Breaking Bad S1E1: Flash Forward
This weekend I started watching the streaming series Breaking Bad. I started, of course, with the first episode. I'll share a few thoughts on it here.
(Yes, I know I'm way behind on this show. It premiered in 2008. We've been meaning to get a Netflix subscription for years- Breaking Bad a few other shows we want to catch up on are on Netflix- but waited until now when we got a bargain because we didn't want to pay $$$ for too many simultaneous streaming services.)
The pilot episode of Breaking Bad opens with an unusual flash-forward. Walter White is driving an old RV hard over dirt roads in the New Mexico desert. Glassware and liquids in the back of the vehicle, the apparent materials of an illicit drug-making operation, crash and slosh around. Back there are also a few bodies. And another body is slumped over in the passenger seat up front.
White is in a state of panic and possibly injured as well. He crashes the RV and stumbles out the door. We hear police sirens. Out in the desert. White grabs a video camera and quickly records what sounds like a final message to his family, then grabs a gun and aims it in the direction of the approaching sirens. It seems like he is planning to commit suicide by cop. And scene!
This flash-forward opening left me wondering. See, one of the benefits of watching this show umpteen years later is that I know Walter White doesn't die in a shootout with cops in the desert in the first episode. He's the main character, and the show runs for five seasons. So I wondered, is this a flash-forward to an end-of-season cliffhanger? The end of the series? Both seemed unlikely but especially the latter, as a subtitle on the screen after the scene faded to black said "Three weeks earlier...." Could it be a dream or drug-induced paranoid hallucination that never really happened?
What really happened: [Episode S1E1 Spoiler (click to open)]Indeed, this scene occurs at the end of the episode. S1E1 moves quickly on White's character transition from mild mannered high school chemistry teacher. In this one episode he's already hooked up with a local drug dealer, proposed a partnership, and successfully made a batch of drugs. Their attempt to sell the batch to a distributor goes south, though, and that culminates in the situation with the RV on a dirt road in the desert.
Oh, and instead of it turning into a shootout with the police... it turns out the sirens are from a trio of fire trucks. Walter loerws his gun and stands aside. The trucks rush past him as they're responding to a brush fire.
BTW, the brush fire was started as a side effect of how the drug deal went south. Apparently someone was nearby enough to spot the fire promptly and call it in. It's not shown in the area in this episode who might have been. Oddly enough, that was probably the biggest suspension-of-disbelief challenge for me. I have called 911 to report wildfires, and even in densely populated areas, along 8-lane-wide superhighways, it takes longer than that for emergency crews to arrive.
(Yes, I know I'm way behind on this show. It premiered in 2008. We've been meaning to get a Netflix subscription for years- Breaking Bad a few other shows we want to catch up on are on Netflix- but waited until now when we got a bargain because we didn't want to pay $$$ for too many simultaneous streaming services.)
The pilot episode of Breaking Bad opens with an unusual flash-forward. Walter White is driving an old RV hard over dirt roads in the New Mexico desert. Glassware and liquids in the back of the vehicle, the apparent materials of an illicit drug-making operation, crash and slosh around. Back there are also a few bodies. And another body is slumped over in the passenger seat up front.
White is in a state of panic and possibly injured as well. He crashes the RV and stumbles out the door. We hear police sirens. Out in the desert. White grabs a video camera and quickly records what sounds like a final message to his family, then grabs a gun and aims it in the direction of the approaching sirens. It seems like he is planning to commit suicide by cop. And scene!
This flash-forward opening left me wondering. See, one of the benefits of watching this show umpteen years later is that I know Walter White doesn't die in a shootout with cops in the desert in the first episode. He's the main character, and the show runs for five seasons. So I wondered, is this a flash-forward to an end-of-season cliffhanger? The end of the series? Both seemed unlikely but especially the latter, as a subtitle on the screen after the scene faded to black said "Three weeks earlier...." Could it be a dream or drug-induced paranoid hallucination that never really happened?
What really happened: [Episode S1E1 Spoiler (click to open)]Indeed, this scene occurs at the end of the episode. S1E1 moves quickly on White's character transition from mild mannered high school chemistry teacher. In this one episode he's already hooked up with a local drug dealer, proposed a partnership, and successfully made a batch of drugs. Their attempt to sell the batch to a distributor goes south, though, and that culminates in the situation with the RV on a dirt road in the desert.
Oh, and instead of it turning into a shootout with the police... it turns out the sirens are from a trio of fire trucks. Walter loerws his gun and stands aside. The trucks rush past him as they're responding to a brush fire.
BTW, the brush fire was started as a side effect of how the drug deal went south. Apparently someone was nearby enough to spot the fire promptly and call it in. It's not shown in the area in this episode who might have been. Oddly enough, that was probably the biggest suspension-of-disbelief challenge for me. I have called 911 to report wildfires, and even in densely populated areas, along 8-lane-wide superhighways, it takes longer than that for emergency crews to arrive.