Posted on Monday, August 15th, 2011 by Angie Han
As AMC continues to deal with the fallout from its firing of The Walking Dead showrunner Frank Darabont, it’s managed to resolve another one of its notoriously tense negotiations. News comes today that the network has renewed Breaking Bad for another 16-episode season, which will be the series’ fifth and last.
The deal comes at the end of a long, unhappy public battle between Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan and the network; at one point, Gilligan and his team even began shopping the series to other networks. Read more after the jump.
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Fans who’ve had to wait a full year since the incredible final shot of season three of Breaking Bad, we feel your pain. Vince Gilligan‘s show about a meth-dealing chemistry teacher (Bryan Cranston) and his former student/assistant (Aaron Paul) is constantly filled with incredible tension and, after last year’s finale, we all needed time to decompress while eagerly awaiting the next chapter. That wait is almost over.
AMC has finally announced that the fourth season of Breaking Bad will premiere on July 17 and put together a one minute teaser trailer to whet your appetite. Don’t worry, it’s all footage from the previous seasons so no spoilers for what’s to come, only what’s already happened. Check it out after the jump. Read More »
In this special episode of the /Filmcast: After Dark, David Chen, Devindra Hardawar, and Adam Quigley share their thoughts on Breaking Bad‘s superlative third season.
You can always e-mail us at slashfilmcast(AT)gmail(DOT)com, or call and leave a voicemail at 781-583-1993. Join us on Monday at 9 PM EST / 6 PM PST at Slashfilm’s live page as we review The Last Airbender.
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This article concludes /Film’s recaps and discussions for the third season of Breaking Bad. A spoiler warning applies after the jump for the recap and for the comments section. Meth heads welcome. For previous recaps, click here.
The season three finale, “Full Measures,” differed from those of previous seasons with a grisly cliffhanger that incidentally and tragically pushed one main character over the point of no return. Or did it? In recent days, the show’s creator, Vince Gilligan, has given three candid and revealing interviews wherein he’s cleared up a number of viewers’ apparent confusion over the very last scene. He’s done so in good humor, but I can’t recall a previous highly anticipated finale that needed the showmaker to later vouch his intent—and in Gilligan’s case he helmed the episode (his sole directorial effort of the season.) The initial confusion was due to the aim of a gun, which appeared to tilt to the right of the target before the trigger went off. And I’m guessing the immediate cut to black that followed only amplified some viewers’ doubts. “SMDH.” – David Chase.
Gilligan, who is refreshingly and perhaps too open about Breaking Bad‘s creative process, also stated that the writing team didn’t map the season’s arc at start, unlike they’ve done in the past. This revelation confirmed observations about the season’s touch-and-go feel cited in the previous recap with guest Sven Barth. After the jump, I address personal questions about the finale, where the show and characters are possibly headed, and analyze Gilligan’s post-ep comments. Thanks to the /Film commenters who left insightful and spirited opinions over the past dozen BB posts. Let us know what you thought of the finale and of the questions posed below.
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/Film will be recapping and discussing each episode of the third season of Breaking Bad. A spoiler warning applies after the jump for the recaps and for the comments section. For previous recaps, click here. Note: I skipped over episodes “Fly” and “Abiquiu” due to traveling (one leg of which sent me to Puerto Rico for the return of Kenny Powers).
This week, we discuss the shocking semi-finale “Half Measures” and the season’s flaws with the culture writer, white rapper, and L.A. personality known as Sven Barth. A discerning barbarian of boob tube and skateboard culture, Barth’s creative endeavors span the single “Baby I’m Black” and the cooking series The Shredding Chef on Fuel TV.
Hunter Stephenson: Okay Sven. I think we both agree Breaking Bad is superior to most TV series currently going. But I want to ask you: is the third season where the show went from being a great series to a good if uneven one? When the Cousins exited—empty characters hyped as a death rattle but comparable to a violent psych-out—I was hopeful the season would upswing. Instead, we got Rian Johnson‘s episode “Fly,” which was the best ep of the season but it also inadvertently juxtaposed how little time and writing was spent in other eps, before and after, on rewarding character development. The writers focused so intently this season on viewers’ anticipation of bad shit happening and murderous voodoo tension that Walt and Jesse often registered more like pawns of doom than people. “Fly” explored and deepened their individual personalities and psyches, and reexamined their flesh and blood bond. Nevermind that it was executed, due to sheer genius or budget restraints, in a one-room setting. Am I being too critical, or do you agree?
Sven Barth: I’ll start by saying Breaking Bad is, without a doubt, one of the best cable shows of the past few years. But to me, this season continues to have several problems not present in one and two. I was still excited to watch each episode but Jesse in particular became closer and closer to a mall-type caricature as the season marched on. And yeah, “Fly” was excellent. It hearkened back to the season two episode, “4 Days Out” about the RV battery. “Fly” exemplified why I got addicted to this show from day one, back when I was tuning in because I was invested in the characters foremost, sudden thrills second. Walt’s and Jesse’s day-to-day was more tangible, convincing. Now that they’re certified bad guys, that’s missing.
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/Film will be recapping and discussing each episode of the third season of Breaking Bad. A spoiler warning applies after the jump for the recaps and for the comments section. Meth heads welcome. For previous recaps, click here.
The calamitous, nail biter episodes that were “Sunset” and “One Minute” were followed by two quieter if unsettling installments. The first, “I See You,” focused on the mortality and health of several characters, and the latest, “Kafkaesque,” naturally dove into the resulting problem of money and insurance—the serpentine topics at the series’ core. The salad days of stashing illegal monies behind air vents and under the kitchen sink are long gone for our beloved meth-slinging duo. Their conversations and the scope of their operation have expanded into the tens of millions, if not more, and in this ep we see how differently they continue to (forever) handle greed, contentment, and “taxes, yo.”
Their cash problems lie not only in finding and purchasing physical space needed for money laundering, but mental space as well. It’s the latter here that unleashes a whopper of a lie. Taking the lie into context, an unrelated scene where Walter informs Gus that he wants to “Lay the cards on the table,” bites with considerable irony. After the jump, we welcome your comments in anticipation of Sunday’s episode, “Fly.” Don’t miss it, it’s the best and easily the most creatively daring of the season (and some fans will say ever), directed by no less a talent than Rian Johnson (Brick).
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The /Filmcast Interview is a series of conversations with actors, directors, and other key figures from the entertainment industry. In this episode, David Chen speaks with Vince Gilligan, the creator and showrunner of Breaking Bad, about how The X-Files inspired him, why he finds science so appealing, and the psychology of Walter White. Breaking Bad currently airs on AMC on Sunday nights at 10 PM EST.
Have any questions, comments, or suggestions? Want to be interviewed on the /Filmcast? Feel free to e-mail us at slashfilmcast(AT)gmail(DOT)com. You can also call and leave a voicemail at (781) 583-1993.
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/Film will be recapping and discussing each episode of the third season of Breaking Bad. A spoiler warning applies after the jump for the recaps and for the comments section. Meth heads welcome. For previous recaps, click here.
In movies, when bank robbers and gangsters grumble, “I’m never going back to jail, they’ll have to kill me,” the statement does not uniformly rule out visiting peers who are incarcerated. On the other side of the glass, a visit can be a sobering reminder against surrender, and a satisfying reassurance of dominance to the criminal mind—”Better him than me”—all the while keeping the enemy close. Walter White has never served a prison sentence, but he’s weathered a death sentence as a patient confined to a hospital. The time served there, the loss of freedom and control over his life, forever skewed his outlook on mortality and morality. The hospital is a sort of prison in Walter’s psyche, and in season three, he seems to gain an introspective satisfaction in visiting others there—standing over their beds, his hand—or in the enemy’s case his eyes—on theirs.
Episode seven, and especially episode eight, entitled “I See You” (a play on the acronym for “intensive care unit”) demonstrate how smoothly Walt operates in this setting when he’s not the patient. “I hide in plain site, same as you,” Gus Fring tells him. And in this episode, Walt is never far from a character who is bruised, bloodied, unconscious, emotionally scarred or confused, characters snagged directly or indirectly in the wrath of Walt’s crimes, and thus weaker than him. The hospital scenes in “I See You” are an affirmation for Walt of a reality in which he’s the patriarch of survival, his facade the armor.
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