Breaking Bad: Horrific Prefection

Breaking Bad:
"ABQ"

OMFG, Breaking Bad's season 2 finale was phenomenal. The second-to-last episode ended with Walt's horrifying decision to not help Jane as she choked to death in her sleep, and the season finale kept the WTF moments coming. The shockers were relentless: from Gus touring the police station to Skyler catching Walt in his lies and kicking him out to the terrifying revelation that the now infamous pink teddy bear fell from the sky after an airplane collision that was caused (albeit inadvertently) by Walt's actions.

Breaking Bad has always lived in the world of moral grayness and ambiguity. With this finale, however, the show moved further into the dark end of the morality spectrum than it ever has before. The show has extensively explored the dangerous nature of drug dealing for the novice dealers, but in our eagerness to see Walt and Jesse succeed and make boatloads of money, we sometimes lose sight of how destructive the drugs they are selling can be. Example A: Jane, who all in all seemed like a sweet girl and was dearly loved by her father and Jesse (and had a tremendously awesome mural on her bedroom wall), dies from choking on her own vomit after a drug binge. Her death leaves Jesse, one of our heroes (or anti-heroes), completely devastated and also leads to Example B: Jane's grief-stricken father, an air traffic controller, is driven to such distraction that he fails to prevent a collision between two airplanes above Albuquerque.

Wow, that plane crash. The source of the teddy bear, the glasses, the wallet and the other debris littering Walt's back and front yards. And the cause of probably upwards of a hundred deaths of innocent people (including the child owner of the pink bear). How can we justify what Walt has done in the face of all this destruction? What started out as a dying man willing to do anything to provide for his family has resulted in a series of progressively horrible events. Walt is already racked with guilt--imagine how he will feel when he finds out about what caused the plane crash. Even aside from all of the collateral damage, has any of this worked out for Walt at all? He beat cancer (for now anyway), but he lost his family anyway.

It's all so bleak. The one heartening moment in the finale came when Walt hunted Jesse down and went into the crack den (is that what that freaky place was?) to save him. Jesse's raw grief was devastating, and it was nice to see Walt vow to help him. If nothing else good has come from any of this, at least these two men have formed an indelible bond.

The up-shot of it all: Breaking Bad should win the Emmy for Best Drama Series. I've watched Mad Men, Lost, Damages, and a myriad of other shows, and nothing has been as consistently stellar this season as Breaking Bad. Additionally, Bryan Cranston has made an extremely strong case for repeating his Best Actor win, and if Aaron Paul's brilliant work is not recognized with at least a Best Supporting Actor nomination, I may cry.

I, for one, am fascinated to see what season 3 will bring. Will a post-rehab Jesse still want to be involved in the drug trade after drugs led to the death of his girlfriend? Will Skyler find out the truth and how will she react? How will Walt come to terms with the fact that his quest for financial security has led to the deaths of so many people? Is there any redemption at all to be had here, or must we now just embrace the dark side?

(photo: amctv.com)