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Books on Friday

 The insightful writer Alan Sepinwall has a new book out on "Better Call Saul"; to get ready, I have been spending time with Sepinwall's essays on "Breaking Bad." Some fun observations:


*People recall that Emily Nussbaum hated the "Breaking Bad" finale so much, she suggested that it was a daydream. The real ending, for her, was Walt in his car, in "Granite State," slowly dying in a snowstorm. But I didn't know that Joyce Carol Oates also advanced this theory.

*The foreword pays special attention to a broken dinner plate. By the writer's calculations, "Breaking Bad" first achieved greatness when Walter White had to contemplate the possibility of his inaugural killing. White really wanted to avoid the killing. But, as he scraped up the shards of a broken dinner plate, he deduced that his captive had snatched one quarter of the plate; that little piece was waiting to become a weapon. For this reason, Walt then committed his murder. (Walt still gets punctured by the dinner plate. A "mark of Cain.")

*In the standout episode "Ozymandias," Walter waits with his abducted infant at a payphone. The infant was coached to be silent; this was the command in the script. But the infant--being an infant--begins calling for Mama. Bryan Cranston--a gifted tactician--understands, immediately, that he can "use" the baby's improvised line. So the baby's remark becomes a pivotal moment in the plot. Lightning in a bottle.

*A detail I'd always missed. After Walter goes into hiding, he becomes "Mr. Lambert." At the same time, Skyler--trying to distance herself from the memory of Walter--chooses to readopt her maiden name, "Lambert." She has no idea that Walt has already violated her last name. Disentangling oneself from Walter will not be an easy task.

I really enjoy these essays, and I'm looking forward to the "Saul Goodman" volume.
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