Man I've been seeing a LOT of crossover action on these shows I watch.
The dude on Justified the other night who wanted to get paid and was pissed that he wouldn't get money out of land, was on Breaking Bad as the NA Group Sponsor.
Then Gale, from Breaking Bad was on the 1st hour of the finale of Law & Order, and Skylar from Breaking Bad was on the 2nd hour of the finale of Law & Order.
ha ha ha...I'm like, damn, these people are EVERYWHERE!
Plus it had dude from The Wire in the finale of L&O as well.
Man I've been seeing a LOT of crossover action on these shows I watch.
The dude on Justified the other night who wanted to get paid and was pissed that he wouldn't get money out of land, was on Breaking Bad as the NA Group Sponsor.
Yup, that's Jere Burns. But he was also in the season premiere, this was the 2nd or third time Jere has shown up. But over the years I have probably seen him in 50 tv shows, he's always getting lots of work. I remember he even used to be on a sitcom in the 90's that if I remember right was canceled early on, so you should look into that one.
This show is the only one with the balls to center an hour-long episode around
[Show spoiler]trying to catch a fly
and really, I was beginning to get worried that not much would happen until Jesse
[Show spoiler]slipped Walt those sleeping pills
which led to a fantastic a gripping final ten minutes.
I also love how
[Show spoiler]the pre-show review required you to have seen Season 2
in order to understand it. What other show would do that? Whenever it happens I always do a double-take and second-guess whether AMC is playing the right episode or not!
This show is the only one with the balls to center an hour-long episode around
[Show spoiler]trying to catch a fly
and really, I was beginning to get worried that not much would happen until Jesse
[Show spoiler]slipped Walt those sleeping pills
which led to a fantastic a gripping final ten minutes.
I also love how
[Show spoiler]the pre-show review required you to have seen Season 2
in order to understand it. What other show would do that? Whenever it happens I always do a double-take and second-guess whether AMC is playing the right episode or not!
You giving them too much credit. Pretty meh episode considering the only good part of us it was the last 15 minutes or so. The first 45 were painful.
I still can't believe you guys calling this the weakest episode of the series, I loved last night's episode. Rian Johnson who directed the fantastic Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Brick is responsible for the style of last night's episode and it was incredibly shot. It's been one of my favorites this season, to understand why it was shot this way though Sepinwall can break it down for you people that might help you understand. I still think it was an incredible episode and some very tense moments especially with Walt at the bottom of the ladder. I thought he was going to confess to Jesse about Jane, he almost did too....When Walt fell off the railing my jaw dropped I thought he'd just crushed his chest in. This is one of the very few shows that allows it's actors to have very long monologues, nearly every show on network is quick little exchanges with only a few sentences, but especially this season, Aaron Paul has been given scene after scene of nothing but pages of monologue with only Jesse speaking for several minutes at at time, and you just remember what a great actor he truly is.
Quote:
'Fly': The best bottle show ever?
A review of tonight's riveting episode of "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I find out when they changed the spelling to "opossum"...
"No end in sight." -Walt
I am going to talk to you for a few paragraphs about how the sausage gets made in television. If you'd rather not think too much about production logistics and budgets and whatnot and just focus on why "Fly" was such an unusual, incredible hour for this series, just skim until I start talking about "The Sopranos."
But I want to start off with sausage-making because it was clear to me that "Fly" was what's known in the industry as "a bottle show" - that is, an episode of the series shot almost entirely on existing sets, with a minimum of guest stars. The idea is to keep the budget as small as possible, so that you can then spend whatever money you saved on another episode down the road. (Or, in some cases, so you can compensate for a previous episode that cost more than anticipated.)
Last year, "Breaking Bad" tried to do a bottle show with "4 Days Out," the episode with Jesse and Walt trapped in the desert after the RV's battery runs down. The idea was that it would only feature Cranston and Paul and take place largely on the standing RV set and therefore be dirt-cheap. Instead, it wound up being one of that season's most expensive episodes, as more and more of the action began creeping outside of the camper and into the desert itself, which meant lots of location filming, often at irregular hours (a lot of that episode, you may recall, took place around dawn and dusk to get a particularly beautiful light quality), and that costs man-hours, it costs crew overtime, and it costs simply to transport all the men and materials back and forth from the studio to the desert.
Still, the basic idea of that episode went to the core of "Breaking Bad" - that of teacher and pupil stuck together, getting on each other's nerves, and revisting all the damage they've done to themselves, to each other, and to the world at large since they teamed up. So it wasn't surprising that the show would try to revisit the basic conceit - nor that Vince Gilligan and company (here with Sam Catlin and Moira Walley-Beckett on script, and Rian Johnson directing) would find a way to do a bottle show as a bottle show. Having already spent the money to build the huge Walt-cave set, they were able to dwell inside it for 95% of an episode, with no castmembers other than the two leads (which is valuable, since most TV shows these days can only sign a few regulars to appear in every episode), and no other speaking parts.
And it was through that attempt at minimalism and frugality that we got the "Breaking Bad" equivalent of the "Pine Barrens" episode of "The Sopranos." Only this one was, heresy though it may be, better.
Both "Pine Barrens" and "Fly" were black comedies about crooks out of their element (Paulie and Christopher lost in the woods, Walt and Jesse trying to play exterminator), but much as I love "Pine Barrens," it stayed in that minor key. "Fly" started out as slapstick; one critic on Twitter compared it, not inaccurately, to Wile E. Coyote trying to catch the Road Runner, and certainly Walt's fall off the railing was as broad a moment as this show has had. But as Jesse realized the only way to control Walt's obsession with the fly was to play along, it turned into something much darker, and deeper, and tenser, until we got to that riveting scene where Jesse is standing atop the rickety ladder, with his only support coming from a Walt who's barely conscious from sleeping pills, and Walt is talking about Jane, and we wonder...
...will this be the moment Walt finally fesses up about what he did?
We've seen Walt make damaging admissions under the influence of anesthesia before, and I think we all assume that the series can't end without that ugly truth coming out. But what would Jesse do in this moment when there are no witnesses and Walt would be defenseless to help himself? Or would the shock of the news be so great that Jesse would lose his balance and break his neck, once again sparing Walt of the consequences of his actions?
What an incredible moment, and what an incredible scene leading up to it, with Jesse telling the story of his aunt's cancer(*), and that story (and the influence of the sleeping pills) in turn inspiring Walt to be reflective and to admit that he's lived too long and hurt too many people. A fatal cancer diagnosis allowed him to justify becoming a meth-lord. But instead of his dream of a quick payday that wouldn't harm anyone except the users, it's become a long blood bath, and one that's driven away his wife and will drive away his surrogate son if Jesse ever finds out the truth of what happened to Jane. Had Walt found a way to die that night before he left the house, things might have gone very differently. Jane wouldn't have died - at least not that night, though Jesse fairly points out that the money from Gus probably would have led to an overdose within weeks - Donald in turn wouldn't have caused the plane crash and Walt wouldn't have been there for his surgery, and to make the damning second cell phone admission to his wife.
(*) Aaron Paul has been given a lot of opportunities to monologue this year, and there's a reason for that: he's great at it. Bryan Cranston's best moments tend to come when Walt is silently reacting to something he's just done, or that's been done to him, but Paul's gifts seem at their greatest when the show just steps back and lets the man talk. Doesn't matter what the subject is - high school wood shop, a trapped opossum, his plan for revenge on Hank - it is always sensational.
Now where is he? He's making more money than his family will be able to spend (even if he's still getting royally hosed by Gus), but he works for a man so smart and ruthless that Walt's death could come at any time without warning. His wife has once again made it clear that she hates and fears him. And every day, he goes to work with a reminder of all the deaths he helped cause because he was so afraid Jane would tell Skyler a truth that she found out anyway.
He is empty and broken, and all he has left is this fancy underground lair, and even that's been contaminated - not just by the fly (who becomes the latest tiny thing to draw Walt's obsessive-compulsiveness, ala the band-aid in the swimming pool or the alleged rot under the house or the uneven table leg at the hospital), but by his knowledge of all the danger that comes with the joint.
Jesse ultimately kills the fly, Walt gets some sleep, and the batch gets made, but the contaminant never goes away, as we see when yet another fly turns up on the smoke detector in Walt's sterile fake apartment.
What's left for this sorry pair? Jesse is still trapped back in time in his relationship with Jane, dwelling on any little memento of her (first the voicemail, and here a cigarette butt with her lipstick stain on it), self-destructively skimming meth from the batch and getting indignant when Walt gently warns him about it. And Walt has nothing but his cash and his lab and his paranoia, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if, sometime before this season ends, he blurts out the truth about Jane without need of pharmaceuticals.
And then Jesse is going to wish he hit him a hell of a lot harder with that ridiculous homemade fly swatter.
Simple episode. Cheap episode. Brilliant episode. A series high point. I love the explosions and the shoot-outs and the mind games, but all this show needs to achieve greatness are these two horribly flawed characters, and the two tremendous actors playing them.
I haven't watched last night's episode yet because I still have to watch the beginning of the season. But I read tons of people, not just on here saying that the episode was weak and not good...?
I haven't watched last night's episode yet because I still have to watch the beginning of the season. But I read tons of people, not just on here saying that the episode was weak and not good...?
For some reason nobody seemed to get what last night's episode was about, they all thought it was weak because it focused entirely on Walt and Jesse who are easily the most talented people on the show. Yes I also love Dean Norris, but next weeks episode will be right back to focus on him in a real big way, but I guess Sepinwall and I are the only people who got the episode. It had plenty of fantastic moments, and yet everybody is complaining. I just don't understand some people.
For some reason nobody seemed to get what last night's episode was about, they all thought it was weak because it focused entirely on Walt and Jesse who are easily the most talented people on the show. Yes I also love Dean Norris, but next weeks episode will be right back to focus on him in a real big way, but I guess Sepinwall and I are the only people who got the episode. It had plenty of fantastic moments, and yet everybody is complaining. I just don't understand some people.
As I was watching the episode, I remembered why so many people can't get this show. Last night's episode was the epitomie of what an average-viewer would call "slow", and I could envision almost everyone I know becoming extremely bored. I enjoyed the episode a lot myself, but then again I like television and movies that give you a lot to "chew on" even as you're watching it. It seems though, that by and large, people want mindless escapism in their TV and cinema, and not thought-provoking material.
This is really the best show I've ever watched.
And also, as much as I'd like to see Hugh Laurie FINALLY get an Emmy for House, M.D. (which he should have gotten many seasons ago), I think last night's episode proves that Cranston once again deserves the Emmy--as does Aaron Paul, considering he's done his best work on the show this season.
As I was watching the episode, I remembered why so many people can't get this show. Last night's episode was the epitomie of what an average-viewer would call "slow", and I could envision almost everyone I know becoming extremely bored. I enjoyed the episode a lot myself, but then again I like television and movies that give you a lot to "chew on" even as you're watching it. It seems though, that by and large, people want mindless escapism in their TV and cinema, and not thought-provoking material.
This is really the best show I've ever watched.
And also, as much as I'd like to see Hugh Laurie FINALLY get an Emmy for House, M.D. (which he should have gotten many seasons ago), I think last night's episode proves that Cranston once again deserves the Emmy--as does Aaron Paul, considering he's done his best work on the show this season.
Americans have become too obsessed with reality tv and have backed away from brilliant tv shows in general. I love shows and movies that can make you think, I don't need constant action infact that tends to draw the tension away for the most part. Aaron Paul deserves that Emmy more than anybody else on tv after the intense monologues he's given this season. Cranston can just make a look and you get what he's doing, but Paul can keep you tuned in just blown away by his dialogues.
Breaking Bad is definitely sitting in my top three shows of all-time, and each week I am more impressed/shocked/blown away than the week before. I don't care how many awards they give Mad Men, I just don't like it, Breaking Bad is the clear winner.
Americans have become too obsessed with reality tv and have backed away from brilliant tv shows in general. I love shows and movies that can make you think, I don't need constant action infact that tends to draw the tension away for the most part. Aaron Paul deserves that Emmy more than anybody else on tv after the intense monologues he's given this season. Cranston can just make a look and you get what he's doing, but Paul can keep you tuned in just blown away by his dialogues.
Breaking Bad is definitely sitting in my top three shows of all-time, and each week I am more impressed/shocked/blown away than the week before. I don't care how many awards they give Mad Men, I just don't like it, Breaking Bad is the clear winner.
I enjoy the show, and I enjoyed last night's episode. Just saying there was very little going on, and I don't know that they needed to spend an entire episode on that situation. not that I desperately needed to see Hank's stupid ass that shoulda been dead at least three times so far, but more to the point I just thought they could gone into other aspects. I could give a rats ass if Walt's losing his mind focusing on a fly or not. As Jesse said, it's not that big a deal.
They have health insurance, but Marie wants to go "out of network" to make sure Hank is rehabilitated by the best therapists in the area.
Well we know that know, but if you noticed that comment I made was from before the episode even aired where they discussed that topic. I was commenting on another poster saying they weren't covered.
Americans have become too obsessed with reality tv and have backed away from brilliant tv shows in general. I love shows and movies that can make you think, I don't need constant action infact that tends to draw the tension away for the most part. Aaron Paul deserves that Emmy more than anybody else on tv after the intense monologues he's given this season. Cranston can just make a look and you get what he's doing, but Paul can keep you tuned in just blown away by his dialogues.
Breaking Bad is definitely sitting in my top three shows of all-time, and each week I am more impressed/shocked/blown away than the week before. I don't care how many awards they give Mad Men, I just don't like it, Breaking Bad is the clear winner.
I think the reason why I love Breaking Bad so much is because you actually have to think. I can't stand shows like CSI because when they speak, it's like they're talking to someone with a mental problem.
Since I have no idea what happened I can't give my own opinion but an amazing show having a somewhat slow episode or whatever is ok. I'm sure they'll make up for it next week.
Did Aaron Paul win at all for last season? The last three episodes were f--kin amazing
Did Aaron Paul win at all for last season? The last three episodes were f--kin amazing
He didn't win but he was nominated in the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series category, but Michael Emerson won for his role as Ben Linus on Lost.
Fly was another stellar acting showcase for Cranston and Paul. And it worked really well for being a "bottle show". These can only work when you have great actors to work with.
The last episode I enjoyed and I kinda was thinking the fly represented Jesse, constantly buzzing in Walt's ear. No matter how many times he tries to swat him he just can't do it.
It's almost as if there's a rule to it, the better the episode, the louder the complaining. I don't have a problem with different opinions, but when I see some people crapping all over this episode without having a single good reason, other than claiming "nothing happened", it makes me wonder why they stuck with the show this long. There have been things blowing up, body parts being cut off, kick-ass shootouts in Breaking Bad, but it always was a character driven show uniquely combined with this epic crime saga.
Now we got an ep that was all characters, giving us some great dialogue and insight, and it wasn't any less compelling this way.
But that's just.. you know, my opinion.
Tim Goodman's (really great) review:
Quote:
Few series are in such command of all the ingredients that go into greatness as "Breaking Bad," and in "Fly" the series managed to tap into some of the brilliant Season 1 tenseness and the hitting-on-all-cylinders minutia of Season 2 to complete an episode as powerfully minimalist as any the series as ever produced. With "Fly," Season 3 now has its polar opposite poster episodes for how to portray what you're capable of. In "One Minute," creator Vince Gilligan and his superb writing staff were able to deliver a purple bruise of an episode that culminated in a wild, bloody parking lot shoot out with The Cousins and Hank. In "Fly," Gilligan and company crafted what was essentially Walt's finite intellectual implosion, a kind of minor stroke that stopped his blinders-on rationality right in its tracks.
Throughout its run "Breaking Bad" has been able to shift gears as radically and deftly as "The Sopranos," a series that despite all of its critical acclaim is barely credited with that particular kind of genius (probably because some of those shifts so utterly upset a certain subset of the fan base who thought the show was about the mob when it was actually about Tony's inner demons as played out through his immediate family, not the Family). In any case, "Fly" is reminiscent of any number of "Breaking Bad" episodes where Gilligan slows the action down (exponentially, in some cases) and focuses on small, important moments. In this episode, an examination of Walt's interior worries, the execution was brilliant. Obviously it was a visual thing of beauty, from the multiple POV camera work to the rush of color and wonderful use of sound; the intersection of humor with pathos -- these elements becoming so standardized in their consistency that it's almost unnecessary to point them out. But no, the work that really stood out in "Fly" was the writing and the pacing.
By the time Walt first encounters the fly - he's distracted by the total amount of the meth output being off (thanks to Jesse's skimming) -- he's already at a tipping point in his brain. (How the last minute comes directly back to Jesse's skimming is so snap perfect after what proceeds it that all you can do is applaud; not forgetting the strands is fine writing.) Anyway, the point is that it's not the fly. It's Walt's brain. He can't sleep. He comes to the superlab in a bother. It's his subconscious, knocking loudly. The fly at first looks to be a metaphor before we come to view it as real, once Jesse gets in on the hunt. And though it's not a literal metaphor for Walt's cancer or his nagging guilt about how his best laid plans have come undone, it's still a fly in the ointment of sorts, "a contaminant" that sets Walt off on his interior world of wonder about how everything he wanted for his family is now tainted. You can't kill the fly - you can't uncontaminate the imperfection that so nags at Walt, a die-hard perfectionist, from inside.
The burden of a great television series is that there are no shortcuts. In the first season of "The Wire," McNulty and crew didn't just get the wire. They had to jump through legal hoops - all the proof you need to clone a pager, for example. Prezbo didn't just magically come up with how to break the pager codes. He worked at it. And explaining them wasn't easy. But in those - and many other instances - "The Wire" did just that: explain. In detail. No corner cut. Boring? Sure, if you're easily bored or watching the wrong show. Any other show - "Law & Order" or similar middling crap - just has that stuff materialize. Great shows don't. And just as the initial episodes of Season 3 of "Breaking Bad" dealt with so much emotional fall out (and plenty of people thought the early episodes were too slow), so too does Walt's intellectual and moral fallibility need to be scrutinized. The guy who's capable of essentially taking back his home and family by force - even holding his baby while the cops talk with Skyler about her complaint against him -- can't just suddenly be an ass. He can't flip that switch and sustain it. He's not wired that way. And in "Fly," we saw a crack begin.
Hit the link for more:
I think we needed to see this episode because Walt has always been a man aware of consequence. His turn toward immorality (an audacious concept I've written about many times and talked in depth about with Gilligan on a podcast.) must have ramifications - at least mentally. And we've seen bits of it. But in "Fly," the writers let it seep out. Where there's smoke, there's fire, right? And Walt stares up at the blinking smoke detector, unable to sleep, his mind grinding on. Something's wrong. At work, down in the superlab, his emotionless life of being a cog in the machine (they didn't show those images of people punching a clock for nothing, you know), begins to show. Walt started this entire idea of his - making meth - to provide for his family. And where is he now? Soaking in the mundanity of mass produced meth. "Vestiges," Walt says, thinking not about leftover meth gunk but about what's imprinted on the brain of a "normal" man who breaks bad. "Mr. White? Are you OK?" No, he's not, Jesse. "There's been a contamination." Indeed there has. Walt realizes, as a perfectionist, that what he planned to do has gone wrong. This meltdown of his leads to him opening up his psyche. There has to be perfection, he tells Jesse. You have to prevent the contaminant. "Failing that, we're dead. There is no room for error."
This is where the episode took a superb little turn. Jesse had been the comic foil to Walt's sleep and guilt-induced weirdness, which is now being accelerated by the fact Jesse puts sleeping pills in Walt's coffee. But Jesse begins to think that maybe Walt is worrying about death (or as Jesse sees it, perhaps the cancer has spread to Walt's brain). Jesse's heartfelt story about his aunt becoming "obsessive and mad" - out of character for her - led to her cancer discovery. But Walt assures Jesse he's been to the oncologist (just last week in fact) and the cancer is in remission. His next words are that there's "no end in sight" and Jesse takes that to be Walt's relative cancer-free prognosis on staying alive. But what Walt really means is that by living, he's outgrown the usefulness of his original plan. Now he's punching a clock, probably for longer than he wishes, and that his "perfect moment" to get out has passed. "None of this makes any sense" if he doesn't leave enough for Skyler and the family, Walt says. But the circumstances of life didn't work out - there was no perfection. Now there's no end in sight to a plan that makes no sense. That's enough to bring down anyone, but certainly the sleep-guilt-and-drug-induced Walt. I like how Jesse's dumping of the pills into Walt's coffee accelerates and expands Walt's descent, to the point he begins talking about Jane (this not long after Jesse sees her lipstick print on a cigarette in his car ashtray) and Jane's father. Right when you're thinking this fugue state interior meltdown is just a way to reveal the crushing effect on Walt, Jesse has tipped the scales further and we now have more plot movement. Walt's woozy apology about Jane falls just short of revealing that Walt was responsible - a fantastically tense combination in that scene of not wanting Walt to let it slip and not wanting Jesse to slip off the ladder. Unbelievably great work there.
Now what? With Walt finally zonked out and Jesse producing the cook, things are seemingly back to normal. In the waning moments of "Fly," Walt hints that he knows Jesse skimmed the meth and that he can't protect him if things go sideways. It may have seemed that not much happened in "Fly," but it certainly did. How Walt and Jesse move forward in the last three episodes will have ramifications that were made more resonant with this hour.
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