best way; he doesn't want a 'non-sustainable business model,' he doesn't want more thugs taking away his cash. It's just like when they were planning to kill Tuco; he didn't want to do it, but once they were planning it he was very calculating with the number of bullets and the timing etc and eventually arrived at a much more calculated means of murder.

Or, for that matter, the situation in S1 with disposing of the body. The way he matter of factly informs Jesse that their best approach would be 'chemical disincorporation.' Walt can be extremely clinical and calculating.

Also, I'm not sure he wants Jesse to kill the junkies, I took from it that he wanted Jesse to get the money/meth back, not necessarily actually killing anyone.

I like that they are making Walt less sympathetic while making Jesse more so. It changes things around a bit.

Great news that there is a S3 coming.
Click to expand...

After having watched it again I think I see what you're saying. His rationality is basically saying you *have* to be like Tuco to be a big bad ass drug lord, which is why he warned Jesse from going down that path to begin with. I think yes on one hand he is definitely testing him but on the other he is making sure things are working the way he percieves reality. "All drug lords must be badasses, therefore Jesse must be a badass."

I just don't want too much moral ambiguity. There were lines that were drawn in the first season and they never crossed them. That's what I like so much about the show, its internal self-consistancy. Walt wouldn't just kill some guy for no good reason. When he attacked Tuco with the mercury fulimate in the first season it was out of anger for 1) Jesse getting his ass beat and 2) the need to succeed.

I am enjoying very much the Walt/Jesse relationship and I hope that it grows a lot more.

And yeah, :lol at the LCD vs Plasma debate, I noticed it the first time I watched but it was funnier the second time (I was more tense the first time because I thought Jesse would be going down over BS stuff).
 
A

AlternativeUlster

Absolutely pathetic part deux
New episode tonight, right? I am doing a medical study with cable so I can actually watch it tonight instead of having to torrent it. Fuck yeah!
 
K

KdoubleA

Member
Man...This show is so good; the episode is great so far. The restaurant scene was just fantastic acting (oh and the F bomb caught me by surprise...not even the Shield tried that during its run).
 
N

neight

Banned
thetechkid said:
AM I the only one who lost interest in this show after the whole tuco thing?
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Most absolutely.

btw never admit stuff like that in the future. You just make yourself look bad... really. That's like admitting you don't like Stanley Kubrick movies. I mean I don't like them but you'll never catch me admitting it out in the open.
 
A

AlternativeUlster

Absolutely pathetic part deux
duderon said:
Walt's becoming a huge deluded asshole.
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Yeah, it seems like he is actually turning into how drug dealers act. Another great episode. I think this episode shows how this can corrupt some people (Walt) and how some people are still good in their core (Jesse).
 
K

KdoubleA

Member
AlternativeUlster said:
I think this episode shows how this can corrupt some people (Walt) and how some people are still good in their core (Jesse).
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I agree. While I don't wish to see a bad ending for Walt (oh wait...what am I talking about; he has cancer...but you know what i mean :p), things can only go downhill from here for him. I like the contrast between Jesse and Walt tonight.
 
A

AlternativeUlster

Absolutely pathetic part deux
KdoubleA said:
I agree. While I don't wish to see a bad ending for Walt (oh wait...what am I talking about; he has cancer...but you know what i mean :p), things can only go downhill from here for him. I like the contrast between Jesse and Walt tonight.
Click to expand...

I think if anything the series is going to end bad for Walt and good for Jesse where he might find some sort of redemption or both completely ends completely awful like Jesse dying and Walt seeing Jesse as more of a son figure than his own since Jesse already looks at him as a father figure.
 
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