Posted by Tony
Breaking Bad, “Ozymandias”
“SPOILER ALERT” if you haven’t seen the Breaking Bad, Sept 15 episode, “Ozymandias”, don’t read any further. Stop what you’re doing. Go watch it immediately.
This episode was the finest hour of one of TV’s best shows ever. It brings to a culmination story lines that have been developing over several seasons and ratchets up the intensity of an already intense final few episodes.
The beginning of “Ozymandias” leaps back to the first episode showing Walt and Jesse at their first meth cook. It is light hearted and almost comic. It shows the naïve beginnings to a disastrous path for both men. The scene also includes a sweet conversation between Walt and Skylar. This was before the lying and intrigue became the centerpiece of their relationship. In that first episode, chemistry teacher Walt tells his students, that chemistry is about “growth, then decay, then transformation.” Little did we know at the time that the decay and transformation of these characters lives would be so profound and unsettling.
After this beginning, the scene shifts to the present in the same desert location as that first meth cook. Hank’s Partner Gomez is dead and Hank is wounded. This brilliant scene shows the almost immeasurable acting ability of Bryan Cranston. He takes Walter White from sympathy, to cruelty, to despair in such a convincing journey that the viewer can barely catch his breath.
The rest of the episode features scene after scene of superb acting and directing. The action and pace vary from slow and torturous (Walt slowing rolling the barrel of money through the desert while the western ballad “Take My True Love By the Hand” plays in the background) to fast and furious (the inevitable physical confrontation between all the members of the White family.)
Everything about this episode was brilliant.
I can’t wait to see where the final two episodes take these characters.