Mad Men - "Red in the Face" (season 1, episode 7)

Welcome to my viewing diary for Mad Men. Most days (except Saturday) I am offering a short review of another episode until concluding the first season. Later seasons will be covered at another time. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on August 30, 2007/written by Bridget Bedard; directed by Tim Hunter): This episode is red all over: Roger's endless soliloquies on redheads, redhead Joan turning him away for a weekend plan, Betty (red-faced from shame) smacking redhead Helen (red-faced from the slap), and much talk of Red-baiting (this is a very Russia-focused episode, between talk of vodka, anti-communist smear campaigns, and martyr cosmonaut Laika). The Sterling-Cooper crew plans to work for notoriously anti-Red Nixon against the Catholic "boy" Kennedy (whose dismissal by the older generation unites the subtly peeved but otherwise mutually antagonistic Pete and Don). Finally Don's elaborate prank on Roger forces him to climb twenty-three flights of stairs, after a lunch loaded with alcohol and oysters, until the older man is red in the face from exhaustion, puking on the carpet in front of the shocked, uptight Nixon team. This is revenge for Roger making a pass at Betty after subtly finagling an invitation for a late-night dinner (never has the slick boss-man seemed so pathetic). Pete, meanwhile, makes a far less clever/successful attempt to compensate for his own emasculation. After a degrading encounter with an indifferent customer service employee, in which his attempts to return a domestic indulgence from his wedding are interrupted by an old pal's far more successful attempt at flirtation, Pete randomly buys a rifle and carries it around the office. This infuriates his wife, bemuses his peers, and spooks Peggy. If Roger flounders with his boorish, undisciplined behavior and Don stews silently under Roger's thumb before calculating a nasty comeuppance, a brooding Pete both rejects and implicitly accepts his own inability, fantasizing with the full knowledge that both it and he are completely ludicrious.

My Response:

Mad Men - "Babylon" (season 1, episode 6)

Welcome to my viewing diary for Mad Men. Most days (except Saturday) I am offering a short review of another episode until concluding the first season. Later seasons will be covered at another time. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on August 23, 2007/written by Andre & Maria Jacquemetton; directed by Andrew Bernstein): The episode opens with a reference to the previous one - Don falls down the stairs while carrying breakfast to Betty and experiences a flashback to the birth of his little brother. He seems a bit adrift for the rest of "Babylon," struggling in particular with an Israeli advertising campaign in which his decidedly gentile organization is trying to sell a distinctly Jewish phenomenon to, mostly, other gentiles. Don uses this as an excuse to meet with Rachel again; she informs him that she's American through and through but needs Israel to exist as a concept. She is on his mind later, when, at a Village coffeehouse with his mistress and one of her bohemian friends, Roy Hazelitt (Ian Bohen), Don is serenaded by a ballad longing for the promised land (whose title, referring to the land of exile instead, gives the episode its name). Another extramarital affair is introduced to us as Roger and Joan romp in a hotel room, he sublimating his possessive jealousy into passion, she determined to assert that she's in the know about how these things work. That jealousy is only further provoked when Joan supervises a lipstick-testing session in front of a large mirror at Sterling Cooper. The mirror is one-way: as the "office girls" guilelessly gaze at their own reflections and experiment with the product, the admen sit on the other side of the glass, gazing in at them with a jaunty leer. Only Joan seems to know the trick, smirking as she poses and bends over in front of the hidden audience, causing most of the men to salute while Roger winces. Peggy makes an impression of a different sort; gathering the tissue samples in a waste basket for the copywriter Freddy Rumson (Joel Murray), she playfully dubs it "a basket of kisses." Freddy repeats the line to Don, who looks befuddled by Peggy's invention; lest he appear too enlightened by contrast, Freddy chuckles, "It was like watching a dog play the piano." Nonetheless, he invites Peggy to write more copy for the company, on her own time of course.

My Response:

Patreon update #13: Spirited Away (+ announcing The Return rewatch series, two perspectives on Twin Peaks' meaning & more)

Nearly a decade since I first (and last) saw and reviewed Spirited Away, I was able to revisit Hayao Miyazaki's masterpiece - or one of them anyway - thanks to a patron's suggestion. The blu-ray was crisp and gorgeous, and I enjoyed digging into some background to the film on the special features as well. This is my Film in Focus this week, but the other big subjects are gathered in the "Twin Peaks Reflections" series where I announce that I'll be revisiting the third season week-to-week on the first anniversary of each episode. I also dive into two different perspectives on The Return, one presented through a Reddit thread reflecting on an LSD-tinged rewatch, the other a popular theory presenting Laura is "bait" to blow up Judy inside a "cage" universe. You can find out which one I really dug and which one I had major objections to.

I also re-visit my video clips series from 2011 (highlighting a "60 Years of Cinema in 40 Seconds" montage I made at the time) and continue to discuss some tweets and threads from earlier in the winter, including film critic Matt Zoller Seitz's "death of cinema" reflections and the decade-recap aesthetics of a car commercial. Plus find out which Twin Peaks veterans made People Magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People" list over the past twenty-eight years! Only the most important topics are covered on this podcast...

Episode 13: Spirited Away (+ announcing The Return rewatch, two perspectives on Twin Peaks' meaning & more)

Line-up for Episode 13

INTRO

WEEKLY UPDATE/recent posts: Mad Men viewing diary

WEEKLY UPDATE/Patreon: changing "Film in Focus" reward

WEEKLY UPDATE/works in progress: Clone Wars & Star Trek viewing diaries, character series - which Twin Peaks veterans were on the "50 Most Beautiful People" list?, Matthew Arnold, history of Fire Walk With Me (screenplay w/ Laura & Cooper hooking up), 4 Ways of Watching of Fire Walk With Me

FILM IN FOCUS: Spirited Away

TWIN PEAKS REFLECTIONS: Announcement - upcoming rewatch segment, two perspectives: Rewatch-on-acid Reddit thread & "Judy cage bomb" theory

OTHER TOPICS: decade aesthetics - what does the 00s look like?, Matt Zoller Seitz on death of cinema, "lost generation" of filmmakers, Rashomon & Anatomy of a Murder - treatment of rape, Ben Dixon on Bernie Sanders in 2020, Scott Ryan & Twin Peaks Unwrapped on "keep the mystery alive", Mark Frost's "accidental" mistakes in the books & Twin Peaks music (teaser for my Reflections next week)

LISTENER FEEDBACK: Inland Empire

OPENING THE ARCHIVE: "Video Dreams" (September - November 2011), this week's highlight (32 Days of Movies Day 19 - "To Become Immortal, and Then, to Die.")

BECOME A PATRON

Mad Men - "5G" (season 1, episode 5)

Welcome to my viewing diary for Mad Men. Most days (except Saturday) I am offering a short review of another episode until concluding the first season. Later seasons will be covered at another time. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on July 26, 2007/written by Matthew Weiner; directed by Lesli Linka Glatter): Don Draper is not Don Draper. Perhaps I should say Dick Whitman is not Don Draper. When "Don" wins an industry award and gets his picture in Advertising Age, a strange young man (Jay Paulson) appears at the reception desk of Sterling Cooper. Don is so shaken that when he returns to his meeting, after sending the curious stranger out to lunch, he can barely speak and refers questions to colleagues. When they meet again at a nearby diner, we learn that this young man is Adam Whitman, Don's - or rather Dick's - kid brother. Dick Whitman supposedly died in Korea but Adam, a child at the time, remembers glimpsing his face from the window of their impoverished, abusive home, always wondering if it was a vision. Adam is not doing particularly well; his whole family is lost, he's working as a janitor in the big city, and he seems lonely and vaguely sad (there's also something strangely threatening about his pale, gangly visage and slight smile; it doesn't help that Paulson looks a bit like Mike White's creepy-friend-returned character in Chuck & Buck). Don shows more cracks in his stoic facade than we've seen before, but keeps trying to shake Adam until receiving an invitation to the room where his half-sibling is staying. Now the big brother has a decision to make.

Concurrent with this darker drama, there's a lighter but similarly troubled subplot with the younger members of the agency. Ken has just been published in the Atlantic Monthly (the series continues to have fun with the relatively confined artsy milieu of the period - what does it means for straight-arrow admen to harbor literary ambitions in this context?). This obviously inspires jealousy in Paul, who thought himself Sterling Cooper's resident man of letters, but it surprisingly spurs frustration in Pete too. Leveraging his wife's prior romance with a man in the publishing business, Charlie Fiddich (Andy Hoff), Pete's grand scheme is to crash the short story field with his masterpiece about a talking bear. He only succeeds in humiliating Trudy (Charlie was her first lover and he tries to initiate a new affair) as well as himself (the story will only be published in Boy's Life). And this places an icky strain on the marriage with the tacit understanding of both spouses that on some level Pete was pimping his wife for his own benefit. Meanwhile Don shows up for his illicit rendezvous (throughout the episode, implicit connections are drawn between Don's extramarital activity and this hidden family history, as if the latter is actually the bigger, more dangerous secret). It is heavily implied that Don has brought a gun to kill the troublesome Adam, but instead the gift he bears is a large amount of cash to pay off Adam, sending him away with the explicit warning never to make contact again. This may not be a physical assassination but it is an emotional one...or perhaps suicide is a better analogy. Dick Whitman is dead after all and it turns out our protagonist - whatever name he's called - is Don Draper. Or is he?

My Response:

Mad Men - "New Amsterdam" (season 1, episode 4)

Welcome to my viewing diary for Mad Men. Most days (except Saturday) I am offering a short review of another episode until concluding the first season. Later seasons will be covered at another time. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on August 9, 2007/written by Lisa Albert; directed by Tim Hunter): For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain an apartment and lose his own job? Not that Pete's soul doesn't feel a bit crushed by the situation too. His literal honeymoon ended before the last episode, but now it looks like his "honeymoon" period is fading too. As his wife Trudy (Alison Brie) pressures him into buying an expensive unit in a high-rise, embarrasses him by soliciting her parents' financial support when his parents won't deliver, and annoys him with her chatty, slightly claustrophobic devotion, Pete can barely disguise how perturbed he feels. Gone is the smug twerp from previous episodes, except for a fleeting moment or two of deserved, and sympathetically defiant, pride in an advertising pitch he came up with. Ironically, this is exactly the gesture that will nearly annihilate his position at Sterling Cooper. Both Don and Roger are insistent that sockless big boss Bert Cooper (Robert Morse) fire Pete but the deceptively casual half of the company name demurs. The Campbells, or rather the Dykemans (Pete's mother's family) are among the tiptop social elite of Manhattan, tracing their lineage back to hardy pioneers who farmed alongside the Roosevelts centuries ago. They could close too many doors, so Pete gets to stay (although Roger tries to save face by telling the trembling young man that it was Don who ultimately saved his job). On the home front, despite her hesitance (but fueled by her curiosity), Betty draws closer to Helen's dysfunctional world, meeting Mr. Bishop (Stephen Jordan) when he angrily knocks on his ex-wife's door and then asks Betty to use her phone (she declines). Later she babysits for the offbeat family while Helen volunteers at the Kennedy campaign's headquarters. She scolds the young Bishop boy, Glen (Marten Holden Weiner - the creator's son) when he walks in on her in the bathroom and stares instead of closing the door. When he cries and compliments her beauty, she allows him to cradle a lock of her hair. As she muses to her therapist Dr. Arnold Wayne (Andy Umberger), the child isn't getting what he needs from his family...something Betty herself knows about, of course.

My Response:

Mad Men - "Marriage of Figaro" (season 1, episode 3)

Welcome to my viewing diary for Mad Men. Most days (except Saturday) I am offering a short review of another episode until concluding the first season. Later seasons will be covered at another time. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on August 2, 2007/written by Tom Palmer; directed by Ed Bianchi): Don is mistaken for "Dick Whitman" by an old Army buddy while commuting to work, although his reaction suggests that perhaps this identification isn't a mistake at all. This is the last we'll hear of that name throughout the episode, though its disorienting aura hovers over the rest. Don continues to pursue...er, conduct business with Rachel, who rejects his overtures when she discovers he's married. This interaction is noticed by Pete, who has returned from his honeymoon smugly complacent with married life (Peggy pretends to understand his self-assured "of course our little fling is over now" flippancy while hiding her hurt). On the other marital extreme, the neighborhood divorcee Helen Bishop (Darby Stanchfield) shows up for the birthday party of one of Don's children and engenders a mixed reaction; some of the wives gossip about Helen behind her back and, to her face, exhibit barely concealed scorn, while their husbands ogle, flirt with, and perhaps even proposition her. Don's casual interaction with Helen is more subtle, and, her reaction (and Betty's) suggests, more successful. When a concerned Betty sends him out to pick up a cake, Don - who's been drinking all day - hangs out under an overpass in his parked car before returning to an empty house that night with a puppy to cover for his dereliction of duty. This streak of irresponsibility beneath the sturdy veneer is noticed by several characters throughout the episode, and frequently (though not universally) admired, as only the deviancy of an alpha male can be: "Don Draper, you are a first-class heel, and I salute you."

My Response:

Mad Men - "Ladies Room" (season 1, episode 2)

Welcome to my viewing diary for Mad Men. Most days (except Saturday) I am offering a short review of another episode until concluding the first season. Later seasons will be covered at another time. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on July 26, 2007/written by Matthew Weiner; directed by Alan Taylor): Last time, Betty Draper was little more than a punchline - "Oh look, Don Draper has a wife. Surprise!" This episode, on the other hand, treats her almost as the main character. Not only is she onscreen about as much as her husband, we begin to glimpse her interior life (externally rendered). Her hands tremble, her eyes flicker with confusion - she even crashes her car into a neighbor's fountain (after witnessing a divorcee move in down the street). Trying to explain to Don that their daughter could have been scarred in the accident, she expresses her fear that the little girl would by condemned to a sad, lonely life. Don is perplexed: isn't Betty happy with what she's got? After initial hesitation, he agrees that she should see a pyschiatrist. This unease with her anxiety spills into the office; as his co-workers attempt to pitch a space-age campaign for aeorosol deoderants, Don is lost in a soliloquey, mumbling, "What do women want?" Eventually - he thinks - he comes up with the cocky answer: "To get closer." Notably he receives this epiphany not with Betty, but with his mistress. The other focal point of this episode is Peggy mooning over a glib postcard from Pete on his honeymoon. (In one of the best lines of the episode - more due to delivery than context - Roger snickers, "Niagara Falls - redefines lack of imagination.") Peggy also has some flirtatious lunchtime encounters with Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis), the acid-tongued copywriter with high aspirations and a sniffy attitude toward his surroundings. Paul is occasionally bashful, especially compared to the frat-boy leering of Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton) and Harry Crane (Rich Sommer). Nonetheless, when he aggressively goes in for a kiss, Peggy pushes him away. She's unable to express what - or who - is compelling her to repel him. The company men aren't the ones who have trouble explaining themselves in "Ladies Room," while the women struggle not just to communicate their experiences to others, but to understand them themselves.

My Response:

Mad Men - "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" (season 1, episode 1)

Welcome to my viewing diary for Mad Men. Most days (except Saturday) I am offering a short review of another episode until concluding the first season. Later seasons will be covered at another time. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on July 19, 2007/written by Matthew Weiner; directed by Alan Taylor): Don Draper (Jon Hamm) seems to be a certain type of postwar man, late fifties/early sixties vintage - the bachelor who doesn't allow domesticity to soften his edges, the sort of fellow Hugh Hefner had in mind when he founded Playboy seven years earlier ("Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" takes place in March 1960). Don is successful but no millionaire, intelligent but not stultified, sturdy without being a total square. He's good at his job - advertising useless or even deadly products to America's booming middle class - but harbors no illusions. In one scene, his eyes aglow, he delivers soothing Americanisms to Lucky Strike magnates (John Cullum, Darren Pettiel), worried their business will be undone by health concerns: "Happiness is the smell of a new car. It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of the road that screams reassurance that whatever you're doing...is okay. You're okay." The latent cynicism in the consumerist lullaby receives full expression later, as Don attempts to woo potential client Rachel Menken (Maggie Siff), a Jewish woman who tells him she never married because she never fell in love. Smirking, he recites (as if by heart): "The reason you haven't felt it is because it doesn't exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons. ... You're born alone and you die alone and the world just drops a bunch of rules on you to make you forget, but I never forget." So that's Don, casually drinking and smoking his way through nightclubs and restaurants, his corner office, and his free-spirited mistress Midge Daniels' (Rosemarie DeWitt's) apartment, where he spends the night. A modern man with a Purple Heart in his desk drawer and a baffling Freudian report in his trash can, riding high on the racial and sexual advantages afforded him, wise to the hustle without dreaming of defying it, free of the cozy sentimentality that stereotyped the fifties in 2007, when Mad Men premiered.

Of course...it's not actually that simple. At episode's end, Don takes the commuter rail back to his quiet home and we close on a Douglas Sirk-worthy tableau of Don Draper, steady husband and father, hovering over his two sleeping children, lovely wife Betty (January Jones) in the doorway. Throughout the episodes we've met many other characters enduring their own identity crises, most notably the loathsome Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), a young adman with his ambitious eye set on Don's office (when it isn't surveying every woman in sight, even though Pete is on the eve of his marriage). Another conflicted character is Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), Don's new receptionist, nervously listening as her confident, arch supervisor Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) gives her the lay of the land. Pete's and Peggy's epidose arcs mark Mad Men as a series premiere: one is a smug scoundrel living his last day as a bachelor, the other a mousy Brooklyn girl surviving her first day in the jungle of Sterling Cooper, where the women are catty and the men are all wolves. Little surprise then that these two go to bed near the end of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," a simpering Pete allowing a suddenly assured Peggy to lead him into her bedroom. There's no question, though, that Don is our star, in terms of screentime and perspective. Yet as Vic Damone's "On the Street Where You Live" kicks in under the end credits, we realize we don't actually know him at all.

My Response:

Viewing diary: first season of Mad Men begins tomorrow

Hopefully you enjoyed my ride through the first season of Breaking Bad, from an episode I'd watched several times before to an episode I'd never seen before. My journey into Mad Men will take a similar route. For just under half the season, I was revisiting vaguely familiar ground (I watched these episodes back in 2014, so there was a lot I didn't remember). For the latter half this was new territory and so as the characters discover the first buds of the sixties zeitgeist blossoming around them, I am right there alongside them. In both cases, of course, I will not be revealing any spoilers - whether out of duty or ignorance.

The diary will halt, for now, with the end of this season but I'll keep watching Mad Men on my own, pausing to record my responses after each fresh episode and probably returning to unveil the whole series when I've finished them all. Even as I write this, I still have a few season one episodes to watch and write about over the next few days. I can say that so far I find Mad Men extremely watchable if at times a tad frustrating (the show, especially in the premiere, can lay on the "this was a different time, folks" nudges a bit too thick, yet admittedly this is the very hook drawing me in the first place).

I remember back in 2007 when the series premiered I was skeptical, but then I'd been skeptical of The Sopranos too, initially; whenever some hot, hyped cable breakthrough came along the contrarian in me would rear his head. But I was curious too especially when I learned the series would move through the decade alongside its characters. I'm looking forward to further indulging that curiosity - the results start appearing tomorrow.

Patreon update #12: Pi (+ Parts 17/18 as Frost/Lynch versions of the same story, Academy Awards, film vs. TV expectations & more) and Images from "4 Ways to Watch Fire Walk With Me"

Episode 12 offers my first opportunity to discuss Darren Aronofsky; like Sofia Coppola, P.T. Anderson, and Christopher Nolan, he's a filmmaker of a certain generation that I haven't talked about in years (in some cases, like Aronofsky and Anderson, ever) so I enjoyed the opportunity to revisit his work. The only one missing now is Wes! There will be at least one Aronofsky film in store before the end of 2018, almost certainly two - the original plan was to launch an Aronofsky retrospective month to month. Since I've decided to step back from commissioned Films in Focus pretty soon, said retrospective will have to be more sporadic and partial.

The pace on the podcast slows down this week, as I begin a "one Film in Focus at a time" approach from now on. However, the pace on the Patreon blog ramped up as I offered a series of updates, announcements, and questions related to the impending change in the rewards structure. I would also love to know - including from people who aren't yet patrons but are considering becoming a member - what rewards will be appealing for various tiers as I take a new approach starting next week. And for my biweekly preview this week I took a visual approach, eager to share my juxtapositions of Fire Walk With Me with various films and Twin Peaks TV episodes.

On the podcast, that film vs. TV question gets a closer look vis a vis a few conversations surrounding Alan Clarke's iconic Elephant (which I covered on the podcast several weeks ago), and I also get into probably the most famous intersection of film and TV: the annual Academy Awards broadcast. For "Twin Peaks Reflections" I dig into a fascinating concept broached by original series writer Harley Peyton - the two-part finale of The Return as a couple solo albums, with both David Lynch and Mark Frost offering alternate covers of the same tune.

Images from "4 Ways to Watch Fire Walk With Me" (March "See the Future" Preview #2 - 3rd tier reward)


Films in Focus: schedule for March through June


A message to all patrons (and potential patrons) - Film in Focus submissions open to 2nd tier through March 31


Oops - Episode 12 forthcoming


What rewards would you like (this one is open to the public!)


Episode 12: Pi (+ Parts 17/18 as Frost/Lynch versions of the same story, Academy Awards, Film vs. TV expectations & more)

Line-up for Episode 12

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: Changing 2nd/3rd tier reward

INTRO

WEEKLY UPDATE/recent posts: Posting every day, Breaking Bad viewing diary

WEEKLY UPDATE/Patreon: 3rd Tier Biweekly Preview - "Images from 4 Ways to Watch Fire Walk With Me"

WEEKLY UPDATE/works in progress: abandoned original "100 films" idea

FILM IN FOCUS: Pi

TWIN PEAKS REFLECTIONS: Harley Peyton & Robert Engels interviews - are Parts 17 & 18 "solo albums," with Frost and then Lynch telling essentially the same story their own way?

OTHER TOPICS: Academy Awards, clip from "Making of Elephant" documentary, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky on film vs. TV audiences/expectations

LISTENER FEEDBACK: Elephant & the Troubles

OPENING THE ARCHIVE: "Running on Empty" (January - May 2011), this week's highlight: Blog 10

BECOME A PATRON

FINAL WEEK - What will I watch? Until 4/1, 2nd tier patrons pick a film I'll cover on my podcast

Select a Subject for "Film in Focus"

From now through March 31, if you become a $5/month patron I will cover a film of your choice on my podcast this summer. To be clear, you don't have to remain at that tier over the following months to access this reward (I'll even email you the file of the episode when it's ready, if necessary); the only reason for the delay is that I'm currently committed to covering many other "Films in Focus" in the coming months. However, around late June/early July I will reach your selections. There will be additional rewards kicking in for April/May and onwards which I will determine over the next few days, so stay tuned for those as well.

For the past three months the "Select a Subject" commitment has been part of my reward structure on Patreon but as more patrons joined the second tier, I struggled to keep up with the workload. Hence I am phasing out this reward on April 1; before then anyone who joins the second tier (or decided to bump up from the first tier) will access the reward before it disappears. I've announced this on my Patreon page and will include that announcement, and other relevant information, in my update on this site tomorrow, but I figured the invitation was worth sharing on its own.

Of course, if you'd prefer to listen without making a selection, you're always welcome to join the first tier and receive immediate access to my weekly podcast episodes (a dozen and counting). There's a lot of new content coming up on both Patreon and this main site; keep your eyes on this spot in particular, because now that I've finished the first season of Breaking Bad, my next viewing diary kicks off this Sunday. I will be covering the first season of Mad Men.

Breaking Bad - "A No-Rough-Stuff-Type Deal" (season 1, episode 7)

Welcome to my viewing diary for Breaking Bad. Each day (except Saturday) I am offering a short review of another episode until concluding the first season. Later seasons will be covered at another time. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on March 9, 2008/written by Peter Gould; directed by Tim Hunter): Although producing the two pounds he promised Tuco last episode (let alone the two additional pounds he promises this episode) is definitely a big challenge, the big turning point and climax in Walter's first season journey occurred last week. At least as far as meth is concerned, anyway; his battle with cancer was emphasized in the episode before that. This leaves us with a finale that consolidates the accomplishments of the season and offers a peek into season two. Walter...er, Heisenberg, finally dons the pork pie hat that completes his iconic look (if I remember correctly, though I recall seeing about as many images of him bareheaded), and - after orchestrating a quasi-comical robbery of much-needed supplies and cooking meth while Jesse absentmindedly permits an open house in his previously "for sale" home - the last scene solidifies his lucrative business deal with Tuco. Walter's cathartic release and easement of his anxiety finds release in, as Skyler herself puts it, an open "friskiness" with his wife. In case we miss the connection, the pre-credits teaser concludes with Skyler asking why their parking lot sex (following an uptight drug scare meeting at the school) feels so good and Walter responds, as much to himself as to her, "Because it's illegal." From the earliest episode, Breaking Bad has hinted at a psychosexual charge to the protagonist's titular turn to the dark side and "A No-Rough-Stuff-Type Deal" confirms that the milquetoast man's criminal path affirms his potency as much as pays the bills.

My Response: