It’s time – time for Breaking Bad to start Season Four. I’ve been stuck hanging on the edge of this cliff by fingernails that I haven’t trimmed in over a year! Let’s all get caught up before tonight’s 10/9c premiere on AMC. (For those of you not caught up through Season Three let me warn you that there are spoilers.)
Walter White is cornered by Mike, the cool-hand enforcer/assassin/cold-blooded killer (all that Walt was not).
Walter, who gave himself the name “Heisenberg” as an identity feigning dark toughness as he entered into a life of drugs and thugs, is screwed.
Mr. White, that dude in his underwear back in Season One yelling at his punk-ass partner Jesse Pinkman for letting their RV meth lab’s battery die. That was him, in the dead of night staring into the dark hole of his stationary meth factory entrance, knowing he was done for.
Then it happened – the awkward, morally-conflicted, but easy-to-cheer-for father, husband, high school chemistry teacher was no longer merely bad, he broke Bad Ass.
The stakes have grown. He would sneak into his unborn child’s room and pull illicit cash from a small dark air duct. By the end of Season Three that small dark access became a million-dollar super-villain lab entrance, and might as well have been Dante’s entrance to hell. Walt knew it was supposed to his tomb that night.
His partner, Jesse, flies into action. They both know what the stakes are. And there’s Gale, making another damn cup of perfect tea, tooling around his little apartment. Gale is who Walter was, and Walter makes the call to have him wasted. It’s calculated. It’s brilliant. It’s bad.
Did Jesse do it? Or did he have a Walter-like flash of insight that may have averted Gale’s demise for some larger more strategic purposes? This has kept me securely attached to that cliff, thinking about what the next meeting between Walter and Gus will be like (can you see it, the two them in subdued tones, at a table at Los Hermanos Pollos while a family orders onion rings)?
Will Gustavo Fring get the dynamic duo of Jesse Pinkman and Walter White more involved in his power grab over the drug trade of the Southwestern U.S.? Will Skyler stand by her man, will Hank sniff out the illicit fumes that have been cooking under his nose? It’s a world of schmarmy lawyers, family, love, lust, loss, disease and healing… it’s our world. Is there any chance for some good to break in?
It all comes back to Walter. He stepped out of some Greek tragedy or Shakespearian drama, a case study for ethics classes. Oh, he’s bad now. For the past three seasons he learned how to wear the persona of bad, getting all Heisenberged up with a dark hat and glasses, but he would always try to get away clean back to his former life.
That’s over. The cancer is in retreat as the darkness increases. Has he fully entered that world, or has it taken him over? Has he left a string tied way back at the start of this thing so he can find his way out, or is trapped for good? And I can’t help but to wonder what in the world Jesse has to do with it. Hang with me folks, the last season ended with a bang, and that is the starting pistol tonight. One thing is for sure, when it comes to Breaking Bad, It’s ON!
CLICK HERE to watch the official Breaking Bad Season 4 trailer and CLICK HERE to see all the other official Season 4 cast portraits by Ben Leuner!
