Breaking Bad re-watch: Season 1, Episode 1: "Pilot"

After four-and-a-half seasons of watching Walter White fall deeper and deeper into the abyss, it’s hard to remember a time when he was ever anything but bad. So viewing this episode again is amusing, to say the least.

Much has been made of how Bryan Cranston’s other claim to fame is Hal, the meek, dim-witted father in Malcolm in the Middle, but this actually works in the show’s favor. Indeed, the very first scene in the series, with Walt driving an old RV filled with chemicals and passed out people while clad in only his undies and a gas mask, looks a little like the ending to a particularly dark Malcolm plotline. It's not played for laughs this time, but he is just as meek, so lost amongst even the small-time hoods in this episode. That he’ll eventually reach the top of the meth underworld, and that we the viewers will take him seriously as such, is a testament to how good an actor Cranston is.

But that’s for later. Right now, he’s not Heisenberg, just Mr. White, the unremarkable chemistry teacher whose unremarkable life is dealt a big blow when he learns he has lung cancer. The pilot reminds us the impetus for his illegal doings wasn’t exactly repressed criminal ambition, but him giving up his sense of restraint in the wake of his diagnosis. Not giving a damn because his days are numbered led him to do things people don’t do in polite society, like telling off his boss at the car wash where he works after school, or beating on some teens for mocking Walter, Jr. (RJ Mitte). Getting into the drug business was another one, one that happened by sheer chance after coming across his old student Jesse (Aaron Paul); had their paths not crossed, Walt might have done something else entirely while throwing caution to the wind.

This is a pilot episode, so naturally some things aren’t fleshed out yet. Walt is the main focus of the narrative, while the rest of the White family and Jesse are yet to be really developed. But the episode establishes the structure of the show, with the ambiguous pre-credits scene that only becomes clear later in the story, and the ending that brings things to a logical stopping point but in no way resolves anything, leaving us impatiently awaiting the next episode (that’s the only real consistent structure of the show; what happens in between in each episode is unpredictable).

There is also one low point that the show would thankfully never sink to again: the bedroom scene in which Skyler (Anna Gunn) multitasks by giving Walt a “birthday present” under the covers with one hand while surfing the web with the other. Ostensibly, this is meant to show how Walt’s home life has become routine and unexciting, in contrast to the passionate sex scene at the episode’s end. It gets the point across, but it’s done in a very tired and unfunny way that’s below this series. And we already get the point from the scenes of Walt at breakfast and at work, anyway. Some versions of the pilot (including that on Netflix streaming) remove this scene, and this is one instance where the shorter version is actually better.