breaking bad

tv:  Last night Breaking Bad returned for the first part of its final season.  I spent a long time thinking about what I saw, and decided that to digest what I saw I had to start with something of a look back at what I had already seen.  The series is the story of a somewhat pathetic high school science teacher named Walter White who turned to cooking meth with a burnout former student of his named Jesse Pinkman in order to provide for his family after being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.  His motive throughout the first two seasons is simply that.  He wants money, and as much of it as possible through his new criminal enterprise.  As the story continues his motives for continuing to cook change.  It becomes more about the threat of the dangerous people he is forced to associate with forcing him to continue what he does.  These threats and motives also allow the absolutely terrible things he does to keep his drug enterprise going, mainly the murder of other drug dealers and distributors, to be more or less excusable.  After all, he is just trying to provide for his family and stay alive in the process.  As the third season ends and the fourth season begins we see both Walt and Jesse descend further into darkness as they are confronted by the all to frightening threat of their boss, Gustavo Frain, played brilliantly by Giancarlo Esposito.  That war escalates to a breaking point that leaves Walt in a kill or be killed mode that ends with him willing to blow up a hospital wing at a retirement home in order to kill Gus.  When he calls his wife, Skylar, who is now involved in his criminal activities by trying to hide and launder his money for him, all he can find the words to say is "I won."
That moment is where we pick up at the beginning of the fifth season.  And with those words, and no discernible threat, besides the pending investigation of the DEA that has been going on throughout the series, we find ourselves now finally atop the mountain looking to finally descend and finish the trip.  And descend is where we go.  There seems to be a somewhat steep and unforgiving downward trajectory to Walt's character that will continue to the end of the series.  It was created, not as an amoral or immoral character to root for, as Dexter or Tony Soprano is, but simply as a study in pure descent from weak, yet decent man, to the embodiment of evil not to be rooted for but just stunned and frightened by.  Walt begins the fifth season in as dark a place if not darker than he ended the fourth season.  And looking ahead it only appears to get darker.
The fifth season begins with Walt and Jesse hoping to evade detection from the cops as the investigation by the ABQPD and DEA continue search for Gus's killer.  This finds them needing to destroy the surveillance footage from the lab that Gus was recording.  The dark humor of this situation, as with most of the show can only be compared to the scene at Eric Stoltz's house in Pulp Fiction when Uma Thurman overdoses, is brilliant.  Walt and Mike, a hitman for Gus, plot, and fight about the realistic possibility, of a way to blow up the evidence room containing the computer that Gus saved the footage (all too elaborately mind you) as Jesse suggests a magnet, with all the memory sucking hand motions and sound effects provided to explain to the two old men of this odd trifecta.  Then as they are testing the magnet that they decide to borrow from a scrap yard for this caper, Jesse so typically yells "YEAH BITCH!!!!!!"  at their apparent success.
The real defining moment of the episode was the very end.  Walt returns home after a seemingly successful attempt to erase the computers memory (it worked "because he says so") and decides to talk to his wife, Skylar, about the fact that she gave all of his drug money to a man she had had an affair with to keep the IRS off of her and her former lovers trials.  Skylar, meanwhile, is still waiting to see some sort of contrition and remorse for Walt's role in the gang war that happened in their town and threatened their family.  Walt shows no remorse.  Instead he acts with the same sort of terror he has grown accustomed to away from his family when he simply holds Skylar and says "I forgive you."
The look on Skylar's face as the episode ends says it all.  We are clearly now in the midst of a full fledged monster where forgiveness for our shortcomings, real or not, is all that is keeping us from a horrible end.  Walt's steep trajectory into darkness has lead us to a place where there is no forgiving his actions.  He is clearly nothing less than a killer and kingpin who feels no fear and no remorse.  People have spent the past months leading up to this season wondering who the new villain would be.  The answer is Walt.
As the show continues to come to an end I have no doubt that the meticulous nature of how the shows entire universe of characters and stories has been conceived and executed will drive it towards a suitable and logical end.  The enjoyment of the ride, in the meantime, will be watching this absolutely morally void main character continue down the path he seems to be set on and how that will effect the place the show is going and the characters that are being brought down by Walt's path of terror.  That end, right now, seems to be the showdown between Walt and his DEA brother Hank.
This first episode was shot in a lot of dark settings.  I couldn't help but smile and wonder if creator and writer of the episode, Vince Gilligan, was telling the director something to the effect of, "Its fine, we'll just use a flashlight or two and a lamp.  I used to do it on X Files all the time."  Out of the harsh light of the New Mexico Desserts and cold lights of laboratories, I wouldn't help but see Gilligan returning to his roots not only metaphorically but literally:  the darkness.