Breaking Bad 2.05 - Breakage

Pre-credits sequence: Here we get the introduction to the plot the whole episode is going to revolve around - how did Tuco's grills get into the nearby swamp? I know you are all on the edge of your seat.

Review: That may have been a little bit sarcastic, because Hank throwing his grills away because of PTSD over the shooting of Tuco is one of the least interesting and forgettable episode dominating plot points Breaking Bad ever did. There's really no depth to the story. Hank has a bit of a panic attack in the elevator, he breaks a bottle of Schraederbrau, and he throws Tuco's grills into the river. This is revealing to us that he hasn't gotten over the implications of the attack. And while it's nice that the show is willing to not back down from the consequences of the events that happen in it, and while this is the first episode that gives us a hint that "consequences" are going to be the main theme of this season, Hank's troubles just aren't very interesting. There's a nice scene with Walt Jr at the barbecue where Hank tries to answer the questions about the shooting while still trying to shut down the conversation. It's a nice bit of subtlety from Hank, who normally doesn't have much of a subtle side to him. Still, this isn't enough of a story to build the backbone of an episode around.

So, I'm going to go pretty much completely off script for this review, and not really talk about this episode at all. I'll cover a few things in the "other notes" section, but in reality there's not that much to this episode that we don't see in other places, and done better.

Instead I want to talk about the entire structure of Breaking Bad, and how Season 2 ties into the overall story it is telling. Hopefully that sounds way more interesting than a review of one of the most pointless episodes in the entire show.

Breaking Bad is ultimately a morality tale. In its simplest and most base essence, it is telling you the story of how someone can go bad, and then have to pay the consequences for it. And every character kind of fits into a neatly defined role in the story. Walt is our hero, our Macbeth, the man who gets corrupted and then has to pay the ultimate price for it. Skylar is the wife, and she exists to show how one man's corruption can forcibly drag the upright into the muck with them. This is kind of the reason that the writers don't know what to do with Skylar the first two seasons, because until she finds out what Walt is about she can't fulfill that role, and is kind of floating in space. Jesse is the one who had a chance to be on the path to good but is instead corrupted and used for the betterment of our hero's ego. Hank is the primary antagonist of the story, but also needs to function as the heart of the story and the ultimate consequence for our hero's decisions as we move towards the end game. Marie is mostly there so we have a reason to mourn that ultimate consequence at the end, which is why she seems so superfluous to the story until somewhere in the back half of Season 5. Walter Jr. and Holly are the excuses, the reason our hero gives himself to reach into such morally dark depths. And fittingly, Walter Jr ends up rejecting Walt at the end of "Granite State" (5.15). There's a lot of other characters introduced along the way, but they mostly serve as obstacles that force our hero to go darker and darker to escape his situation. Gus and Mike mostly serve this role.

The reason I'm bringing this up this episode is we have our introduction to Jane, who has possibly one of the most thankless roles in the entire series. Jane's role is "collateral damage." And not even the ultimate collateral damage, that would be Hank. No, Jane is just the appetizer collateral damage, the collateral damage used to ultimately show us what type of TV show this is. Because the purpose of Season 2 is to introduce to us the idea that this is going to be a morality tale. As soon as we see Season 2, we have a good idea of where the show is going to end up. Walt is going to get his comeuppance. Season 2 is the miniature version of the show as a whole. Walt does bad things and gets punished. Season 2 is ultimately about consequences, and the first 4 episodes of Season 3 are how Walt doesn't heed the warning of those consequences.

But we'll talk more about that during "ABQ" and the beginning of Season 3. I want to get back to the characters, and how a show with a pretty simplistic concept was able to introduce itself into the discussion of the best shows of all time.

The reason the show succeeds despite having a fairly shallow overall arc is the amount of humanity that is put into each and every character (though well executed tension certainly doesn't hurt it). Bryan Cranston absolutely deserves every piece of credit he gets for the acting job he does in the series. He is possibly the main reason for the success it has had. Walt could have easily been this unrelatable and unrecognizable monster, but he never becomes that. Walt is always a real person, he always keeps those empathetic characteristics that continue to distract viewers from the person he really is. He gives these (ultimately delusional) speeches about the importance of what he is doing and how everything he's doing he's doing for his family. And that underlying sense of sadness underneath him never goes away. Either there's the sense of despair because he's dying from cancer, or there's the sense of despair about the type of person he's made himself into. We'll get to "Fly" eventually, but the real reason that episode works so well is how regretful Walt is about everything, how much he's hurt by the things he's done. He almost never lets that regret or hurtfulness dissuade him from being a monster, but the fact that it exists makes him a real and relatable person, far more than he should be.

You can say this sort of thing for every character on the show. They have a strictly defined role in the tale, but inside that role they are so much more. Skylar doesn't just do immoral things because of the hole Walt puts her in, she also gets to be deeply bitter towards him about it. Jesse doesn't just dive head first into the swamp of evil, we get to see where he could have succeeded and how much he does not have the emotional ruthlessness to serve the role Walt is making him play. The simplest stories can have real impact if it involves real people.

I want to get back to Jane, just so I can have some excuse for writing this particular review in this particular episode. I think Krysten Ritter does an amazing job with Jane. Basically, Jane becomes Jesse's girlfriend who uses him as an excuse to relapse and ultimately dies because of it, with some help from our hero. But never once did I see Jane as anything but a real human being. Her exchanges with Jesse have real chemistry. In this very episode she has some real personality and smarts as she realizes exactly what Jesse is, but can't ultimately fight her attraction to him, as much as she puts on a face otherwise. There's depths to this performance, that ultimately don't need to be there. Jane exists to die and to further the plot of the real characters in the story. But there's such care taking in her character and her performance that she feels such a part of the world, and like a real human being. That, in a nutshell, is how Breaking Bad succeeds. "Breakage" is not a good episode, but the introduction of Jane and the way she plays her scene is a glimpse into the reason that Breaking Bad is the show it is.

Other Notes:
- I really like the camera work for Walt's chemotherapy session. Seeing the tube fill up with blood is foreshadowing how the blood is going to start to flow from the direct and indirect victims of Walt's actions

- Skylar is pulling off some excellent silent treatment this episode. There's some more nice foreshadowing where Skylar is doing some family money balancing rather being at Walt's doctor appointment for support

- So Jesse goes back to the guy who he just drove the RV away from, breaking his fence, to try to cut a deal? And the guy agrees? How?

- The best parts of this episode are setups for "Peekaboo." Such as the discussion between Walt and Jesse about "acceptable loss" vs. "unsustainable business mode." More evidence Jesse's not cut out for this business

- Evidence Jesse is already smitten with Jane? Uses her "DBAA" term first chance he gets

Breaking Bad 2.04 - Down

Pre-credits: This is where the season starts to get ominous. We already suspected the burnt teddy bear indicated something bad was going to happen. Now we have evidence being collected for a major police investigation. Nothing good ever brings about a massive police investigation. The foreboding nature of the pre-credits leads nicely into what is a miserable episode for all characters involved.

Review: Somewhere around Seasons 3  and 4 of Breaking Bad, the story becomes less Walt's story and more about Jesse. There's a bit of a necessity to this, because as Walt starts to lose those qualities of empathy and basic human decency, the sympathies of the audience are redirected to his unfortunate partner. Walt threw everything he had away on his own, through his pride and jealousy. Jesse had everything thrown away for him by parents who just weren't prepared to deal with him, simply because he could not grow up fast enough for them. The true tragedy of Breaking Bad is that with a proper replacement parental figure, Jesse could have been led back on the right track and into a respectable life. Walt is not that proper replacement parental figure.

We saw a little bit into the relationship between Jesse and his parents in "Cancer Man." They practically had given up on him at that point. They were no longer willing to work with him, to listen to his efforts to get his life straight. They claimed they had been burned too many times and were done. That there is some Grade F parenting. Because as old as Jesse may have been at the time, he clearly hadn't matured yet and still needed some adult guidance to get him back on track. And the incident in the first few episodes where Krazy 8 and co. nearly murdered him was enough to wake him up, and suddenly, his parents aren't going to be there to help him.

And this episode, they are there to take the rug out from under him because he's been inconveniencing them. I'm not usually one to stand up on my pulpit and start lecturing the characters, but everything about this scene where they call the lawyer in to take the house from Jesse is despicable. The parents pretend this is about Jesse, and about trying to get him to get his life back together. It's not about the fact he's lowering the value of his aunt's house with his cooking and taking money away from them at all, in their mind. Nope, the best way to get Jesse's life back together is to leave him with nowhere to live, no money, no stuff to sell to give him some time to get his feet under him. They basically try to relegate him to being a homeless person. That's not tough love. That's not caring anymore and giving up on your child. Giving up on him because he didn't grow up and mature fast enough and they could not deal with him. This is the root of all Jesse's problems. The problem isn't Jesse connecting with adults, either. He connected with his Aunt Ginny, who decided that he should have the house, and he connects to some extent with Walt, even though Walt is an awful person. The blame fully lies with Jesse's parents in being unable to put in the effort to understand their son, and give him the support he needs.

So the parents leave Jesse with an awful episode for him. This episode kind of suffers from not having a lot of lead up or carry through from the events of it. In terms of the overall second season arc, this episode doesn't really contribute anything, other than Jesse to get him out of his aunt's house so he could move in beside Jane. If you told me that the writers just came up with the plot just to justify using the title "Down" for the title endgame, I wouldn't be shocked. But there's a lot of Walt and Jesse depth for this episode with a special parenting theme throughout.

This episode is all about "explaining" Walt and Jesse. Why do they continue in a relationship that is so toxic? Why doesn't Jesse go back to trying to start a career and get back on a legitimate path? Why doesn't Walt find a partner who is less incompetent? The answer is because they need each other, because they act as replacements for things they are losing or lost. Jesse has matured, mostly as forced by the near death experience he had in the first few episodes of the series, and wants to get a real life started and he needs guidance for how to do that. Typically, that role falls to the parents, to impart their life experience and be there when the young person has questions or feels a little lost. Jesse's parents have completely burned that bridge with him, so it's not going to be them. So it falls on Walt, who acts as a father figure. He provides guidance, he's willing to get in Jesse's face and let him know when he's acting like an idiot. There are times when Jesse needs help and Walt is sitting there willing to give it to him.

But there's times where Walt is not there, and that is what makes the relationship so toxic. Because Walt is not a good father either. Walt doesn't have the patience, or the ability to forgive when Jesse screws up. He instead beats down on Jesse for mistakes when Jesse is already beating on himself. And then, at the times when Jesse needs him the most, Walt can shut Jesse straight down. There's a scene in this episode where Jesse drives to Walt's house in the RV because he has nowhere else to go, and Walt starts berating him for his stupidity until Jesse starts a physical altercation. This is not the person Jesse needs in his transition to adulthood and responsibility. Unfortunately, it's the person he's stuck with.

The one thing Walt has on Jesse's parents is that he never fully gives up on Jesse. He never fully ostracizes him and just stops caring about them. However, this is not because Walt is a better parent or a better person, but because Jesse fills some need Walt has. Walt has a strong need to be in control, he needs to be the one calling the shots and making the decisions. He needs people around him that make him feel smart, that will listen when he bosses them around. Jesse makes Walt feel superior, like Walt is a mastermind with pawns to order around.

Note that the Walt/Jesse relationship takes off right as Walter Jr. stops taking crap from his dad. He picks a new name, so that he no longer has to be solely identified as being the Walt's son. While Walt is trying to teach him driving, Walter Jr. comes back with retorts that indicates that he knows better than his father. Walt can't be in control with his son any more, as his son doesn't see him as the genius he needs to be seen as. His son makes him feel out of touch and powerless.

His wife doesn't improve matters for him either. This is an excellent episode for Skylar and Anna Gunn, who gets to be the sympathetic one for once. She knows Walt is lying to her about the second cellphone. The audience knows Walt is lying to her about the second cellphone. But instead of further alienating herself and being a screaming, annoying harpy, she takes a step back and instead completely distances herself. It's such a cool reaction (in more ways than one), because she forces Walt to come to her. And when he does try to come to her, but continues his really poor lying skills, she is perfectly able to put him in his place and make him seem every inch of the pathetic, desperate man he is. It's exactly what we needed to see from Skylar at this point. It calls to mind the episode "Fifty-One," the best Skylar episodes and one of the best episodes of the series full stop, where Skylar cooly checks herself out of Walt's life and focuses solely on her children, the people who really matter. If Skylar stops caring about Walt, if she stops reacting to him, then nothing he can do or say can hurt her.

The plotting and thematic connecting in this episode is wonderful. The way that Walt gets humiliated by Skylar and then turns around to his pet dog Jesse and trying to humiliate him to prove his masculinity so perfectly dovetails everyone's story together. We see Walt's need for control; we see Jesse going to the one person who he thinks cares about him and is willing to be his father figure. And we see how imperfect a father figure he really is. The aforementioned Walt-Jesse fight scene is great, it oozes with both the chemistry between the two actors and the way it addresses all the issues between them that had been building to that point.

"Down" is an over-the-top episode. Too much bad stuff happens to Jesse and his no-good-very-bad-day doesn't end up having any lasting relevance to the story being told. But the way the episode subtly lays the entire foundation of the series in front of us makes it one of the more important offerings in the season nonetheless. Everything you need to know about Walt and Jesse is in this episode: Jesse's lack of true authority figures, Walt's need to be in control and be recognized as the man, and his hatred for any form of humiliation. This is what the Walt-Jesse relationship is built on, and that foundation is not strong enough to withstand the storms ahead.

Other Notes:

·         Hank and Marie take the episode off. It works, because it is hard to see how they would be able to fit into this episode thematically

·         The Walt-Jesse convenience store scene leaves so many questions: Why do they think moving down aisles at the same time looks inconspicuous? Why does it matter which one of them leaves first, as long as they don't leave at the same time? Why was the policeman necessary in this scene, he serves no purpose except to add a contrivance?

·         Walter Jr breakfast update: He'll have some grapefruit juice. It's good for you.

·         "That was before my housing situation went entirely testicular on me!"

·         If Jesse smells so bad, why does Badger's friend want him to drive away upwind?

·         Whoa! The Aztec crashes! That never is going to happen ever again.

·         Walt asking Jesse whether he wants some breakfast is the absolute perfect capper for this episode. The best ending of an episode to this point by far.

Breaking Bad 2.03 - Bit By a Dead Bee

Pre-Credit Sequence: This is the first time where a pre-credits scene basically just kicks off the episode, and doesn't do anything special such as the constant in media res of season 1, or show some spectacular scene. That said, the pre-credits is achieving something; it's showing the origin of the plan that would dominate the episode. Jesse and Walt are still in a pickle, as they have to explain their absence as well as the fact Jesse's car is at the crime scene. They had a lot of time to make this plan, and for one of the few times in the series, it works almost without a hitch. I'd also like to note that the opening camera angle, showing the camera being in the hole uncovered by the dirt that Walt and Jesse are digging, is nonsensical and I don't like it.

Review: We are getting into a stretch of episodes I generally consider to be the worst of the show. We are done laying the foundation for Walt, we know what makes him tick and the writers have put us fully on his side. We have finished dealing with his first threat in Tuco, his life is not in immediate danger, and while there's some minor danger about him being found out, we don't really have any reason to believe that is going to happen. We haven't entered the part of the show where Jesse and Walt have really kicked off dealing meth on their own, and don't really enter the issues that come with that until "Peekaboo." And even when the good part of Season 2 kicks off, that's really not driven so much by overarching plot as much as making each episode deal with something special and interesting. There is an overall theme to Season 2, and I'll get to that in one of these next two reviews, (because I'm not sure how much else I'll have to talk about), but it's much more of a conclusion driven theme and not a theme you can clearly see as the season is going on.

This episode for instance, from a plot perspective, is basically only about Jesse and Walt explaining what happened to them while being kidnapped by Tuco. Walt showing up naked in the supermarket is such a memorable image, that I remembered this episode as much better than it actually is. It has its moments from both Walt and Jesse, and we'll get to those shortly, but overall there's not as much of either depth or tension that Breaking Bad has at its best, and the show needs one or the other to be successful.

All that said, there are two fantastic scenes in this episode that is Breaking Bad  in top form. The first one is the kickoff to Jesse's section of the plan, where he's waiting in Wendy's motel room. The way the scene is staged makes it look like Jesse is on some sort of drug. The camera focuses on the sun through the blinds and is alternating between focused and unfocused. This continues until the police team breaks into the motel room and starts yelling and taken Jesse in. It becomes pretty clear afterwards that the fading camera was not a symptom of Jesse on drugs, but more displaying the tension Jesse felt because he knew what was about to happen. It's a great piece of camera work, a great piece of misdirection, and it still manages to put the viewers in Jesse's mindset. He's going to get hassled, it's not going to be easy, and he'd rather not do it, but he has no choice in the matter and his freedom depends on how he acts.

The other scene is Walt talking to the psychiatrist. The type of scene where someone lies by revealing a lot of the truth isn't unique to Breaking Bad by any means, but almost any time a show is clever enough to use this technique it works. Here it works particularly well, as this discussion with the psychiatrist also informs Walt's decision in the rest of the episode. The reasons that Walt gives for running away for a couple days are pretty much the exact reason he starts cooking meth in the first place. It's so cathartic to hear him finally give his real reasons for doing the things he is doing, even if it's just as part of another lie he's telling.

At the end of the episode, Jesse believes that this is the end of the road and that their cooking adventure is over. It's a reasonable thing to assume, given that they nearly were sent to Mexico and/or killed by a crazed lunatic. But Walt's reasons for cooking, the same reasons he gave to the psychiatrist, are as strong as they've ever been. As much as he repeats the 737,000 dollar number to himself, the real reason is that for the first time, he feels powerful. He feel like he's in control. He feels like his chemistry expertise is finally not being wasted teaching high school students. And he's still got that addiction to danger that drove so much of his actions in "A No Rough Stuff Type Deal." At the moment, Walt is in this for the long haul. Is there something that will change his mind, at least for a while? Absolutely, but it's not the threat of death from Tuco. It's actually a pink teddy bear.

Also driving Walt to continue in spite of the danger? That view of just his wife and son, on their own, while he thinks he's in hospital. It allows him to keep up his lie that all he is doing is for them, and to keep them well enough off without him there. The interesting thing about this scene is that there isn't actually anything special about how Skylar and Walter Jr. were interacting when he saw them. There's nothing he sees here that would be different than what he knew, or would have seen before to change his perspective on things. I really believe Walt is looking for excuses to continue, and a glimpse of his family that shouldn't be meaningful, he elevates it to very meaningful levels in his mind.

One thing that's surprised me writing these reviews is how prominent Hank has been this early in the season. He gets two episodes focussed on him later in the season in "Breakage" and "Negro Y Azul", and in the episodes leading up to that, he's definitely been the third most important character on the show. It is sort of impressive that the show commits this much this early to developing someone they had originally outlined as a joke caricature. In this episode, we really start to see the fringes of how the Tuco shootout affected Hank. It's pretty easy to tell in hindsight that he's really not comfortable with what went down. He is initially taken aback by Junior asking him about the shootout, though just for a moment before he recovers. This same sort of hesitation happens when he gets awarded Tuco's grills, though once again he recovers quickly and acts as he thinks would be appropriate for someone who should be proud of his "catch." It's subtle writing, and only really can be seen after watching "Breakage" and knowing the truth about Hank's  PTSD.

The other small sign of the effect of the Tuco shootout on Hank is how ineffective he is in his interrogations. Jesse was clearly not comfortable, but he's unable to really push the issue with him. He has Wendy where he wants her, and then blows in on his cheap "Windy" joke that he had previously used when seeing Wendy with Walter Jr. in "...And the Bag's in the River." He's been shown to be a pretty good cop, both before and after this point, and is really not good at all in this episode.

This episode is about 25% really good deep stuff and about 75% fluff. That's not a good ratio for Breaking Bad and a sign that the show really isn't quite ready to take the next step it wants to take. This season was built backwards, where they knew the ending and had to build to it, so it is possible that they didn't have enough story to fill the 13 episodes they were given. The show really shouldn't be spending a whole episode on the execution of a rather straight forward plan by Jesse and Walter. The show still has its flashes of brilliance, and the execution is still at a really high level, but for a show that needs the plot engine to be churning to be successful, "Bit By a Dead Bee" is not the episode the show needed to follow up its Tuco arc.

Other Points
- The writers still aren't being very careful with Skylar. In this episode, she's made to look dumb by supporting Walt's lie by complaining about cancer drug side effects, like this is something new to a doctor

-  Badger is on a roll this episode, especially clearing out the basement. "You are Willy Wonka and I have the golden ticket!"

- Speaking of Badger, if Badger was vouching for someone to you, does that really impact anything at all? I'd be less likely to trust that person.

-My favourite part of Walt's naked gag with Skylar is that he wears the porkpie hat

- And we have the continuation of the all time great second cellphone storyline! I really thought I liked Season 2 better than this going in to these reviews

Top 10 TV Shows of 2014

Here's some caveats before I get into my top 10, because I certainly haven't seen everything that has aired this year:

- I live in Canada. There are some shows, like Transparent and Review that simply have not become available in Canada through any (legal) form yet, so they have gone unwatched.
- I do not have any pay cable channels. As a result, there is no Game of Thrones or Girls or Boardwalk Empire on this list. There is one exception to this, which we will get to, because it was available on DVD before the end of the year.
- I give up on shows fairly quickly, so if a show got considerably better over the course of the year past the initial reviews and my initial impressions, I don't typically try to catch up. For that reason I don't watch shows like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I also only got into serious TV watching around 2011, so shows that started earlier than that (such as The Good Wife) may be unwatched as well.

So, this is by no means an exhaustive list. But without further ado, here is my top 10 shows that aired in 2014. I watched enough of about 25 shows to be considered for this list.

First, honourable mentions this year go to The Killing and House of Cards.

10. Survivor
Yes, really. I'm just as surprised as you are. I'm not sure what bug infected me that I started watching Survivor again this year, but I quickly became obsessed with it. No other show this year did I spend more time obsessing over the ins and outs of what was really going on. The combination of trying to figure out the best strategic moves as well as how to deal with people in the game has not yet really gotten old for me. Plus, this year's two seasons both gave plenty of food for thought, as they were two of the least straight forward and most unpredictable seasons ever. It's completely unlike anything else on this list, but I don't look forward to any other show more, nor did I discuss any other show as much. Seriously, look at my Disqus comments since I joined. They are literally 95% Survivor comments. So I had to put it on the list, and this was the place for it.

9. The Walking Dead
This is an odd one for me. All at once, somewhere halfway through the previous current crop of episodes, a bunch of critics including Andy Greenwald of Grantland and Todd Van Der Werff of Vox posted columns about how The Walking Dead had finally gotten good after years of being mediocre. Meanwhile, I've thought Season 5 has been business as usual for the show, which for the longest time I've been more positive about than the general community, particularly through Season 2. Comes onto the list this year after not even getting an honourable mention last year for two reasons:
1. Three stellar episodes this year. When The Walking Dead  is at its best, it is one of the top shows on TV, no exaggeration. It hit those highs this year with "After", "The Grove" and "Self Help".
2. The baseline for the show has improved. In previous years, when The Walking Dead was bad, it was quite awful. This year, the Walking Dead had no episodes that I would give any worse adjective to than tepid. I still would like to see better consistency from the show, but having no episodes reach the lows of some of the later Season 3 episodes or the Season 4 midseason finale is a nice step.

8. Fargo
Considering how many great shows I haven't seen, putting Fargo this low on the list is practically trashing it compared to the general critical community. Voted the number 1 show of the year by the critics polled for hitfix.com, it is beloved. And the show is pretty great at multiple things. It has possibly the best command of tone of any show on this list, effortlessly switching between dark comedy and heroic drama. It's that tone that is the biggest tie between it and the movie, and being able to pull that off makes the project a worthy sequel to the movie. It also has one of the top 3 characters on TV, Molly Solverson, played wonderfully by previously unknown Chicago theatre actress Alison Tolman. Martin Freeman also gives a great performance that is nothing like either Bilbo Baggins or John Watson. And while I have fairly major problems with the character concept, Billy Bob Thornton is having a lot of fun and chewing a lot of scenery as Lorne Malvo.

However, the problem is that the degree of heightened reality that the show employs doesn't work very well for me. I find that it removes the character just enough from my world that they become tougher to dig into and really explore in proper context. For instance, there is no exploring to do with Lorne Malvo. He's a cartoon character who is evil incarnate and nearly unstoppable for most of the run of the series, and he sucks everything around him into his vortex of ridiculousness. I find it hard to scrounge for something worthwhile among the carnage he creates. Still a pretty good show, and I'll be looking forward to next year, especially with no Malvo to be seen.

7. Happy Valley
Even as I'm writing this post, I'm still playing around with my rankings. I originally had Happy Valley in the 5 hole, but I moved it down as I was writing the blurbs for the next two shows. Happy Valley  is pretty flawless, and does a good job not being exploitative or misogynistic with a kidnapping case, something almost every other show falls into. It does a great job sketching out its main character in Catherine, who feels so much like a real person, and can hit the emotional moments and absolutely wreck the viewer when it is aiming for them. I highly recommend it. It doesn't have uniqueness of many of the other shows on this list, which is why it dropped as there's not as much about it that sticks with me, but it is extremely well executed, compelling, and does some great character work.

6. True Detective
It was a great battle between anthology series this spring, as everyone was picking a side between Fargo  and True Detective, and it had to be one or the other. At the time of airing, True Detective had all the accolades and buzz surrounding it, and Fargo was the much smaller show airing later that so many assumed was much better. This was not the side I thought I'd be taking, especially after about 6 episodes and this show seemed to be running out of steam. But the much maligned finale brought it all together for me, that this show was never about the Yellow King or murder mysteries involving antlers. This was a show about a broken man, Rust Cohle, who was so damaged by the loss of his daughter that he just couldn't be a person any more, and instead decided to be this philosophy touting piece of cardboard that didn't really resemble a human being. To watch the little pieces of the real Rust come out among the acting, in his dedication to a case he pretended wasn't important in the grand scheme of things, before finally emerging in that wonderful speech in the finale was compelling and some of the best character work of the year. The show is flawed, the case wasn't that exciting and it took the flashback and interrogation room form as well as some spectacular directing to tie us over while the show built its foundation, but there was some really fascinating work under the surface. It's a show that missed the boat on the cable antihero era and therefore seems a little tired, but there's something new and different about it nonetheless.

5. The Americans
This is, bar none, the most morally complex show on television right now. There is no other show that is so dedicated to making us care, and care deeply, about people who routinely kill and ruin the lives of innocent people as part of their daily life. It is committed to showing the toll it takes on them, and the acting of those characters is fantastic. And this season, by centring the season so much around Phillip and Elizabeth's children, it turns that around. It puts a new set of innocents in the path of the wreckage of their jobs, but this time it's innocents that they love more than anyone else in the world. Choosing their undercover life fighting for a theoretical sense of patriotism and right and pitting that up against the things that affect them on a more real and emotional level was a brilliant play for this show and paid major dividends.

I just wish I could feel the show like some of its biggest proponents can. It's just that Phillip and Elizabeth are just so far misguided and so inhuman at times that I just can't drum up the empathy for them that I need for this show to fully succeed and take me through the slower stretches. The good episodes of the show are fantastic, but there are enough dragging ones that I simply can't justify putting it higher, especially since I'm so much more invested in the main characters of these four shows above it.

4. Hannibal
At this point, there's not much left to say about Hannibal that hasn't already been said. The number 1 show at the AV Club, with a finale that I would consider probably the best episode of television this year, the psychological dance between Hannibal and Will Graham this year was nothing short of a masterpiece. The way Will embraced his darker side to lure Hannibal in to ultimately trap and catch him was both brilliant and tragic to watch, as Will struggled with the difficulties of empathizing with serial killers like never before. And that finale left everyone, including the viewer, as an absolute wreck. A fantastic season of a fantastic show, one I'm not sure of how it continues to exist, but we get a Season 3 and I couldn't be happier.  And I almost forgot to mention the best cinematography on TV.

3. Rectify
As far as concepts for a television show go, there are few that have as much depth and complexity as a man getting off of death row 19 years after being convicted as a 16 year old, and having to find his place back in the world again. There's something so bittersweet about the show, a sense of joy and loss mingled with one another, forcing you to put yourself in Daniel's shoes and feel along with him. And the show lives up to that concept, as Daniel's character is even more than you expect. This season, he's shown to be just weird enough and off-kilter enough that you wonder whether his time in prison completely distorted a normal human, or whether he was already a weird dude and death row just exacerbated the problem. And if it's the latter, was he strange enough that he did commit the crime he was convicted of?

I've heard many say that it's not important whether Daniel committed the crime or not, but I disagree. Learning whether Daniel is capable of murdering his girlfriend is essential to learning who Daniel is, and what kind of person he is. And that is ultimately what the show is about. And it's so intellectually and emotionally stimulating to try and parse that out.

The show does very well with its supporting characters such as Ted and Amantha as well. It manages to make them both off-putting and downright unlikable at times while still maintaining their basic humanity. This is something many shows struggle to do with their main characters, much less their supporting ones.

Ultimately, this could have been my number one show this year if it had been a little tighter. The expanded 10 episode order this year meant it spent a little too much time with "Lezlie with a z" for my liking. But the highs were so high, and the finale was so good, that even disregarding the premise that is tailor-made for my TV sensibilities, this show fully earns this spot on the list.

2. Mad Men
I'll talk more about what makes Mad Men so great near the premiere of the final stretch of episodes, but suffice to say that it's a show that manages to cover the broadest range of topics with the most depth. After spending the last two years very invested in the societal changes of the 60s, this half season it dug deep into the technological changes that were on the horizon. It made the visionary of the show, Jim Cutler, into the primary antagonist and ended up with the two obsolete members of the agency dominated the final episode. And the fact that it had the men of past winning a victory over the ways of the future in the end showed how subversive and unique Mad Men can be. Plus, thematic material aside, those last two episodes were great and fully showed off possibly the best cast of characters on television. I thought this was a down year for the show. Yet it's still the show, and wasn't going to drop any lower than this.

1. Orange is the New Black
This has everything you could possibly want in a television show. It has the highest quantity of great characters anywhere, and makes you care about every single one of them (that aren't complete sociopaths). It tells diverse types of stories with a diverse cast, incorporating the experiences of people from all classes, races and religions. It can be hilarious, enough that many consider it to be a comedy. It highlights flaws in society, particularly the prison system. It's centred around women, something traditionally under-represented on TV. It points the finger at privilege, and makes the least likable and most out of touch character the one that is most similar to the majority of the audience (that would be our good friend Jason Biggs). It does standalone episode arcs, and they are brilliant. It does season long episode arcs, and they are brilliant. It incorporates flashbacks in ways that add to the characters without protruding too much into the main story.

In my mind, this year of Orange is the New Black was pretty much perfect in every way and I couldn't be happier to have it as my number 1 show of 2014. I'm honestly surprised that it is not the consensus choice for best current television show (or whatever) of people everywhere, that is how good I think this show is. If you haven't seen it, do whatever you need to watch it. It is amazing.

The Personality of a Killer - On Serial and The Killing Season 4

*The following has minor spoilers for Serial and major spoilers for Season 4 of The Killing. It does not assume you’ve seen/heard either of these, so if you don’t plan on watching The Killing, or don’t particularly care about spoilers, you should be fine.

Over the past couple of months, Serial has quickly become the most famous podcast ever to pod. It’s the relaying of the results of a real investigation by reporter Sarah Koenig into the murder of a girl named Hae Min Lee, and specifically whether the convicted ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed actually committed the murder. The first half of the episodes of the podcast were focussed almost entirely on the evidence Koenig had collected about the case, and parcelling it out in a natural form that arrested the reader and made them care about the results.

The podcast took a turn near the end of episode 6, “The Case against Adnan Syed.” Sarah had just finished laying out all the evidence that had accumulated against Adnan, and then her thoughts turned a different way. She wonders aloud how someone who acted like Adnan, and spoke to her like Adnan could be capable of this murder. But she also wondered if she was just being manipulated. The story has progressed in a similar vein ever since then, focussing on people and behaviours rather than hard evidence, because it seems the hard evidence for the case has pretty well dried up. It has become no less fascinating through this stretch, though.

Through this whole process, the listener had the opportunity to hear many parts of Koenig’s taped interviews with Adnan. And he literally says all the right things. With everything he says, my immediate reaction is “How can someone who had committed apparent cold-blooded murder speak like this?” But it’s not just how he speaks; it’s listening to how those who were in contact with him, both before and after the murder. He’s always presented by everyone as kind and caring and gentle, even by those who think he committed the murder. Anyone in contact with him says he was not overly upset about the breakup with Hae Min Lee, at least externally. This breakup was said by the prosecution to be the driving motive for him to commit murder.

Yet the hard evidence points to him, and it pointed to him enough that he was able to get convicted. And while I don’t believe that he should have been convicted, that there are more than enough problems with the prosecution’s case that there is reasonable doubt, if you asked me at gunpoint, I would say that Adnan Syed killed Hae Min Lee.

This seems so simple. You can’t trust personality evaluations when looking at murders. People who seem like outstanding citizens have committed them to the shock of everyone around. I know of these stories, you know of these stories. However, to this point, I’ve never had such an in depth look at a real person accused of murder that really doesn’t seem like the type. And it messes with your head badly. Adnan Syed is not a trained actor; he should not be able to pull off the role of the innocent victim of circumstance as well as he’s pulled it off. And that’s not only 32 year old Adnan who is speaking to Koenig and to the audience from his jail cell, but 17 year old Adnan was doing the same charming innocent victim bit back them. The judge at sentencing accused him of manipulating through his charm. It just doesn’t seem likely that the things Adnan says, and the way he acts both then and now are the actions of a perfectly rehearsed psychopath, or even the actions of someone who let their emotions run away with them to such a degree that they committed murder. This person committing murder seems like something off a TV show.

The Killing is an interesting place to turn when looking at Serial. It was one of the first television shows to try to pull off the “one case over a season of episodes”, a format Serial is sort of piggybacking off of. I watched Season 4 recently. The conclusion of the matter is the detectives find out that a son was moved into a trancelike state by his peers at his military school and convinced to kill his parents. He kills them and the rest of his family, including his young sister. Afterwards, he attempts to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head, but fails, and the impact of the bullet wound causes him to experience amnesia and forget the whole event.

It’s not a great season of television, and the case isn’t particularly groundbreaking, though it does have a nice hook to it. It has a cool roundabout narrative, where suspicion is initially on the son (Kyle), moved off of him for a while, before finally landing back at the place where they started, that the initial suspicion was correct. But the writers are very careful to make it seem that Kyle was not capable of murder, and they get to work on that almost from the moment he wakes up out of his coma.

There’s one scene in particular where the lead detective takes Kyle back to the house where the murders were committed. It’s a very emotionally charged moment, as Kyle immediately throws up upon seeing the blood stains and being walked through exactly what happened. He’s not in the role of the charming sociopath, he’s in the role of the normal person who doesn’t understand how he could have done something like this. There’s one point where the detective asks him point blank whether he could have killed his younger sister, even if it were possible with his parents, and Kyle says no, and there’s no doubt at all that he means it. There is no acting about it.

The writers of The Killing are positing that people who seem normal and grounded are capable of terrible things if they snap the wrong way, things they themselves wouldn’t have been capable of, and there have been real cases that have indicated that to be true. There’s no such thing as the personality of a killer, they can manifest many different faces to the public eye.

This is what is messing with my head so badly about Serial. Emotionally removed, and ignoring everything said by or about Adnan, he seems like the killer. And there’s ample reason to ignore all that stuff. There’s many times where you simply cannot tell someone is a killer by the way they act before or after an incident. But I’m wondering if TV is influencing me the wrong way in this regard. How many people are really like Hannibal Lecter, the charming sociopath? Or like Kyle, the normal kid who snapped? Maybe TV is making me think these types of things are way more common than they actually are. Maybe I should be paying more attention to the character references, both from my instincts from listening to him talk and the way the people around him refer to him. Maybe people just aren’t as good as acting as TV, which is built for dramatic purposes, makes you believe.

I’m stuck. I’m reluctant to see Adnan as a manipulative psychopath, because that seems such a rare and extraordinary thing to me that he would distribute absolutely no other signs of that to anyone. Is he a version of Kyle, someone normal who suddenly snapped on the person who broke up with him, and is just fighting hard to maintain his innocence because he can’t bear to see people think of him that way? Maybe, but how was he able to maintain so calm and collected between the breakup and the murder if it made him angry to that degree? Is he innocent? The facts just don’t seem to back that up.

How much can you know about a person, or believe about a person based on what they present to the public? TV and other fictional literature tell me you can believe very little, but they have an agenda of trying to be dramatically satisfying. There’s special real life cases that tell me you can believe very little, but they are special cases for a reason. Ultimately, I just don’t know, and that’s going to bother me. By far the most interesting thing about Serial is that it is real life, and real life is confusing and messy. 

Breaking Bad 2.02 - Grilled

Pre-Credits Sequence

Chaos. That's what Walt brings to the table throughout the series. When it comes down to it, Walt's position as an agent of chaos is probably his most surprising trait given what we know about him early on in the series. He seems to be the type who prefers things neat and orderly, yet he's constantly the one throwing things into complete disarray.

Now, most of the disarray in the pre-credit sequence isn't caused by Walt. Apparently Tuco is a hoarder of some really weird stuff. But there's the bouncing car with the bullet holes, and that's the true symbol of what happened here. Interestingly, even though we don't see any people in this scene, Hank, Walt, Jesse and dead Tuco are still around, as the end of the episode shows the car stops bouncing before anyone leaves.

Review

Breaking Bad is the best show I have ever seen at creating tension, and making that tension stick. A lot of the time, shows can have very tense moments while you are watching, but afterwards, when the more rational part of your brain kicks in and the more emotional part of your brain kicks out, the tension you felt fades away. "Grilled" shows the template Breaking Bad uses throughout the series to create that tension. They use memorable images and sounds, so you always have that reminder of the tension you felt. But most importantly, Breaking Bad understands that tension comes from unpredictability.

Most shows simply don't give themselves much room for possible resolutions to the conflicts created. The stakes are often life or death for the main characters, and since the show has to continue, there's no doubt which way things are going to go. The brilliant thing about this episode is that there is a possibility of a third option, an option which would allow the show to keep its actors employed, but is still enough of a deterrent to the characters that the viewers don't want to see it happen. The threat from Tuco is not to kill Walt and Jesse, or at least that's not the direct threat, the threat is to ship them off to Mexico so they can cook in a lab they have built there. What makes it terrifying for the viewer is that there is no reason that the show can't go there, as it is always a possibility that the show can do two or three episodes with Walt and Jesse kidnapped, working for a mad man who could kill them at any time, and looking for a way to escape. The threat is real, which is more than can be said for what passes as tension on most TV shows these days.

Further, the show has gotten to the point where it can endanger some of its cast members. It's become well known now that if the writer's strike that shortened season 1 did not occur, Vince Gilligan and company had planned to kill off Jesse. The viewer may not have known it at the time, but the threat to Jesse's life in this episode was real, and it was always a potential scenario for the show. There's another instance where Tuco is going through Walt's wallet and pulls out a picture of his family. No real threat is made, but the tone of Tuco's voice and the menace he has makes it clear that Walt's family is not safe either. These are real potential results, and though the show doesn't follow through with any of them here, it will eventually make it clear that it's not fooling around, no one is safe. And establishing that in the back half of season 5 is what makes the home stretch of the show so fascinating.

The scene that makes this episode in particular, though, is Uncle Tio's bell. It seems like it's something played as a joke first. Tuco has his decrepit uncle hanging out at his hideout who communicates with a bell. But does the show ever use that. It soon becomes clear that Tio has more control of his faculties than previously realized, and the only thing that stands between Walt and Jesse and a swift death is Tuco's ability to translate the ding of the bell. The most terrifying scene in the episode is right when the viewer realizes that Tuco and Tio have a system for communicating, and the effort to slip Tuco the ricin cannot stay a secret for long. Further, you don't only have the bell, you have Tio's face. I could really mention almost every actor who plays a minor character in this series, but holy crap does Mark Margolis ever make a meal out of a role with strict limitations. He has no way of speaking, he only has a narrow range of expressions he can use due to Tio's inability to really move his face, but he makes the most out of those expressions. His death stare to Walt and Jesse here is something to behold. It conveys pure hatred, yet he still leaves something in reserve to top that expression when Gus declares that he has killed his last remaining male heir in "Crawl Space." It's masterful work from one of the most memorable characters in the series.

As far as convoluted Walt and Jesse escapes go, this is one of the more straight forward ones in the series. Like always, they manage to dig their own hole by screwing up royally. Jesse can be such an idiot at times, and this episode he may be at his most idiotic. He tries way too hard to get Tuco to try the poisoned meth, mentioning chili powder as a secret ingredient. The whole reason Tuco liked their meth in the first place was the purity of the high, did he really think putting chili powder in it would make him more likely to try it right there? It put Walt and Jesse into scramble mode immediately. Poisoning the burrito was a good plan, but of course Tio was there to screw that up. After all that it is kind of amazing that they were eventually able to scramble their way into getting the upper hand, mostly through the pure craziness of just trying to attack him.

But in getting that upper hand, Walt and Jesse show us something else, something that shows it's still early days in the series for Walt, but establishes a continuing pattern for Jesse. They have Tuco writhing on the ground, bleeding out, and neither of them is able to shoot him. Walt has killed previously, but it's clear that this isn't something that comes easy to him. However, forcing himself to watch Jane die in "Phoenix" and killing Gus's henchmen in "Half Measures" shows that circumstances can force him to get over that bridge. And while he very seldom pulls the trigger himself, Walt  has no qualms about someone dying if they need to die. Jesse has those qualms. He can't shoot Tuco either, and when he does have to finally shoot Gale in "Full Measures" it sends him into a complete tailspin. Jesse is just not the person who is cut out for the stuff that being in business with Walt forces him to do.

The structure of this episode is something to behold. After the cliffhanger ending of the previous episode, where Jesse and Walt are kidnapped by Tuco, we don't see either of them for 10 minutes. We spend the early portion of the episode with Skylar and her attempts to find Walt. Then, we finally see Tuco, but he's by himself. He's smoking a cigarette and overlooking the scenery. Then finally, he moves over to the trunk, opens it, and we finally see Walt and Jesse shoved in there before cutting to a commercial break. From that point on, the only time we spend away from the action at Tuco's hangout is to lead us to the finale, all the other scenes are about how Hank comes to find Jesse's car and end up in the shootout with Tuco.

There's something to be said for an episode that's perfectly structured but doesn't call attention to itself. There's nothing special or extraordinary about the structure of this episode; this isn't a very special episode of Breaking Bad. Instead it just does a fair job of building tension, starting the episode off with Skylar's search, a place with no danger or real stakes, and slowly building towards the confrontation at the end.

Skylar herself has possibly her best episode of the series to this point. We desperately needed to see Skylar competent at something, to give her character more depth than being the nagging wife who tries to override her husband's wishes. And this episode gives us that. Skylar does a really good job searching for Walt. She checks the credit cards, she gets the posters ready. She covers pretty much all the bases, and throughout it all she's able to maintain a calm demeanor and keep her mind on the task at hand. Skylar is a competent person, and her business acumen and attention to detail makes her valuable to Walt's organization throughout seasons 3 through 5.  It would have been nice if we could have seen this side of her sooner, but better late than never.

Hank and Marie keep trending in the same direction they were previous to this episode. Hank gets to be non-confrontational again, trying to ease Skylar into the idea of the Walt's second cellphone in a way that won't make Skylar blow up in his face. But for all his bluster, he actually proves to be good at his job, tracking down Jesse's car, and then not being too surprised to stumble onto Tuco to compromise his ability to deal with him. Marie is obnoxious this episode, just blurting out the grenade about the second cellphone, and using "at least Walt hasn't turned up dead" as her form of consolation to Skylar. Marie has a long way to go in the series, and she takes her time getting there. It basically takes Hank's injury in season 3 to put Marie in a sympathetic enough role that the viewer can finally start to tolerate her. Fortunately, she grows as a character from that point forward.

"Grilled" shows Breaking Bad to be a masterclass at tension. It has real stakes and unpredictability, and it creates images to make the tension stick. It is structured perfectly to build the tension over the episode, but it doesn't skimp on giving any of the characters development, whether it be Jesse, Walt or Skylar. This episode is really the start of Breaking Bad as we know it, and all the foundations of greatness are clearly visible.

Other Notes:

-Tuco's reference to the Mexican cartel and specifically "his cousins" is a nice setup for the start of Season 3
- I'm not a big fan of Walt having to lay out to Jesse exactly why they are in trouble if Tuco finds out that Gonzo is dead. The viewers are smart enough to figure that out on their own.
- The music over the closing credits is fantastic. You have a Mexican style version of the Breaking Bad theme, with Tio's bell intermixing in. It leaves the viewer with that sense of terror that Tio's bell had begun to conjure up by the end of the episode.

I'm Still Here, I Promise

Hi everyone,

It's been a while, and I have no real new posts ready to go, so I wanted to let you know I'm still here, and there's new stuff on the horizon. Coming in the next month or so:

"Grilled" review: This one is about half written, and it's pretty much certain to be my longest review yet. I've had to back off of it in the last week because I became crazy busy.

Review of The Sopranos Season 5: ie - the season that is both by far the best season of The Sopranos as well as the one that has given me no real enthusiasm for continuing. I'll explain.

Year End Top 10 list: At my current TV watching rate, this may be the last year I watch enough shows to create a real top 10 list, so it may be a monumental event.

Walking Dead Midseason Review: I still have 4 episodes to watch, so I have no idea what form this review is going to take. Suffice to say, a lot of high profile critics have suddenly jumped on the bandwagon for this show. I sort of get why, but I still think they were missing a lot of what the show had done best that's kind of disappeared under Gimple's reign.

Update: If you have any other suggestions for posts, feel free to suggest in the comments. I should have made it so that everyone can comment with no need for an account of some type.