A Reflection on Breaking Bad's "Felina" (And The Show Overall)

*WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW* (Obviously)

It's over. It's hard to say it and actually mean it, but it's over. Even if I don't feel like it's over, I can recognize that it's over. So, I guess the only thing I can do to help me come to terms with the fact that it's over is to talk about it in depth.

Since 2010, Breaking Bad has been my personal refuge in obsessive television habits. After hearing all of the hubbub about the show's "Half Measures" episode, I decided to watch it without any prior exposure to the show and only a vague knowledge of what it was about.

And, by the end of it, I was hooked. The cliffhanger of the episode sold me enough to watch "Full Measure," and the ending of that episode made me want to watch every previous episode.

Breaking Bad was a revelation for me. As someone previously apt to watch shows on a purely visceral level, the way Breaking Bad asked, nay, begged its viewers to watch it was marvelous. There were a bevy of "Holy crap!"-worthy moments that could hook those simply looking for thrilling television, but the layers underneath were astounding. There were the characters, developed and defined in ways that surpassed the typical "single defining characteristic" method. There was the blurred morality as viewers were constantly challenged on how much they wanted Walter White to triumph in his goals or how much they would support his decisions. And, for those brave enough to seek it out, there was a daunting amount of symbolism and meaning behind the images and framing that made watching the show with a close eye infinitely rewarding. (There's also the blistering stupidity of hatred towards Skyler, but it's best not to discuss that.)

So, with so much to live up to and more people watching than ever, Breaking Bad was inevitably going to fight an uphill battle in satisfying with its conclusion. Did it succeed? Well, from my own perspective, yes. But, in true Breaking Bad fashion, it did so in a way that I wasn't expecting.

Based on the build-up from the last few episodes (specifically from "To'hajiilee" onward), I was expecting a raucous, no-holds-barred, intense rush to the finish line. After all, given the cataclysmic events in "Ozymandias," one could easily assume that an eventful response was all but assured. The implied calm before the storm of the penultimate "Granite State" seemed to cement that things were primed for an explosive finale.

Yet, a curious thing happened on Sunday, September 29th at 9:00 pm. The final episode of Breaking Bad, "Felina" (which, as knowledgable Internet hounds have noted, has a triple meaning linked to the periodic table, referenced in a Marty Robbins song that appeared in the first scene, and as an anagram for "finale"), closed the series with a whimper rather than a bang. Things ended, loose ends were tied, nothing (with the exception of one Huell Babineaux, still presumably waiting in a DEA safe house) was left to the imagination. Yet, there was an oddly solemn, hollow, empty feeling to it all.

Clarification: This is not a bad thing. In fact, not only do I believe that this was intentional, I believe that it puts just the right footnote on the series and the legacy of Heisenberg. Here's why.

In the aftermath of the finale, I read a couple of reviews that suggested that things wrapped up a tad too neatly for Walt's often messily executed plans. Let me throw out a suggestion: "Ozymandias," the most eventful, chaotic episode of the series, in which everything spiraled horribly out of control, was the way it was because the control in that episode was out of Walt's hands. The Nazis kill Hank and Gomez in their unorganized yet effective manner. Walt twists the knife into Jesse due to his overflowing shock and rage. He loses his family because they finally reject his lies.

It's for this reason that "Granite State" is perhaps the most necessary transition episode of the show. The implied trapping of Walter White in the Hell that is his remote New Hampshire cabin, slowly dying from the cancer, unable to atone for his sins one last time when denied the opportunity to give his son the money he spent the entire series earning is what makes the Walter White we see in "Felina." Here is a man, left with no safety net, nothing left to hang on to, acting methodically and in control for the first time in a while. Perhaps it's the cancer taking hold, perhaps it's the systematic destruction of the hellish New Hampshire tundra, but this is a different Walter White than the one who left Albuquerque.

Note the minimalist dialogue in every scene with Walt. Now, no longer feeling the need to stand by his eloquent, drawn-out fibs that were meant to explain his every action, Walter White is the most honest he's ever been. That also means he has very little to say. The first couple of scenes have him making his first moves in near silence, occasionally muttering a couple of lines when he needs to. But, even when he's face-to-face with previous acquaintances, he speaks only the truth and as bluntly as possible. Take, for example, his first true moment of honesty with Skyler since the pilot:

"I did it for me. I was good at it. And I was really --- I was alive."

As I previous stated, there's an air of solemnity that naturally comes with the conclusion of a dramatic show, but there also lurks a hollowness beneath that was wholly unexpected. By the end of the episode, I wasn't all too emotional or stunned. I just got an empty feeling inside. I was satisfied, but I got the sense that the show ripped a hole inside of me, devoid of sentiment, that conveyed exactly how it is to feel loss even with closure. The shocking stuff was there, but with a expedient and deliberate attitude. The M60 massacre isn't an extended bloodbath as the show foreshadowed, but merely a sudden annihilation that practically concludes before the gun runs out of bullets.

In this respect, the finale could be a reflection of Walt's own actions: quick, effective, and ultimately withdrawn. The exchange between Skyler and Marie is especially telling; the Heisenberg legacy has reached a point where Walt simply being present generates a wave of panic and dread. Walt essentially goes through his to-do list without any major hiccups, but to what end? He, presumably, gets the money to his family, but, as the above quote establishes, that doesn't mean much to him. He frees Jesse, but only as a last-minute improvisation to his plotted course.

What matters, in the end, are the final moments of Walter White's life. Bleeding out from a stray bullet from his M60 rampage, he shambles over to the nearby meth lab and dies in the only place he truly lived. Family doesn't matter to Walter White. Jesse doesn't matter to Walter White. The only thing that does matter is his ego, fueling his legacy, his reputation as Heisenberg. In its waning moments, Breaking Bad strips its protagonist of his facade and lets the man who lived underneath show through.

Album Review: MGMT by MGMT

Most people who leap to claim that MGMT lost their way or wish that they'd return to their roots are those who pine over their blockbuster success that was their debut, Oracular Spectacular. I fall into a different camp. Perhaps it was because my initial exposure to the group was through Flash Delirium, but I consider their follow-up, Congratulations, to be their crowning achievement, near-perfect except for the aimless Lady Dada's Nightmare. So, when I heard that the band was moving even further away from their alt-pop image for a more experimental take, I was hyped.

This album does not live up to said hype. In fact, I don't know if it could live up to any fan's hype, unless they found both previous albums lacking.

The shift in the group's third, self-titled album is one that ditches the prog rock, multitiered songs of Congratulations and the poppy hooks of Oracular Spectacular, going for an odd psych-drone variant. I could have bought into that if the songs were well structured or memorable enough, but instead, many of them fling their ideas at you either too quickly or over a slow-build to nowhere, allowing for little room for building on top of these ideas.

OK, maybe I'm getting too in-depth too early. The best comparison I can make is that this album is their non-mainstream equivalent to Oracular Spectacular. By that, I mean that, while Congratulations had a great flow to it and was evenly paced throughout the album, Oracular Spectacular was front-loaded to a fault, dooming the second half of the album to the insurmountable feat of besting what came before. MGMT faces the same problem, but to a far graver extent.

The album opens with the prog-based Alien Days, the first single from the album. Despite some ill-fitting elements (the off-tune melody in the bridge), the format of the verses really stuck with me. It's a suitable opening in that it eases the gap between Congratulations and this album, but does little to signify what's to come.

While the following song, Cool Song No. 2, doesn't falter much in quality (despite not taking to it much on my first listen, it's grown to become one of my favorites on the album), it's quite the departure from the opener. The heavy beats, the low-register vocals, everything points to an entirely different direction. And that's one of the problems of this album: Despite coming up with a made-up term for the genre of the album, I had trouble figuring out just what sense of identity MGMT was going for on this thing. They cited Aphex Twin as a major source, but I see little to no sign of that influence emerging. If anything (as I'll get into later), it's more of an imitation of Animal Collective than anything.

The next couple of songs, Mystery Disease and Introspection, both seem under-confident for the usually boisterous group. The lacking vocals fit the subject matter of both of these songs, but ultimately lead to them fading into the background once they end (except for Introspection; dear God, I don't know how this song is stuck in my head but I want it out).

Your Life is a Lie, despite the lackluster vocals, won me over due to how cohesively the song works. Imagine this song as a loudspeaker announcement in an idyllic society where everything is going perfectly. Then it all makes sense: the monotone, the pseudo-chanting, the basic beat, and the minimalistic chords all paint a larger picture. If only the rest of the album's songs had this much thought put into muted results, I might have bought into it.

After Your Life is a Lie, the album takes a catastrophic tailspin. A Good Sadness, though I found it interesting the first time around, ends up meandering for its entire length, never really doing much with the cool synth at its core. Astro-Mancy is the closest thing to homage this album comes to, with vocal style and instrumentation taken straight from Animal Collective's playbook. Yet, it fails to make it its own and dissipates from memory the second it ends.

And then there's I Love You Too, Death: the absolute nadir in both the album and MGMT's entire career. I'm OK with slow-build songs. I'm OK with off-kilter instrumentation. But, for whatever reason, this song just pisses me off to an irrational degree. Maybe it's the tonally-deafening recorders of doom. Maybe it's the lack of energy in vocal inflection (again). Maybe it's the fact that it makes the 12-minute Visiting Friends by Animal Collective seem progressive and evolving by comparison (yes, a weak comparison as I actually like that song, but still). Everything in this song just annoys me to an absurd degree. By the time the song finally builds to nothing, ending without a clear resolution, I was ready to just call it quits.

Then Plenty of Girls in the Sea comes on. Despite the unorthodox, out-of-key synth and the skittering beat throughout, something about this song just wins me over. Maybe it's because it includes the best vocals on the album save for Alien Days. Maybe it's the cool time signature swap in the breakdown. Maybe it's the group's best key change in the final verse. I just love everything about this song in ways that I can't adequately explain and it's by far my favorite song on the album.

The album ends on perhaps the most-telling note it could: the schizophrenic, uncertain An Orphan of Fortune. What starts out as a moody, solemn piece turns into a slow stomp, before shifting into a bluesy bridge, then reverting back to the stomp section. I honestly can't pin down my thoughts on this song as a whole, except that it ends leaving me even more mixed than before.

Did I enjoy this album? In parts. Did I dislike this album? In parts. Was I uncertain on how to feel overall? In parts. What does this show about MGMT's identity, as of now? That, it too, is in parts.

Best Songs: Plenty of Girls in the Sea, Cool Song No. 2, Your Life is a Lie
Worst Songs: I Love You Too, Death, Astro-Mancy, An Orphan of Fortune

Movie Review: You're Next

You're Next not only begins as a typical horror movie, but it was also advertised as one. The trailer (linked below) as well as the posters hinted at a film consisting solely of, "Ooh, look at these menacing guys in creepy animal masks who terrify people! This is our main source of fear, guys! This is the best we got!" This mentality was played out long by the time that the modern go-to template for home invasion movies, 2008's The Strangers, was released, so I and most of the moviegoing public wrote this off as yet another knock-off in that field.

Boy, was I wrong.

This may be from a purely immediate reactionary standpoint, but I had a blast with this movie. Similar to my quick realization that I formed an intense emotional bond with The Place Beyond the Pines, You're Next is shaping up to be quite possibly the most fun I've had at the movies this year (with the exception of The World's End). This might just be due to the way my opinion of the movie progressively changed: As the film evolved in style and tone, I found that the trajectory of quality was quite the upswing.

Take, for example, the opening. After a standard home invasion murder complete with obligatory jump-scare, we get a married couple moving into a new house. Check. Introductions to guests who will most likely have stock traits so that not much gets in the way of their deaths. Check. Suspicions that something is not right in the house, only to be quickly shrugged aside, the audience meanwhile fully aware that these assumptions had merit. Check. A family dynamic courtesy of a reunion built around the parents' anniversary. Che- Wait, that's new.

And this is the first sign that this movie is trying something different. From here, the movie uses the standard tropes of the tried-and-true format to not-so-subtly progress into something that's less of a horror film and more of a black comedy (one scene features the parents' daughter crying over the fact that her family thinks she's not as capable of running to get rescue as her siblings) with a horror format. While the family relationship doesn't remain at the forefront for long (it becomes more of an implied driving force for many of the later moments), it paves the way for interesting scenes and concepts.

One scene, in particular, seems like this film's equivalent of the bike scene in The Cabin in the Woods (for the record, that did horror movie deconstruction much better than this film, but I think that this scene works better than that film's solely due to the hilariously brutal shock gore here). The animal mask guys also hint at this movie's approach through the quietly funny way in which they act, cutting through the potential fright their appearances could muster. At one point, one sits down nonchalantly next to a corpse after murdering someone, the humor stemming from his staid stance. They're also on the receiving end of some of the comedy, such as the Home Alone-esque extent to which a couple of them get attacked.

Ultimately, what ends up working the most in this film's favor is it's satirical elements. By the end of the movie's second act, the film drops all notion of the "horror" aspect advertised for a bitterly funny and violent edge. The movie deliberately plays a good amount of this section for comedy, even though the context for these events is anything but. It's also giddily fun and an all-around really enjoyable movie. While not nearly at the same levels of visceral satisfaction as The Cabin in the Woods, the conclusion of this film has a gratifying edge that made me squirm and gasp with glee. Despite the fact that the final event of the movie comes as the result of an impractical judgment on one fairly level-headed character's part, the payoff that results is one of the most insanely awesome abrupt endings since 2011's Hanna.

By the end of it all, I could say so much more about this movie (such as the fact that Sharni Vinson is fantastic and needs to get more roles as a result of this, or how cool the John Carpenter-esque soundtrack is, or about how we need to give the ludicrous number of GODDAMN SLOW-MO SHOTS a rest), but the fun factor ends up being the greatest strength of the film. As soon as the movie ends, complete with the film's main musical motif ("Looking for the Magic" by Dwight Twilley Band, which, trust me, makes a hell of a lot more sense in context) playing over the credits, I wanted to not only immediately buy a DVD copy of the film, but also talk about it to somebody, anybody who would listen. I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up being one of my favorite movies of the year.

Movie Review: In A World...

It's kind of odd and somewhat antiquated, now that I think of it, to picture a movie like this, where voiceovers for trailers are as highly esteemed as they are, being released in 2013. Sure, I do vaguely recall a time when voiceovers in trailers were a big deal and telegraphed to the audience that THE MOVIE WE ARE ADVERTISING IS THE MOST IMPORTANT MOVIE YOU WILL SEE UNTIL THE NEXT MOST IMPORTANT MOVIE. But, after the passing of Don LaFontaine in 2008, the art of epic voiceover work for trailers seemed to subside.

Lake Bell's comedy, In A World..., resurrects the importance of a single powerful voice in the pantheon of movie legend by taking a decidedly striking approach: pitting one woman with a voice that rivals her male counterparts against sexist mores instilled in society. Granted, there's much more complexity and intricacy going on than that concept, but this is the main conflict the film posits a rebuttal to. Bell (in addition to writing and directing) plays Carol, daughter of fictional famous voiceover artist Sam Sotto, who, after being discouraged by her father on the difficulties of breaking into his line of work and being kicked out of his house, goes to stay with her sister and her husband who are themselves going through marital struggles. Other plot threads intertwine, including a fellow employee (Demetri Martin) with a crush on Carol and a rival voiceover star (Ken Marino) under Sotto's wing attempting to bring back the title phrase made famous by LaFontaine.

The film's subject matter has become its main talking point and it's for good reason. How often have you caught yourself thinking that we need equality of the sexes in a career like trailer voiceovers? The movie aims to ferment this notion within those who had never considered it before. But, what could have easily been a preachy message of equality comes across as an original, fresh take on feminist culture. This is most obviously present in one of the final exchanges of dialogue in the film, which eschews radical Amazonian feminism referenced throughout the film for a general instillment of empowerment that could serve as a strong stand-alone argument for the movement as a whole.

Bell's script here is sharp and witty, zipping along at a brisk pace that keeps the plot moving at a natural speed as opposed to rushing through all of the necessary beats. Bell brings an astoundingly human, flawed, yet good-natured turn in the lead role, but Martin's lovable awkwardness and Fred Melamed's realistic stubbornness are noteworthy as well. The supporting cast is excellent here, with Michaela Watkins, Marino, Rob Corddry (yes, this movie is somewhat of a mini-Childrens Hospital reunion, though Marino and Corddry never appear on screen together) Nick Offerman, and Tig Notaro (exceedingly funny in her brief screen-time) among others in bit parts.

Though the script does allow for a lot to happen in a light 93 minutes, it also lets quite a bit go and is, at times, overstuffed. A minor plot thread involving Carol's sister and an Irish director seems to go nowhere after it's resolved with 30 minutes left in the film, aside from a brief reference at the end. Another minor character, a British neighbor, appears in two scenes with hints that she may become important later in the film, but then disappears without a mention.

The movie is also structured in an unorthodox fashion. The first two-thirds of the movie serve as an ensemble piece of sorts, with the big conflict at the end hinted at but not pursued. By the third act, all other side plots are dropped and the main arc of the film becomes the only one. While this isn't necessarily detrimental to the film, it sticks out quite a bit and leads to some awkward shifts in pacing.

But the film gets by on its charm alone. It's a genuinely enjoyable film that has its highs and lows, but I found myself liking it throughout, flaws and all. By combining a noteworthy concept with a overwhelming amount of positivity, In A World... won me over by being the most likable thing a film can be: charming.