All in all, most every one of the main characters has been dealt a harsh hand. Skyler’s sister is a shoplifter, who refuses to acknowledge that she is. Her husband, Hank Schrader (very nimbly played by Dean Norris, while barely staying this side of self-parody) is a DEA agent who in particular targets crystal meth dealers but is in essence a buffoon.
But White is the center of his human drama and certain to be tragedy. You feel his pain, even though he can’t articulate it. And even though he knows crystal meth causes great destruction, his greater allegiance is to his family. In the first show of season two, just after a drug deal that turned horribly ugly, he calculates how much he’ll need to pay his bills and leave his family for their financial security after he dies. He comes up with $700,000.00, give or take — and says, “That’s 11 more deals.”
Season two will clearly be about those 11 more deals, if they happen at all: because right from the opening both his and Pinkman’s lives are in danger over a murder they witnessed.
Season one unfurled itself like a flag in slow motion: long spaces of silence, and an existential quiet that pervaded the whole of these lives in the middle of something larger than they could ever guess.
Season two, at least early in, moves at a quicker pace, which makes sense since Walt is dying and his days are fewer and fewer. He’s a complex, desperate man propelled by a singular desire to help his family. The opposite may be the result, or not.
This is a world that, even though it might seem otherwise, is a real as it gets. It’s life or death, and the best thing you can do is watch the series to see this eternally epic battle play itself out yet again.
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