Breaking Bad Review: Hazard Pay

Our favorite show, Breaking Bad, had it’s first “set-up” episode this season. There was not a ton of action, but a lot of plot setup. Here’s a few things I found interesting:

• It’s great to see how many people are truly terrified of Mike. When Dennis walked into the interrogation room, based on the look on his face when he saw Mike, I’m pretty sure he instantly pooped his pants. On the other hand, we were able to see for the first time that his power has limits. Although everyone is scared of him, I guess they’re not scared enough to keep quiet without hazard pay. And how is Mike posing as a paralegal at different prisons? Isn’t Hank keeping an eye on him?

• Poor, poor Skyler! Walt is doing whatever he wants and he knows you’re deathly afraid of him and he’s using it. Oh, you didn’t want him to move back in? Well that sucks for you. She wouldn’t dare stand up against him. Or will she?

• Second best line of the episode: “He handles the business, I handle him.” There are dark times ahead between Walt and Mike. That’s for damn sure.

• I’m glad they didn’t do another 80′s movie style montage for touring all the cook sites like they did last week cleaning Jesse’s house.

• I’m not sure how I feel about the tented house idea for cooking yet. It’s sort of genius and I never would have thought of that, but it sounds like it’s going be a lot of work every time they cook. Also, I’m not sure we can trust the extermination crew – they seem like a shady group. I was surprised Mike signed off on that, but I loved when he told them, “You need a name for them, you call them yes sir and no sir.” I have a feeling some sort of law enforcement is going to see Walt or Jesse walk in or out of these houses and it’s not going to be good.

• “Can we take a vote?….Why?” Great line. Walt is really starting to love flexing his power muscles with the group.

• Who knew Skinny Pete was such a good piano player? Badger….not so much.

• It was chilling when Walt met Brock. He tried to kill him and he has no remorse. Well, I cant really tell, he’s kind of like, good thing you didn’t die.

• I loved the music when they came in the house for the first cook.  They strolled in like rock stars taking the stage at an arena.  They saw their yellow cooking suits and they thought, “Lets do what we do best, make super powerful blue crystal meth!”

• I love the animation/cgi they did with the chemicals when they were cooking. I have never seen anything like that on the show before and it reminded me of Spiderman when Peter Parker gets bit and they show the DNA changing.

• At first I wasn’t sure what was going on with Walt and Jesse’s conversation about Andrea.  It seemed like Walt was actually trying to give Jesse some good advice for once instead of plotting and scheming, but then after I finished the episode and thought about it, I realized I was completely wrong. Walt sees Andrea and Brock as a potential risk in the business him and Jesse have so Walt planted a seed of doubt in Jesse’s head about where the future of the relationship with Andrea is going and he knows that Jesse will do whatever he can to not endanger or complicate Andrea’s life anymore than he already has. Also, Jesse, the most caring, kind-hearted meth cooker of all time, walked right into Walt’s trap. So rough.

• And now, for the best line in the entire episode:

• Ugggggh, I really could write volumes about how much I hate Marie, so I’m just going to get some of it out of my system. I hope she gets badly burned in a fire and when she walks out of the hospital I hope she  is hit by a car driven by a grizzly bear. Then that grizzly bear gets out of the car and mauls her.  She’s such an annoying character, the only thing she’s ever done of any worth in the show was steal from open houses.  When Skyler started screaming “SHUUT UUUPPP” at her I really just wanted to get in that room and tell Skyler, “Listen, I’m so glad you’ve finally come around and given this woman what she deserves, but I really think you need to drive the point home a little more.” Then I would explain the whole fire/car/grizzly bear scenario I described earlier.

• I know there’s a ton of imagery/hidden meanings/symbolism in this show and I don’t know if this is one of them, but it’s a theory. When Marie leaves, instead of going to help Skyler, he eats an apple.  Maybe this is an analogy of Eve eating the poisoned apple in the bible. By not stopping Walt when she could have, she has released an evil onto the world that is now out of her control. Or maybe it’s just Walt being a cold-hearted bastard.

• Having Scarface on is definitely foreshadowing of what’s to come. Maybe that will tie in with the intro to the first episode when Walt buys that massive machine gun. When Walt said, “Everybody dies in this movie,” I thought maybe everybody will die in this show too?

• The fireworks between Mike and Walt begin. I thought it would take a little more time than this, but with Walt’s thirst for hunger getting bigger everyday I should have known.  So here is my updated theory on the direction the show will take: Walt will try to kill Mike without Jesse’s help. Mike will not die though and both Walt and Mike will have a full out war with Jesse torn in the middle about what side to be on. In the midst of this war, they will get sloppy and Hank will find  something out and realize who Walt is. What happens after that I have no idea.