Better Call Saul: Something Beautiful

 "It never loses suction."

I was going to use a certain quote concerning gold nuggets, but decided I'd better not. Anyway...

This is a fascinating episode, which has the air of calm before the storm. Not that Nacho's extraordinary actions- faking a hit, including having himself shot and wounded twise, in order to cover up the death of that bloke- are exactly calm. But these are the lengths he has to go to, conflicted between his loyalty to the cartel and towards his father. He's badly conflicted and he can't, surely, keep getting away with this. He's lucky to survive... for now. And that doctor has such a wonderful bedside manner.

These things create ripples. Gus isaffected, with supplies disrupted and having todeal with conflicting demands from on high. Yet we also see him interact with an ambitious Gale for the first time, another old face.

Jimmy, meanwhile, is "masterminding" another dodgy scheme... eventually, when he can persuade a patsy to do the cat burglaring. I love how we spend such a long, tense scene with things almost going very badly indeed, yet with intentional bathos as the rather pathetic victim has been kicked out of his house by his wife. This is all sort of comic relief, but I suspect I ought to be seeing this as a clue that things are about to get serious.

We see Kim, working to hsrd while she should be resting, but... it she reaching some sort of crisis? Chuck's letter to Jimmy is actually nice, and it is she who tears up while Jimmy remains cold, as he always is deep inside, because what she loves is the mask, not the man. Is she beginning to realise...?

As ever... wow.

Breaking Bad: Box Cutter

 "Well? Get back to work."

This is, of course, a superlative episode of television in its own right as well as being, although I say this unspoiled, the perfect season opening to set us up for a season based on competition between Heisenberg and Gus.

Yet it all boils down to one long scene, which I'll turn to immediately. Because we may start with a nice little flashback with Gale, ironiclly sowing the seeds of his own destruction, in flashback, as he encourages Gus to hire the creator of the mysterious blue meth. And we may then move on to the moment of the fateful shot- the camera focusing, as it should, on Jesse's horrified face as he does something he can never undo. But ultimately it's Jesse and Heisenberg (not Walt; only Heisenberg appears in this episode. That's a first.) who have to face the music as they wait for Gus.

As Gus enters, the tension is electric. Heisenberg is immediately out-alpha maled as he tries to justify his actions and emphasise his value- intrerestingly, taking a risk to protect Jesse. It seems what Jesse has just done has made Walt even more loyal to his friend. It's an extraordinary scene, which works due to the power of Bryan Cranston's delivery and the sheer menacing presence of Giancarlo Esposito. It's truly shocking when Gus, calm and silent up until this point-silence, in this case, means power- slashes Victor's neck and kills him. Walt and Jesse are too valuable, for the moment, but someone has to die.

It's an extraordinary and haunting few moments of television. The status quo is restored, on the surface, but it's kill or be killed.

Elsewhere, Skyler goes deeper into acceptance of her new criminal lifestyle- how far will she go? And Hank is not in a good place. He'd be in an even worse place if he knew what was funding his recovery. The direction is sublime, with objects used as reference points- that teddy bear eye again, and the knife used to kill Victor is seen earlier, like Chekhov's Gun. But this superlative episode is, ultimately, based around that one scene.

Breaking Bad: Full Measure

 "That's like Thomas Magnum threatening that, like, prissy guy with the moustache."

This is a big, important finale: we know, as Vince Gilligan is writing and directing himself. 

It's all really a big chess game between Walt and Gus. Yet it's all done with such humanity, reminding us that these are all people with lives and loved ones; even Mike is shown as a doting father immediately before he goes and kills some people in a rather cool little mission.

The start, a flashback with an incredibly young-looking Walt and Skyler, is a curiosity, certainly, and reminds uswhat a perfect couple they once were, in an empty house so full of infinite possibility, Skyler pregnant with Walt Jr and Walt both ambitious and irrepressibly confident. Yet it also serves to remind us how far Walt has come to be such a cold blooded killer, as we see this episode.

Walt talks his way out of immediately being killed on the orders of a superbly menacing Gus, but we all know it's just a temporary reprieve. As soon as we see his assistant- Gale- it's clear that a successor is being groomed for after his death. And the conversation between Gus and valuable pawn Gale is a triumph of scripting and acting, one of those conversations that are 100% subtext.

There's so much tension in this episode, as Walt knows he's to be killed very soon. The solution- to kill Gale and thus render himself irreplaceable- is brillant but desperate, and that final scene, as Walt is about to be killed, is an amazing bit of television, ending with a moment of high drama.

Where now...? Things are looking very much like Walt vs Gus, with Walt about to move upwards against the odds. We shall see...

Breaking Bad: I See You

 "It's all, like, shiny up in here."

Once again we have a devilishly clever episode which gets even cleverer at the very end. On the surface it's about Walt juggling two worlds: one where he's under pressure to deliver his meh quota; and another where he has family obligations to wait at the hospital with the family as Hank fights for his life. Yet there's so much going on beneath the surface of the deceptively simple plot, and we discover that literally everyone is but a fly in Gus' web.

Jesse basically spends the episode being a ridiculous dick, with Aaron Paul's facial expression when he discovers what happened to Hank being utterly priceless. And his arrival in the lab at exactly the wrong moment while Walt (not Heisenberg!) is bullshitting badly to Gale is hilarious. I'm calling it now; Gale is to become a future antagonist and Walt will regret treagting him so shabbily.

Elsewhere we have hints at a connection between Walt and Marie, which is interesting. We have a truly terrifying horror scene where the surviving brother sees Walt, leaves his hospital bed and crawls, legless and bleeding on the floor, towards Walt. We have a uniquely straightforward opening. And we have Walt Jr telling his dad about a book Hank got him- Walt being out-fathered by a man fighting for his life.

Yet all that is overshadowed by the end, with Gus humiliating Walt and subtly letting him know that he knows everything, and proceeding to kill the remaining brother (and only witness as to who ordered the hit on Hank) before almost casually having his rival killed. We now realise just how dangerous Gus is... and yet, with the trajectory of Breaking Bad being towards bigger and bigger scale, I expect one day he will have Walt for a rival...

A superb episode, and superb performances all round.

Breaking Bad: Sunset

 "This is my own private domicile and I will not be harrassed. Bitch!"

Wow. Breaking Bad is consistently bloody good, but this is easily the best single episode yet. It's simply extraordinary in how it inexorably builds up to that scene where Hank has Jesse and (although Hank doesn't know) and Walt at his apparent mercy in the RV. The script seems to drive events into a corner, with Hank certain to discover Walt… and then cleverly, plausibly, and with much wit, manages to withdraw from that corner. It’s a magnificent scene.

There’s so much to love in this episode, right from the first, tinted, suspense-filled and quietly terrifying scene reminding us what inexorable killers the brothers are to the final scene where Gus- an extraordinarily controlled performance from Giancarlo Esposito- solves the Walt problem by allowing the brothers to go after Hank, in a nice twist.

There’s also Walt’s first day as a salaried employee as he really bonds with his assistant over how the chemistry is “magic”; the two of them come across as alchemists in the almost mystical reverence they have for their art. There’s the interesting commingling of Walt and Heisenberg throughout this episode in a way that hasn’t quite been seen before. There’s Jesse answering the phone with a still-deferential “Mr White”? Amongst all the twists and turns there are so many exquisite little character moments.

Most of all, though, there’s Walt’s cleverness with that scene. Which is only as clever as the writer…