“I’m saying I lived too long.” – Walt
Only Breaking Bad could create such a scene of tension and havoc from a man attempting to chase down a simple housefly.
What’s so rewarding about such a scene and Breaking Bad at large is that there’s so much that has led up to this seemingly simple scenario. Walt (Bryan Cranston) has been acting more self-destructive than usual of late, almost as though his prowess in the drug kingdom and truce-of-sorts with Skyler (Anna Gunn) has left him with little to do with his most terrible and manic instincts.
I love that we’re reminded often enough that Walt is (or has become?) at core a deeply unlikable man – far more so than, say, James Gandolfini’s wise crackin’ goodfella Tony Soprano can be when he’s on game. Case in point is just before Walt takes his fall (and a nasty and awkward one it was!), he blows off Jesse (Aaron Paul) over the issue of the numbers being off on the meth output in a statistically significant way.
The cruelty with which he dismisses Jesse’s every notion and idea almost makes you think that Jesse is justified in opening his own meth dealership in Albuquerque with the “vestiges.” And you’d have to think too that were Walt able to take the time to really absorb what his business partner is telling him, he’d perhaps be able to sniff out that something was indeed a bit off in Jesse’s enthusiastic participation in the Case of the Missing Meth.
For a spell, I thought that we might be seeing a start to a true mental break for Walt – which would be a most startling, disturbing, and intriguing direction indeed and of course one which I wouldn’t put it past this show to go for – but Walt’s explanation of how a fly loose in the lab could indeed equate to a ruined batch and consequently their deaths (“we’re dead,” he says plainly) shows that the pressure and stress of his breaking bad decisions is taking its toll. He may be right to some extent about taking care to make sure that the lab is a clean environment… but it seems pretty plain that Walt’s myopic focus on details could help to push him to the self-destruction that he actively toyed with by racing his car to the limit in “Kafkaesque.”
In what plays out as something of a two man play (and love the deliberate decision to keep this episode so “small” with virtually everything taking place with just Walt and Jesse inside the lab… plus a little flying friend of course!), we get more Cranston and Paul together than we have since the first season.
Transitioning from bleak drama to dark comedy and back again, Walt – softened up by sleeping pills, slipped into his coffee in a perhaps kind gesture of Jesse’s someone who has cared for the cancer stricken in his day – is more honest than we’ve ever seen him, musing that the “perfect” time for him to die (just enough money to take care of the family, before Skyler had found out about his drug dealings) may have come and gone. His remission now is something of a prison sentence, a sentence to live each day with the ever compiling consequences of his rash and short sighted and corruptive acts.
While Jesse and Walt show something close to warmth toward each other during the long scene where Walt is lapsing into a sleeping pill-induced doze (and one fraught with peril it must be said, both from Jesse’s precarious position on a folding ladder positioned on top of two metal desks, and from Walt precariously but not quite admitting his indirect role in Jane’s death), it does not last long. By the next morning Walt warns Jesse – and not unkindly for him – about stealing meth from the likes of Gus, AKA Mr. Los Pollos Hermanos – and the latter does not take kindly to the words of advice.
Overall, a masterpiece of “small” filmmaking to bookend the exquisite action and guns blazing that we saw in “One Minute” earlier this season.
More thoughts on “Fly”:
- The direction on this show continues to be terrific. Absolutely love the camera angles from places like the perspective of Jesse’s scrub brush as he cleans the industrial level meth cooking equipment. And of course the “fly cam”!
- “You didn’t happen to… maybe try our product, did you?” – Jesse to Walt
- “We’re making meth here, not space shuttles.” – Jesse
- “There is no more room for error here, not with these people.” – Walt
- How heartbreaking was the cigarette with lipstick on it, sitting in the ashtray of Jesse’s car?
From Around the Web: Breaking Bad, “Fly”
- The Proper Lounge: Maybe I’m still on a LOST high, but it was hard not to draw a comparison in the scene where Walt talks about meeting Donald at the bar with the scene where Sawyer tells Jack about how he met Christian in a bar in Sydney. Both Walt and early Jack are men of science and it is in these moments when the seed gets planted that maybe there is something out there that goes beyond science.
- TV Squad: One of the things that makes this show excel is that Vince Gilligan and his staff seem to have a knack for making the viewers feel as claustrophobic as the characters do when they feel trapped. “4 Days Out’ from last season immediately comes to mind, when Walt and Jesse were stranded in the desert for days because of both men’s arrogance and stupidity.
Some stats and info about Breaking Bad, “Fly”
TV SHOW – Breaking Bad
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 3, Episode 10
AIRED ON – May 23rd, 2010
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – AMC
GENRE – Drama, Crime Dramas
CREATED BY – Vince Gilligan
CAST – Bryan Cranston, Anna Gunn, Aaron Paul, Betsy Brandt, RJ Mitte, Dean Morris, Bob Odenkirk, Steven Michael Quezada, Jonathan Banks, Giancarlo Esposito, Charles Baker, Jesse Plemons
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.