Norm MacDonald once said that cliff diving has two outcomes: World Champion and Stuff-On-A-Rock. Television directing is the same way and Michelle MacLaren, who directed Breaking Bad episode 402 ‘Thirty-Eight Snub,’ is definitely a World Champion.
She has a very interesting style I first saw in The Walking Dead season 1 episode ‘Guts’ in which the situation the characters go through, including their emotions, aren’t just played out in front of you, but through camera angles, editing choices, and the pacing of the story you experience all the feelings they do. In ‘Thirty-Eight Snub,’ this style is combined with the allegorical depiction of the ending life cycle of a drug addict to take the viewer on a wild emotional ride that is at times both subtly uncomfortable and viscerally satisfying.
This episode basically shows three sides to addiction. Walt represents the paranoia side brilliantly from his opening conversation with the gun dealer which might as well be a soliloquy to the anxiousness in the car before he steps out towards Gus’ house. Drug fueled paranoia comes in waves and sometimes they are interspersed with lucid moments of clarity. Bryan Cranston shows why he is an Emmy award winner for this role. His style with the character is very muted, and yet every bit of business is engrained in your mind like the anal retentive lined up bullets on the counter.
While Walt represents the paranoia side, Hank is what happens to addicts when the self hate takes over and you push those around you away. You can almost taste the awkwardness as his wife goes for an unrequited high five.
The best performance of the episode, by far, belongs to the manic side of addiction, Jesse.
The very last scene in which Aaron Paul’s Jesse is in is a perfect example. This is the point River Song would pop up and whisper “Shhh, spoilers sweetie.” No matter how hard you party, how many drugs you do, and how many “friends” you do all of that with, at some point the night ends, unless you’re Charlie Sheen. When the night ends and you’re left all by yourself, and the music is off, and the drugs no longer have their desired effect, all the feelings you tried desperately to hide and erase come crashing down on you. Jesse’s party is through, the last of the group have left and he sits in front of his hip-hop blasting speaker, incredibly alone, incredibly sad, and utterly lost. The scene could have been cheaply represented with tears and sobs, dramatic overture, a light rising in, but MacLaren chose not to do that, and Paul chose to play the scene with realism.
Overall, ‘Thirty-Eight Snub’ is a well done episode with not much to pick apart. If I do have to make one suggestion it would more Roomba-cam.
– James Zappie
