Having built from nothing a drug empire and taken the crash course from hell in cooking meth, pathological lying, killing and almost superhuman selfishness, Walter (Bryan Cranston) has turned a moral corner. It’s everything creator Gilligan envisioned, and more: there is no word for what Season 2’s plot arc has done – crescendo implies a rising to great heights, but the second half of the season has done the complete opposite, plunging Walter to Faustian levels of iniquity. Having left Jesse’s girlfriend Jane (Krysten Ritter) to die and Jesse (Aaron Paul) to believe himself responsible, Walter’s own complicity in the subsequent events (Jane’s father, an air-traffic controller, in a fit of grief loses focus and misdirects two planes into each other’s flight paths, killing over a hundred people) forces him to take the role of passive bystander as the untold horror unfolds before him and his community.
Walter’s actions – or his lack of action – his guilt – or his denial of complicity – signal confirmation of what we suspected first when he turned down offers of cancer treatment and further during the scene late in Season 2 just after baby Holly was born and he insulated her nursery with stacks of cash: that his obsession has gone beyond a need to provide for his family in the case of his demise and turned into something else entirely: an unbelievably misguided reclaiming of his masculinity, so long dormant and crushed beneath the ignominy of nonentity. His confidence now is mirrored by those earlier flashbacks with Gretchen. Having gone unrecognised for doing good, Walter has found greater success and affirmation in doing evil.
Just like its predecessor, Season 3 is gripping. Hank (Dean Norris) is growing steadily more fixated on Heisenberg, allowing his job to suffer and anxiety to take hold. It doesn’t help that Skyler (Anna Gunn), furious with Walter but unable to share the reason with her family, has moved with Walter Jr and the baby into Hank and Marie’s (Betsy Brandt) house. When Walter moves out Skyler returns home, only to have her estranged husband move right back in. As revenge, she embarks on an affair with her tax-fiddling boss.
The first half of Season 3 deals with the dissolution of partnerships. Skyler engages a divorce attorney, set on excising Walter from her family’s life once and for all, while Walter tries to enlist the help of Saul (Bob Odenkirk) to end his association with Jesse. It is an extraordinary portrait of two “marriages” falling apart. Walter Jr (RJ Mitte), unable to understand Skyler’s sudden and outright rejection of his father, signals whose side he has taken by reverting from his nickname “Flynn” to his given name.
The second half of the season revolves largely around the fallout from Walter’s actions back in Season 2. Tuco’s Mexican cousins, directed by his paralysed uncle, have sneaked over the border to take out “Heisenberg”, and Gus (Giancarlo Esposito) decides to kill two problems with one stone by pointing them in the direction of Hank. The ensuing battle leaves Hank paralysed, and Skyler, sensing that the attack somehow stems from Walt’s misdeeds jumps with both feet into his web of lies, conspiring with him and blackmailing him all at once to pay for her brother-in-law’s treatment.
Wheels within wheels: as before, the show’s interweaving plot is tight and smart. The characters fall in and out with one another in an intricate dance of love and hate, need and rejection, denial and retribution. One can only wonder where it will go from here, but what has come before bodes extremely well for Season 4. Breaking Bad continues as it began: brutal and brilliant.
Breaking Bad is out now on DVD and Blu-ray.
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