Coming after the incredibly well plotted-out Season 2, the third season of Breaking Bad doesn't quite follow the same structure. What results in easily the most uneven season of the show, with some of the highest high points yet and also some of the largest flaws.
Let's start with the good stuff, because there's still a ton of good stuff. Most of Season 3 focuses around Walt beginning to work for Gus while Skylar deals with the knowledge that her husband's a drug dealer. The first half of the season also has a villain in the form of the Salamanca Cousins, the two terrifyingly mute hitmen who are after Hank. I like a lot of these storylines, Skylar is a much better character now that she actually knows Walt deals drugs and is struggling to figure out how to deal with it, Hank's conflict with the Cousins has some of his best moments, and Gus is, once again, an excellent antagonist even if he doesn't quite seem like one until the latter half of the season.
Now for the problems, Season 3 is pretty obviously a season that was written episode by episode rather than planned out and it shows, even moreso coming after a season as tightly-plotted as the second. The first half is alright, it's very slow-paced but it works as a slow build to the dramatic events of One Minute, but once the cousins are killed off, the show starts to meander a bit until the last two episodes. But by the second to last episode, I was still pretty engrossed, and the season could have still left a strong impact with a strong ending. It didn't quite do that, though. Full Measure is a fine finale, we get some badass Mike moments and a pretty tense final few minutes, but it felt incomplete. ABQ gave nearly every character something to do and tied up everything, but in Full Measure, characters like Skylar and Hank, who had ongoing storylines, had pretty much zero screentime. And while the plane crash definitely caught me off guard, Jesse shooting Gale was predictable the moment Jesse brought up the fact that he doesn't kill people. There was a lot of potential here but with the limited cast and the fact that we don't even see Jesse on the run, it definitely felt like the show runners weren't as on top of things this season, more than in any other episode.
Despite my gripes though, at its best, this season can still be pretty damn great:
Sunset: Sunset was an incredibly fun and incredibly tense episode that did a great job at saying goodbye to the iconic RV. The main conflict is simple, Walt and Jesse give away their RV now that they have Gus's superlab, but now they need to find a way to prevent Hank from getting his hands on it. Most of the episode is just this really entertaining cat-and-mouse game as Walt tries to give Hank the slip, with tons of close calls and clever strategies.
One Minute: Easily one of my favorite episodes of the first three seasons, One Minute is pretty much the defacto season finale for the first half of Season 3. After getting beat up by Hank, Jesse gives Walt an iconic and devastating call-out speech that really feels like the first major rift in their relationship. But the real highlight of the episode is Hank's intense fight with The Cousins. Breaking Bad has a few action scenes but this was easily my favorite of the bunch, it's relentless and scary, with all three major players near death at a constant rate. It's a brutal flurry of violence that ends on an excellent cliffhanger with all three men down.
Fly: Ah, Fly, the most divisive episode of the whole show. For a lot of people this episode is filler, but for me, it's a pretty great character study of Walt and Jesse, along with their dynamic. It says a lot that a simple storyline of Walt stringing Jesse along as he tries to kill a fly feels like such an encapsulation of the series as a whole, and Walt's big monologue near the end of the episode is definitely some of Bryan Cranston's best acting. I don't care if Fly is "filler", it's a damn good episode with great writing, fun offbeat humor, engrossing character drama, and some of the most inventive cinematography in the show thanks to Rian Johnson (Whose work I absolutely love). Easily one of the best bottle episodes of all time.
Half Measures: While I didn't love the season finale, the penultimate episode was actually pretty great. Jesse's investigation into Gus's men really solidifies the fact that he's far more cruel and despicable than he initially seems, and the final scene where Walt kills two of Gus's men and tells Jesse to run is one of the most thrilling and propellant cliffhangers in the series. I also quite liked Mike's speech about not taking half measures, it's a great speech and an iconic moment overall.
Overall, I still enjoyed Season 3. Its main storylines were compelling and its high points were insanely high, but it definitely felt a bit clumsier than the previous season and ended on a bit of a weaker note. Not quite 3/5 Stars, but not 4/5 Stars either, so...
3.5/5 Stars?
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