It’s Saul in a scene (blog post from Ep 302)
What’s the difference between a main character and a minor character in a film or television series? Some may argue that that answer is simple–it depends on how much information we’re given about the character. Others might point to how much dialogue we hear from the character; more words means a more important character. Still other viewers might look to impact of the character on the plot, the depth of their personality, or even the amount of screen time dedicated to them.
While I do not think that the issue is as simple as this last criterion would suggest, I do believe that in Breaking Bad, the frequency with which characters are shown on screen alone gives us as an audience a clue as to who is a major character. The main characters get more screen time. Viewers have the chance to see almost every one of these characters alone in contemplative moments. How many times does the camera focus in on the confused, angered, smug or nervous faces of Walt or Jesse? Indeed, one of the show’s strengths is its ability to provide insight into a character’s inner life through intense, fleeting close-ups.
Comparatively, in his early appearances, Saul Goodman is given relatively little time in front of the camera. Until season 3, Saul is never in a scene by himself, appearing only when talking to Walt or Jesse. This implicitly tells viewers that Saul is only important insofar as he has an effect on Walt and Jesse. We’re given very little insight into Saul’s backstory or his personal struggles related to the events of Breaking Bad, indicating that we’re not meant to view him as a major character.
This trend lasts until Episode 302: Caballo Sin Nombre, in which Saul joins his comrades in close-up glory. As Saul leaves Walt’s apartment, the camera shows him walking toward, and then sitting in, his Cadillac DeVille. Though the shot is brief, its impact is lasting. Saul is given his own moment of contemplation. His heavy sigh and furrowed brow betray frustration and concern, a stark contrast to the jocular legal eagle who moments before had tried to give Walt a pep talk. In this way, Saul is finally becoming a deep character, capable of emotional dichotomy and independent thoughts.
The fact that this close-up occurs in a car is also a familiar scene to faithful viewers. Multiple scenes have given us such raw encounters with characters in cars–Jesse before he enlists Badger to cook meth with him in episode 105, Walt after he kills Crazy 8 in episode 103, Skyler as she smokes her cigarette in episode 204. Vince Gilligan and his team of writers are clearly fond of exhibiting character’s inner thoughts by having them contemplate some challenge or dilemma while sitting alone in parked their car before setting having to drive off. These quiet moments give viewers a rare, external glimpse of the private concerns of major characters.
All of these factors combine beautifully in Episode 302 allowing Saul Goodman to take a more central role in the narrative. In literally seconds, Saul is transformed from a sideline personality into a main character. — Jacob E.
Jesse’s Faustian bargain (blog post from Ep 307)
By season 3, several characters in Breaking Bad have made bargains and deals which have led to devastating consequences for them. No character has done this more or more heart-breakingly than Jesse. Every time he’s out of danger and pain, he gets sucked back in. In Episode 307 (One Minute), Jesse enters into a deal that may be a tragic turning point for him.
Jesse lies in the hospital after being severely beaten by Hank. Worried that an angry and vengeful Jesse might be trouble for him, Walt visits Jesse in the hospital twice, the second time offering him a “fifty-fifty partnership” to work with him in the lab and an eventual payday of $1.5 million. Jesse immediately turns it down, leaving Walt in disbelief. Wracked with pain and on meds, Jesse then begins perhaps his most dramatic scene yet, which could be considered a soliloquy in the classic tragedy genre:
I am not turning down the money. I am turning down you! You get it? I want nothing to do with you! Ever since I met you, everything I’ve ever cared about is gone, ruined, turned to shit, dead, ever since I hooked up with the great Heisenberg! I have never been more alone. I have nothing! No one! All right?! It’s all gone! Get it? No, no, no. Why would you get it?! What do you even care, as long as you get what you want? Right? You don’t give a shit about me. You said I was no good. I’m nothing!
Here Jesse finally realizes and acknowledges how Walt has been both manipulating and ruining his life. The scene makes you feel for Jesse and want him to keep away from Walt. Here is his one chance to get out of trouble while he can, but as soon as Walt returns home, he gets a phone call from Jesse, who decided to take his deal.
If there was ever a Faustian bargain in the series, this is it. Jesse makes his deal with the devil. As Jesse hangs up, he stares at the 10 on the pain scale next to his hospital bed, accompanied by a red, miserable sad-looking face. This only foreshadows the misery to come, while showing that what Jesse really wants–encouragement, friendship, love, and family–is no closer now even with the promise of a million dollar payday. — Brett W.
Is Br Ba accurate in its depiction of drug cartels? (blog post from Ep 307)
The scene in Episode 307 in which the twin cartel hitmen, Leonel and Marco Salamanca, try to assassinate Hank Schrader in a parking lot has the potential to strike many viewers as embellished and somewhat fantastical. However, recent historical events tend to show a different story.
In the past several decades, drug cartels from Mexico have become more and more dangerous within their own borders and even across American borders. The combination of steep drug trade profits, a weak Mexican government, and a border with the United States that is far from secure, Mexican drug cartels have more than fertile ground to develop their power. Major cartels such as the one depicted in Breaking Bad, the Juarez cartel (also known as the Carrillo Fuentes Organization) use their tremendous illegal profits back into the market, flooding the United States with even more illegal shipments of cocaine and heroin. These shipments come via a host of different forms of transportation, everything from cigarette boat to underground tunnels.
The true defining aspect to the cartels however, is their propensity for violence. This is where the scene involving the Cousins’ attempt on Hank’s life is actually very true to life rather than fantastical. Cartels have withstood the many attempts to break up their rule of crime and responded with extremely violent methods of intimidation. For instance, the Sinaloa cartel left 14 severed heads outside of a mayor’s office in north Mexico after attempts to limit their control. Cartel killings commonly have an “overkill” aspect to them, meaning they are chosen to be extremely gruesome and graphic in order to act as a warning to anyone who might think of not respecting the cartel.
With all of this as contextualizing information, the choice by Marco Salamanca to go back to his car to get the ax to kill Hank with was not overly dramatized but rather true to the actions of a cartel member. The odds of Hank killing Marco with a bullet that was dropped are very slim, but Marco wanting to not only kill Hank, but send a message to the community and the DEA is very true to cartel form. — Grady B.
Fly on the wall (blog post from Ep 310)
“All my precious secrets, yeah
You’d know them all
Don’t you wish that you could be a Fly on the Wall?” — Miley Cyrus
One of my absolute favorite episodes of season 3 is episode 310 (“Fly.”) While the fly may have been a real presence in the lab, its presence also symbolizes some critical events in the storyline. Flies are annoying. They show up where we least want them. They distract us, and many times, despite our very best efforts we can’t get rid of them. Flies frustrate us and drive us crazy; they consume our attention for minutes on end until we are finally able to defeat them.
Flies can produce a sort of paranoia. What have they touched? Where are they? Have I actually gotten rid of the problem? This paranoia is present throughout the whole episode. Walt has many reasons to be anxious and worried. He’s noticed that they’re consistently short in their yields. As viewers, we know that Walt is keeping the secret of Jane’s death from Jesse and that Jesse is keeping his own secret–that he’s been skimming off some of their meth and selling it on his own. The fly symbolizes the secrets Walt and Jesse are keeping from each other.
Perhaps the fly is also symbolic of Jesse being a nuisance to Walt. At the end of the episode, Walt confronts Jesse about the missing meth and darkly reminding him that he won’t be able to protect him. The fly for Jesse could be a manifestation of his annoyance with Walt’s over-protection and nosiness. “Who’s asking you to?” retorts an irritated Jesse after Walt confronts him. The feeling of tension and paranoia through season 3 reaches in its peaks in the “Fly” episode. — Zachary S.
Walt’s breaking point (blog post from Ep 310)
Season 3 has had many great and memorable moments (we all love the pizza on the roof) but none more important or breathtaking than Walt and Jesse’s dialogue in “Fly.” This isn’t a conventionally exciting episode filled with action scenes, but it’s enchanting nonetheless.
“Fly” allows us to take a moment to closely examine and take stock of Walt and Jesse’s characters. Near the end of the episode, Walter determines what would have been the ideal moment for him to die. More thinking out loud than speaking the Jesse, he says, “If I had just lived right up to that moment and not one second more, that would have been perfect.” At this moment, even viewers who have come to dislike Walt ache with him.
Walt’s usually not very self-aware or honest about how his actions affect others. A brilliant scientist, Walt is terrible at reading people and seeing things from their point of view. But in “Fly,” he shows a level of self-awareness exceeding anything he’s shown us before. We see the remorse that Walt feels over Jane’s death and the other terrible things he’s done, but we also see the irrational obsession that plagues him. Walt is so obsessed with making money for his family that he’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants. When he refuses to quit unless the fly is caught, we see how far and how crazy he can get if he doesn’t get his way.
Walt has always used his considerable mental energies to explain and rationalize his actions–getting in the meth business, killing Krazy-8, going to work for Gus Fring. But while chasing a fly in the lab, he reaches the end of his rope. As he talks about Jane’s death, Walt is unable to think of a way to justify all of the horrible things that resulted from this. While Jesse stands precariously perched on the top rung of the ladder, Walt gives up his justifying and rationalizing. “Jesse, I’m sorry. I’m sorry about Jane.” This line and the whole scene opens Walt up to us and lets us know that there is still is a man inside the meth-cooking monster he’s become. — Ida E.
Sexual ethics in Breaking Bad (blog post from Ep 312)
Season 3 is the season of Hank and Marie, as viewers finally get a closer look into the inner workings of their marriage. It’s also the season of awkward sexual encounters. Already, viewers have seen the show depict sex as awkward duty (Walt’s birthday night in episode 101) or as a means of power (Walt and Skyler in the kitchen in episode 201) rather than a loving and committed act among married couples.
Hank and Marie’s sexual encounters in season 3 seem to continue this pattern of portraying sex as serving other than good and virtuous ends. In episode 312, a despondent Hank thinks that he has a long hospital stay ahead of him and that he might never be able to fully physically recover after his shootout with the Cousins. Marie, though, thinks Hank needs to return home soon to get back to his old self physically and emotionally. While giving Hank a sponge bath, Marie brings up this topic. Hank rejects the possibility of returning home soon, as well as Marie’s sexual advances. Goaded by Marie, Hank agrees to her bet: “If I can get the groundhog to see his shadow, you check out of here.” Hank doesn’t see the point of this, but Marie seems quite serious: “The point is you’re not completely hopeless.” A few moments later, we see an upset Hank being wheeled out of the hospital, followed by Marie wearing a proud smile.
Here, sex is viewed as a means of manipulation. Marie uses Hank’s sexuality in order to get what she wants. In the “game” between the two of them, there’s a winner and a loser. While this is consensual, it also raises a question: Is this an appropriate use of sexuality by one of the series’ at least partly supporting and functional couples? — Kelly H.
Jesse “breaks bad” (blog post from Ep 313)
Many viewers claim that Walt “breaks bad” when he lets Jane die in episode 212. So is there a point in the series where Jesse “breaks bad”? I’d say there is. It’s when Jesse kills Gale Boetticher in cold blood in episode 313.
Gale was an innocent man who was only a threat to Walt through no fault of his own. Gus used Gale to take over the meth cooking so that Gus could eventually get rid of Walt. When Walt called Jesse to tell him to kill Gale, Jesse felt he had only two options: kill Gale or let Walt die. When Jesse sped over to Gale’s apartment and stood in his doorway holding his gun with a shaking hand, he hated those options. When he shot Gale, Jesse chose wrongly. Yes, I was glad that Jesse killed Gale (not glad that Gale died) because I wanted Walt to live. But that’s not up to us. In killing Gale, Jesse lowers himself to Walt’s violent level. I’m convinced that Jesse has a different heart than Walt. Jesse has always been the more moral one in their relationship, but that didn’t affect his actions in this moment. Until Gale’s death, Jesse had managed to steer clear of killing. Walt was responsible to Krazy-8’s death and Hank for Tuco’s, but until episode 313 Jesse remained free of this type of blood guilt. When Jesse pulled the trigger, he joined Walt on the dark side. No one would argue that Jesse wanted to kill Gale, but he did it. Yes, Jesse seemed torn over Gale, but what matters in the end is that Jesse murdered an innocent and defenseless man. There is no going back once you take another’s life, and Jesse can never go back from “breaking bad.” — Ida E.
Studying Breaking Bad 