Where is Breaking Bad headed? Except for the new introduction, ‘Behold the lamb of Gus, your cocky, egotistic Walter’, I can’t seem to clutch at any straw.
What’s going on? What about all the suspense that leads to nothing and nowhere? We started with Hank dropping his Heisenberg investigation only to pick it right back up. We started with Walt risking his life through some reckless speeding only to park at Los Pollos Hermanos, sit and wait for Gus?
If Breaking Bad achieved anything in this Shotgun episode, it will be shortchanging its fans. This time around, a story weaned from the crude Biblical analogy – Gus sends Mike (the devil) and his cronies (yeah) to tempt Jesse – is a complete lack of story. And lol, did Jesse pass the test with flying colors?
Throughout the pickups with Mike, it was only at the last pickup when a man approached Jesse’s car with a shotgun. Even then, immortal Jesse quickly botched a hit-and-run, slamming the ‘raiders’ car, and killing one as a result. He took off leaving Mike behind, only to return later, unharmed, unscathed with all the cash safe. Alas, does he earn a right to enter the kingdom of Heaven? ‘Light a smoke, will ya?’
If Breaking Bad is going to live up to the hype, it had better start producing some hard believable storylines and fast. Because, the way this is going, the characters are dissipating down to boring. A warrant for some much needed infusion of interesting characters must be served. No offense. Whatever happened to finding people like The Twins, Tucco and Gale?
Nonetheless, Breaking Bad’s Gus has finally cemented his cunning and intelligent reputation as the master tactician in this game. Has he broken the Jesse-Walt bond? Perhaps, it’s an alliance that needed breaking if Gus had any chance of alienating Walt. Divide and conquer. It was classy, not because the plan was impeccable, but because its execution was as beautiful as it was clandestine. This man, Gus, is good. Period!
As a result, even though Jesse is back to working at the lab, he has a new second job – his hope – his only stake in the business that would probably spare him, the wrath of Gus. So where does this leave Walt?
Walt, like a proud Persian emissary ‘sheepishly stands at the edge of a 100-km-deep well and dares King Leonidas Hank’, “maybe your Heisenberg is still out there”? Will Walt ever learn? The character is not growing and that is frustrating to me, to say the least.
Together with the idea that Skyler and Walt could rekindle the flame under the circumstances of an unromantic voice message, Breaking Bad’s Shotgun episode is a ditch in the road for a TV show that seems to have rivaled the likes of The Wire in three solid seasons.
My opinion now? I think the storylines leading up to some of the scenarios are rather implausible! Overall, this new style of Breaking Bad, to manufacture suspense and repeat it relentlessly, is racking up every nerve in me. They better wake up!
