(It’s hard to write about a television series with so many intricate plot twists without completely spoiling the story. However, having just finish Breaking Bad Season 3, I need to spout a few words about his beast of a show. Some details have to leak; if you can’t handle spoilers, stop reading).
I continue to wonder when Breaking Bad will slip the Kinks’ song “Do You Remember Walter?” into an episode. Not entirely obscure (it appears on The Village Green Preservation Society), the song about memories of a lost friend seems appropriate to the coarse evolution of chemistry-teacher-turned-meth-cook Walter White.
The mild-mannered chemistry teacher’s naivete is immediately challenged by the drug peddlers he encounters. Walt acts in self-defense; later, he will engage in dangerous acts of self-preservation for himself and Jesse Pinkman, his cooking partner.
Early in Season 2, Walt goes on an odyssey. He left the room mid-conservation with his wife, then drug kingpin Tuco orders Walt into a car by gunpoint. Out in the desert, he conceives a plan to hide his indiscretions (they are many). Walt covers up his kidnapping by stripping naked in a grocery store and acting as if he entered a fugue state, a rare disorder where stress causes amnesia that can last for days.
Before he left, he nearly confessed his drug cooking ways. Instead, Walt has to further his lies, stretching them to where Skyler doubts them. She mockingly brings up the fugue state as their marriage dissolves.
In a fashion, hasn’t Walt been living in a fugue state? He gives his name as Heisenberg, a name that circulates back to the DEA. Working under that name, he leaves Walt behind.
Walt’s transformation isn’t a true fugue state because he saw the point of no return on a certain night in Jesse’s apartment. "Fly" outlines how it was the turning point for both Jesse and Walt.
Think of the transformation actor Bryan Cranston has undergone with his roles. From twisted dentist Tim Whatley on Seinfeld to the goofy, neurotic father on Malcolm in the Middle, no one could have predicted Cranston would tackle Walt and his descent.
Take the man from Season 1 and he wouldn’t recognize the bald, goateed stranger in black. By Season 3, he no longer maintains the pretense of a normal living. Although in remission, his cancer scarcely receives mention beyond subtle reminders.
On indefinite sabbatical from teaching after a making a pass at the principal, Walt cooks 9-5 for a drug kingpin hiding in plain sight just like him. Yet at home, there exists some semblance of normal. Still estranged, Skyler has been drawn into the morass. Walt Jr. is anxious about getting his license then a car. The moments holding his baby daughter are the last vestiges of the old Walt. Even those moments are fleeting, swept away by calls on the secret cell phone.
The cracks appear to the world at large through little moments: the poolside tequila scene; the rambling speech at the plane crash memorial; and the confession of a gambling addiction to his sister-in-law. To us viewers, we get the global view, and all its ugliness.
The meek man we saw washing cars to supplement his income faded quickly - it's hard to see any traces in mad, desperate actions that end Season 3. There's more to the story, but don't try to remember old Walter anywhere in Season 4.
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