After the edge-of-your-seat tension of Ta’hajiilee, and the devastation of Ozymandius, the gang at Breaking Bad wisely feel that it’s time for a little break. Of course, in the land of Breaking Bad, a “break” means that one woman will be threatened, and another murdered, and our main character will be reduced to paying a virtual stranger ten thousand dollars to hang out with him for an hour.
Earlier this week, TV critic Todd VanderWerff tweeted that he finds it interesting Nucky is reluctant to be in the position that he’s in, making him different from most anti-hero characters. Todd is right and Nucky says it himself in this episode, saying he was happier when he was just a crooked politician. And who can blame him? In many ways, those were the good old days for Nucky Thompson. He still had Jimmy, he could still regularly appear in public, he didn’t have to watch his back every other step, and, in season one, he found Margaret.
We start back at the original cook. The original lie. The original sin. It’s nice to see the boys again when they were grudgingly getting along, before it all went so horribly, horribly awry.
Poor Boardwalk Empire. It’s unfair that the beginning of this season has to go up against the final four episodes of Breaking Bad (OH MY GOD, I KNOW). I had to give myself some time after watching Breaking Bad before I went to see what our friend Nucky Thompson was up to, knowing that Breaking Bad’s insane episode might color my enjoyment of HBO’s drama.
It was at To’hajiilee where Walt and Jesse started cooking, lo those many months/years ago. They were just a couple of young upstarts, with nothing more than an RV and a dream. I wasthere man, on the original airdate. Before it was even in HD. Were you? Nah, you were probably a johnny-come-lately, jumping on the bandwagon after it got cool. You didn’t have to tell anyone that the story was about a chemistry teacher who gets lung cancer and starts selling meth—yeah kind of like Weeds, but it’s good I swear—it’s called “Breaking Bad” because the main character breaks bad by selling meth.
Right on time, salon.com had an article today on whether or not Boardwalk Empire is trashy or not and, oddly, seemed to come to the conclusion that it should be trashy (they call it pulpy but, incorrectly, appear to believe pulpy means the same as trashy). Articles such as that one crop up every September before Boardwalk Empire begins yet another season as many see the drama as an oddity, the somewhat ugly stepbrother of The Sopranos. Let me say up front, Boardwalk Empire is not as good as The Sopranos. However, no other show is (no, not Mad Men although I can hear arguments for The Wire) so that’s a tough standard to hold Boardwalk Empire to.
This week, we get Walter White, stumbling into his own home, gun held outward. Shaking. Nervous. Decidedly un-Heisenberg. We haven’t seem much of Heisenberg in these last four episodes at all, come to think of it. The one-two punch of both Hank and now Jesse becoming his mortal enemy has entirely unmoored our Walter White.