Moose watches Breaking Bad

Okay, I literally have no idea what this show is about. All I've heard is that it's very good. So let's see if it is.

Series 1 Episode 1: Pilot

It starts with a man in his underwear wearing a gasmask crashing an RV in the desert. It's the dad from Malcolm in the Middle (to be referred to as Walter from now on, although it's hard not to see him as Hal). No idea what's going on, but there's sirens in the background. He gets out, records a message to his family, and then walks into the road to confront the oncoming police.

3 WEEKS EARLIER

Oh, one of those openings. So it's Walter's 50th birthday. He has a wife, and a son with some kind of disability (they don't say what it is and I can't be arsed to look it up. He needs crutches to walk and has a mild speech impediment). Walter's on some kind of medication for something too, I didn't catch what it was.

Walter is a chemistry teacher. It was weird that he gave an introductory chemistry speech as if it was the first class of the year despite seemingly being familiar with the students. He's also a carwash attendant, so I guess the family are strapped for cash.

At a surprise birthday party, we find out his wife, Skyler, is pregant. We also meet his brother in law, Hank. Hank's a cop. He's showing off his gun, and turns on the news so everyone can see a report about a meth lab he busted. Seems like a slight jerk. On the news report they show all the money they found at the meth lab, which Walter finds surprising. Hank offers to let Walter ride along on a raid if he's that interested.

There's a scene with Walter and his wife in bed where she gives him a handjob (happy birthday) while they have a boring conversion. It was really odd, but I loved the detail at the start of the scene where Walter has to remove half a dozen cushions and pillows from the bed before he can get in. What is it with women and having a ton of pillows?

Walter is working at the carwash when he sees a woman in a green dress with a nice ass. Her ass is apparently so nice he faints at the sight of it and gets taken to hospital, where we learn he has terminal lung cancer. He doesn't tell his family this, but takes Hank up on his offer to tag along on a raid. This leads to a meeting with Pinkman, a student that failed Walter's class a while ago and is now a drug dealer. Hank sees Pinkman escaping but none of the cops do.

Being a chemistry teacher faced with a terminal illness and cash trouble, Walter makes the logical choice and decides he wants to make crystal meth. He finds Pinkman and offers to be his partner and cook drugs. They buy an RV and take it out to the desert to be safe. Pinkman's old partner, out on bail, doesn't like this much. He and his brother go down to the RV and plan to shoot Walter and Pinkman.

Walter offers to teach them his recipe if they let him go. They go into the RV, where he throws some dangerous chemicals together to gas the dealers, runs out and holds the door closed. And so we're back at the opening. The sirens turn out to be a fire squad though, and they just drive right past him.

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Well then, that was alright. Wasn't expecting much from just one episode, but it looks promising. The show certainly has an interesting premise. Favourite character so far (which isn't very far at all) is probably Pinkman. I liked seeing how his attitude changed in different situations. I guess that's a given when it comes to acting, but for some reason I really liked it. His put-on, tough-guy, been-there-done-that facade when talking to another dealer ("I had a dog like that once, except about twice as big.") compared to how he was when alone with Walter ("A cow house. You know, the house that the cows live in.") was fun to watch.

Cerebral Palsy.

Krazy 8 and Emilio are cousins.

Pinkman's name is Jesse.

Looking forward to this topic.

I recently rewatched the first few episodes and I'm astounded by how dark and dirty everything is. Walt's life is awful: he's a brilliant chemist but he works two horrible jobs to support a family who take him for granted, he is constantly overshadowed by his boisterous brother-in-law, and he can't even grow a real moustache. Everything we see of him: from scrubbing the wheels of one of his prick students' car on his hands and knees to receiving the most awkward handjob in the world just demonstrates how dead-end his life is. He's completely emasculated by his wife and boss, and you really cannot help but empathize with him, especially since he's played by the utterly nonpareil Bryan Cranston.

It only gets better, I'm surprised you can only watch one at a time.

Cousins? I swear it was brothers. Although maybe someone just ssaid "bro" and I took it literally.

Well, one is Latin and the other is Asian so that's kind of a giveaway.

Yeah, I guess so.

Series 1 episode 2: "Cat's in the bag..."

This episode was mainly about disposing of the bodies of Krazy 8 and Emilio. Except Krazy 8 is alive. Walter and Jesse lock him up in Jesse's basement. They decide to kill Krazy 8 and dissolve Emilio's body in acid, flipping a coin to see who does what.

Jesse gets the acid job. Walter doesn't go through with killing Krazy 8 so he's just living in the basement, locked up.

Walter and Skyler go for an ultrasound and find out the baby is a girl. Walter realises he won't be alive to see her grow up, but still doesn't tell his wife about the cancer. She finds out about Jesse, but Walter just says he's been buying pot from him.

Jesse couldn't find a plastic tub big enough for a body, so he used the bathtub. Unfortunately, Walter specified a plastic tub because the acid he's using won't eat through plastic but does eat through just about everything else. So the episode ends with a bathtb full of acidic dissolved flesh crashing through Jesse's ceiling.

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I'm confused about whose brother Hank is. I thought he was Walter's brother-in-law in the first episode, but I'm sure that both Walter Skyler refer to him as their brother-in-law in this episode.

Walter also seems to be taking the massive amounts of shit happening to him a bit too well. He found out he has terminal cancer, decided to become a drug dealer, and killed a man within the space a few weeks. I'm surprised he hasn't just gone mental.

Marie and Skyler are sisters.

So Hank is Marie's husband?

Is this worth me watching, I haven't watched a series in a long time, by that i mean something thats not a comedy.

It's the best series on TV since The Wire ended.

Kaio wrote:

It's the best series on TV since The Wire ended.

Um... Should i watch the wire instead?

You should watch both.

One of The Wire's main characters is also guesting on Community this season.

Actually how long are both i'll just watch whichever is shorter first.

Breaking Bad has short seasons. Season 1 is only 7 episodes, and the others are 13 episodes I think. Only 4 seasons so far.

The Wire's hard to get through, but it's rewarding. I'd recommend you start with Breaking Bad first since it's much easier to watch (and it's better, but that's just my opinion).

A_Nonny_Moose wrote:

So Hank is Marie's husband?

Yep.

Sarbud wrote:

The Wire's hard to get through, but it's rewarding. I'd recommend you start with Breaking Bad first since it's much easier to watch (and it's better, but that's just my opinion).

Thanks, i'll start watching this in a week or two and hijack moose's thread.

Good. Moose'll probably be hatin' soon anyway. He's already confused by character relationships so it's only a matter of time before he complains about bad storytelling.

The Wire is fucking amazing. This show is pretty awesome too but I think the golden globes got it right and the emmy's fucked up. Boardwalk Empire is the best drama out there now. The emmy's were just so used to giving best drama to BB that I guess they felt like they had to keep doing it.

You mean Mad Men but that's okay. Both MM and BB are better than BE.

Oh shit you're right. Anyway my statement still stands. No way BE gets beat after this season. It's off to an amazing start.

Well, this episode established that Hank was Marie's husband, bu that's not how in-laws work to my knowledge.

Season 1 episode 3: "...And the bag's in the river"

Good episode. Started with Jesse and Walter cleaning up the remains of Emilio. Krazy 8 is still locked in the basement. Walter is cleaning out his shit bucket when Krazy 8 reveals that Jesse told him all about Walter.

Walter is understandably pissed. He and Jesse have an amusing little slap fight after which Jesse storms out because he upheld his end of the bargain but Walter has yet to do his part. Coin flips are sacred apparently.

Meanwhile Skyler, thinking Walter has been smoking pot, starts asking her sister about her experiences with it, saying it's research for one of her short stories. Her sister, Marie, ends up thinking that Walter Jr (the son) is smoking pot. So in a completely pointless scene where she steals some shoes, she phones her Hank husband and asks him to straighten Walter Jr out.

Which happens in another completely pointless scene where Hank drives Walter Jr to a shitty motel where drug addicts and whores hang out to scare him ot of his supposed habit. Enjoyable scenes but all they did was pad out the run time. There was another one showing a substitute teacher standing in for Walter, but it was very short and I liked it for the observation that substitute teachers always just put a video on.

Then we get the meat of the episode, where Walter has to decide whether to kill Krazy 8 or not. While taking Krazy 8 a sandwich, Walter faints again. When he wakes up he clears up the broken plate and makes another sandwich. He tells Krazy 8 to convince him not to kill him, because he doesn't want to but can't think of a reason not to. They end up talking for a while about Krazy's dad who owns a furniture store than Walter once visited. Krazy tells Hank he's not suited for this life and he should get out while he can.

This seems to do the job for Walter, and he goes upstairs to get the key to the bike lock that's around Krazy's neck, locking him to a vertical beam. But while upstairs he notices something odd about the broken plate he cleared away. He tries to piece it back together and realises there's one big piece missing, that Krazy 8 must have picked up while he was unconscious. He goes down to the basement and asks Krazy 8 to turn around so he can unlock him, but he ends up grabbing the lock and suffocating Krazy with it while Krazy waves the bit of plate around behind him. He manages to stab Walter in the leg, but dies in the end.

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You can't end an episode with "There's something I need to tell you". It's not fair!

Other than that I liked it. Jesse was barely in it which left Walter on his own or with Krazy 8 for the most part, and those were the best scenes. Seriously though, Walter has now killed two men. He is having a serious midlife crisis/mental breakdown. I wonder how long it'll be before he starts taking control of the situation. He's got to harden up at some point. If he doesn't he'll have commited suicide by the end of the season at the rate shit keeps piling up on him.

Season 1 episode 4: "Cancer Man"

So everyone knows Walter has cancer now, and naturally everyone's pretty upset. Walter Jr appears to be having the typical angry teen reaction while Skyler opts for the typical "everything is okay because I'm reading pamphlets on the subject" reaction. Hank assures Walter that whatever happens, he'll be there to look after Walter's family. Which clearly pissed Walter off immensely, but he didn't say anything. Same thing happened when Skyler suggested they borrow money from Hank or Walter's mother.

Marie helped them get an appointment with a really good doctor somehow. I guess she has some kind of medical job, but either I forgot what it was or they haven't said exactly what she does yet. The treatment would cost $90'000, andd Walter's worried about goiing through with it and then dying anyway, leaving his family in a ton of debt. So whether he gets treatment or not is undecided yet. However since this show lasts a few more seasons at least, I'm gonna guess that Walter doesn't die any time soon.

He uses the money they stole from the drug dealers they killed to pay for the deposit, and while out he encounters an obnoxious business who steals his parking spot. He sees him again at the end of the episode in a petrol station. While the guy is in the store and not looking, Walter opens the hood of the guy's car and sticks a window washer on the battery, connecting the... I forget what they're called. Basically he shorts the circuit or something and the car bursts into flames while Walter is walking away. He doesn't look back.

Meanwhile Jesse is freaking out so he goes to stay with his parents. He has a little brother who's doing incredibly well and winning lots of trophies and stuff. He's there the whole episode and it seems like he might be about to turn his life around, or at least consider it. But the cleaner finds a spliff in his room and his parents kick him out. Turns out the weed belonged to the little brother.

Also, Hank and the cops have found Emilio's car out in the desert, along wiith a sample of the meth that Walter cooked. They also found the gasmask that Walter threw away out there. And holy crap, Krazy 8 was a snitch for the cops. He sold his cousin out. So now the cops think there's some new kingpin in town. But it's just Walter.

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Given the short seasons and the events of the first episode, I was expecting this show to race along with constant tension and shit happening really fast. But it seems it's going for the slower paced, character centric approach. Which is actually working out fine, since it has some good characters.

I liked the "debriefing" scene with Jesse and Walter. Any scene with just the two of them is really enjoyable.

Walter is going mad. It's only episode 4 and he's already walking away from explosions without looking back. I guess there's not much risk in it for him though, what with the probably-going-to-die-in-a-couple-years-anyway thing he has going.

Marie is a Medical Technician.

The next episode is another slower, character centric episode, but tremendously interesting.

The episode after that, things start accelerating right past the season finale and into the second series.

Season 1 episode 5: "Gray Matter"

Jesse meets an old friend at a job interview and they decide to cook some meth together. Jesse is now a perfectionist, and gets pissed off because he can't make it as good as Walter.

Walter goes to an engagement (I guess) party of a old friend that he started a business with. He's not involved in the business now though, so I assume they fell out over something. Probably his friends fiancee, since there seems to some history between her and Walt.

The friend, Elliot, offers Walt a job at the business, along with some conveniant health insurance. Walter guesses that Skyler told Elliot about the cancer and turns down the offer. Walter's family hold an intervention to get Walt to take the treatment.

Walt has a great speech about why he doesn't want the treatment because of all the side effects and how he doesn't want to be remembered as a bald, bed-ridden, artificially alive wreck. But then the next day he agrees to have the treatment anyway.

Having turned down Elliot's offer, he goes to see Jesse so they can cook and pay the bills.

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Walt instantly going back on his decision to not get chemotherapy pissed me off. I understand that his wife doesn't want him to die, but she's really not doing anything to make me like her. Walter finally puts his footdown at home, but his wife's upset so he gives in.

Season 1 episode 6: "Crazy handful of nothin'"

He's also started cooking meth again, on the understanding that he is the silent partner and is not involved with the customers at all. Hank continues his investigation, finding out that the gas mask was stolen from Walter's school. He checks the chemistry inventory and finds that a lot of stuff is missing. He ends up arresting the janitor because he had keys and a record of drug use. They don't find the equipment though, so they know it wasn't him who stole it.

Walter started chemo in this episode. His hair started to fall out so he just shaved it, and he's throwing up a lot.

Walter is pissed off because Jesse isn't making enough money from the meth, and decides they need to sell it in bulk. Unfortunately the local distributor is dead, courtesy of Walter, so they have to go to the new guy, Tuco.

Jesse goes alone and demands money up front, which pisses Tuco off. Jesse ends up in hospital and Tuco keeps the meth. So Walter goes to visit Tuco, taking some more meth. He demands $50'000, partly for the stolen meth and partly for beating Jesse. Tuco's pretty amused at Walter's bizarre plan of walking in to his "office" with some more meth and demanding money with no way to enfore the threat.

"You got one part of that wrong". Walter picks up one of the crystals and throws it on the ground, where it promptly explodes and blows the whole room. Holding the whole bag now, Walt demands the money and he fucking gets it. He also makes a deal with Tuco to sell him 2 pounds of crystal meth each week, and then walks out with the money.

He's so pumped up and pleased with himself that he has to have a little yell in his car.

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That was great. So much for being the silent partner.