El Camino (A Breaking Bad Movie)
Jan. 20th, 2025 09:15 pmLast night I watched El Camino, the movie that's a postscript to the Breaking Bad TV series. I'm not sure what I expected of it but it... wasn't what I expected. I mean, I knew it's a follow-on to the TV series. I knew it focused on Jesse Pinkman's character as he tries to recover from the terrible things that happened to him in the last two episodes the series. I guess I expected it'd cover a longer span of time than basically two days. In that sense the movie was like two bonus episodes of Breaking Bad.
The movie gets its name from the model of a vehicle Todd Alquist owned that Jesse stole in the penultimate scene of Breaking Bad. The El Camino was produced by Chevy from the 1960s through the mid 1980s and is recognizable to anyone who lived in the US in that era because it was unique as a successful hybrid pickup truck/car.
Jesse parts with the movie's namesake car within the first few scenes. He drives it to Badger and Skinny Pete's house late at night. They take him in and hide the car. The next morning Jesse calls Old Joe, the guy who owns a junkyard and enjoys giving the middle finger to police, to dispose of it. But Old Joe first checks the car with a radio transponder and finds that its LoJack system has just been activated. He nopes out there quickly, warning the men that the cops are probably only minutes away. Skinny Pete quickly forms a plan to swap cars. Jesse narrowly escapes the cops arriving en masse.
I knew that Badger and Skinny Pete would be in the movie; the trailer that ran right after Breaking Bad showed them. I find them oddly lovable minor characters. They share a scene at the house trash-talking each other's video game driving skills that's downright hilarious. But just like the namesake El Camino disappears from the movie after the initial scenes at their house, so do Badger and Skinny Pete. The rest of the movie is Jesse trying to get out of Albuquerque, getting money and settling an old score on the way. In that sense it's kind of like what the final episode of Breaking Bad was for Walt, except instead of returning to Albuquerque, Jesse's trying to leave.
The movie includes a number of flashbacks to when Jesse was held captive by the Alquist gang. These show Todd Alquist, who was Jesse's primary jailer and the guy who was learning to manufacture meth from him, as a real monster. Forget his occasional I'm-a-polite-young-man-who's-socially-inept act; even though he is socially inept, that politeness is a sociopath's trick to disarm people.
In one of the flashbacks Todd shows Jesse he killed his housekeeper because she found his hidden money. She didn't steal the money; she merely saw it. He was nonchalant about killing her. He even left her dead body on his kitchen floor for days.
The flashbacks show that Todd broke Jesse's spirit, getting him into a Stockholm Syndrome type situation. Jesse had an opportunity to kill Todd— Jesse had a gun in his hand, and there were no witnesses within miles— but Todd sweet-talked him into surrendering with the promise of getting pizza and a beer together before returning him to his underground cage. Of course, by the final episode of Breaking Bad, Jesse was was ready to kill grievously injured Todd with his bare hands.
Jesse goes through some more stuff before getting out of Albuquerque. He needs money to pay Ed Galbraith, "the disappearer", so he goes hunting for Todd's hidden stash. He finds the money but gets crossed up with thieves who are also after Todd's stash. The thieves trigger another flashback. Jesse realizes he has a personal score to settle with them. Jesse says goodbye to his parents in a melancholy scene that shows they no longer care about him as a son, only as a dangerous fugitive who's best in police custody asap. And likewise he uses them only as a means to help his escape, misdirecting them as he knows they'll immediately tell police whatever he tells them.
In the end Jesse gets the money he needs to pay off Ed. Ed smuggles him off to Alaska. It's a place where, in a flashback at the start of the movie, Mike Ehrmantraut suggested Jesse go to start a new life. Ed echos Mike's words when he drops Jesse off in Alaska in the final scene, telling him he has an opportunity few people get to start fresh and become whatever new person he'd like to become.
The movie gets its name from the model of a vehicle Todd Alquist owned that Jesse stole in the penultimate scene of Breaking Bad. The El Camino was produced by Chevy from the 1960s through the mid 1980s and is recognizable to anyone who lived in the US in that era because it was unique as a successful hybrid pickup truck/car.
Jesse parts with the movie's namesake car within the first few scenes. He drives it to Badger and Skinny Pete's house late at night. They take him in and hide the car. The next morning Jesse calls Old Joe, the guy who owns a junkyard and enjoys giving the middle finger to police, to dispose of it. But Old Joe first checks the car with a radio transponder and finds that its LoJack system has just been activated. He nopes out there quickly, warning the men that the cops are probably only minutes away. Skinny Pete quickly forms a plan to swap cars. Jesse narrowly escapes the cops arriving en masse.
I knew that Badger and Skinny Pete would be in the movie; the trailer that ran right after Breaking Bad showed them. I find them oddly lovable minor characters. They share a scene at the house trash-talking each other's video game driving skills that's downright hilarious. But just like the namesake El Camino disappears from the movie after the initial scenes at their house, so do Badger and Skinny Pete. The rest of the movie is Jesse trying to get out of Albuquerque, getting money and settling an old score on the way. In that sense it's kind of like what the final episode of Breaking Bad was for Walt, except instead of returning to Albuquerque, Jesse's trying to leave.
The movie includes a number of flashbacks to when Jesse was held captive by the Alquist gang. These show Todd Alquist, who was Jesse's primary jailer and the guy who was learning to manufacture meth from him, as a real monster. Forget his occasional I'm-a-polite-young-man-who's-socially-inept act; even though he is socially inept, that politeness is a sociopath's trick to disarm people.
In one of the flashbacks Todd shows Jesse he killed his housekeeper because she found his hidden money. She didn't steal the money; she merely saw it. He was nonchalant about killing her. He even left her dead body on his kitchen floor for days.
The flashbacks show that Todd broke Jesse's spirit, getting him into a Stockholm Syndrome type situation. Jesse had an opportunity to kill Todd— Jesse had a gun in his hand, and there were no witnesses within miles— but Todd sweet-talked him into surrendering with the promise of getting pizza and a beer together before returning him to his underground cage. Of course, by the final episode of Breaking Bad, Jesse was was ready to kill grievously injured Todd with his bare hands.
Jesse goes through some more stuff before getting out of Albuquerque. He needs money to pay Ed Galbraith, "the disappearer", so he goes hunting for Todd's hidden stash. He finds the money but gets crossed up with thieves who are also after Todd's stash. The thieves trigger another flashback. Jesse realizes he has a personal score to settle with them. Jesse says goodbye to his parents in a melancholy scene that shows they no longer care about him as a son, only as a dangerous fugitive who's best in police custody asap. And likewise he uses them only as a means to help his escape, misdirecting them as he knows they'll immediately tell police whatever he tells them.
In the end Jesse gets the money he needs to pay off Ed. Ed smuggles him off to Alaska. It's a place where, in a flashback at the start of the movie, Mike Ehrmantraut suggested Jesse go to start a new life. Ed echos Mike's words when he drops Jesse off in Alaska in the final scene, telling him he has an opportunity few people get to start fresh and become whatever new person he'd like to become.