Fifty-One

Bro the scene with Skyler is crazy. I love it bro omg it's the best tv series omgyattt I love the show so much and I love the way you guys are doing this with the characters and the characters and the characters and the characters and the characters and the characters and characters are amazing I can't stop laughing so hard at the fact they were all amazing I can't believe how amazing this is this was a good idea for a new game I have a few ideas on what I would do if we had to get rid off the old game but the game was a little more fun to do with a little more of the old game.jjb.fjjfjdjsdlfkd.

This was EXCELLENT. Hard to believe a year has passed since Walt's diagnosis.

Rian Johnson directed the hell out of this episode. I'm really quite impressed with what he did here, especially with all of the scenes between Walter and Skyler. What was that car sequence at the beginning though? It felt so strange and off the wall...

I guess this Lydia character is a little intimidating too. For a paranoid, unkept person, she seems to be kind of calculating and manipulative as well. Mike is probably right about her.

The highlight for me was definitely the final argument between Walter and Skyler though. It's such a challenging scene to watch. They've both been through so much over the past year, but it's all coming to an end soon it seems. Gunn and Cranston are stellar.

Very, very good.

'Breaking Bad' is one of the most popular rated shows on IMDb, is one of those rarities where every season has either been very positively received or near-universally acclaimed critically and where all of my friends have said nothing but great things about.

Very few shows in recent memory had me so hooked from the very start that before the week was over the whole show had been watched, especially when for a lot of shows now airing watching one episode all the way through can be an endeavour. 'Breaking Bad' had that effect on me, and its reputation as one of the best, consistently brilliant and most addictive shows in many years (maybe even ever) is more than deserved in my eyes. Its weakest season is perhaps the first season, understandable as any show's first season is the one where things are still settling.

Actually everything is established remarkably from the very start, but once the writing and characterisation becomes even meatier the show reaches even higher levels.

"Fifty-One" may not have the tight pace, being more of a slow burner (nothing wrong with that, 'Breaking Bad' does slow burners well), and red-hot intensity of the best episodes or the Season 5 opener, but everything that makes 'Breaking Bad' as a show so great is present. It may be something of a "filler" episode, with other episodes doing better in story and character advancing, but it's a great one. Skylar is written a little too neurotically at times, making it not always easy to root for her situation, but there is really not much to complain about.

Visually, "Fifty-One" is both stylish and beautiful, with photography and editing that are cinematic quality and put a lot of films today to shame, where there are a lot of visually beautiful ones but also some painfully amateurish looking ones. The music always has the appropriate mood, never too intrusive, never too muted.

The writing in "Fifty-One" is a fine example of how to have a lot of style but also to have a lot of substance. The dialogue throughout is thought-provoking and tense, while also have a darkly wicked sense of humour, nail-biting tension and heart-tugging pathos. The story is texturally rich, intimate, tense and layered, with the pace of it consistently deliberate but taut.

Can't say anything bad about the acting. Bryan Cranston is phenomenal as one of the most fascinating anti-heroes, or even of any kind of character, in either film or television. Aaron Paul has never been better and Anna Gunn is affecting. The supporting cast are both intriguing and entertaining, especially Dean Norris. The characters are compelling in their realism, likewise with their chemistry, and the episode is superbly directed.

This episode is a slow one. I was never a great fan of Skyler, as i suspect other fans of the show must feel; she must have been written to annoy people as i cannot imagine anyone that likes Walt and Jesse also liking the neurotic/complaining/moody Skyler. Every other character in the show has either grown on me or i liked from the start, even her crazy sister now seems more normal somehow. Although i realize she may need more story time now and again to push the story along, but, in the end i think every episode that focuses on Skyler ends up a neurotic boring drudgery; although i still gave it an 8 because i felt it had enough pushing it along apart from the crazy woman.

We are also left to wonder exactly what extent Walt runs his life and how much time Hiezenburg is spending running the show; is he an alter ego or has he become a split personality, or even scarier, is he now Hiezenburg? One thing is for sure, Walt seems to like running the show now, and he doesn't like taking no for an answer. There doesn't seem to be any more Mr Nice Guy, and even though Walt was always an "ends justifies the means" kind of guy he always seemed to have a bit of nice guy underneath.

"Can the Breaking Bad soundtrack get more diverse?", you may ask. "Yes.", responds Vince Gilligan and adds Australian dubstep duo Knife Party for the scene of Walt and his son enjoying themselves with their freshly leased muscle cars. Just as this intro isn't of much importance for the rest of the episode, this also applies for the introduction of my review and I'm now going to make a similarly unsmooth change of topic.

As we meet Lydia again, not only will native German speakers notice that Laura Fraser's German is the epitome of halting, but her story arc is also getting more interesting. Her relationship with Mike hasn't got any rosier since he was on the verge of blasting her head off in "Madrigal" and a little GPS tracker on a methylamine barrel secures that the next episode, "Dead Freight", will be outstanding. That adjective isn't yet fitting for "Fifty-One", but the season's fourth episode has clearly got its moments to shine, to wit the scene that Fraser and Aaron Paul share together and that leads to the aforementioned discovery or the last shot of Walt's birthday present clock ticking. However, that's about everything worth mentioning, which is a fairly low yield from an episode lasting three quarters of an hour.

With that, I'm not insinuating that I didn't like "Fifty-One" since Sam Catlin did a nice job with the script and made some of the duller story lines a bit more interesting. Nevertheless, the episode was too slow for my taste and I disliked the lengthy scene at the White house, which also sets off a new living situation for the family that I'm not too fond of. Additionally, there's a blemish with the episode's title and the actual overall number of it, which is the 50th and not the 51st. But my generous self won't be reducing the rating for "Fifty-One" just because of that.