AMC’s Breaking Bad returned last week with a deliciously dark season opener after forcing viewers to wait 13 months after last season’s cliffhanger finale. As the finale had led viewers to suspect, Breaking Bad has turned over a new chapter in its life, and that chapter is a decidedly murky one. With producer Vince Gilligan threatening that he’s only planning on five seasons, the fourth promises to be a whopper; there will be no penultimate series sluggishness here, making Gilligan’s decision, to keep the show crisp and tight rather than dragging it on, an obviously smart one for the series as a whole.
Breaking Bad revolves around the slow slide of Walter White (Bryan Cranston), introduced at the start of the series as a high school chemistry teacher with a terminal diagnosis who just wants to make a little money to support his family after he’s gone. He turns to methamphetamine manufacturing, taking advantage of the booming demand for a drug that has spread like a plague across the United States, hopscotching into the nation’s heartland and destroying lives in its wake. This is a storyline that could very quickly turn after school special, with moralising episodes about methamphetamine and the drug war, but Gilligan has managed to keep it a very human drama, avoiding these pitfalls. This may in part be because of the medium; the networks would feel obligated to include some Very Special Episodes to remind viewers that methamphetamine is bad, whereas Gilligan clearly figures that viewers can come to that understanding all on their own.
Over the course of three seasons we’ve watched White get progressively darker, increasingly tangled in the underbelly of the drug trade, and the events of the season opener seem to mark a turning point for him and for the series. Walter’s risk-taking behaviour has finally come to a head, threatening everyone around him, and the stakes just got a lot higher. While viewers are accustomed to seeing Walt and former student Jesse (Aaron Paul) in dangerous situations, this one took on new nuances and it may not be one that the characters can come back from; Walt’s decision to order Jesse to kill his rival has changed Jesse’s life forever.
The episode cuts back and forth between a tense scene in the underground lab, where Jesse and Walt sit under armed guard and await their fate, and the bubbly goings-on above ground, which manage to carry a sinister air despite the relentless New Mexico sunshine and determined optimism of Marie Schrader (Besty Brandt). Marie is determined to pretend that absolutely nothing is wrong while everything falls apart around her, and the facade is obviously starting to crack.
Viewers have been promised a very dark season for Walt, and it’s clear that Breaking Bad means to follow through in hallmark style. Sometimes the best way to illustrate that darkness is with the elegant juxtaposition of light and shadow, used to great effect throughout the series and especially in this episode, one of Breaking Bad’s best overall. Superb cinematography is graceful and unintrusive but still tells a story, and Michael Slovis, the Director of Photography, has definitely accomplished this here.
This award-winning show has been praised, with good reason, for its masterful visuals, and this episode was no exception. Much of ‘Box Cutter’ revolved around the superlab; even the scenes not set in the lab recalled it through the use of constant blue and red references in other scenes, creating a note of tension that reminded viewers of the dark turn the show is taking without being overbearing. The relief in the light scenes only highlighted what lies in store in for the characters and I can even forgive the obvious foreshadowing placement at a crime scene of a notebook promising ‘Lab Notes’ for the criminal investigators.
Breaking Bad is also unafraid to make room for very visually oriented scenes; much of the action in the superlab took place in silence, until Walt’s panicked monologue became the soundtrack. The decision to show the story, rather than telling it, was a bold move for a season opener. Yet, this was true to the show’s artistic and creative history, where abrupt camera angles, stark lighting, and silent narratives are a critical part of the storytelling technique.
Perhaps the most brilliant transition was the shift from the Walt swabbing up the remainder of a pool of blood, cutting abruptly to the diner scene, and a French fry being dragged through a puddle of ketchup. It’s a visual that could easily be trite and overdone, but they managed the shift seamlessly and pulled the two scenes together brilliantly; who knew that an endlessly overused image could still be handled well? Even as Walt and Jesse sit in the surreality of a Denny’s while Walt, again, monologues to Jesse and willfully ignores the situation at hand, the shadow of what happened in the lab hovers over them, and over viewers.
2.6 million viewers turned in for this episode, a marked upturn from last season’s numbers, illustrating that Breaking Bad managed not only to hang on to viewers over the break, but to actually build those numbers up, attracting new fans. New and old fans alike were richly rewarded with the season opener, which turns the series on its head and changes the game significantly. Has Walter White crossed the point of no return? If the rest of the season remains as elegantly balanced and complex as the opener, finding out the answer to that question is going to be a pleasure.