Last season, American Movie Classics'
Breaking Badwas one of the more delightful surprises of the year. Bryan Cranston's performance, creator Vince Gilligan's dark vision, and the show's relentless, involving dramas and crises -- they combined for a seven-episode blast of high-octane, darkly comic, intensely dramatic television. Sunday night at 9 ET,
Breaking Badreturns for season two. Somehow, it's even more intense -- and even more impressive...
First off, anyone who missed the first season of this boldly original drama series, which presented only an abbreviated seven-episode run last year because of the writers' strike, can catch up tonight (Friday) at 8 p.m. ET, when AMC presents all eight episodes in a very convenient marathon. Cranston won an Emmy for his portrayal of high school teacher turned meth manufacturer and dealer Walter White, and those episodes easily explain why.
What Walt is doing is heinous, illegal, and not without repercussions. His motives, however, are pure: He's dying of cancer, and wants to leave his pregnant wife (played by Anna Gunn from Deadwood) and cerebral-palsy-stricken teen son (played by RJ Mitte) enough money to provide for them and pay his own deathbed medical bills.
But purity of motive doesn't mean much when he's dealing with deadly drug dealers, and investigated by DEA agents including his own brother-in-law (Dean Norris).
Breaking Bad is written in serialized form, and the new season's first three episodes concerns Walter, and former student turned meth-sales partner Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), as they strike an uneasy deal with a psychotic meth dealer named Tuco. He's played by Raymond Cruz, who's more familiar from the other side of the thin blue line, as Det. Julio Sanchez on TNT's The Closer. Here, he's so scary, so volatile, and so mad-dog unpredictable, every encounter with him is a high-tension, highly risky affair.
And what Breaking Bad does to add to the tension, besides its finely tuned writing, acting and directing (Cranston himself directs the opener), is to eliminate background music almost entirely. More than almost any series I can remember, Breaking Bad plays out against eerie, uncomfortable silence. No music bumpers between scenes, no dramatic underscoring during the climaxes and confrontations -- almost nothing unless there's a musical montage at the end of the show. The starkness is haunting.
So is Cranston's performance, which is so total, so real, you forget it's a performance at all. You just feel for poor Walter, and hope for him to dig out of the latest hellhole into which he's found himself, even when it seems there is no escape, no way out, and no possible path to survival.
Just like Walter's own death sentence.
But in following Walter on his desperate final journeys and adventures, Breaking Bad has given us one of the most lively, and thrilling, TV shows of 2009.