“I’m wearing a Darth Vader outfit with the helmet sitting on the table next to us.” Walt was sympathetic to many viewers long after he’d become a terrifying and proper sociopath-and for some viewers, he still is.“It was this great picture of Badger and I sitting at a table, having an argument, watching Die Hard on a huge TV,” Baker recalls with a laugh. Yet, there was so much about Breaking Bad’s propulsive plotting, its energy, Bryan Cranston’s persuasive, hypnotizing performance as Walt, to say nothing of his death in a blaze of gunfire, that muddied the waters. Breaking Bad was aware it was telling the story of the moral degradation of a mild-mannered chemistry teacher turned megalomaniacal drug lord, a regular Joe harboring a malignant ego he was just waiting to unfurl. What all of this means, though, is that El Camino is an addendum to Breaking Bad without one of the key elements of Breaking Bad: a kind of roiling moral confusion. As the plot gets going, it doesn’t have him forswear violence exactly, but it does show him backing down from a killing twice, at great cost-a confrontation with Todd that would result in the death of a little boy, a confrontation with two guys he thinks are cops-and only killing those same guys after they have been shown to be scuzzy douchebags, one of whom participated in Jesse’s torture. El Camino goes out of its way to keep things ethically simple for this former snot-nosed punk. In El Camino, as on Breaking Bad, it’s clear that Vince Gilligan, who created the show and wrote and directed the movie, loves Jesse too. In the moral calculus of Breaking Bad, Jesse’s remorse and regret made him nearly a good man, someone to root for. We could forgive Jesse because he seemed so incapable of forgiving himself. He wanted to be better, he wanted to change, he wanted to get out, but he was too weak, further weighted down by a conscience that kept him from the ruthlessness escape might have required. His dopey, puppyish smartass became a taciturn, depressed man burdened by all the terrible things he had done or been party to. Jesse, unlike Walt, felt guilt, grief, sadness. He was relieved of his blithe, selfish innocence by a long series of crimes and traumas, other- and self-inflicted, that revealed him to be a man with a conscience. El Camino is a sumptuously shot, totally entertaining, somewhat needless, but sure-why-not elaboration of what has come before.Īt the beginning of Breaking Bad, Jesse Pinkman was a goofy punk, a small-time dealer whose pant legs widened to platter size and who yappily appended “bitch!” to shiny nouns. Punctuated with flashbacks, the movie follows Jesse as he contends with a number of hurdles, challenges, and familiar faces while desperately trying to get out of the Albuquerque environs. The movie picks up where Breaking Bad left off, with Jesse hurtling down a dark road in a stolen El Camino, traumatized and wanted by the police, and ties up the not-exactly-loose ends. Anyone who chose to imagine Jesse Pinkman coming to some bad end after he howled into the night, tearfully speeding toward freedom, was most definitely a “see a half-full glass as completely empty” kind of person.Įl Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, which arrived on Netflix on Friday, explicates in detail the events that immediately followed the finale, while hewing to the already-relayed gist. Depending on how you prefer your closure-just well-sealed or air-tight, staple-gunned, tied off with titanium floss-the final shot of Jesse, screaming behind the wheel as he made his escape, was either a loose end or explanation enough. Before him was nothing more distinct than his future. Behind him were the dead: his former partner Walter White and the slaughtered crew of skinhead criminals who had made Jesse their meth-making slave. When we last saw Breaking Bad’s Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), he was fleeing a gangland crime scene where he had been tortured and caged for months, filthy, matted, and screaming in agonized relief. And Just Like That… How Do You Solve a Problem Like Miranda Hobbes?.The Other Two May Be Ending in Controversy, but the Finale Is Just Right.The Idol’s Twist Ending Was Clumsily Hidden in Plain Sight All Along.
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