![]() Whereas for Brock, Jesse gets to solve a mystery that probably would have consumed him for the rest of his life.Īnd the movie itself feels like it’s trying to make things right by Jesse after the fact. If Jesse hurt him - as he hurt his parents - by making him associated with an infamous criminal, there’s nothing Jake doesn’t already know about the subject that could make things better for him. They were already estranged the one and only time we saw him in Breaking Bad (in Season One’s “Cancer Man”). (*) That Jesse doesn’t also write one to his little brother Jake is interesting, but not too surprising. Before Jesse Pinkman ceases to exist as he used to be - assuming that guy didn’t die the night he saw Todd murder Andrea - the least he can do is explain to that poor kid why he got so sick that time, and who killed his mom and why(*). Nobody else,” he tells them, in the middle of a phone call otherwise designed to lure them out of the house so he can steal his father’s guns.) And the one person he writes a letter to before departing his old life forever is Brock, who suffered so much because his mother had the misfortune to date Cap’n Cook. There’s obviously the literal one to Ed the disappearer, who demands payment for the trip Jesse didn’t take back in “Confessions.” But Jesse also gets to say a proper goodbye to Skinny Pete and Badger, gets an extra bit of revenge-by-proxy in taking out Neil and his partner Casey, and apologizes to his parents one last time. But in addition to getting out of town with a decent amount of money, Jesse manages to repay a variety of old debts. ![]() Jesse’s adventures on the way to Alaska aren’t as sweepingly effective in this regard as Walt’s return from New Hampshire was, which makes sense, since he was never the intellectual or the showman his late partner was. The prologue with Jesse and Mike (set circa Season Five’s “Buyout,” where Jesse is ready to retire in the wake of Todd murdering Drew Sharp) establishes the movie’s key question: In escaping this criminal life, can Jesse find a way to set things right, as he suggests, or is Mike correct that all he can do is to start over? The events of the end of the series - where Walt arranges for his kids to inherit what’s left of his fortune, helps Skyler get out of her legal jam, rescues Jesse, and kills all of his remaining enemies - suggest that it is possible to right at least some of the wrongs you’ve done. ![]() But it would skip too many of the kinds of small, difficult steps that have defined this tale going all the way back to 2008. Driscoll might be interesting - and would offer a very different visual palette from the one Gilligan and company established so well on the original series and Better Call Saul. A story set largely during Jesse’s new life in Alaska as Mr. There are wrinkles in terms of exactly which old friends prove helpful to Jesse, as well as the introduction of a new foe in cruel welder Neil Kandy, but the plot functions more or less the way it should, given the rules of this fictional universe. It opens and closes with cameos by dead figures from Jesse’s past - Mike at the beginning, Walt and then Jane at the end - and frequently jumps back to Jesse’s long period of captivity with Todd in between the Season Five episodes “Granite State” and “Felina.” But the majority of the film is a simple instructional narrative, covering only a few days time, about how to get out of town when you’re the most wanted fugitive in the American Southwest. ![]() In the end, the story is more or less what we all should have expected, based on how Breaking Bad leaned so heavily on what Gilligan liked to call “the in-between moments” that most crime stories skip over. But from the moment word leaked out, there was wild speculation as to what it would be about, how much ground it might cover, and who from the original series - alive or dead by the end of it - might make an appearance. I already published my spoiler-free thoughts on the film, and now it’s time to go old-school recapping, like I did for every episode of Breaking Bad, with full spoilers for El Camino coming up just as soon as I’m sized for love…īreaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan went to extreme lengths to keep the very existence of this movie, let alone its contents, a secret from the outside world for as long as possible. Jesse Pinkman is back in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, which Netflix released on Friday.
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