Archive | August, 2011

Breaking Bad – 406 – Cornered

21 Aug

“It’s all about me.”

The first half of tonight’s episode seems to believe Walt’s self-important statement.  Whether he’s arguing with his wife or hanging out with his son or just taking a shower, the first two acts barely leave Walt’s side.  This extra time with the man shows us how he’s still trying desperately to be the bad-ass meth-scarface he considers himself to be.  Take, for example, that excellent scene in the car wash when Walt refuses to part with the sentimental “first dollar,” only to nonchalantly destroy the frame and burn the dollar on one of his own coke machines.  Or look at the way Walt puffs up his chest and asserts to Skyler that he “is the one who comes knocking.”  He’s so comfortable being the criminal mastermind, just so long as there aren’t any other criminals around.  It sorta recontextualizes Walt’s previous attempts to take Fring’s life – Walt isn’t desperate to save himself, he’s desperate to prove himself, and he thinks that being a bigger bad-ass does that.  But his casual murder plots fall on their face frequently enough that he’s starting to rebel in other ways, like buying his son a fancy new car or bringing outside help into his lab to clean.  More on the latter later.

Something I’ve noticed about this season is the tight focus of an individual episode will change abruptly at about the halfway point.  Tonight was no exception, as we check in on the continuing adventures of Mike and Jesse.  It’s nice to see a show depict a junkie off his meds without putting him in a hooded sweatshirt and covering his face with white make-up.  Also fun to see Jesse dealing with other meth heads – it’s not dissimilar to that season episode Peekaboo (where the lady smashes her baby-daddy’s dead with an ATM while their kid was in the house).  I love the idea that digging a hole is a mysterious enough activity to draw the good-natured curiosity of Tucker.  Hell, I wanted to know what he was doing.  But the gambit paid off and Jesse is further ingratiated to the Pollos methempire.

But that was never his goal – it’s Walt’s.  The bold move to repurpose the laundry facility’s staff to help him in the lab backfired.  Walt thought he was being bold, assertive, when in reality, he was just being dumb.  Those poor ladies are getting on a bus bound for (what I can only assume is their home in) Honduras, despite his protestations.  “Blame me.”  “He does.”  Ouch.  But then, what does it matter?  He already on the outs with his boss and seems to be losing an ally in Jesse, what else does he have in this organization?  His essential invulnerability and a hell raiser’s spirit.  Obviously, Gus has bigger concerns, and Walt’s belief that everything revolves around him might be true for the moment, but increased cartel activity threatens to rearrange everyone’s priorities.  And where does that leave Mr. White?

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Skyler’s scene at the Four Corners.  Standing on the New Mexico side, she tosses a coin into the air.  The result of the coin toss is irrelevant, she’s looking to see where it lands: Colorado.  Skyler looks north and tries again.  Same result: Colorado.  No.  She slides the coin south 3 inches with her foot.  She’s not going to let anything drive her from her home, not even the rotten luck to be caught in the Whites’ current situation.  When she gets home, she puts her foot down, and again holds the hole thing together.

Go West, Young Man – Part I

20 Aug
Siwek did tell me that Mercury was in retrograde. Whatever that means.

Okay. Ready to go?

Right from the get-go, we’re a little delayed.

Oh, I’m moving out to Los Angeles.  From Chicago.  This is what that looks like.

We’ve got the SmartBoxes packed and the car mostly packed.  As soon as it clears up a little, my sister and I will be striking out on the first leg of our journey.  That puts us in Lincoln, Nebraska tonight (yay).   My mind is stuffed with the various logistics of transporting all my shit 2000 miles, so this first entry will be brief.

Some quick thoughts in the meantime:

AAA – I like it.  It makes me feel like I’ve aged 3 decades, but it’s useful and it looks like it’ll save me some money as well.

SmartBox – These guys are awesome.  They drop of trailers in front of your place, even though it’s technically illegal in the city of Chicago.  When we asked what would happen if the boxes were ticketed, they responded “oh, we’d never pass that cost on to the customer.”  That’s right, they’re contract-criminals.

GPS – I bought a GPS (in addition to having two iPhones and an atlas in the car).  I knew virtually nothing about them prior to this experience and after a few hours of researching, and a few scant minutes of actual purchasing, I’m convinced that I know even less.  My favorite was as the cheapest Magellan, which doubles as the cheapest machine in the store.  The touch screen is responsive, it makes pleasing clicks and beeps and it comes loaded with AAA info – which I’ve previous professed to loving.

It sounds like it’s clearing up.  Here we go.

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Breaking Bad – 405 – Shotgun

14 Aug

When I was in high school in medium-small-town Wisconsin, my friends and I drove everywhere.  At the risk of dating myself, I remember when gas was a buck-fifty – cheaper if you went to the little Amoco next to Stars and Stripes.  And we all had cars: some were hand-me-downs from older siblings, some were presents from parents that could afford them and a few were even honest purchases of industrious 16-year olds.  Like most kids of that age, we were constantly looking for a space that wasn’t ruled over by adults.  More often than not, it meant we were in the car.  This was also a magical way to share music with your friends – no one had CD players so we had to make taped copies of anything we wanted to listen to.  It meant that a surprising amount of my time spent not driving was engaged in preparing to drive.  A lot of relationships were born in the car, some flourished, others died.  The size and shape and capabilities of the car dictated the nature of our relationships, or culture and our lives.

We would honor calling “shotgun.”  For the uninitiated, you shout shotgun sometime after you leave a location, but not before you see the car, and you have the right to sit in the front passenger seat on whatever ride came next.  My friends and I were fiercely competitive about shotgun, and would always respond to losing the seat with a passive-aggressive “no, it’s fine, I didn’t want it anyway.”

My experience here isn’t unique, or even atypical.  Being in a small space with someone necessarily draws you into their life and them into yours.  Jesse and Mike spend some time together in the car tonight, and even if the climactic events are brought about by Fring’s designs, Mike and Jesse shared something meaningful.  Jesse in particular.  He’s the heart of the show and it’s always a drag on Breaking Bad’s energy when he’s upset.  It was nice to see him forced to do something active, pulling him out of his constant drudge-party.  And the hero routine suits Jesse, it gives him purpose.

Speaking of purpose, check out Hank.  Sure, Marie says he’ll only get out of bed to have dinner with the Whites, but the Heisenberg case has him mildly engaged.  That is, until Walt – now feeling his own purposelessness – suggests that the real genius is still out there.  Hank and Jesse are back, invested and ready to get something done.  But Walt is settling back into a world that simultaneously bores and terrifies him.  The intersection of mundane and criminal is not a good fit for Walt, even if he seems to think otherwise.

There were a lot of really nice visual touches tonight, including some great time-lapse, multiple kickin’ montages, unnervingly clandestine perspective shots and even some decent action.  Also, I’ve talked about color in these write-ups before, but I always find the palettes they use pleasing.  The road scenes have this nice red and yellow tint to them, accentuated by the car’s upholstery, that characterizes the long, hot New Mexican day.  By comparison, the blue light cast on Walt and Jesse by the sheets of Mega Meth feels much more cool and controlled.

While I watch Breaking Bad for its deliberate pace and excellent character work, I could easily just be watching it for the stunning filming and cinematography.  Tonight was a good reminder of both of these strengths.  All we need is some of the show’s trademark extreme-tension, and we’ll have the makin’s.

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Breaking Bad – 404 – Bullet Points

7 Aug

Breaking Bad appears to be going for the slow burn this year.  Aside from the violent opening, we are a little shy on action and tension all around.  This shouldn’t sound like a criticism: I love the character work and tonight’s episode in particular was beautifully filmed.

Because I found it to be the strongest of the episode, I want to start with Skyler teaching Walt how to execute their lie.  She approaches this as she’s approached all of her previous lies, with ample preparation.  Walt is much more of a seat-of-his-pant liar, so all the coaching and scripted confessions set his teeth on edge.  What’s more, he doesn’t like being painted as a villain, which suggests Walter still sees himself as a victim of circumstance.  He goes on – at length, later in the episode – with Saul about how his family can never know just how deep in he is, but seems to think that all of this is happening to him.  He can’t be sorry for what he’s done to Skyler, but he sure can suggest the line, simultaneously belittling her suffering and her role in this whole mess.  It’s a beautifully written, and incredibly acted, scene which nails that signature sense of humor.

And yet the haunting echo of this scene later in the program doesn’t share much of its levity.  When Walt drops by Jesse’ place to have his own version of the “you need to take this shit seriously” conversation, Jesse blows it off entirely.  That’s Jesse’ default stance these days, and it’s troubling for the character and troubling for the show.  My girlfriend said tonight that she’s having a hard time getting in to this season, that very little is compelling.  Specifically, she expressed that if Jesse doesn’t care about himself, why should we?  By all measures, Walt’s the only one who still cares about him, and that relationship becomes more unnecessary as Walt gets closer to his wife, or even, touchingly, to Hank.  Jesse is aggressively wasting space, and his current life style is so objectionable that I can’t even imagine myself existing in his presence, let alone being his buddy.  I vaguely remember feeling this way as the third season got going – that making Jesse realize that he’s just a bad guy dulls the heart of the show.  It certainly makes him less fun to be around.

In some ways, Walt is struggling from the same thing, only less explicitly.  He stares down at his feet, per Skyler’s instructions, at Hank and Marie’s dinner table.  He’s going through the motions, and struggling to play out the part of someone with which his family can sympathize.  That ritual, the one by which a man appears to be what we expect of him, is sad and fascinating, if not a bit unsetting to see played out on television.  I’ve always found that to be some of the more gut wrenching material from Dexter.  Dexter’s voiceover will often confess to pretending to have emotions as to avoid being singled out and avoid suspicion.  While Dex invents feelings to keep himself alive, the practice of presenting yourself as normal is universal.  We all withhold details of our weekends from our coworkers, we all pretend to enjoy something we don’t.  Because we are social creatures and whether we like it or not, there will always be other people in our lives.  Now, Jesse is refusing to play that game.

Mike and Fring recognize this quality in Jesse, and I’m guessing that’s the point.  Our villains are going to be painfully sympathetic when they go to extreme measures to silence Jesse.

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Nostalgiacast

4 Aug

The summer of 1999 was a pretty good time for me.  It was the summer between sophomore and junior years in high school, and as such, I was fitting comfortably into my dual identity as drama geek and orchestra dork.  But this was summer, and I was working at my friend’s father’s construction company as a shop guy, which basically meant that I had minimal responsibilities and made some really solid bank.  Trying to teach me that money doesn’t really come as easily as it was coming to me that summer, my mother made me put something like 90% of my paycheck in a savings account.  Much of the remaining 10% wound up in a jar I kept in my bedroom, on which I had carefully painted the words “Dreamcast Fund.”

The Sega Dreamcast was released on September 9, 1999.  Yes, the same day as the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards.  I don’t know why I was so excited about the new system, but I’m sure the numerical novelty of 9/9/99 had something to do with it.  This was the first Sega console that ever I purchased – I was strictly a Nintendo boy before that.  I also had a Playstation at this point… Jesus, I had access to a lot of resources as a kid.

My buddy Pete gave me his pre-order for the Dreamcast because he decided last minute that he wasn’t going to pick one up right away.  So I was in line at Toyworks on the ninth of September with maybe half a dozen other people.  Dreamcast didn’t get the sort of launch the most recent generation of consoles got.  In the early early early days of the Wii and PS3, I used to hit two different Best Buys, two Targets, a Wal-Mart and three Gamestops searching for them, and I was always in good company.  This went on for weeks before I finally found a Wii.  But this wasn’t the case Sega’s swansong.

The video game industry looks back fondly on the Sega Dreamcast, but it was never appreciated during its lifespan.  The controllers were weird and the memory cards were even weirder.  The technology was just a shade too dumb to play DVDs, which I always thought would have been a save for the system.  This also landed it in that awkward phase between console generations, so while the hardware was impressive at the time, it would soon be trumped by Nintendo’s Game Cube, Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PS2.  The one thing this magic white box had going for it was software.

I bought it for the Resident Evil series.  Totally worth it, by the way: Code Veronica was a great game.  Either the machine came boxed with Sonic Adventure or I decided that I wanted to support the company’s new entry in the flagship series.  My collection was eventually rounded out with two Capcom fighting games – Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Power Stone.  If you never played Power Stone, the game is amazing – you get to run around in an interactive 3D environment and throw chairs at your opponent until one of you collects three gems and transforms into a robot/demonic/monstrous version of that character and starts kicking ass.  There are only two ways to play that game now – on the PSP and on a 12 year old Sega Dreamcast.

I still own the Dreamcast that I bought when I was 17.  Any other so-called classic consoles I own have been purchased second-hand in my twenties.  Tonight, I took the machine out of the box and cleaned it.  I was preparing it to sell to a vintage gaming store in Chicago.  While dipping a Q-tip into a glass of warm water, a melancholy set upon me.  I only bought four games for the system, and by most accounts, Sega’s console was DOA.  In 1999, I felt like I was part of something that most people were avoiding.  In the years since, I’ve been able to say that I liked the Dreamcast before it was unpopular and then mysteriously popular again.  A Dreamcast in your collection is a sign of nerd cred, a sign to other life-long gamers that I wasn’t fucking around.

But that’s not why I saved all summer for the thing.  I didn’t know there would be a cult surrounding the Dreamcast years later, I just wanted to play some fun games.  Those four games represent some of the purest gaming experiences I’ve ever had – all fun, all immersive, and all came to me at a time that I needed something to be excited about.  I have an obsessive nature, and adolescence magnified this in me greatly.  The result being that I played the ever loving shit out of this system.  My little sister and I bonded over these games – especially Power Stone – for reasons neither of us understand.  The Sega Dreamcast represents that whole time for me and yes, I do know how silly that sounds.

No matter what I do, I can’t shake the thought that I should hang on to the Dreamcast forever.  I only pull it out of whatever storage I’ve crammed it in once a year.  That’s an estimate, it’s probably less frequent than that.  But as my girlfriend and are preparing to move out west, we’re making a specific effort to get rid of junk and slim down our possessions to those that we really need or really want.  I know I don’t need it.  In truth, I don’t even want it that much.  But it makes me feel safe to have it.  Besides, I’m guaranteed an astonishingly low price to part with it.  Obviously, I’m conflicted on the issue.

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