In my review of "Full Measure," Breaking Bad's Season Three finale, I wrote that this has arguably been one of the greatest single television seasons of all time, up there with "the first few seasons of The Sopranos, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Two, or whatever great season of television you can throw out there."
Part of the reason for that – in the mix with the insanely tense atmosphere, the intriguing (a)moral wrangling, the dynamite cast and performances – is the writing and particularly a series of noteworthy lines punctuating the season that are so shocking, so amazing, or so revealing that it merits taking a look back at the very best ones.
Instead of ranking them in "best" order, which would be incredibly hard to do in any event, let's take them chronologically through the season.
S0301: "No Mas"
"No Mas" is such a strong episode and season opener in every way that I had to go with three here.
"You're a drug dealer." – Skyler
It's a total shock at this point that Skyler (Anna Gunn) finally internalizes what Walt (Bryan Cranston) has been up to all this time and is able to bluntly say what we've known for so long. I wrote at the time that it reminds me "of the Mad Men Season Three episode where Betty Draper (January Jones) confronts Don Draper (Jon Hamm) with evidence of his past, and then it all comes out."
"I'm the bad guy." – Jesse
Another frank admission and seeming moment of self clarity in this case. However, as the season unfolds we see that while obviously Jesse (Aaron Paul) has done many bad things in his young life (and an increasing load of it due to the corruption and "contamination" from his association with Walt), he's not an evil person, not truly. Which of course makes the events at the end of the season finale all the more shattering.
"I am not a criminal… it's not who I am." – Walt
And another self-appraisal, but this one's not so much on the money, is it? Walt makes a go at the "straight life" for a spell, but by episode five ("Mas"), Walt is drawn back into meth cooking, and on a level that he could never have previously imagined (dreamed of?).
S0302: "Caballo Sin Nombre"
"POLLOS." – Gus Frings (text message)
Crazy that a simple one word text message could carry so much weight, but so it was in one of the early and almost unbearably tense scenes of the season. The Cousins (remember those not-so-friendly ax wielding silent but deadly thugs?) had tracked down Walt to the White home with alarming speed (and indeed I think most people were settling in for a season long slow burn on a Walt vs. Cousins and cartel confrontation that did not play out as we expected at all) and sat on his bed in the master bedroom while he unwittingly showered, whistling and a-humming away. If POLLOS didn't arrive from Gus Frings (Giancarlo Esposito) AKA The Chicken Man, still a relatively unknown figure at this point, Walt would have been no mas.
S0303: "I.F.T."
"I f---ed Ted." – Skyler
Of all the end of episode reveals that explained the meaning of the episode, this perhaps was the most shocking and surprising as it threw Walt and the audience along with it for a huge WTF-infused loop. Even with the show's convention of muting out that naughtiest of curse words (which has consistently been done since the beginning of the series) it still packed a most maximum emotional punch. The implication is that Skyler is laying out in no uncertain terms that going off and becoming a closet drug dealer/meth cooker and criminal mastermind (and little does Skyler even know the full extent, even at season's end!) will have severe consequences on the home front. I.F.T. consequences. And then on a much more melancholy and less salacious level we're starting to see Walt's corruption of those closest to him spreading.
S0304: "Green Light"
"Everything's maximum interesting." – Jesse
While I just stated above that Jesse isn't quite the bad guy he proclaims himself to be, he comes pretty damned close here, selling the merits of the blue crystal meth that he's been cooking up as a one-man operation to a teenage girl working the register at a gas station convenience store. It's also telling that it's a "winning" line in terms of the sell because Jesse believes it. Even though he's cleaned up for most of the season, the draw of drugs to blot away his loneliness and despair is ever present.
S0307: "One Minute"
"I never saw this coming." – Walt
An ironic and telling line in the midst of an episode that ends with one of the greatest and most intense action scenes I've ever seen on television or on film. Of course Walt never saw any of this coming, and he didn't mean any of it to happen. His breaking bad is a series of poor and short-sighted decisions to keep the ever more chaotic and collapsing world around him semi-stable for a bit longer. And ironic again is the fact that Walt avoided direct confrontation with The Cousins via "POLLOS," but brother-in-law and DEA agent Hank (Dean Norris) was not so lucky. And save the warning of "one minute" that came to him again through Gus' Los Pollos Hermanos meth empire, he really would have been completely blindsided. Instead, after a miraculous and heroic standoff, he's laid up in the hospital with terrible injuries.
S0308: "I See You"
"Guys, did you hear that? Mr. Fring is offering a $10,000 reward for any information about the case." – Skyler
This reveal comes as we see Walt and his family sitting down with Gus, the emerging Big Bad of the season. Walt's secret identity and secrets in general are getting scratched away at from all sides, and a meticulous and cold and fearsome scratcher such as Gus is cause for huge worries in Walt's world (see: "Full Measure."). "I hide in plain sight, just like you," Gus tells Walt later. Except that Walt's position is much more vulnerable, at least at this point. At the risk of bringing in too many Mad Men references to my Breaking Bad coverage, I'll echo Don Draper's veiled warning to Sal: cover your exposure, Walt.
S0309: "Kafkaesque"
"You know, I didn't give the box to my mom. I traded it for an ounce of weed." – Jesse
Jesse Pinkman wasn't a major factor during the first third of the season, getting out of rehab and discovering his newly quiet and sinister side. As things progress he becomes more central and Aaron Paul as Jesse delivers a series of captivating performances. "Kafkaesque" provided several a few opportunities for Paul/Jesse to deliver raw and uncomfortably compelling monologues to his NA group. The story Jesse tells about becoming motivated for once in his life to work with his hands, to create something beautiful and useful from nothing, is sweet and heartbreaking at the same time. And then having that line dropped on us, that he literally threw out his chance at hope and a better life for another quick chance to get high, was an absolute gut punch. And of course this all predates Jesse's interactions with Mr. White, chemistry teacher-turned-Heisenberg meth cooking mastermind.
S0310: "Fly"
"I'm saying I lived too long." – Walt
Whereas Jesse's shocking reveal in "Kafkaesque" focused on his past, Walt lays out the naked and toxic truth that he never thought he would live to see the present day, and that in fact his life and those around him are suffering more for each day that he remains among the living. The forum for Walt's revelations is exquisite and claustrophobic: the meth lab underneath the Los Pollos Hermanos plant in which Walt and Jesse barricade themselves to eradicate a simple house fly. The fly is a potential contaminant (there's that word again), and Walt's quest to neutralize it is a microcosm for his obsession with perfection and order, a world that can never be. And Jesse's semi-humane attempt to knock out a sleep deprived and manic Walt with some secretly deployed sleeping pills into his coffee brings Walt into a hazy state within a confined environment where he's able to be this revealing.
S0311: "Abiquiu"
"Married couples can't be compelled to testify against one another." – Skyler
This line seals in Skyler's new complicity into Walt's criminal activity. In fact, in the eyes of the law, she's setting herself up as something close to Heisenberg's co-conspirator from the very outset. It's a stunning turnaround from what was a rather sustained campaign to stonewall Walt and keep him as far from her family as possible… or was it? The more I think about it, her inability to fully grasp the monstrous actions of her husband (even of the ones that she knows of), that this man she thought she knew and clearly loved for so many years could do such a thing, is part of the seed of her own unraveling. That is, why not lay it out to Walt Jr. (RJ Mitte) and even Hank that Walt's a bad man who has done things she finds unconscionable? She can't go that far though – it's just not in her. And Hank's enormous medical bills may have even been something of an excuse for her to justify Walt's actions through lies (he's a fabulously lucky poker player) and bring her a few degrees closer again to her not quite ex-husband.
S0312: "Half Measures"
"Get 'em young and they're yours forever." - Jesse
At one time this line may have been said by a jive slinging and drug dealing Jesse with glee, but here he's consumed with guilt over the death of his friend and drug dealing employee Combo, as well as the complications involving the murderer coming in the form of a prepubescent kid. Therefore this line becomes darkly ironic, said with an unintentional disgust toward the drug world that he at one time so easily embraced. He can't go through with his plans to sell meth to his NA group, nor can his remaining crew (and how hideously hilarious was that scheme?), and really at core Jesse Pinkman is a deeply lonely and troubled young man ("…they're yours forever" might as well be talking about himself) – and not much more than a kid at that – who is acting out against those who helped to produce his living prison of solitude and bitterness.
And man, when you take the final scene of the season into account, how long is it going to be when Jesse, bona fide murderer, will be compelled to act out against Walt for real?
"Run." – Walt
One word, delivered only as Bryan Cranston can, after actions that change everything yet again and hurtle the season toward its conclusion. In a crazily ironic twist, Walt's decision to murder Gus' street level thugs who ordered Combo's hit in order to save Jesse from a fairly certain end is the closest thing we've seen to a selfless act from Walt. It's ironic because the act involves double murder and puts both he and Jesse at extreme risk. In essence it's yet another short term (breaking) bad decision, and a major one, that thrusts this antihero and compelling figure toward some great and no doubt cataclysmically tragic end. And therein lies the fun!
S0312: "Full Measure"
"I can't do it, Mr. White… Like you said I'm not a… I can't do it." – Jesse
A poignant bookend to Jesse's "I'm the bad guy" line from early in the season. When push comes to shove, he can cook and push and shove drugs but he's not a murderer. That revelation has the potential to unlock other doors on his life's journey, but the final moments of the season are such that it's clear that his path, his association with Walt, and his actions as a murderer in reality as opposed to in theory put Jesse Pinkman on a very very bad road indeed.
"You might want to hold off because your boss is gonna need me." – Walt
Even though Walt donned his Heisenberg porkpie hat earlier in the episode, this is the true voice of Heisenberg: resonant, powerful, the guy in the room that has thought three chess moves ahead of everyone else and knows it. So again it's ironic and subversive that it's so damned enjoyable to see Walt/Heisenberg get his groove back, so to speak, and at the same time watch his train wreck of a life chug along to the next inevitable station. In this case, he's just managed to barely stay alive through his superior if narrow intelligence and pure bluster, while essentially allowing critical chess pieces to fall all around him (Jesse's humanity: gone, Gus' desire to kill Walt: unyielding, and so on, Walt's loved ones: now very much in play, etc.).
And I'll be waiting desperately for the Breaking Bad train to pick up steam into its fourth season so that we can have yet another gloriously delicious and dark journey to discuss.
