(The series’s pilot opened with a similar framing shot, but that episode circled right back around to telling us where the framing device fit into the narrative within the pilot itself.) The episode replayed just enough of last season’s final scene to get everyone all caught up again before Tuco (Raymond Cruz), the big-time player on the Albuquerque drug scene that Walt and Jesse (Aaron Paul) have thrown their lot in with so Walt can make as much money as he can as quickly as possible, exploded in a murderous rage (perhaps under the influence of the meth Walt had made just for him?) and beat one of his lackeys to a pulp. The teddy bear scene is a taste of what’s to come, though it seems unlikely we’ll get to figure out what that was all about until much later in the season. It opens with a black-and-white sequence of what appears to be teddy bear carnage in the Whites’ backyard, police sirens wailing on the soundtrack, then goes immediately into resolving last season’s ad hoc cliffhanger (only forced to be a cliffhanger because the writers strike cut the episode order for season one down to seven from 10). Roberts and directed by Cranston, is a pretty classic season premiere. He needed to be there in the short-term as well, and the short-term, where Walt is often unable to improvise, is what so regularly trips him up. In his own way, he WAS caring for his wife, but only in the long-term. All the while, Walt’s wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) was calling for him, and we wanted him to go to her, since their marriage was more fraught than usual in this episode, but the scene kept doggedly showing us how Walt’s devotion to the big picture was completely messing up his several smaller pictures. Even a scene as simple as Walter trying to better hide all of the money he’s socked away to support his wife and children after he dies goes through an almost laborious step-by-step portrayal of Walter going to the vent where he’s keeping the money hidden, then removing it, then pulling out the money, then looking for a better place to hide it, then finding that place in a half-empty diaper box, and on and on. On the series, process IS the story, rather than the crime being committed. It rarely avoids showing us every step of something the clinically detailed Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is doing.
It’s this sort of detail that makes Breaking Bad, ultimately, so satisfying.īreaking Bad is ALL ABOUT process.
#BREAKING BAD SEASON 1 EPISODE 2 TV#
Most TV, obviously, just takes aim at the widest possible target and hopes for a mass audience (has anyone ever learned anything about the art of singing from American Idol?), but the best TV focuses in on some laser-specific arena, showing us every inch of it in minute detail. TV shows can also show you the process of one person becoming an entirely different person, slowly and painfully finding out what they are capable of (even if they rarely do this). Think of how Project Runway gives you a quick shorthand to the process of coming up with new fashions or how the best procedural cop shows take you inside the world of solving crime.
#BREAKING BAD SEASON 1 EPISODE 2 SERIES#
One of the things that draws me to the medium of television is the way a series can show the process of doing something.