Quick Take: Breaking Bad, "Fly"
"I'm saying I lived too long." - Walt
Review: Breaking Bad, "Fly"
(S0310) Only Breaking Bad could create such a scene of tension and havoc from a man attempting to chase down a simple housefly. What's so rewarding about such a scene and Breaking Bad at large is that there's so much that has lead up to this seemingly simple scenario. Walt (Bryan Cranston) has been acting more self destructive than usual of late, almost as though his prowess in the drug kingdom and truce-of-sorts with Skyler (Anna Gunn) has left him with little to do with his most terrible and manic instincts.
I love that we're reminded often enough that Walt is (or has become?) at core a deeply unlikable man – far more so than, say, James Gandolfini's wise crackin' goodfella Tony Soprano can be when he's on game. Case in point is just before Walt takes his fall (and a nasty and awkward one it was!) he blows off Jesse (Aaron Paul) over the issue of the numbers being off on the meth output in a statistically significant way. The cruelty with which he dismisses Jesse's every notion and idea almost makes you think that Jesse is justified in opening his own meth dealership in Albuquerque with the "vestiges." And you'd have to think too that were Walt able to take the time to really absorb what his business partner is telling him, he'd perhaps be able to sniff out that something was indeed a bit off in Jesse's enthusiastic participation in the Case of the Missing Meth.
For a spell, I thought that we might be seeing a start to a true mental break for Walt – which would be a most startling, disturbing, and intriguing direction indeed and of course one which I wouldn't put it past this show to go for – but Walt's explanation of how a fly loose in the lab could indeed equate to a ruined batch and consequently their deaths ("we're dead," he says plainly) shows that the pressure and stress of his breaking bad decisions is taking its toll. He may be right to some extent about taking care to make sure that the lab is a clean environment… but it seems pretty plain that Walt's myopic focus on details could help to push him to the self destruction that he actively toyed with by racing his car to the limit in "Kafkaesque."
In what plays out as something of a two man play (and love the deliberate decision to keep this episode so "small" with virtually everything taking place with just Walt and Jesse inside the lab... plus a little flying friend of course!), we get more Cranston and Paul together than we have since the first season. Transitioning from bleak drama to dark comedy and back again, Walt – softened up by sleeping pills, slipped into his coffee in a perhaps kind gesture of Jesse's someone who has cared for the cancer stricken in his day – is more honest than we've ever seen him, musing that the "perfect" time for him to die (just enough money to take care of the family, before Skyler had found out about his drug dealings) may have come and gone. His remission now is something of a prison sentence, a sentence to live each day with the ever compiling consequences of his rash and short sighted and corruptive acts.
While Jesse and Walt show something close to warmth toward each other during the long scene where Walt is lapsing into a sleeping pill-induced doze (and one fraught with peril it must be said, both from Jesse's precarious position on a folding ladder positioned on top of two metal desks, and from Walt precariously but not quite admitting his indirect role in Jane's death), it does not last long. By the next morning Walt warns Jesse – and not unkindly for him – about stealing meth from the likes of Gus, AKA Mr. Los Pollos Hermanos – and the latter does not take kindly to the words of advice.
Overall, a masterpiece of "small" filmmaking to bookend the exquisite action and guns blazing that we saw in "One Minute" earlier this season.
More thoughts on "Fly":
Video: Breaking Bad, "Fly"
Inside the episode, from AMC.com:
Recap: Breaking Bad, "Fly"
It's two in the morning at Walt's condo. He lies in bed, staring up at his smoke detector's flashing indicator light. From at AMC.
From Around the Web: Breaking Bad, "Fly"
