By Price Zimmer ’14 | Entertainment Editor
The chickens came home to roost on this week’s installment of “Breaking Bad”. The third to last episode was a masterpiece, it encompasses the series in its entirety and the character of Walter White, a troubled chemistry teacher turned meth baron, who goes by the name Heisenberg, portrayed by Bryan Cranston.
It opens with memories of happier times for Walt and Jesse Pinkman’s (played by Aaron Paul) which slowly fades away to the present: a gun fight that will doom Walt and his ‘great works’, much like its namesake poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley. To go more in-depth on the plot of the episode would be ruinous, as it is the moment the entire series has been building towards. The following episodes can best be described as an epilogue to finish out the series.
The acting and characterization contained in this episode are phenomenal, every actor, even the baby who plays Walt’s youngest Holly, is in top form. There are no muddled lines or forced emotions, this is among the closest it gets to characters becoming people; they feel real, their heartbreak palatable.
Cranston essentially won himself another Emmy; he’s won three for the role already. Walt is at times heart-broken, cruel, determined, weary, frustrated and depressed in “Ozymandias”; he fluctuates between Heisenberg and Walter White almost visibly. He is both personas at once and it takes an actor of Cranston’s caliber to pull it off.
The episode was directed by Rian Johnson, who has directed two prior episodes of the series, as well as the notable films “Brick” and “Looper”. Every frame of this episode fits perfectly together, there is nothing erroneous and each shot captures the emotion of the scene. It is not unlike a poem, especially the repetition of the “phone-and-knife” shot, which occurs at three points and represents the choice Skylar must make at each point.
Suffice it to say, “Ozymandias” is the height of television and makes a watch of the preceding fifty-nine episodes and following two both recommended and worthwhile.
A+ on The Z-Scale
