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chaniI watched the 10th episode of Breaking Bad's season 3 and it put a smile on my face.
"Fly" is one of my favourite episodes so far. It focuses on the core of the show, that is the odd pair that Walt and Jess make, is deep and multi-layered, with metaphors en veux-tu en voilà; has funny moments and great lines (almost everything that Jesse said), touching, painful even, dialogues; the tension towards the end as Walt is succombing to the tranquilizers and actually talking about what happened in season 2 (will he spill the beans?) and as Jesse climbs on the ladder, is unbearable; the acting is fantastic and the shooting, as usual, flawless.
This is the episode in which BB goes Greek or existentialist, embracing its high-brow nature, risking to lose part of its audience, just like BtVS with "Restless"once apon a time. I can see how some viewers wouldn't enjoy it as very little happen during 47 minutes and I'm sure that there are BB fans that mostly dig the action, gun shots and drug kingpin plot. They probably thought WTF? They might have found the episode boring, maybe pretentious.
Because after a few expository scenes showing Walt having insomnia and the two partners cleaning up the shiny equipment of their super meth lab, the episode mostly consists of Walt and Jesse trying to kill a fly. It's Walt, first chasing alone the fly in the lab (a scene heavy on gags and symbols), in vain, and after another sleepless night spent in the lab, postponing the meth cooking because of the unbearable "contamination" (Jesse fears Ebola or something but that is just a fly!) and enlisting Jesse to chase the fly with him during the whole following day! Don Quixote y Sancho Panza anyone?
But let's forget Cervantes for a moment. Jean-Paul Sartre would have loved that one too!
"Fly" is basically a huis-clos with two characters with "heavy baggages" and an intruder, a haunting little flying Erinýe, they have to deal with. But the structure and themes aren't artifical, they fit in the show, putting Walt and Jesse in a situation that recalls season 1 and 2 when they were isolated from the rest of the world in their R.V; they help to study both characters, to explore what is going on in their heads given what happened before, and to add depth to the relationship between our anti-heroes. The beautifully shot "Fly" provides superb and symbolical visuals but is not just empty style. Apart from Greek mythology and reference to Sartre, the fly's irrational path, elusiveness, and connection with dirt and death is a great metaphor of the point at which Walter finds himself.
"Fly" is so great that it requires, no it demands!, my writing some analysis, even if it's only for myself.
This episode showed very well the state of both Walt and Jesse.
Walt can't sleep. Guilt is eating him up even though he doesn't acknowledge it. He still finds ways or "the right combination of words" to justify is actions, he isn't ready to repent yet, nor is he ready to admit that he is "the bad guy".
We already knew that he was a meticulous guy so his cleaning up the equipement and calculting the production are totally in character. But the sleep-deprivation helps to turn what was a feature into true obsession. And we already knew he was a control-freak and had "rage " episode, so when a fly invades his lab, he is ready for indulging in a behaviour that is everything but sensible.
Suddenly Jesse, who often clowned away in the show, is the reasonable person there. Well, at first. The role reversal was interesting, as Jesse watches Walt's antics, worries about him, tries to distract him (the "possom" story, and how "opossum" sounds like it's an Irish possum!) while telling him a sort of parable about his aunt to worm information out about a possible brain cancer which might explain Walt's Captain Ahab-like behaviour (although pursuing a fly looks more pathetic than chasing Mody Dick) , and eventually takes care of his Mr White in the end, the way a parent would take care of a child (putting Walt on a couch,covering him, taking his shoes off).
"Fly" is a moment of craziness and bonding but also a catharsis through a crisis. And in the end, outside of the lab, they are back to their roles.
So Jesse is seen as quite sensible at first, not understanding Walt's crazy obsession about a possible contamination of its perfect product and trying to put some sense into him "We probably have the most unpicky customers in the world". Besides the show reminds us that, unlike Walt who's been deluding himself to avoid moral responsability, he has no illusion about what they do "Were making poison for people who don't care". Ouch! Jesse nailed it.
Yet Mr White 's influence on Jesse and probably his own feelings of guilt make him share Walt's quest, join the fly chasing. It's really well done because it's partly Jesse indulging his partner's "crazy game" to get rid of the fly so they could get meth cooking sooner, partly submitting to his elder, partly pretending to play while taking care of a restless Walt and partly getting annoyed by the fly himself. Because as soon as Walt mentioned Jane's death, it's obvious that big bad Jesse's wounds aren't closed and his shattered heart is still in the right place. By the way, there's the little detail of the cigarette butt he keeps in his car, a butt with marks of lipstick. Oh show, how many times are you going to break my heart?
When Walt, on the verge of falling asleep, says that he is so sorry for Jane, really sorry, while Jesse teeters on top of a stepladder resting on two rolling cabinets that Walt holds––a great metaphor of the current situation the pair is in regards to their relationship and to their working for Gus Fring––, Jesse says that her death was nobody's fault but allows himself a heartbreaking "I miss her though. God, I do".
Little he knows of Walt's true responsability. I feared that Walt would spill the beans because it would have been devastating. The tension was incredible.
Finally Walt is resigned "everything is contaminated", begs Jesse to step down and stop chasing the fly. Walt doesn't question his making meth yet but has accepted his responsabilty in some destructive events, Jane's death and the consequences of her death (her father causing the planes crash). His apology to Jesse is pure penance. At the very moment Jesse has put his feet on the floor, the fly lands in front of him and he is able to kill it. But Walt is already snoring, unaware of the final victory, a poetic yet twisted parallel of the season 2 scene in which a passed-out Jesse was unaware of Jane dying at his side.
While Walt sleeps at last thanks to the tranquilizers Jesse put into his coffee, the young man gets busy with meth cooking (btw great shot of the shoes on the floor with Jesse going to work in the background) which, I guess, points out that Jesse does stuff when Walt isn't watching, like skimming and selling in the side.
Is this foreshadowing a future in which Walt will be out (dead?) and Jesse will cook alone?
"Everything is contaminated" is also a reflection on Walt's life. Making meth has poisoned his life, just like the cancer and to a certain extent the chemiotherapy have poisoned his body. It's too late, he is contaminated and so is his family since Skyler found out about his meth making. In a way, Jesse represents the fly who intruded onto his life, even though it's Walt who went to him and blackmailed him into partnership, not the other way round. By the way, at one moment, Jesse wears a respirator on his head instead of wearing it on his face, and it makes him look like a fly with huge red eyes! I love the show for precious little details like that.
Being stuck with Jesse always make Walt talk, and it's usually significant. He reveals that he has seen his oncologist and still is in remission, and he doesn't sound too happy about it, so when a concerned and quite perceptive Jesse asks him if he is saying that he wants to die he answers "I'm saying that I've lived too long". And then he starts explaining that he should have died before...he starts looking for the perfect moment his death would have ideally happened. It's a terrific and painful speech, showing that Walt is aware of being trapped by his actions. Finally he finds the perfect moment, and mentions the night Jane's died and the moment he was in a bar beside Jane's father, not knowing who the man was. It hurts Jesse of course, but Jesse can't really understand what Walt means then. Walt says that he shouldn't have left home that night and shouldn't have gone to Jesse's place, he should have died before, at home while Skyler was singing a lullaby to Holy. It's ambiguous enough for Jesse to believe that Walt hints at the time he went to hand a bag of money to Jesse and Jane that night, especilly since he mentioned said meeting before in their conversation, but we know that he must think of the second time he went to Jesse's house, as he tried to wake his post-heroin-shot-passed-out meth son, inadvertly throwing Jane on her back when shaking Jesse, and just watched Jane die choking in her vomit, without helping her.
So when Walt mentions his converstion with Jane's father it's quite significant and touching too. He tells Jesse that they talked about family and the stranger said "never give up on family" and that he followed the advice. Jesse probably assumes that Walt means that he went back to his family after leaving the bar that night but we know that Walt went to Jesse's place, trying to protect him from a girlfriend's bad influence and save him from a possible overdose. No matter that Walt also had selfish reason for letting Jane died, since she had blackmailed him and was a threat to himself, he went to the house for Jesse not for getting rid of a threat (although now that I write it, I can totally see our Fly as representing Jane or being Jane back from the dead to tourment Walt like a Fury, besides back in season 2 she was an element of contamination, an intruder threatening the partnership with Jesse, and like the fly she was killed by one partner while the other was passed out nearby!). Jesse is the family he didn't give up on, but Jesse can't hear that and Walt can't really confess what he did otherwise he would lose Jesse for good.
At the end of the episode, our characters have left the lab, Walt is better now that he has gotten some sleep and he shares one last thing with Jesse, reaching out while he's already in his car: he warns Jesse about the danger he might be facing given the missing weight in meth production (despite his going off the rails, Walt figured out what Jesse is up to!), suggesting that the people they work for are very dangerous (yet not sharing what he knows exacty about Gus Fring) and saying he won't be able to protect Jesse.
But Jesse denies everything and shuts down. It is a sad moment given the bond that existed inside of the lab. It's like once they were out, in the real world, the spell was broken, at least for Jesse.
As much as I love neat metaphors, stylish visual and meta writing, it's mostly the emotional connection that makes me adore this episode, because as I said before Breaking Bad is all about Walt and Jesse, an unlikely partnership and a weird twisted version of father/son relationship. It's the stuff that got me hooked and makes me melt every time. The chemistry (pun intended!) between the two characters (probably helped by the complicity between Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul) is incredible, their interactions provide the most powerful moments of the show. There's some ugly stuff ahead and Jesse is playing with fire but I can't imagine that the series could continue if they decided to kill Jesse off.
Apparently, "Fly" aired the same evening as the finale of Lost. I wasn't very happy with that finale but I guess my review would have been even harder on Lost if I had known how awesome BB were and if I had seen the brilliant "Fly" at the time.
"Fly" is one of my favourite episodes so far. It focuses on the core of the show, that is the odd pair that Walt and Jess make, is deep and multi-layered, with metaphors en veux-tu en voilà; has funny moments and great lines (almost everything that Jesse said), touching, painful even, dialogues; the tension towards the end as Walt is succombing to the tranquilizers and actually talking about what happened in season 2 (will he spill the beans?) and as Jesse climbs on the ladder, is unbearable; the acting is fantastic and the shooting, as usual, flawless.
This is the episode in which BB goes Greek or existentialist, embracing its high-brow nature, risking to lose part of its audience, just like BtVS with "Restless"once apon a time. I can see how some viewers wouldn't enjoy it as very little happen during 47 minutes and I'm sure that there are BB fans that mostly dig the action, gun shots and drug kingpin plot. They probably thought WTF? They might have found the episode boring, maybe pretentious.
Because after a few expository scenes showing Walt having insomnia and the two partners cleaning up the shiny equipment of their super meth lab, the episode mostly consists of Walt and Jesse trying to kill a fly. It's Walt, first chasing alone the fly in the lab (a scene heavy on gags and symbols), in vain, and after another sleepless night spent in the lab, postponing the meth cooking because of the unbearable "contamination" (Jesse fears Ebola or something but that is just a fly!) and enlisting Jesse to chase the fly with him during the whole following day! Don Quixote y Sancho Panza anyone?
But let's forget Cervantes for a moment. Jean-Paul Sartre would have loved that one too!
"Fly" is basically a huis-clos with two characters with "heavy baggages" and an intruder, a haunting little flying Erinýe, they have to deal with. But the structure and themes aren't artifical, they fit in the show, putting Walt and Jesse in a situation that recalls season 1 and 2 when they were isolated from the rest of the world in their R.V; they help to study both characters, to explore what is going on in their heads given what happened before, and to add depth to the relationship between our anti-heroes. The beautifully shot "Fly" provides superb and symbolical visuals but is not just empty style. Apart from Greek mythology and reference to Sartre, the fly's irrational path, elusiveness, and connection with dirt and death is a great metaphor of the point at which Walter finds himself.
"Fly" is so great that it requires, no it demands!, my writing some analysis, even if it's only for myself.
This episode showed very well the state of both Walt and Jesse.
Walt can't sleep. Guilt is eating him up even though he doesn't acknowledge it. He still finds ways or "the right combination of words" to justify is actions, he isn't ready to repent yet, nor is he ready to admit that he is "the bad guy".
We already knew that he was a meticulous guy so his cleaning up the equipement and calculting the production are totally in character. But the sleep-deprivation helps to turn what was a feature into true obsession. And we already knew he was a control-freak and had "rage " episode, so when a fly invades his lab, he is ready for indulging in a behaviour that is everything but sensible.
Suddenly Jesse, who often clowned away in the show, is the reasonable person there. Well, at first. The role reversal was interesting, as Jesse watches Walt's antics, worries about him, tries to distract him (the "possom" story, and how "opossum" sounds like it's an Irish possum!) while telling him a sort of parable about his aunt to worm information out about a possible brain cancer which might explain Walt's Captain Ahab-like behaviour (although pursuing a fly looks more pathetic than chasing Mody Dick) , and eventually takes care of his Mr White in the end, the way a parent would take care of a child (putting Walt on a couch,covering him, taking his shoes off).
"Fly" is a moment of craziness and bonding but also a catharsis through a crisis. And in the end, outside of the lab, they are back to their roles.
So Jesse is seen as quite sensible at first, not understanding Walt's crazy obsession about a possible contamination of its perfect product and trying to put some sense into him "We probably have the most unpicky customers in the world". Besides the show reminds us that, unlike Walt who's been deluding himself to avoid moral responsability, he has no illusion about what they do "Were making poison for people who don't care". Ouch! Jesse nailed it.
Yet Mr White 's influence on Jesse and probably his own feelings of guilt make him share Walt's quest, join the fly chasing. It's really well done because it's partly Jesse indulging his partner's "crazy game" to get rid of the fly so they could get meth cooking sooner, partly submitting to his elder, partly pretending to play while taking care of a restless Walt and partly getting annoyed by the fly himself. Because as soon as Walt mentioned Jane's death, it's obvious that big bad Jesse's wounds aren't closed and his shattered heart is still in the right place. By the way, there's the little detail of the cigarette butt he keeps in his car, a butt with marks of lipstick. Oh show, how many times are you going to break my heart?
When Walt, on the verge of falling asleep, says that he is so sorry for Jane, really sorry, while Jesse teeters on top of a stepladder resting on two rolling cabinets that Walt holds––a great metaphor of the current situation the pair is in regards to their relationship and to their working for Gus Fring––, Jesse says that her death was nobody's fault but allows himself a heartbreaking "I miss her though. God, I do".
Little he knows of Walt's true responsability. I feared that Walt would spill the beans because it would have been devastating. The tension was incredible.
Finally Walt is resigned "everything is contaminated", begs Jesse to step down and stop chasing the fly. Walt doesn't question his making meth yet but has accepted his responsabilty in some destructive events, Jane's death and the consequences of her death (her father causing the planes crash). His apology to Jesse is pure penance. At the very moment Jesse has put his feet on the floor, the fly lands in front of him and he is able to kill it. But Walt is already snoring, unaware of the final victory, a poetic yet twisted parallel of the season 2 scene in which a passed-out Jesse was unaware of Jane dying at his side.
While Walt sleeps at last thanks to the tranquilizers Jesse put into his coffee, the young man gets busy with meth cooking (btw great shot of the shoes on the floor with Jesse going to work in the background) which, I guess, points out that Jesse does stuff when Walt isn't watching, like skimming and selling in the side.
Is this foreshadowing a future in which Walt will be out (dead?) and Jesse will cook alone?
"Everything is contaminated" is also a reflection on Walt's life. Making meth has poisoned his life, just like the cancer and to a certain extent the chemiotherapy have poisoned his body. It's too late, he is contaminated and so is his family since Skyler found out about his meth making. In a way, Jesse represents the fly who intruded onto his life, even though it's Walt who went to him and blackmailed him into partnership, not the other way round. By the way, at one moment, Jesse wears a respirator on his head instead of wearing it on his face, and it makes him look like a fly with huge red eyes! I love the show for precious little details like that.
Being stuck with Jesse always make Walt talk, and it's usually significant. He reveals that he has seen his oncologist and still is in remission, and he doesn't sound too happy about it, so when a concerned and quite perceptive Jesse asks him if he is saying that he wants to die he answers "I'm saying that I've lived too long". And then he starts explaining that he should have died before...he starts looking for the perfect moment his death would have ideally happened. It's a terrific and painful speech, showing that Walt is aware of being trapped by his actions. Finally he finds the perfect moment, and mentions the night Jane's died and the moment he was in a bar beside Jane's father, not knowing who the man was. It hurts Jesse of course, but Jesse can't really understand what Walt means then. Walt says that he shouldn't have left home that night and shouldn't have gone to Jesse's place, he should have died before, at home while Skyler was singing a lullaby to Holy. It's ambiguous enough for Jesse to believe that Walt hints at the time he went to hand a bag of money to Jesse and Jane that night, especilly since he mentioned said meeting before in their conversation, but we know that he must think of the second time he went to Jesse's house, as he tried to wake his post-heroin-shot-passed-out meth son, inadvertly throwing Jane on her back when shaking Jesse, and just watched Jane die choking in her vomit, without helping her.
So when Walt mentions his converstion with Jane's father it's quite significant and touching too. He tells Jesse that they talked about family and the stranger said "never give up on family" and that he followed the advice. Jesse probably assumes that Walt means that he went back to his family after leaving the bar that night but we know that Walt went to Jesse's place, trying to protect him from a girlfriend's bad influence and save him from a possible overdose. No matter that Walt also had selfish reason for letting Jane died, since she had blackmailed him and was a threat to himself, he went to the house for Jesse not for getting rid of a threat (although now that I write it, I can totally see our Fly as representing Jane or being Jane back from the dead to tourment Walt like a Fury, besides back in season 2 she was an element of contamination, an intruder threatening the partnership with Jesse, and like the fly she was killed by one partner while the other was passed out nearby!). Jesse is the family he didn't give up on, but Jesse can't hear that and Walt can't really confess what he did otherwise he would lose Jesse for good.
At the end of the episode, our characters have left the lab, Walt is better now that he has gotten some sleep and he shares one last thing with Jesse, reaching out while he's already in his car: he warns Jesse about the danger he might be facing given the missing weight in meth production (despite his going off the rails, Walt figured out what Jesse is up to!), suggesting that the people they work for are very dangerous (yet not sharing what he knows exacty about Gus Fring) and saying he won't be able to protect Jesse.
But Jesse denies everything and shuts down. It is a sad moment given the bond that existed inside of the lab. It's like once they were out, in the real world, the spell was broken, at least for Jesse.
As much as I love neat metaphors, stylish visual and meta writing, it's mostly the emotional connection that makes me adore this episode, because as I said before Breaking Bad is all about Walt and Jesse, an unlikely partnership and a weird twisted version of father/son relationship. It's the stuff that got me hooked and makes me melt every time. The chemistry (pun intended!) between the two characters (probably helped by the complicity between Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul) is incredible, their interactions provide the most powerful moments of the show. There's some ugly stuff ahead and Jesse is playing with fire but I can't imagine that the series could continue if they decided to kill Jesse off.
Apparently, "Fly" aired the same evening as the finale of Lost. I wasn't very happy with that finale but I guess my review would have been even harder on Lost if I had known how awesome BB were and if I had seen the brilliant "Fly" at the time.
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-20 04:22 pm (UTC)Sorry to hear about your mum in your previous post - I hope her health improves soon *bisous*
no subject
Date: 2010-07-20 09:23 pm (UTC)Thank you, Karen. xxx
no subject
Date: 2010-12-27 02:23 pm (UTC)I loved your interpretations of Jesse and later Jane as the Fly's in Walter's live. I guess chasing something elusive, trying to contain the contamination (in vain) is the tragedy of Walter's life.
It was so incredibly moving when he mapped out the perfect moment, where he should have died, before he went to see Jesse and Jane. Doing the rational thing but not at all the right one.
I also loved the many little details you also mention in your review. That shot in the end where you see that Jesse took his shoes of ? It's amazing how much care that little gesture signifies, after all that futile hunting in the lab and Jesse's worries that Walter might be worse again.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-28 11:44 pm (UTC)His "I can't be the bad man" said a lot about the show's boldness, given that Walter, with the passing of time, is turning into(or is revealed as) a bad man while he is the lead, which goes against the usual tv formula. Breaking Bad broke the rules.