Breaking Bad: Cancer Man
(S01E04) This episode was about calming down and reassessing one’s life and family. We got to see Walter open up and share his cancer with his extended family, albeit reluctantly and only done really because Skyler couldn’t handle it alone. Walter, in fact, remained incredibly stoic, silent and passive about his impending fate. He also stayed true to his original vision, which was not to leave his family with a mountain of debt.
As for Jesse, we finally got to meet the rest of the Pinkman clan and they’re nothing like you’d expect - or they’re exactly like you’d expect - and yet somehow they appeared to have a profound influence on where Jesse’s life is heading and what he wants to do about it.
When we first met the Pinkmans we weren’t told who we were looking at. It was a mother and father sitting with their son at the dinner table discussing playing the piccolo and oboe. Everyone was overly polite and supportive and emotionally vacant despite saying all the right things. It was painfully perfect, if such a thing can be believed. It was at that point that Jesse came crashing into this bizarrely serene world, quite literally.
After the events of the first three episodes, both White and Pinkman had withdrawn into their respective worlds. For Walter this meant opening up to Skyler and ultimately his family about his cancer and dealing with the consequences of this action. For Pinkman it meant separating himself from a career in drug trafficking and focusing more on drug using. When his friends guilted him into smoking the pure meth White had cooked, he had a subsequent bad reaction, becoming paranoid and hallucinating serious threats. It was running from this that lead him to the Pinkman clan.
Walt was trying to figure out what treatments he could possibly afford while his wife and sister-in-law were making appointments and planning for him to get the best and most expensive treatments possible regardless of cost or personal hardship. Their concern is that he get better and be there for his wife and family. Walt’s concern was how much debt he was going to leave the family in when he dies, already dismissing the admittedly slim chance that he could go into remission and actually live considerably longer.
Walt Jr.’s cry that Walter just “give up and die” then was so beautifully written into the scene when Walter was balking at a $90,000 price tag. Such a subtle moment spoke volumes to Walter about the massive importance of his decision. Here he was worrying about money when his son only sees his dad dying and not wanting to live. An impossible situation with impossible decisions but those are the ones he was facing.
Meanwhile, Jesse was staying with his parents and his little brother Jacob for a few days. While they don’t know for sure, his parents guess that he was high on something when he arrived and clearly do not want to deal with his drug problems again. Jacob’s room was littered with awards and scholastic honors and you can tell Jesse feels inferior to them. His mother awkwardly opens the door asking if the boys are okay and then very blatantly leaves the door wide open, indicating she doesn’t trust Jesse alone in the room with Jacob.
The oddest exchange of the night followed when Jesse lashed out about how that act showed the parents didn’t want Jesse negatively influencing their favorite son. It was this line that brought Jacob out of his shell as he whirled on Jesse, stunned that he could be their favorite son. “All they talk about is you,” he told his older brother. Now, based on what I’d seen of his parents I couldn’t see how this could be true, unless they were always bitching about what a failure he was.
We already know Jesse failed in school and hasn’t done much with his life as of yet, except deal drugs. In fact, we’re not even sure how he got such a nice house. His parents have a nice house so either they hooked him up with his or he bought it with drug money. Either way, I am curious as to whether or not Jesse was a child with incredible promise as Jacob appeared to be or if he was always kind of a screw-up.
In the end, Jesse nobly took the fall for Jacob’s joint leading to his eviction from the Pinkman home but more importantly it revealed cracks in the Pinkman home’s facade of perfection. Then, when he destroyed the joint rather than return it to his brother, he showed that he wanted his brother to live up to his own potential rather than follow on Jesse’s faltered path. It was good to see the growth potential in Pinkman’s character.
There was a lot of personal issues dealt with here and you saw how these characters could easily settle back into non-meth lives; even Pinkman showed the potential to try and clean his act up. But, in the end, an offer came up for the rest of White’s batch and Pinkman arrived at the White house with Walter’s $4,000 share of those profits. With the looming costs of his own treatment hanging over him and the fact that we still have a show to do here, I think it’s pretty obvious what’s going to happen.
Add to that the opening of the episode where the DEA, with Walter’s brother-in-law taking point on the investigation, has discovered his 99.1% pure meth as well as the disappearance of Krazy-8 and his cousin. He’s tracking a possible new “kingpin” in town, who may just turn out to be the “cancer man.”
V: The Second Generation, the book and TV movie?
Aint It Cool posted an interview with Kenneth Johnson, the creator and writer of the V television mini-series from 1983. He has recently released a sequel book called V: The Second Generation (available on Amazon here).
The most interesting facts to come out of the conversation with Johnson is that in his novel he ignores the sequel mini-series V: The Final Battle and the short-lived V television series that came afterward.
I remember watching and being terrified as a kid from the original V mini-series (think of the Nazi takeover of Germany, except with aliens). Johnson left NBC before the sequel came around and, to make an understatement, the sequel strayed from his vision. The book more represents what his original vision of the continued V story would be like. It takes place twenty or so years after the original.
According to IMDB, a television mini-series version of the book is in the works. Based on the interview, I think we may even see Marc Singer reprise his greatest role since The Beastmaster. Fingers crossed.
Lauren Ambrose Replaces Michelle Williams in Where the Wild Things Are
Lauren Ambrose has signed on to voice one of the title roles in Spike Jonze’s big screen adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s fantasy book Where the Wild Things Are.
Ambrose is replacing Michelle Williams in the role of KW, one of the giant creatures in the land of the Wild Things. In the classic story, a young boy named Max who is transported to a land with mythical creatures. KW and the group of “Wild Things” turn him into their king.
According to Hollywood Reporter:
“…the filmmakers enjoyed working with Williams, but her voice didn’t match their original vision of how the Wild Thing should sound.”
Call me cynical, but doesn’t that sound like the definition of “PR spin”?
The cast also includes Catherine Keener, Max Records, James Gandolfini, Angus Sampson, Forest Whitaker, Catherine O’Hara, Rachel Rivera, Melissa Davis and Paul Dano. Where the Wild Things Are is scheduled to hit theaters on October 3rd 2008.