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Our surrogates, Walt and Jesse, have become acclimated to the most repellent aspects of their trade, to the point where - to paraphrase David Simon on the violence of "The Wire," the only other cable series that routinely and convincingly explored this aspect of criminal life - they go from being horrified newbies to hardcases who see murder an economic transaction. We don't realize how deep inside we are until we realize we've spent the better part of an hour in an underground meth cooking facility watching two guys being threatened and a third being murdered, and it seems perfectly normal. Then it gradually takes us deeper and deeper into a criminal world, starting from the outside and moving slowly in. Gilligan's series starts with an ordinary, law-abiding man, Walter White, deciding to become a criminal, then hooks him up with Jesse, a petty criminal, then slowly introduces us to other, harder sorts of criminals, all of whom have certain awful lessons to impart to Walter and Jesse. It's not dropping us into the middle of an unfamiliar world and asking us to empathize with characters whose moral compasses are (one would hope) horribly defective compared to most people's - characters we could always choose to feel superior to, if things ever got too icky. This is the aspect of "Breaking Bad" that elevates it into the pantheon of great crime stories, and the aspect of the series that improves on "The Sopranos," "Deadwood," "The Shield" and other popular, crime-driven cable shows.
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It's the line about how to cook a frog in a pan of water the show's writers turned up the heat so gradually that it isn't until season two or three that you looked down at your arm and thought, "Hey, are those blisters?" They are capable of almost anything, and there is almost nothing we won't watch them do. If Walt and Jesse are horrible human beings, then what does that make us, the loyal viewers? Complicit. The moment when Walter arrives home wearing his white slacks and Kenny Rogers t-shirt and Skyler tells him she moved the car was definitely a moment of complicity.) (It's the business that Skyler has chosen, too, even if she doesn't consciously realize it yet. To quote Hyman Roth in "The Godfather, Part II," this is the business they have chosen.
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history, for which Walt was indirectly responsible - it's impossible to describe Walt and Jesse as a couple of guys who are just doing what they have to do to survive. They're full-blown drug traffickers and cold blooded murderers.Īnd if you total up the deaths caused directly or indirectly by their adventures in the meth trade - including the "fiftieth worst" air disaster in U.S. Walt and Jesse are no longer hapless wannabe-players spelunking in the underworld. From the moment that Gus walked out of the Super Lab, Victor's death was just another inconvenient event to be mastered. Their non-reaction was partly due to shock at seeing a man murdered right in front of them, but I don't think shock was the whole story. Their reactions in this episode were totally different. It's impossible to make that trip without becoming desensitized to violence, and increasingly willing to rationalize the most horrific crimes.Īrguably the most shocking moment in the first part of Season 1 was when Walt and Jesse cleaned up the gory remains of Emilio's acid-dissolved corpse that had leached through the ceiling. They've gone from small-potatoes hustlers on the fringe to major players. If you'd watched the previous three seasons, you couldn't help thinking about Walt and Jesse's moral degeneration over time. (I once thought the red floor in that James Bond lair-looking meth lab was an ostentatious design touch, but now the color makes sense.) One especially chilling shot showed Walt glopping some of Victor's blood toward a grate with a push broom, like a sidewalk cleaner pushing wet leaves toward a gutter. It was the moment when the episode cut to Walt and Jesse dealing with the remains of Victor - stuffing his corpse into a container and pouring acid on it and mopping his blood off the floor. It wasn't the excruciating lead-up to Gus' murder of Victor - the ritual of donning the red uniform and gloves and shoes - or the equally drawn-out undressing and cleanup, or the nonchalant kiss-off line: "Well.Get back to work." It wasn't even that Brian DePalma-like shot from Walt's point-of-view showing Victor's blood welling out on the floor like a sunburst. It wasn't when Mike first glowered at his prisoners, Walt and Jesse, or when Victor arrogantly proclaimed that he could do the cooking from now on because he had studied Walt's recipe. The most significant moment in last night's "Breaking Bad" wasn't when Gale's body hit the floor.