Due to their not being much on TV right now I have been diving into my box sets, you know the ones? They sit there for ages before you get round to doing anything about them, yeah? Well one of those box sets just happens to be Breaking Bad's first season, at seven episodes you would consider it a breeze and it was, I started watching the set a while back now and done some individual reviews for the first, second and third episodes I then decided that I can probably do a show like Breaking Bad a little more justice if I just sat, watched and enjoyed it before delivering a review to cap off each season, so here you go.
I was never really into Breaking Bad, not because I watched and didn't like it, it's just the scheduling of the show here in England, it airs late at night and really wasn't advertised that well but never mind at least in the box sets I don't have to put up with the adverts which channel 5 would offer up. After watching the first season I now find myself eager to get on with watching the second, third and fourth, it's not exactly a secret that Breaking Bad's fifth and final season starts on AMC July 15th and I would like to be caught up with the show by then.
If you don't follow or have never seen Breaking Bad then it concerns Walter White (Bryan Cranston) a family man who works as a chemistry teacher, he scrapes a living whilst also working part time at a car wash. Right in the very first episode Walt finds out that he has Lung Cancer, stuck in a dilemma of having no money already, let alone to pay for the treatment, his medical insurance won't pay out and his wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) is expecting their second child. Walt's brother in law Hank (Dean Norris) is a DEA Agent and takes him on a drive along, there Walt sees one of his former students Jesse (Aaron Paul) who is a young drug runner. We soon find out that Walter is no ordinary chemistry teacher, he's quite the genius in fact and approaches Jesse with an idea. Walter will cook the most pure street crystal meth ever seen and Jesse can use his contacts in order to have it distributed. That is the real crux of the show, a hard working honest individual who is trying to make his way in life finally Breaks Bad.
If you have read the first few reviews which I linked to at the top then you'll already have heard of Crazy-8, the drug dealer who Walt is forced to deal with in later episodes, I'm conscious that I will cover things that I already have so won't go into to much but basically they have to kill Crazy-8 and his pal (don't remember his name) from there they fall out and their crystal meth cooking operation is called off, that pretty much where I picked up with the show again. If I'm honest I think Breaking Bad is quite slow to start off with, that's probably why it took me a while to get through to the final three episodes. I would say that episode 6 "Crazy Handful of Nothing" was where I sat up and said ok, this is great, just simply brilliant TV.
The episode started brilliantly with Walt approaching Jessie once again and simply saying "Wanna Cook?" From there he goes on to lay out a few ground rules, he is the cook and wants nothing to do at all with customers who buy their product and ends the conversation with the words "no more bloodshed", just then it jumps to another scene of a shaven headed mean ass looking Walt walking away form a local drug boss he has just set straight, a position he found himself in thanks to Jesse's lack of sales experience. Selling their brilliant crystal meth street level was simply not profitable enough, $1300 each didn't cut the kind of money Walt new they could make, hence their decision to approach a distributor. The show really just got even better from this point with the very un-streetwise Walt realising that if he is to become a supplier of crystal meth then he's going to have to toughen up a bit, silent partner simply won't work. What you end up with is Walt becoming the boss of the operation whilst Jesse (who is supposedly a tough guy) taking a back seat for want of a better word.
I said it in previous reviews that Bryan Cranston does an absolutely phenomenal job as Walter White, it's no surprise this guy has won so many awards for this show. But, not only is Cranston great Aaron Paul also puts in an impressive performance, Walt's oldest son Walter White Jr (RJ Mitte) is brilliant along with Dean Norris who plays Hank. Seriously, you can go down the entire list of actors and actresses and none of them would disappoint. I will be rolling on with the second season soon which is a full thirteen episodes, but if the same pace is kept up in that season then I'm sure I won't be disappointed.
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