Breaking Bad is Back

Friday morning. I'm doing what any lazy, unemployed, recently graduated 20 year old person would be doing - Sitting in bed with a coffee, catching up with newly released series. Yesterday was True Blood - which, for the record, is smokin' hot and a show that will always have a place situated comfortably and warm in the centre of my heart. Yeah, you heard me Eric Northman.

Good ol' Hal

I'm taking a break from True Blood today however - too much vampire and fairy chemistry is making me feel somewhat sexually deprived which is really not that fair. So I thought I'd give the first episode of the freshly released and well awaited season 4 of Breaking Bad a watch. For all those living under a rock out there, Vince Giligan's award-winning series stars Bryan Cranston, whom many of you might remember playing Hal in the legendary sitcom 'Malcolm in the Middle'. However Cranston seems to have left his comedic role (along with his hair) back in the 90's, impressively morphing into the perceivably nonchalant Walter White, who has exceeded from his lack of street credibility by creating a highly radioactive looking blue crystal methamphetamine that is essentially the bomb in his neighbourhood. Of course however, we see that any usage of these substances is portrayed without glamour, referring predominantly to the business, art and talent of Walt's chemistry while casting light on the severity and dangers of being part of New Mexico's drug trade. Not to mention throughout this entire series, the crux of Walt's illegal doings is to support his wife and children as he juggles a double life of meth-making with being a modest chemistry teacher living with a sense of impending doom due to his lung cancer diagnosis.

The last thing that we see in season 3's finale is a teasing cliffhanger of frustrating enigmas provoking many thoughts. In a state of hysteria, Jesse turns up on Gale's doorstep pointing a gun to his face. Then, like all cinematic cliches, we hear the gunshot after the camera cuts to a landscape scene leaving us with six trillion questions that were only to be answered in the following season.

Without disappointment, season 4 directly picks up from the previous gripping action (remember Mike's unexpected orders to dispose of Walt?) and there's a definite sense of imminent tension throughout the entire episode, throwing us directly into the deep end before we've even touched the water.

All in all, this is a pretty great episode. It's hard to please a starving audience and Vince Giligan has certainly put just the right amount of cake on our empty plates to keep us begging for more.