Gold and Glitter from TinselTown
We’ll admit it. Our household is completely addicted to ABC’s fairy tale mashup Once Upon a Time.
Season two starts September 20 and we’ll be blogging about it. Also, we have a pretty cool giveaway for complete Blu-Ray sets of the first season.
But for now, check out this teaser for the next season.
I am officially putty in Vince Gilligan’s hand.
I had finally given up on Walter White (Bryan Cranston). I had accepted the fact that I was witnessing the unraveling of a man’s humanity; the defraying of his soul. I had given up on redemption and wholeness and settled in to watch evil become evil. On some level, I had started to lose interest. The nuance and tension was dissipating as Walt became more and more of a monster. But I was also too bought into the story to really give it up.
Then he spoke the two words I’d been waiting for, hoping for, yet – after four and half seasons – had given up on hearing: “I’m out.”
“Gliding Over All,” the 8th episode of season 5, was brilliantly written. It contained the best montage clip Breaking Bad has yet to display: a month’s worth of making meth comprised into mere moments of seamless transitions. Beautifully synchronized scenes. Business as usual. “Crystal Blue Persuasion.”
At the end of it? We enter a storage unit with a huge stockpile of money. More money than anyone could spend in ten lifetimes, let alone launder in one. And with Skylar (Anna Gunn), we ask ourselves: Walt, why are you still doing this? Please tell me how much is enough?
Apparently enough came as soon as the problem solving stopped. As soon as mastery, control, and routine had begun. As soon as Jesse (Aaron Paul) isn’t around to question him. (Remember Todd’s (Jesse Plemons) response when Walt says he doesn’t want to talk about Mike’s death? “OK,” Todd says. That’s it.) Enough is as soon as Mike (Jonathan Banks) isn’t around to challenge him and as soon as Walt is able to pick up right where Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) had left off.
It’s as soon as Walt attains the smooth stability of his meth-making empire that he steps out. It was the quest, not the destination that he was after. The challenge and thrill of adventure, risk, and creative problem solving. The collaboration of working with a team. The sense of purpose and of worth that comes from living into your potential. Am I really that different? Aren’t these the same things that I want? That I live my life striving for?
All of a sudden, I’m back to rooting for Walt. I believe he’s finished making meth. He’s out and he means it. The story doesn’t make sense otherwise. Walt, as a human being, doesn’t make sense otherwise. And I don’t think we make sense if a large part of us doesn’t want to jump on board as soon as the current starts to shift towards good.
Yet, does that justify, excuse, or negate the consequences of the last year? Can Walt just sidestep the full impact and weight of his actions? Can he “dust himself off and start all over again?”
An object in motion remains in motion (and an object at rest remains at rest) until acted on by an outside force. This is the scientific definition of inertia. It’s also why Walt says he and Jesse hung on to their old, beat-up RV.
What’s kept Walt going? What force will it take to stop him? And what will that sort of collision look like when it happens?
We’ll have to wait until next summer to see how creator, Vince Gilligan, addresses these questions to conclude the Breaking Bad series. There are only eight episodes left for Hank (Dean Norris) to catch up to whatever remnants of his trail Walt has left behind. How many degrees separate Walt (Jesse, Skylar, and Saul) from Gale’s death? Fring’s death? Jane’s? From the ricin? Or the little boy on the bike? What about Mike? And Tuco?
A lot of questions remain. The tactical questions of inquiry, discovery, and punishment. But also those moral questions that once again hang in the balance: Who is to blame for what? When did the line of bad get crossed? Can repentance outweigh consequences? Should we get another chance?
It’s easy to punish what we deem as truly bad. But what if we don’t know? Or, more likely, when we aren’t totally sure? What happens and who decides then?
I’m glad Breaking Bad isn’t quite finished. I’m also nervous to see what new kinds of bad get broken as we uncover our answers to these questions. Something tells me the second half of season 5 may be more painful to watch – a different, more self-implicating, kind of pain – than what we’ve been exposed to thus far.
Who else is looking forward to the enchantment of the next season of Once Upon a Time?
I know my daughter and I are.
The show stars Jennifer Goodwyn as a Snow White cursed to forget her identity and true love. Along with the whole universe of fairy tale characters, she is doomed to live in the real world with no idea who she really is. That is until Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison) comes into town. Season two starts off September 30 on ABC.
My tween daughter and I never missed an episode of the first season. We loved the familiar stories retold in fresh, unexpected ways. Even more, we loved the rich and moral themes woven throughout.
If you missed the first season, or if you want to revisit it, now’s your chance. The fairy godmothers over at ABC are giving away four complete sets of the first season to our readers in high quality Blu-Ray.
Bippedy Boppidy Boo!
Just leave a comment below to enter to win. When you enter, we’ll also sign you up for our soon to be launched Movie Channel newsletter. If you’d rather not, just let us know. One entry per household. The contest will close and winners will be selected September 14.
Mike (Jonathan Banks) is gone. And Walt (Bryan Cranston) killed him. Breaking Bad has unraveled into a game of every man for himself. And based on the preview of next week’s episode (which is the final episode until the series concludes next summer), this looks like it means trouble for everyone.
C.S. Lewis, who calls pride the’ Great Sin’ also writes, “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man… It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone.”
Walter White has become the living, breathing embodiment of pride. As he compares his ‘product’ to the talent of the New York Yankees and the classic purity of a Coca-Cola, Walt demands that we say his name and deem him king.
As Mike breathes his last breath, Walt apologizes, not for what he’s done, but because he remembers another way out in which everyone could still have ‘won.’
Walt tells Jesse (Aaron Paul), “Jesse, what we do – being the best at something – is a very rare thing. You don’t just toss something like that away. You want to squander that potential? Your potential? Why?”
And he tells Todd, “Give your full effort and attention. Listen and apply yourself. Do that, and we might have a fighting chance.”
It’s the competition, the challenge, and the potential, that inspires him. It’s the possibility of more, of better, of the fight. Striving is the only thing keeping Walt going.
And apparently this striving for potential justifies everything.
Even if the consequence is hell. Especially if the consequence is hell. Walt tells Jesse he is not going to lie down and wait until hell arrives. And anything less than the best counts as lying down according to Walt’s calculations.
Walt’s logic is flawed though. Because it relies on the the cowardice, evil, and ignorance of others. What happens when fear, death, power, and money fail to function as lures in Walt’s scheme? When Mike decides to die in peace? When Jesse is out, with or without his money?
The illusion of power and pride produces a festering evil that has systematically destroyed Walt’s job, his relationships, his family, his moral compass, and his own humanity. Walt believes he is “pretty much going” to hell and seems perfectly content. What Walt fails to see in all his calculating, though, is that he’s already there.
Daniel Defoe, the prolific and versatile English novelist, said “Pride is the first peer and president of hell.”
I don’t know if Walt is the king Heisenberg he sees himself as, but it’s hard to deny that he reigns as president of some sort of hell.
If hell is the choice of pride, may everyone else choose to get out. To embody another reality. To live – and to rest – in peace.
With Rebecca on summer vacation with her family, Samantha Curley, the Patheos Movie intern, got the chance to interview Jeff Foxworthy about his role as host of The American Bible Challenge.
Chicken and Dumplings. This would be Jeff Foxworthy’s team name if he was a contestant on – rather than host of – GSN’s newest show, The American Bible Challenge.
The American Bible Challenge premiers this Thursday, August 23 at 8/7c. Teams of three go head-to-head to see who knows more about the world’s best selling book of all time.
In an interview with Patheos, Jeff said there is a lot about The American Bible Challenge that is similar to other shows he’s been a part of. “Just like, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, there will be those questions that you know and some that you don’t. And when you hear the answer you’ll think you knew it all along.” So what’s different about a game show centered around the Bible?
“No one is doing this show for themselves. This isn’t about you, this is about helping other people.” Each episode the winning team gets $20,000 to give to their chosen charity organization. For example, Jeff pointed to the team of three women from Texas who dream about the 80,000 people they could feed if Minnie’s Food Pantry were to receive that money.
Foxworthy believes most people are more faithful than they let on. If the secular world could see the generosity that is the hallmark of the Christian life, he says, then they would start to see Christianity differently, too. Maybe even read the Bible differently. With this show, the Game Show Network could become the place for changing the Evangelical conversation. And Jeff Foxworthy will be at the center of it all, making us laugh and perhaps teaching us a different means of knowing God.
As a successful and gifted comedian, Jeff doesn’t know why God choose him to do all that he’s done. Aside from hosting the hit show 5th Grader, Jeff is the largest-selling comedy recording artist in history, a multiple Grammy® Award nominee, and bestselling author of more than 26 books. “It’s certainly not because of anything I did; that’s not how God seems to choose.” If not based on smarts, looks, or talent, there’s something to God’s grace that forces us sit back and laugh. Together, with each other.
Humor, Foxworthy says, unifies us. Almost all of Jeff’s comedy comes from paying attention to what happens inside his home and within his family. When people come up to him after his shows saying, “Yes, how did you know that? You must have been inside my house!” Jeff replies, “Exactly. We really are all the same.”
Team Chicken and Dumplings would include Jeff, his mom (who, Jeff says, would hate to be on TV), and Chicken Man, Jeff’s friend from the homeless ministry and bible study he is a part of in Atlanta.
This, more than anything, is the image Jeff gives us of what it means to follow God. It’s family, it’s humor, and it’s generosity. There are times when laughter is the best medicine. And times when the best thing to do with money is to give it away. The American Bible Challenge is situated to teach us both lessons as we learn to laugh, to give, and hopefully to change the way the world understands the Bible.
Empire // supreme power in governing; imperial power; supreme control; absolute sway.
All Hail The King. It finally makes sense. This is the game Walt’s playing. It’s not about the meth, or money, or cancer, or even his family. It’s about Walt’s desire for power. Supreme power. Imperial power. Absolute sway. The potential to take the world by storm.
Has this always been what it’s about? Or is it only as Skylar (Anna Gunn) waits for him to die that Walt (Bryan Cranston) decides he has nothing else left to live for?
Did Walt become a soulless evil, or did he begin the journey this way? What does the demise of a man look like?
Jesse calls Todd (the man who doesn’t hesitate in killing an innocent 12-year-old boy), “Ricky Hitler.” Breaking Bad is dealing with the fascinating and terrifying question of how Hitler became Hitler. In Walter White, creator Vince Gilligan says it happens by putting yourself on a throne and manipulating the world to worship you with respect, love, money, and business. Walt is right, this isn’t about the meth. And the reason Breaking Bad is so powerful is because it never was. This is a series about our humanity. About the ways of being human that we worship, celebrate, and become.
“Jesse, nothing can change this. Now, finally, we are self-sufficient. No one to answer to except ourselves. In a year, a year and a half…we’ll have plenty of time for soul searching. Now, we cook.”
I don’t know if I feel relieved to finally hear Walt confess his strategy out loud: cook meth now, accumulate power regardless of consequence, and question ourselves (maybe even find ourselves) later. Or if I’m more afraid than ever of what’s coming next. It’s probably a little of both.
Remember earlier in the season when Jesse’s (Aaron Paul) girlfriend, Andrea, comes home with a bag of groceries and invites Walt to stay for dinner? And soon after Walt manipulates Jesse to throw away his chance for family? We see a parallel of that scene in the sixth episode of season five, “Buyout.” Except this time it’s Skylar coming home with dinner and Walt insisting that Jesse stay. What happens around their dinner table says it all.
Jesse, innocently clueless to what’s going on, says all the wrong things. Skylar plays the role of partner turned hostage. Walt remains a silent, yet threatening presence; his back to the camera for the entire scene. The house is pitch black and a clock audibly ticks in the background.
Saul (Bob Odenkirk) warns Mike (Jonathan Banks), “Whatever you’ve got planned, best pull the rip chord while you still have the chance.”
What chance is left? What option would you vote for? What, or who, can win in Walt’s business of empire?
Walt promises everybody can win.
But when you reduce life to a game of winning and losing, as Walt has done, you create a dualism that is impossible to escape unharmed.
Keep up with the rest of Season Five:
Episode One - “Is Redemption Possible For Walter White?”
Episode Two - “Madrigal, Money, and Metanoia”
Episode Three - “Breaking Bad Made Whole?”
Episode Four - “An Object Lesson and Breaking Bad’s Next Move”
Episode Five – “Is The Thrill of Breaking Bad Over?”
Last week’s episode ended with Walt (Bryan Cranston) proclaiming that nothing would stop his train. But Walt didn’t have time to decide how seriously he meant those words before Todd grabbed his own gun and fired.
We’ve learned to pay attention to Vince Gilligan’s opening scenes.
“Dead Freight” begins with an unknown little boy playing with and eventually capturing a tarantula spider in a glass jar. I assumed it was a scene that wouldn’t come back into the plot for at least a few more episodes. Like the tired Walt at a diner on his birthday that opened season five (a scene we now know comes a year from this point in the season). Or the outlined bodies and police tape on Walt’s driveway and the ratted, pink teddy bear from season one.
And then, just as I was sucked back into celebrating another of Walt’s victories as the team extracts the final gallon of methylamine from the train just in the knick of time, the unthinkable happens. That same little boy emerges – in the wrong place at the wrong time – and without hesitation, or time for anyone to stop him, Todd (Jesse Plemons) reacts and kills an innocent boy.
Is the killing of a child the last layer of bad to be broken?
So far, the only characters in the show who have remained innocent are children. Jesse’s (Aaron Paul) relationship with Brock. Mike’s (Jonathan Banks) love of his granddaughter, Kaylee. Skylar (Anna Gunn) is desperate to protect Walter Jr., and Holly. Even Lydia’s daughter becomes the reason Mike didn’t kill her. And while Walt has proven he’s willing to go to any length to ‘protect his family’ and continue making meth, even he has yet to actually kill a child.
Breaking Bad has become a battleground of words. Words that foreshadow. Words that come back to haunt and to kill. Words that shatter our assumptions about right and wrong, good and evil. This is what makes the show (and creator, Vince Gilligan) so brilliant. In this episode alone, we hear –
Hank (to Walt): “It’s always darkest just before the dawn.”
Walt (to Lydia): “Trust has to work both ways.”
Mike (to Walt and Jesse): “I’ve done this long enough to know there are two kinds of heists. Those that get away with it and those that leave witnesses.”
Jesse (to Mike and Walt): “What if we ripped off the train and no one ever knows?”
Walt (to Todd): “No one can know about this other than the three of us. You understand?”
Todd (to Walt and Jesse): “You guys thought of everything.”
Skylar (to Walt): “I’m not your wife. I’m your hostage.”
We’ve gotten used to drugs, deception, and the seemingly inevitable death of those who choose to get involved in these activities. But in this episode, Breaking Bad has broken new ground.
Is the thrill of breaking bad finally finished? For Jesse? For Walt? For you?
Keep up with the rest of Season Five:
Episode One – “Is Redemption Possible For Walter White?”
Episode Two – “Madrigal, Money, and Metanoia”
Episode Three – “Breaking Bad Made Whole?”
Episode Four – “An Object Lesson and Breaking Bad’s Next Move”
As Skylar (Anna Gunn) winds a single strand of floss tighter and tighter around her finger, wincing with the comfort created by pain, creator Vince Gilligan gives us several object lessons in episode four, titled “Fifty-One.” With this episode we are officially a quarter of the way through Breaking Bad’s final season; four more episodes to go this summer and eight remaining for the summer of 2013.
Walt’s (Bryan Cranston) Pontiac Aztek opens the episode, operating as an analogy for Walt. It’s been continually beaten and bruised, but restored at the expense of someone else; a shiny exterior covers the broken, apparently unbeatable interior. This is a car that’s unwilling to die. The mechanic brags about the car’s indestructibility while Walt knows its hardly worth $50. Lydia’s mismatched shoes carry the weight of a woman losing control of her own life. A clue that only Hank (Dean Norris) picks up on, trying to weave the object into the unfinished lines of the story. We see Skylar’s unwinding in the scenes with the floss and her escape into the pool. As she’s submerged in the water – signifying freedom, cleansing, baptism, new life, and drowning – we see her smile for the first time of the season. And in the final scene Jesse (Aaron Paul) gives Walt a watch; an all-to-telling reminder that time is running out.
With the reemergence of Walter Jr.’s (R.J. Mitte) snazzy red sports car, Walt’s 51st birthday “celebration,” and the anniversary of Walt’s dismal cancer diagnosis, Vince Gilligan brings us through one full year of breaking bad in the life of Walter White.
As Walt’s house gets darker and darker, physically and relationally, he insists that he is just getting started. “Nothing stops this train. Nothing.” Not Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), not paranoid women or tracked barrels of Methylamine, not Jesse, Beneke, or Mike (Jonathan Banks). Not the DEA. Not his cowardly wife who tries to pronounce the end of his bullshit rationalizing. Not infidelity or boarding school. Not even cancer.
What’s the next move? How do you take on a man who has lost his soul?
With Skylar, we wait. We watch as the clock ticks, more characters unwind, and Walt ramps up. We hope that Hank ties the story together faster. That Skylar snaps. That Mike kills Lydia so their meth production has to slow down. We hope that the cancer returns.
And we wonder, whose bad is being broken now?
Follow along with Breaking Bad’s Season Five: episodes One, Two, and Three.
Episode 3, Season 5 by Samantha Curley
“You will be made whole.”
These strange, almost threatening words are spoken by Mike (Jonathan Banks) in the opening scene of this week’s episode, “Hazard Pay.” They are words that should strike a chord for anyone from any sort of faith background.
The third episode of season five sees a begrudging Mike forced back into business with Walt (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse (Aaron Paul) in order to make-back the hazard pay the feds took from his guys’ off-shore accounts. A discovery, remember, that resulted from Walt’s giant-magnet scheme in the season’s first episode. Another reminder that no small action in this series goes without bigger and badder consequences. (This is known as the butterfly effect, most dramatically depicted in what happens after Walt doesn’t stop Jane from dying in season two.)
On the surface, the wholeness Mike promises is related to money; to replacing the confiscated funds that ensured Mike’s guys did their job well. But what does it mean to be made whole? Are there other layers of wholeness going on? Perhaps in Jesse and Andrea’s seemingly good relationship? Or Jesse’s offer to give a double cut from his share of their earnings so Walt doesn’t have to pay his portion. Maybe in Walt continuing to ‘play house’ by moving back home and sharing popcorn while watching a movie with his kids? And this has always seemed to be about more than money for Mike. Are these signs pointing us towards a longing to be made whole? Is this a longing we all feel? Is it a longing that can (or will) be satisfied?
“Hazard Pay” gives us Walt at his ‘best’ and his worst. He’s back at his mastery of creative and terribly brilliant problem solving as he outlines his plan for the team’s new cook sites. Also, in his fatherly (albeit feigned) attempts at connecting with Jesse regarding his relationship with Andrea. But unlike in the previous four seasons, Walt is too far gone. Reinterpreting truth to fit his deceptive scheming, Walt manipulates Marie (Betsy Brandt) concerning Skylar’s (Anna Gunn) affair with Ted Beneke and also twists the memory of Victor in order to excuse his own greed and justify his selfish gain. Walt is so deep in his own web of lies and manipulation that he must actually believe his version of what’s true. Walt has created an alternate reality that he’s living inside and is systematically working to suck the others in with him. And those who don’t get sucked in? Those whom Walt can’t brainwash (Jesse), manipulate (Marie), or control (Skylar and Saul)? Well, they’re the ones who end up getting killed (Gus). That just leaves Mike and Hank…
What kind of wholeness will creator Vince Gilligan offer us as Breaking Bad’s legacy?
The episode concludes by leaving Jesse with a choice between Mike and Walt. As Walt warned him earlier in the episode, secrets do in fact create barriers between people and Walt has kept a lot of secrets from Jesse. It seems like the whole thing is riding (and maybe it always has) on what Jesse will decide to do next.
[For some Breaking Bad extra credit, notice the details of how media conveys deeper levels of meaning throughout this episode: the lyrics to "On A Clear Day" by the Peddlers playing as Walt and Jesse cook, the plot to the movie Scarface that Walt watches with his kids, the sounds coming from Jesse and Brock's video game. As if we didn't already know, Vince Gilligan is good!]
Join us each week as we blog through the epic final season of Breaking Bad:
Episode 1: Is Redemption Possible for Walter White?
Episode 2: Madrigal, Money, and Metanoia
Episode 2, Season 5 by Samantha Curley
Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan dropped another prophetic bomb at the end of the second episode of Breaking Bad’s final season when Walt says:
“You know it gets easier. I promise you that it does. What we do is for good reasons. There’s nothing to worry about. There’s no better reason than family.”
Excuse me, Walt, did I hear you correctly? Did you say family?
Walt (Bryan Cranston) continues to deceive himself into thinking he is making the right choices – good choices – for the sake of his family. But this episode, more than any other of the season, begs the question, “Walt, what family are you talking about?” Your terrified wife (Anna Gunn) who couldn’t get out of bed and didn’t speak a word to you (or anyone) the entire episode? Your son (R.J. Mitte) who has been abandoned by every adult figure in his life? Your infant daughter who will grow up having to confront her monster of a father? Your brother-in-law (Dean Norris) that you’ve used and deceived to build your drug empire?
Walt has no family left. Yet, the fantasy of family continues to motivate his downward spiral. “Madrigal” forces each character to confront the question: Why do you do what you do? A question that seems to boil down to either money or family. And let’s be honest, Mike (Jonathan Banks) might be the only one choosing family.
It was eery and unsettling to watch Walt in his cocky attempt to become Gus (Giancarlo Esposito). His calm, yet demanding demeanor; his relational manipulating, flat affect, and plotted confidence. (It physically hurt to watch him cover his tracks in the cigarette and salt scenes with Jesse.) Walt’s every move reeks of Gus, even as he extends a handshake to Mike after their first meeting of the episode. While the new mantra is, “If Gus can manage it, so can we,” let’s just remember where Gus ended up…
As Walt’s storyline becomes, well, pure evil, we continue to hope for the redemption of characters like Jesse (Aaron Paul), Mike, Hank, even Saul (Bob Odenkirk) to some extent. These characters have become the wise sages of the show; the ones who have eyes that see. Jesse’s genuine, yet unknowingly misplaced repentance in the show’s opening scene as he apologizes to Walt, “How could I have been so stupid.” Mike’s warning to Walt about being a ticking time bomb and his ironic, punchy wisdom in the diner: “Here in the real world we don’t kill eleven people as some kind of prophylactic measure.” Hank continues to sense there is something beyond the surface, while remaining unable to exactly put his finger on it. I wonder (with a sense of foreboding) where his good questions and intuition will take him. Even Saul comes through with the lottery analogy pleading with Walt and Jesse to get out while they’re still alive.
Where will these characters be when the bomb finally does explode? When bad is officially broken? We can only hope as far away from Walt as possible. Sadly, there are few avenues of metanoia (deep repentance, change of heart) left as viable ways out.
Join us each week as we blog through the epic final season of Breaking Bad:
Episode 1: Is Redemption Possible for Walter White?
Episode 2: Madrigal, Money, and Metanoia
Episode 3: Breaking Bad Made Whole?
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