Breaking Bad: Slow Start to Season 3
Oct. 27th, 2024 04:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerOn Saturday this weekend I watched four episodes of Breaking Bad. Normally I don't like bingeing TV that much. ...And it wasn't just the ~4 hours of Breaking Bad I watched; I also watched 2 episodes of Lucifer, planting myself in front of the TV for almost 6 hours total. Why? Well, three reasons. 1) I was tired and still partly recovering from side effects of the shots I got on Friday. 2) I was relaxing after a week of work, because I deserve it. And 3) season 3 of Breaking Bad is off to such a slow start that I wanted to see if something would actually happen.
Across the first 4 episodes most of the main characters are spinning out of control. Walt, Skyler, Jesse, even Hank are all feeling sorry for themselves for various reasons and doing stupid things. Walt makes a pass at the principal and gets himself fired from work. Skyler seduces her boss and tells Walt, point-blank, what she's done. Walt makes a scene at the office trying to attack him. Jesse is moping about Jane's death still. Even months later he's compulsively dialing her phone over and over just to hear her voice on the greeting. (You'd think the phone company would've shut it off for non-payment at this point.) And Hank is trying to prove something to himself about how tough he is and is attacking people with no probable cause and getting his compatriot, Steve, to lie about it.
Once again the only person in this whole story who's sympathetic, or at least isn't a criminal and isn't doing stupid self-sabotage stuff, is Walt Jr., a 15 year old boy. Oh, and Holly, the infant. She's not doing anything bad. She's not even a fussy baby. Go, kids!
Across these first 4 episodes of S3 it's like there's enough action here for 1 really good episode or maybe 2 perfectly decent ones. But since it's stretched out across 4 hours.... Well, it's a good thing I'm already invested in this show, because if this were the beginning, I'd skip the rest.
Across the first 4 episodes most of the main characters are spinning out of control. Walt, Skyler, Jesse, even Hank are all feeling sorry for themselves for various reasons and doing stupid things. Walt makes a pass at the principal and gets himself fired from work. Skyler seduces her boss and tells Walt, point-blank, what she's done. Walt makes a scene at the office trying to attack him. Jesse is moping about Jane's death still. Even months later he's compulsively dialing her phone over and over just to hear her voice on the greeting. (You'd think the phone company would've shut it off for non-payment at this point.) And Hank is trying to prove something to himself about how tough he is and is attacking people with no probable cause and getting his compatriot, Steve, to lie about it.
Once again the only person in this whole story who's sympathetic, or at least isn't a criminal and isn't doing stupid self-sabotage stuff, is Walt Jr., a 15 year old boy. Oh, and Holly, the infant. She's not doing anything bad. She's not even a fussy baby. Go, kids!
Across these first 4 episodes of S3 it's like there's enough action here for 1 really good episode or maybe 2 perfectly decent ones. But since it's stretched out across 4 hours.... Well, it's a good thing I'm already invested in this show, because if this were the beginning, I'd skip the rest.
