So there’s less than two weeks to go until the final season of “Breaking Bad” kicks off and every Monday at the office will be spent dissecting the final movements of Walter, Jesse and everyone else. Details have kept tightly under lock and key but pretty soon the show will be the only thing anyone can talk about. Perhaps speaking to the absurd levels of secrecy around the show, the first reviews, which have landed today, contain exactly zero plot points and read with something of a Kafkaesque obliqueness, so it winds up being a recap of the last season. But we’ll get to that in a second…
First off one more tidbit has been revealed about the final batch of episodes: none other than talk show titan Charlie Rose will be making an appearance. He spilled the news during an event celebrating the “Breaking Bad” exhibit at the Museum Of The Moving Image, adding that he will be in the penultimate episode entitled “Granite State.” The AV Club speculates that title cold be a wink toward the season five opener, “Live Free Or Die,” which flash-forwarded to a grizzled Walter in a diner closing a deal for a massive M60 machine gun. Perhaps the story of Hank’s brother-in-law becoming a meth dealing kingpin goes national, prompting him to chat with Charlie Rose? Guess, we’ll find out in a few weeks.
Until then, here’s the mostly effusive praise that the critics had for the first episode. We’ll have our take closer to the air date on Sunday, August 11th. Roundup below, followed by a new teaser trailer for the final batch of episodes.
NY Daily News: If this first episode foreshadows the other seven, much of the drama will be psychological. While Bryan Cranston’s Walter White tries to ignore the toll of his chosen course on those around him, the wreckage has begun piling up…the first episode offers few clues about what form justice will eventually take, if it takes any form at all.”
Hollywood Reporter: “… the return episode is riveting from start to finish — with the use of another flash-forward that also kicked off this final season — and it concludes with an extended scene that is written, acted and shot with the kind of magnificence that is at the heart of why the series is so exalted.”
