On The Fly

Every now and then, Breaking Bad will say to heck with the general arc, let's do a small story. Sometimes it works out really well, like "Peekabo" or "4 Days Out," but sometimes it's more frustrating, leaving you waiting for next week when the story starts again. That was the case with "Fly," one of my least favorite episodes.

"Fly"has the shortest cold open of the series, where we have a close-up of guess what? A fly. We watch a few seconds and that's it. Okay.

We're in the lab, and the numbers aren't adding up for Walt. The net is .14% off. Jesse knows it's because he's skimming the meth, but it's driving Walt to distraction. And, in addition, there's a fly. A contaminant.

The entire episode is Walt obsessing about the fly. He chases after the fly, hurts himself, perhaps even knocks his brain a bit loose. (As he's lying on the ground, the fly comes right up on his glasses. Aeon Flux, anyone?)



Walt stays up all day and night trying to get the fly. When Jesse returns from a night's sleep, there's Walt, still going crazy. I realize it's symbolic of something bigger, of the failure and disappointment Walt feels, but still, this is an hour about trying to catch a fly.

Worse, it's Walt being irrational. Last week, for the first time ever, I was annoyed at Jesse's actions. He's a millionaire thanks to this sweet set-up, he's clean, and his lawyer is teaching him how to launder money. And all he can think of is screwing it up and being a gangsta. I don't get it. In the past, Jesse has been a major screw-up, and shown a startling lack of technical knowledge, but he's not an idiot. I don't buy his need to "be the bad guy." Not when he can sit back and be the rich guy.

So we've already got one character acting like a jerk, and now we have Walt acting crazy. He won't cook? For a fly? It's just silly.

In between the fly chase, they speechify. Walt, tired and drugged, goes on about how he should have died earlier, when he'd have been missed. I can see it, but this monologue would work better in a show with real action. Jesse also suggests Walt might have brain cancer, though Walt assures us his check-up was clean, which mean he has no excuse.

There is one good source of tension. Walt talks about Jane, and how he met her dad the night she died, and you realize he's getting close to dangerous territory. With lack of sleep, and the over-the-counter sleep aid Jesse slipped into his coffee, perhaps Walt will spill he's responsible for Jane's death. We've seen him do this before, when he was going under for surgery and admitted he had two phones. But he goes right up to the edge and pulls back, not unlike last week, when Skyler looked like she was gonna talk about meth, but changed the story.

At the end, Walt explains that if Jesse is skimming (they both know it, but neither will say it) and the management finds out, he can't protect him. Sounds to me like this will be the plot for the rest of the season.