Legality vs. Morality

In episode 7 season 1 of Breaking Bad, Walter and Jesse continue their Methamphetamine drug trade, getting involved in alternative, and more dangerous, ways to go about acquiring their ingredients.  Their involvement in their trade is pushed to ridiculous limits as each step of creating the product becomes even more of a challenge.  Not only are they getting involved with these more dangerous methods, but they are also getting involved with more dangerous people in their trades (Tuco), and they know that the police are after them.  Their dangerous and possibly imminent future is even laid in front of them at the scene closing episode 7 and opening season 2 episode 1—where Tuco kills his partner right in front of them, without thinking twice.  At this point, Walter and Jesse are faced with the reality of the industry they’ve gotten involved in.  However, as we see in season 2 episode 1, Walter’s involvement is directly tied to the well being of his family.  In the scene with Walter and Jesse in the car, Walter blatantly lays out his plan of making enough money to pay for his family’s well being for the rest of their life after he passes away from Cancer.  It is evident there that his focus and moral judgement is purely based on providing for his family, regardless of the detriment of the situation.   Therefore, this makes us, the audience, blend our views of legality and morality.

Though we are truly aware of how illegal the situation Walter and Jesse are, we sympathize with them because of their reasoning and moral "goodness" in our eyes.  In fact, there are many situations where legality is questioned in these two episodes: Walter and Jesse’s drug trade, Marie’s shoplifting problem, and Hank’s Cuban cigars.  Though Walter and Jesse’s drug trade definitely trumps both of the other situations by far in terms of their illegality, we still have the most sympathy for them, because we can empathize with their moral judgement.  When Walter posed the hypothetical question to Skyler asking her what she would do if he did something bad, but for the sake of the family, she replied with "you don't want to know what I would do".  This is the typical outsider reaction to situations like the one Walter is in that deter the laws of legality.  However, as audience, since we have been immersed in Walter's life, we understand his moral judgement and loosen our laws of morality towards him.

The use and context of episode openers

   In the opening of season one, the viewers are presented with the image of pants falling through the bright blue desert sky, Walt's confession video, and his attempted suicide. Throughout the episode, the order of events leads us to place that scene in context. By the end of the episode, we understand just what is going on. Throughout season one, this form of analepsis is used in several more episodes and is effective in creating suspense for the viewer. We can expect to see some sort of abstraction of a scene and eventually figure out some sort of context or conclusion of that scene.
   Season two opens with the same sort of abstraction introduced in season one. However, something is markedly different with this opener. First, the scene is shot in black and white and has an oddly sharp quality to it. The camera work is stark and slightly shaking. Normal items from the backyard—a hose, a slug, a wind chime—now seem eerie and out of place as they cut from one to the next. At the shot of the pool, we first hear the siren in the distance as a plastic eyeball floats past—wait, a plastic eyeball? Soon this is given context as the camera sinks under water and a neon pink teddy bear enters the frame. Aside from being the first item of color shown in the scene, it sticks out for more than one reason. As the camera rotates around it, we can see it is charred on one side (thus, the vagrant eye). This is alarming: why is this teddy bear in the pool? Why is it burnt? What relation does it have to Walt, Skyler, or the unborn baby girl? And why is a siren the only noise we can hear?
   I spent the episode excited for the conclusion of this bizarre scene (something season one had trained me to expect). However, no context whatsoever is given for this opener. While season one was effective in using to create suspense through analepsis, this scene created even more suspense than any other opener. Something about seeing the stuffed animal in a bright neon color juxtaposed with the eerie black and white calm water was especially disturbing—it should definitely not be there. This scene effectively sets the tone for the episode; Walt and Jesse cannot turn back any longer and this season seems as though it will be much darker than the previous. Indeed, the conclusion of the episode—Walt getting into Jesse's car at Tuco's gunpoint—is bound to lead nowhere good. When we will be able to place the opener into context, only time will tell.

Two Endings

The two endings of Great Expectations have common ideas at their center but veer in very different directions in terms of depiction. Both endings feature a reunion between Estella and Pip years after Drummle has (somewhat fittingly) been killed by a horse that he had treated badly, though in the original ending she remarries. Both endings imply that Estella's years of unhappiness with Drummle have wiped away Miss Havisham's teachings of disdain towards all men and given her an appreciation of what Pip had gone through. But while the original ending depicts a quick encounter between Pip and Estella in the middle of the street, the canonical ending gives their meeting more room to breathe. 

There's been discussion as to whether Dickens makes the mistake of revising his ending to be more audience-friendly (and it definitely is, as unlike the original ending there's hope that Pip and Estella might have a future together -- the final words of the novel, "I saw no shadow of another parting from her," leave this ambiguous). I don't know if Dickens betrays the novel by veering away from the ending that would seem truer to real life, but I think the value of the revised ending is that Estella gets her say, in a way she never really had previously. Throughout the novel she's a character who is acted upon: she is corrupted by Miss Havisham's teachings; she is the object of Pip's affections. Even in the original ending it's up to Pip to interpret their encounter as proof that she has softened towards him. But in this ending she gets to tell Pip that her feelings have changed, and that makes all the difference in terms of allowing her to be a character with an inner life and agency. What the ending leaves me with isn't the idea that Pip and Estella might get married (or, conversely, that they might not see each other again) but that after this meeting they're finally on equal footing and there's nothing in the way of them truly understanding each other.

A Little Tweak of Chemistry

What I was most struck by in the 5th and 6th episodes was the relationship between Walt and Jesse. In Gray Matter were Walt is being thrust back into a world he could have had, Jesse is alternatively looking for what seems to be a chance to go straight. Throughout the episode the both of them demonstrate aspects of the others personality  While Walt's I would argue becomes more apparent in the next episode, Jesse's attention to detail when cooking with Badger mirrors Walt's and shows just how much he has come to learn from Walt.  I also found Jesse dissatisfaction with the product and it's imperfections to poignant as it strengthens the scenes from earlier where Jesse is understandably upset with is life and the options he has for employment simply because he lacks the  schooling to do so.  

In Crazy Handful of Nothin it's Walt's action's that exhibit elements of Jesse.The episode starts with him telling Jesse how their partnership is going to continue with Walt doing the cooking and Jesse just distributing only to end with Walt being the main reason they find a large quantity buyer and the reason they get money.  I feel like the fact that the two of them are seemingly unconsciously picking up nuances from each other is telling of a burgeoning friendship between the two while also setting the stage for a future power shift within their partnership/friendship.

Fulminated Mercury

Reactions, changes, and explosions are the catalysts that drive plot and action in S1:Ep6 of Breaking Bad.  In the opening of the episode, we see Walt talking to Jesse about their new operation and his desire to be the “silent partner” who doesn’t interact with the customers.  In the next few seconds we come to realize that Walt will not be the silent partner for long.  As a voiceover of Walt saying “No more violence, no more bloodshed” plays, we hear sirens and see a transformed Walter White walking away from what we can only assume to be a crime scene.  As the Breaking Bad opening credit plays, the open form of this scene leaves us asking questions.  What did Walt do?  Where is he?  What’s in the bag?  When does he go bald?

Then, after a brief look into Walt’s cancer treatment, the concept of explosions is revisited while Walt is teaching his chemistry class about chemical reactions.  Walt explains to his students that chemical reactions must require a change in matter and energy.  Re-watching this episode several months after the first time I viewed it, I found this lecture to be very interesting in terms of change not only throughout Season 1 but in subsequent seasons as well.  In my favorite part of the lecture, Walt elaborated on the effects of the speed of change on how violent a reaction is.  He explains that the faster things change, the more violent an explosion is, and “If a change happens too quickly, otherwise harmless substances can interact in a way that generates enormous bursts of energy.”  He then provides an example of one of these otherwise harmless substances, fulminated Mercury, and lucky for us, this isn’t the last we hear of this substance in Episode 6. 

In the rest of the episode we see Walt’s perceived character change rapidly from a quiet, reserved Mr. White to a more powerful, fear-inducing Heisenberg.  The speed of his character change culminates in a huge burst of energy at Tuco’s hideout, when we see fulminated Mercury in action.  With this simple substance, Walt uses his knowledge to place him in a position of power and induce fear in all of those around him, a position quite different from how we’d seen him in earlier scenes.  The reveal of the dominant Heisenberg in this episode leaves the audience wondering how this change will affect plotlines and the development of other characters in future episodes.

Time Jumps Revealing Character Insights

I don’t think it’s a very big stretch to say that Breaking Bad is one of the best TV shows currently on the air. Critics and audiences love it, two groups which have been known to disagree to disastrous results – The Black Donnelly’s anybody? Breaking Bad manages to be technically excellent without giving up an inch of audience engagement to what some might see as overly ‘artsy’ elements. But what is it exactly that keeps people coming back every week? What makes us all so willing to plug back in to a show that we’ve watched at least once before?

I think that the wild and free sort of timeline style is definitely a huge contributing factor to the love of the show. The writers obviously rely heavily on the element of suspense to drive the plot forward but take it in an interesting direction by making the question not “where are we going next” but rather “when are we going next.” After that first shift in the pilot episode, it’s clear that this show isn’t going to be just a run of the mill ‘good guy falls in with a bad crowd and hijinks ensue’ sort of plot. When the first episode ends, we see the characters one way. When the second begins, we see them a hop, skip, and a jump away from where we last left off in the slice of ending we are given, just one tasty bit of where their development is going, and then we’re put back where we left off. From there we can see the things that cause them to develop in to the person we saw at the 'end' of the episode.

It’s rough and it’s a bit dirty sometimes, but the jumping around really makes the show work. The grittiness is what the viewers want not because it’s new and spectacular, but because it’s real. We see real character progression in each episode and people can relate to that, can find a piece of themselves in how the characters on screen react to situations, even if they themselves would never end up selling drugs to provide for their family (or maybe they would, who knows, this is a no judgement blog).