Breaking Bad – Blood Money Review
The second half of the final season of Breaking Bad picks up exactly where we left off. Kind of. With direct parallels to the beginning of the season, Walter White is bearded with a full head of hair. This time, instead of picking up guns from a diner, he is outside of his Albuquerque home. And instead of the house we are used to, we see a vandalized home with the name “Heisenberg” emblazoned on one of its walls. We now get a better idea of when and why these scenes are taking place. It seems as though we are looking into a future where Hank is seemingly on the run – a fugitive perhaps. And what follows seems to be the lead up to what we are seeing.
After where we ended up with the show last year, we are all anxious to see what happened with Hank Schrader’s stunning revelation while on the toilet. Although it takes a little while to get there in context of the episode, we see Hank and Walt come to a head way sooner than I would have ever expected. Instead of a long drawn out season of Hank piecing things together about Walt, we see the two confront the issue head on. Ultimately we are left with a draw dropping end of the show that left me slow clapping in my mind. And believe you me, I hate the slow clapping cliche.
Meanwhile, we see Jesse trying to come to grips with everything that he has been through. Jessie is a broken man, he is scared, and he is unstable. Where he ends up seems like it will be anything but good.
If I have any qualms with the episode, it was the fact that the first half moved along pretty slow. This is minor though, as the exposition set us up with a new status quo. It was necessary and it worked.
What we see in this premier is no disappointment. The show feels like it hasn’t missed a single step. It actually seems to kick things up a few notches, even if it was just at the latter half of this episode. That ending was enough to bring it over the top into “amazing” territory.
Score: 9.0