This is the third post of Operation AMC, my ongoing project to watch every episode of the AMC series Breaking Bad and Mad Men, often called two of the best shows on television. This post covers the second season of Breaking Bad.
SPOILERS HEREIN
When I wrote on the first season of Breaking Bad, I noted that the actions of Walter White were always selfless. Everything he did he did for his family, and he never thought of himself. This second season changes that. He convinces himself that what he is doing is the right thing. Once he was doing it for others, but by the end of Breaking Bad’s second season he is doing it for himself. Late in the season, he holds his newborn baby girl as he looks upon his newfound wealth. “Look what daddy did for you,” he says.
I can imagine that if a man were to go down Walter’s path it wouldn’t be long before they got caught up in it, no matter how righteous their intentions at the start. When Walter started his methamphetamine project the entire concept of lying to his family to make a dollar was foreign, but by the end of this season it all comes natural. The result is gut-wrenching.
The second season of Breaking Bad is one of the most consistently brilliant and affecting seasons of television I have ever seen. When the final seconds tick away you have seen a man, nay, a community, collapse. It all started when Walter White (Bryan Cranston), high school chemistry teacher, was diagnosed with cancer in the Pilot. Assuming death was waiting around the corner, he decided to cook and distribute meth to make a quick buck so his family can survive once he passes on. All in all, he and ex-student Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) are rather clumsy about it all, but by season’s end they were making it big selling to Tuco Salamanca (Raymond Cruz).
Going too deep into plot description would be both pointless and yawn inducing. I try and keep you entertained here at CinemaSlants. All I can say is that the first handful of episodes reminded me (in the best possible way) of 24 at its best. The predicament is pretty simple: Walter and Jesse are selling to a man who is about as Sane as Robin Williams on a caffeine kick, only with a gun, and they realize that if they deal with Tuco much longer they’re going to end up in a ditch next to the Albuquerque highway. Before they can fully work out a way to kill Tuco before he kills them, they are kidnapped and taken out to a shack in Nowhereville, New Mexico. What follows is one of the most incessantly suspenseful sequences I’ve seen in a while, including one character which never speaks a line, but says everything he needs to with a stern look and a ring of a bell.
While the opening acts of Breaking Bad’s second season are a masterpiece of sustained tension, what eventually follows makes it all seem shallow. Once Walter returns home he slowly digs his own grave, becoming the man he was afraid of turning into when the drug business started. He continues to lie to his family about his dealings, and eventually his lying no longer serves a greater purpose. In the first season Walter lied so that he could protect his family. In the second season he lies so that he can sit down and drink for a while.
One character that is introduced in season two is Jane Margolis (Krysten Ritter), who becomes Jesse’s landlord once he is forced to find a new place to live. Eventually they take a deeper interest in each other, but Jane is hesitant as she knows Jesse’s true profession. She is a recovering drug addict herself, and she refuses to be around Jesse when he breaks out the meth… for a while. Soon she regresses and the next thing you know she brings home heroin for she and Jesse to try. Walt finds out what Jesse and Jane are doing, and one night Walt goes over to Jesse’s house to try and set things straight. He finds them passed out in Jesse’s bed. Suddenly Jane wakes up, rolls onto her back and starts choking on her own vomit. Walt just stares. He could very easily help Jane and let her live, but instead he stands there and watched another human being die.
It is this moment when we realize the monster that Walt has become. The first season presented him as the ultimate sympathetic character with only a few annoying traits. Not so much in season two. Here he becomes obsessed with having all the power not just in his family, but in the drug business. He likes being the kingpin on the streets and the breadwinner in the home. When he makes a fortune in a deal, he cannot figure out how to get the money to his family without being suspicious. His newfound lawyer, Saul Goodman (played with a memorable amount of sleaze by Bob Odenkirk of Mr. Show fame) proposes that he funnel in the money through his son’s new fundraising website. In theory, this is perfect. Instead, Walt is furious that his family will not see him as the one who got the money. Media comes to the house to create publicity for the site, but Walt is furious that he is not the hero, but instead it is his son.
All in all, the second season of Breaking Bad revealed that Walter White is not a saint. Nay, he is one messed up sonofagun. He makes mistake after mistake until finally his wife kicks him out of the house at season’s end. She won’t listen to any of his lies anymore, and the sheer amount and enormity of Walter’s lies surprise even him.
We then go back to Jane. Her father (John de Lancie) works as an air traffic controller, and he eventually returns to work after his daughter’s death. He is overcome, and eventually he makes an error so drastic that he causes two flights to collide right over Walt’s house as he sits in his loneliness. He had grown so used to lying that he didn’t even realize he was doing it anymore, and as a result he had torn everything apart. His family has left him, Jesse has gone into a downward spiral, and two airplanes worth of people are now dead. All he wanted was some money for his family, but eventually he just did it all for himself. The damage would appear irreparable.
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