I knew this show was suppose to get better as it went along. I was most certainly not disappointed. There was a little bit of struggle in the early episodes of season one, but most shows go through something of a learning curve and this one's was minimal. Once they found their voice before being cut off by the writers strike, it has been pretty phenomenal ever since.
In Medias Res, Latin for "into the middle of things," is a literary technique where we start in the middle or the end of the story before going back to the beginning. Many stories use this as a crutch to simplistically draw people in or to put some action in the very beginning before getting to the "boring" stuff, like setting up the characters and story. Breaking Bad is what anyone who wants to start a work in medias res should look at before writing it. They managed to put together a season long in medias res (also a few great episodic ones, my favorite being Jesse's car hydrolics bouncing in the desert with bullet casings surrounding it).
The black and white openings with the pink bear in the pool had me intrigued from the very first moment of the season. Each subsequent time they would use it, you get a little more of what's going on. The bear, Walt's glasses, and many other things being put in evidence bags. The two body bags in the front driveway. Then finally, widespread destruction of the street and smoke in the distance as thing become colorized. Everything comes together at the end of the final episode. Jane's father is struggling with his air traffic control job and we see on the radar two planes getting closer together and everything clicks, those planes are going to collide over Walt's house and he played a hand in it happening. That moment becomes a large scale metaphor for what the season, and possibly the series is about. Walt's pride and greed is destroying everything he touches.
It started out as pride that he didn't want to take anyone's charity. We see it still on display when he says the word like a curse when Walt Jr. sets up the donation website. Now though, it's more than just pride, he's never going to get out of the game. He has amassed nearly all of the $737,000 he set as a goal in the beginning of this season and he only appears to want to go deeper. Greed seems to play a large factor, but the rush of the illegality has it's hold on Walt, too. He berates Jesse for being a junkie, but Walt is just as much a junkie, his drug of choice is just happens to be cooking and selling them.
Walt found himself going over the edge near the end of this season. He's done bad things in the past, but there were reasons behind most of the worst offenses. That moment when he's standing over Jane choking on her own vomit and does nothing, that is the moment where Walt tips the scale. He made have had to kill in self defense before, but this is murder. Bryan Cranstan sells the hell out of that moment. We can see it all on Walt's face. Thinking he needs to do something, then realizing that letting her die would solve a problem, and just letting it happen. Then actually feeling sad that after she dies, even though he could have prevented it. He deserved his Emmy for that scene alone.
Other characters become more fleshed out throughout this season, too. Jesse becomes more sympathetic as Walt becomes less. In the beginning he was more of a bumbling comic foil for Walt, but he's grown into the guy we root for now. Walt keeps pushing him more and more, and when Jesse fights back it makes sense, but Walt uses his superior intellect to manipulate Jesse to do what he wants. Hank becomes much less of cartoon through his problems after killing Tuco and his troubles in El Paso. The turtle blowing up really took me by surprise, which is something this show is very good at. Skyler's final scene with leaving Walt did really well by that character. It was an emotional way to end the season and was well timed before she becomes to come off as colossally stupid for not figuring out that something was wrong after so many incidents.
I really enjoyed the introduction of Saul. Here's a morally corrupt character who revels in it, and doesn't care. He adds a lot of humor to the show with his deadpan view of the bad things that keep happening to the Walt-Jesse operation. The other major introduction of the season is Gus Fring. A huge player in the drug trade who holds a double life as the owner of a chain of fast-food places. He's a pillar of the community and everything Stringer Bell of The Wire wished that he could be. We don't know much about Gus so far, but now that Walt is working with him, things are probably going to go bad, just as everything else Walt does goes.
Oh yeah, as icing on the cake, the four episodes that use the black and white in medias res opener are called "Seven Thirty-Seven," "Down," "Over," "ABQ."
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