Breaking Bad "Dead Freight"

August 12, 2012

Breaking Bad “Dead Freight” Review:

Man oh man was this a good episode. The setup was fantastic, the opening scene was great, the train sequence was thrilling and suspenseful, and the twist at the end was truly horrifying. I think that this is probably the stand out episode so far of the fifth season.

Performances: In this episode, Walt Mike and Jesse start it out by talking to Lydia about the tracking device. Walt says that Mike can kill her after he finds out that she put a hit out on him, and Jesse is truly horrified, being the audience’s true way into the group. Probably one of the best scenes of the entire episode comes when Walt it talking to Lydia about their kids and you can tell that Walt may end up siding with her over Mike in the end. That would be awesome because then Jesse would have to side between Walt and Mike. I think Mike might tell Jesse that Walt poisoned Brock and lied to him, and a true drug war would start between the two groups. Later on in the episode, Mike becomes the voice of reason yet again when he tells Walt to stop what he’s doing and get the hoses out of the train, and yet again Walt refuses. I was yelling at my TV in anger over that, Walt is really starting to act pretty stupid.

Plot: The episode starts off with a teaser of a young boy on a dirt bike in the countryside. You can see that he’s wearing a helmet, either because he’s worried about his safety or he has loving parents who do. The boy is probably about 12, and he is the face of innocence in this episode. This scene seems out of place however when we are launched into the real plot. The group wants Lydia to give them methylamine, and she tells them that they can have as much as they could possibly want if they steal it from a train. The only problem is that they will have to kill off the conductor and engineer to do so. This causes tension because Walt is fine with killing them but Mike refuses. However, Jesse figures out the perfect way to do it, and it really is a great plan. Near the end of the episode, the train sequence begins, and the resulting scene is one of the best of the show and probably one of the best scenes on TV ever. It truly is the most suspenseful heist scene ever. There is also a subplot with Walter Jr. rebelling again, and you start to think that he might end up siding with Hank over Walt in the end. At the end, after the train sequence is pulled off, you think that everything may have worked out for our heroes for the first time ever, but then you hear the familiar sound of a dirt bike. You see the small boy from the opening teaser, and my heart started raging. They waved at him, and I actually had hope, then Jesse Plemons’ hand moved to his gun, and the boy is killed. This is horrible, tragic, and most of all needed. And it truly makes for great TV. I know I’m dying to see Mike’s reaction to the young boy’s death.

Entertainment: I’m going to talk about the train sequence here. This is one of the best heist sequences ever filmed, on TV and in movies. The plan is great, it seems like it actually would work. You just have to think about how long it took the writers to come up with that. I wonder if it took them a while. I mean for me to come up with something like that it would take a least six months. The sequence is so great because it just so suspenseful. You want the characters to pull it off, even though you know what they are planning to do with the stuff is bad. It goes fine for the first five minutes or so, then the other car movies in and shit gets real. You start to wonder if someone will die when Jesse is under the train and Todd is on top when it starts to move. Then they both get out and they win. I was laughing along with them when they pulled it off.  I was happy for them. I thought that it would have just been that, and it would have been just another episode of Breaking Bad, which is not a bad thing, but it’s just another episode. Then the boy showed up and the episode went from being great to being fantastic, and I know that this is going to be one of the best episodes of the series when it ends.

Overall: This episode is the standout of the fifth season so far. The train robbery sequence is fantastic, and you want the characters to be able to pull it off. You’re just worried about what they will do with the stuff when they have it. The scene with Lydia isn’t bad either, and neither is the subplot with Walter Jr. and Hank and Marie. This episode actually had me yelling at my TV in suspense, worried that the team will fail. But they pull it off, and it actually works. And for a minute you think that’s how it will end, and then the boy shows up, and the teaser starts to make sense, and he is shot. And then you know that this is one of the best episodes of Breaking Bad so far, and that this could start to spell out the end of Walter White as we know it. It’s a great ending, and a terrific storyline, along with probably one of the greatest heist scenes ever put to film, in both TV and movies. Overall, this was a fantastic masterpiece of an episode.

Grade: A+