Every story Vince Gilligan has set in Albuquerque is a tragedy—until now.
With El Camino, the world of Breaking Bad has its first redemption. Walter White slid down a hellish spiral into megalomania and self-delusion for five long seasons. Jimmy McGill ended the last season of Better Call Saul diving headfirst into his sleazy, criminal-abetting, increasingly Giuliani-esque Saul Goodman persona, on his way to a Cinnabon in Omaha and a name tag that says “Gene.” Both faced moments where they could choose to step off that path, struggle for something different. Neither did.
Jesse’s story, Gilligan has decided, is different.
And as the writer and director of El Camino, he signals the shift in possibility in innumerable little ways. There are familiar stylistic tropes, like the creative camera placement and montage as Jesse tears apart Todd’s apartment, looking for money. But new ones predominate. Check out the tilt-shift effect Gilligan employs in the desert, making the characters look like the figurines in Todd’s terrarium. The widescreen framing repeatedly presents balanced groupings, centered tableaux, where Gilligan’s previous Albuquerque stylebook emphasized off-kilter angles and pointed shots of isolation.
The road Jesse travels doesn’t have to be the same as Walter’s and Saul’s, if only because he is at a different stage of life. He may not be able to “set things right,” as Mike warns him against trying to do, but he’s still a young man of 26. The secret to his future lies in being able to imagine that he might not be the hero, coping with and conquering whatever the universe throws at him. He doesn’t have to be the outlaw, finding the cracks in normal society for illicit schemes and Peter Pan values. He doesn’t have to be the heartless, casually cruel foot soldier who treats other people as means to his ends. He could be… someone unremarkable. Someone who drives a Pontiac Fiero.
When Walter found him, Jesse was a dead-end kid. Walter’s worst crime was manipulating Jesse’s ambition, and then his loyalty, down through bottomless levels of self-destruction and fatalism. In a flashback to the aftermath of season two’s marathon “4 Days Out” cook, Walter paternalistically urges Jesse to go to college, and asks him what he’d study. “Sports medicine?” Jesse throws out, but Walter has something else in mind—business, maybe management. Walter’s vision narrows to the width of a sniper’s scope because he assumes the boss’ job is the only job worth having. But Jesse offhandedly conjures a life spent on the sidelines, taking care of the real stars. He has a different horizon because he never wanted the spotlight.
Rescued and rising from the grave—literally—Jesse, alone among the Breaking Bad cast of characters, has a chance for a future. But this small measure of grace takes some hard winning. The story of Jesse Pinkman is still battered, scarred, bloody, and haunted. We drive, run, hide, trudge, and backtrack with him, crossing and recrossing the unrelenting Albuquerque grid, every inch of progress twisting into yards of complications. And as Jesse grinds out the hard road he’s chosen, Aaron Paul emerges as an even more magnificent performer than his multiple Emmys attest. Gilligan’s camera won’t let us look away from him: painfully infantilized by Todd in flashback, flinching and broken at Badger’s house, desperate in Todd’s apartment, regressing to petty defiance at the vacuum shop, and wearily dominant at Kandy Welding.
Did Jesse’s story need to be told? Four years ago, I didn’t think so. Emotionally invested as I was in his escape in the finale, I didn’t want my vague hopes in that direction diminished, rendered mundane by an actual depiction. But what I’ve always loved about letting Vince Gilligan tell me stories is that it’s not about what I want. I look forward to hearing him all the way through, seeing what he wants to show me, thinking about it afterwards rather than trying to engineer or predict it in advance. I should have known that when he decided to tell Jesse’s story, it would be necessary. To give Jesse his escape, Gilligan has to take him through the fires of purgatory. Months of torture and captivity have marked him; who could truly believe that simply fleeing was enough? He struggles upward and outward, sliding back, negotiating with those who hold the keys or stand in his way. Over the course of El Camino’s two hours, we see what’s changed in him through each scene of dogged determination. And when he makes it, we don’t have to just hope for the best for him anymore. We can believe.
No one gets off easy in Gilligan’s New Mexico desert. At least one person, though, gets out alive.
134 Comments
For a second when Bryan Cranston showed up I thought that Jesse was having some sort of mental breakdown, which wouldn’t make sense since the other people in the diner clearly noticed Walt’s presence. In fact I wasn’t sure if it was a flashback until I read this article since it had been a while since I watched the show.Also it says a lot about how Brock’s mom was fridged since the movie kind of seems to forget her existence outside of a photograph and Jesse writing a letter to Brock.
I thought maybe he was a ghost or something! One thing this movie did really well was the transitions between flashbacks. Just seamless enough to make you as disoriented as Jesse felt.
Very naughty of Gilligan to put Jesse in a slightly different, but similar enough to disorientate, black beanie hat in the present day and the WW flashback. I watched it at the cinema and I reckon from the audible reaction that at least 70% thought he was back.
Did nobody else notice the bullet pattern on the door of the long-since-cubed Winnebago? That, Cranston’s bald cap, and the conversation about slinging their own meth put the Cranston scene sometime during the first season.
Yeah – I think they’d got it by that point. I’m talking about when he first appeared.
That’s funny, because it was WHEN Walt showed up that I realized it was a flashback (Where is he taking a bath? Who is he saying he misses? Oh, there’s Walt, it’s a flashback, duh.)
Second season.
As confirmed by Gilligan, and the way they are behaving / what they are talking about in the scene – it is directly after “4Days Out”.
The minute he says “bitch” in the glorious style of old is the kicker. This is Original Recipe Jesse, so good to see him again.
Brock and Sonia hovered over the entire story, flashbacks and current time. They were always the driver of the decisions Jesse made. When he didn’t run from Todd’s apartment. When he gave Todd back the gun. It’s not like he would have been talking about them in the 48 hours-ish before he got out. And the flashbacks didn’t need to beat you over the head with it.More importantly – how on earth did you not realize the YEAH BITCH Jesse at a diner salad bar was a flashback?!
I wish the Jessie Narration of the letter had made the final cut of this. Apparently they cut that from the script, but it was also the inspiration for writing the rest of story.
Yeah, I’m kind of bitter about Andrea. Don’t get me wrong, I like Jane too, and I’ll go along with the people who argue she is Jesse’s “true” love, but you can’t deny he came to love Andrea too. They way he was screaming and crying through his gag in the car as he watched Todd shoot her just rips my heart out every time. You can literally FEEL his agony. Yet she didn’t deserve more than a brief appearance in the photo again?I feel the same way with how they handled Brock. We got the letter at the end, but were robbed of knowing its contents (Aaron Paul said it was originally in the script via voiceover). I really, really hope that will be a DVD extra.
I think his black skullcap during the scene was the first thing that tipped me off it would be a flashback, since he used to wear them in seasons 1 and 2 of BB. That’s about all the hints Vince Gilligan was willing to give us, but I appreciate his “show, don’t tell” method and letting us figure things out for ourselves.
I’ve said this before but yeah – I didn’t THINK I needed to know Jesse’s fate, I was pretty sure he came out of it okay.But El Camino gave me the details, with the violence, suspense, poignancy and final redemption that I, as it turned out, really did need.And goddamn, a really beautiful role for Robert Forster to go out on.
I also loved Jesse in that scene. “I’m 96% sure you’re the guy!” And then his face when the cops show up.
I just loved the idea of Jesse trying to think his way out of a corner in the way Walter would have and failing completely. It fit perfectly.
That may have been the only thing in the entire movie that gave me half a chuckle. Something about the whole thing was just off…can’t put my finger on it though. I wouldn’t say it was bad, but I didn’t think it was all that good either.
“Gotta love that response time”
Forster just waiting for the cops rolling up, letting Jesse rant — what a boss. He can play cards Jesse can’t and Jesse is still too dumb to know this. But he wises up.
It was painful to see Jesse back in the position to be misjudging outcomes just like he used to. When he tries to call Forster’s bluff about the cops and he thinks he is owed a pass on $1800 it made me think “Boy, he hasn’t learned anything. Still a fuck up, still naive”. Forster schooling him on who cares about your sob story was so much part of Jesse’s past story line. I think there was a nuanced change but Jesse old Jesse is still in there. That kind of nuance is great writing though. People only change so much.
Honestly, ending the movie with Jesse behind the wheel of a car with the crime/violence in his past and nothing but a question mark ahead of him left me thinking “what was the point? That’s the exact status the finale left us with.” I wouldn’t call it a mistake to have made, and it was nice to spend a couple hours back in that world, filling in some of the blanks, but ultimately I didn’t need to know how Jesse got out of Albuquerque or got over his trauma.I’d be very curious how this movie stands in the show’s legacy. I’m trying to picture someone ~5 years from now finally sitting down to Breaking Bad for the first time, and what it would be like to finish Felina, then load up El Camino.
Completely agree it was ok but totally unnecessary. I guess we’re supposed to assume that the punishment he got from the nazis was enough to cure the guilt that prevented him from leaving before. Also there’s no way Robert Forster would have charged him the standard rate to take him to Alaska that involves going thru 2 border crossings.
I guess we’re supposed to assume that the punishment he got from the
nazis was enough to cure the guilt that prevented him from leaving
before.
I mean, isn’t the whole movie the explanation for how he overcame the forces that prevented him from leaving before? Like, the climactic moment is him killing the guy who literally chained him there. And the main character arc is him going from broken and accommodating (he actually flashes on a memory of being Todd’s prisoner right before he decides to capitulate to Neil and Casey in Todd’s apartment) to standing up for himself and demanding what he needs to get free.
Sorry when I said before I was referring to before he was taken prisoner after Walt left the 2 bags of money on his porch he had already had the conversation with Mike about Alaska.
It tend to agree with this stance. I was quite happy to see Jesse again, but this story wasn’t necessary and didn’t add anything. Nice to see all the faces, but the parade of cameos amounted to nothing, as well. His soulmate, here, was Jessica Jones? That’s a surprise. .I enjoyed this, for the most part, (The fake cops thing was plot contrivance, and weak) but I think I preferred Jesse’s final moments in BB more
I think it bothered Vince Gilligan that he meant to show Jesse finally escaping his past in the series finale, but due to the time and logistical constraints he really left Jesse in an ambiguous place. It was hard to believe he could escape to freedom with only the clothes on his back while he was wanted for murder and a thousand other crimes. So, this was Gilligan’s feature-length way of clarifying that, don’t worry, Jesse did really escape to freedom and here are the nuts and bolts of how that happened.It was necessary in the sense that I don’t think Gilligan ever wanted you to believe that maybe the cops just pulled over Jesse in the El Camino five minutes later and he spent the rest of his life in prison.
I think it will stand up alright, as it was essentially just an extended episode packaged as a movie. I enjoyed it, but I also probably won’t remember it in a few weeks. Tbh, I feel like this may have been a vehicle to jumpstart Aaron Paul’s post-Breaking Bad career and put him back on the map. He’s admitted in interviews that it’s been tough shaking the character of Jesse, so maybe he figured by showing an evolved version of that character casting directors will take notice?
FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK NO MOVIES ARE “NECESSARY”I’ve seen this nonsense for the last week. Folks, there are no movies you *need*. The refusal to judge the film on its merits rather than its “necessity” is extremely dumb.
Who here said anything about ‘necessary?’ I said that a) it was good and I enjoyed it and that b) if there WAS some other reason for it existing besides, you know, existing, that it was likely in support of Aaron Paul. CHILL THE FUCK OUT. (see? I can use obnoxious caps too)
Honestly, ending the movie with Jesse behind the wheel of a car with the
crime/violence in his past and nothing but a question mark ahead of him
left me thinking “what was the point? That’s the exact status the
finale left us with.”
But those two moments are very deliberately not the same, right? In the former he’s disheveled and wild and screaming cathartically; in the latter he’s cleaned up and calmly looking toward the future. To me it seems like one of the main points of the movie was that a big moment of catharsis wasn’t enough to set Jesse on a new path—that he needed to do a lot more work to reckon with his past and leave it behind.
You’re totally right, and I agree that the difference there is the point. I guess I was okay with the story concluding messily in the finale, and while I’m glad to see that arc of him finding peace and escape, I was perfectly happy with how he literally escaped the machinations of the show in the finale.
I actually thought the preview with Skinny Pete being interrogated was more exciting than the movie. Wish that scene would have been in the film. Find it odd that nobody recognized Jesse even though he’s all over the news. I think they could have gotten to the same ending in a more interesting fashion. The Forster stuff was great though.
I was playing with the idea of not watching, because the series finale truly stuck the landing. But I’m glad I did. It was satisfying. Kudos to Mr. Paul.
Yay, a Donna Bowman sighting!
I liked this analysis, but I still have mixed feelings about this movie. For one thing, I’m just not sure the film earns the idea of Jesse’s redemption. I mean, he doesn’t really do anything except beat some bad guys and get enough money to get away. Genuine question, do people think Jesse is any different by the end of the movie, other than being out of danger?Also, minor nitpick, I wouldn’t say Jesse never wanted the spotlight. The guy who called himself “Cap’n Cook” and had that one answering machine message and a website talking about how much he liked MILFs, that dude definitely wanted as much attention as possible. But Jesse is a very different person by the end of the show, and I liked the observation that sports medicine fits in with who he is now.
Agreed on your first point. I don’t see any redemption in El Camino; just escape. He’s the only one to get out of this madness alive, which is a victory, but calling it redemption is a stretch.
Except that the only reason he went through what he went through is because he went back to town to burn down Walter’s house. He could have escaped and instead ended up paying for his morality.
I’ll say “yes” to the “is Jesse different?” question – but it is a matter of degrees.His friends taking him in, the look of shock, surprise – seeing the news cover that Walter’s dead, along with the Nazis. They feed him, give him a place to sleep. He falls on the bed, and is just out. Months since he “slept well.” He wakes up the next morning, and the first noise he hears, he screams and grabs a gun – pointing it at his new protectors.
He’s suffering from full-blown PTSD at the start, jumping at everything. The shower – blasting him in Skinny Pete’s place, seeing the dirt and the muck and the shit come from his body. And then he lashes out, remembering the hose blasting him at the Clubhouse. He shouts, he turns off the water and for a second, that look he has is, “I’ll never enjoy anything again, because everything reminds me of what just happened.” And the second he’s done? Gun in-hand again. He can trust nothing and no one.As the film progresses, he goes to some great pains to avoid any kind of violence. He’s had his fill. He’s had far more than his fill. Even when violence would solve a big problem, he doesn’t go for it. It costs him a way out, with Kandy. But his lack of violence hasn’t left him cowed, either, calling Kandy’s bluff and daring him. When he says he’s not afraid to die, it isn’t bullshit.Only when faced with a threat against his life does Jesse engage in violence. But he’s pragmatic, he’s smart, he’s distracting. The hidden item in his jacket? Nervous Jesse from Breaking Bad would completely fuck up that little trick. He isn’t fearless per se, but he knows what needs to happen and he isn’t afraid of it.The driver’s license ploy was fantastic, and again, pragmatic. He issues the threat, but the viewer knows it’s pointless. Finally, Jesse arrives at his destination, hidden away in an incredibly cramped space, over rough road. He believes the smuggler (RIP Robert Forster) when he gives his word, and true to that word, he gets where he’s going.Jesse’s at his destination, but the journey isn’t over. Haines is 30 miles away. But he’s not jumping anymore. He’s haunted but not tortured. He has scars that won’t heal, regardless of time, but at least he has a chance with some distance.Is Jesse the same throughout? No. Is Jesse “fixed” by the end? No. Is Jesse just the least-bad of the bad guys? Yes. We root for him, because when he was still a member of society, he tried to do right at the end. He tried to end a cycle, and in that attempt, the cycle consumed everything about him. His health, his dignity, his freedom, his hope.
I’m still wondering how he stays free in all this, he’d still be pretty high on the Most Wanted list, even if the news acknowledges that he was a captive of the neo nazis, he still was involved in the meth business.But Alaska seems like the best option for him, other than surrendering, doing some sort of reduced time in exchange for info (but not who killed Gale) and writing a tell-all book of the tv show called……… “The Teacher Who Couldn’t Stop Cooking Meth”
I was wondering at first why the cops were even looking for Jesse in the movie – with no survivors, how would anyone know Jesse was even AT the Nazi compound? But then I realized the CSIs would notice Todd was strangled (not shot by Walt’s machine gun) and check the prints on the chain. . .
Two points? Nobody earns redemption, save in their imagination or possibly their friends’ flattery. People are given a chance, and they take it, turn away from the old ways (aka repent,) and do better. That’s as close to redemption as it gets. The primary obstacle is not getting a chance. Asking about redemption being earned isn’t even getting the question right in my judgment.And, Jesse most certainly does do something: He surrenders to the cops. Or, if you prefer, he surrenders to Todd rather than risk Brock’s life. That’s the proof Jesse has changed. (Changed enough all the judgmental people ask? But so many of them are assholes, who cares?) It’s the script that suddenly turns the cops into Nazi-adjacent scumbags. It’s the script that has toxic masculinity lured into fatal attempt to murder Jesse because a 44 is so much more phallic than a 22. It’s the script that adds redemption through winning to Jesse’s arc. So the script has it both ways. Jesse is redeemed from being a druggie who would rather steal than quit, and rather kill than pay with hard time. And Jesse is finally effective. After all, there are lots of people who adored Walt because he had agency out the wazoo while despising Jesse for being weak.
Yeah, I was expecting him to do something for either Brock or Kaylee, or save some random kid out of nowhere.
I watched this over the weekend and quite enjoyed it. It was a nice little roll call on people from the series, and he was finally able to get out, something Walt did, but came back because he wanted more.
Walter’s worst crime was manipulating Jesse’s ambition, and then his loyalty, down through bottomless levels of self-destruction and fatalism. Absolutely! Walter’s crimes were myriad, but none compared to his treatment of Jesse.Was great to see Kristen Ritter return in one of the flashback scenes.
Well. Yes and no. Recall, Jesse would have been dead had Walter not acted the way he did in Half Measures. And let’s not sugarcoat things: Jesse was a massive fuck up and probably had it coming.If Walt would have been willing to sacrifice Jesse, he likely would not have gotten sideways with Fring. From a causal standpoint, Walt’s loyalty to Jesse was ultimately the thing that eventually brought him down.
Walt would have surely have eventually crossed Fring one way or another. The panic attacks and irrational behavior during the honeymoon of that tenure was symptomatic of this, as was insisting Jesse replace Gale rather than simply paying him off to not press charges on Hank.
Being a cook for a few percent from the gross was not the empire business he had in mind. He was sabotaging that relationship from the start.
Agree except the part about Jesse being the reason Walt falls out with Fring. The whole point of Walter’s arc is that even when he’s won a battle, he can’t help but undermine himself out of egotism. There is no way Walt would have been able to keep working for Fring, even though Fring is the best boss he could possibly hope for in that business, simply because Walt can’t abide being beholden to anyone but himself. You might even recall that it was Mike Ehrmentraut’s words to this effect that made Walt lose his temper and shoot him.
Yeah, he still did care for Jesse in a messed up way, even if it was for a selfish reason. I think with the meth cooking overall while he says it was for him, it was also to prove to his family who Daddy was and to genuinely ensure their security when he died.
Yes, all of those are much worse than the murders that he directly or indirectly was responsible for.
Nah, i’m pretty sure orchestrating a mass prison murder, killing Mike, letting Jane die, poisoning Brock, and mass producing/distributing a drug which definitely led to the deaths of countless others are all worse crimes than manipulating Jesse.
I thought the Walt cameo was a bit much, but it still was a great scene and telling how much he underestimated/played Jesse, even assuming he didn’t graduate college and lecturing him on how he is doing his big accomplishment at such a young age (which also shows his insecurities as to how much his ego squandered a few big breaks)
This made me realize just how much I miss Breaking Bad. The camera work, the montage, everything about it made me realize how lucky we were to have that show week-to-week. Better Call Saul is fantastic, but so different.I can’t wait to see what Vince does next.
Watching El Camino and Robert Forster’s role in it made me realize how awesome a show with this character could have been. Someone with that sort of power, similar to Gus Fring in his absolution and methodical nature (but using it in a very understated way to help people) would have been a great show, and deep-diving into the relationships he formed with people both good and bad to get to that point. And if he moved that many people at that price, he was probably incredibly well connected and well-off – he had huge power over big people in their times of need. Would have been a great show, IMO.
I would watch the hell out of it.
I’d watch a show about Marie if Gilligan was attached.
An emotionally tense deep dive on the origins of her obsession with the color purple.
Her gradual rise as the shoplifting queen of New Mexico.
“Are we in the shoplifting business or the money business?”“I am the one who knicks!”
Hey, it writes itself. “After Hank’s death, Marie grows increasingly desperate and shoplifts increasingly valuable items until she falls in with a ring of thieves and, through cunning she didn’t know she had, becomes queen of a shoplifting crew.”
Seems like a possible origin is wanting to irritate/offend the eyes of her parents for constantly treating Skyler, the responsible one, as their favourite. I’d also like to see a sequel where Skyler and Marie travel America hunting (criminal?) monsters. Seems like they have a fitting sibling dynamic.
I genuinely an unironically love Marie. She’s a much better character than the consensus would have you believe.
She uses a bubbly, flighty personality to cope with anxiety, but is there for her extended family when they need her, and is the only one adult enough to tell Walt to make his own choice about chemotherapy. I like her too. And I’d like to see her come to terms with her grief, because the way it ended for her (first the horrifying expression when Walt claimed to have murdered Hank, then the anxiety-filled, purple-free phone call to Skyler about reported Walt sightings) was hella depressing.
I’m happy to see more love for Marie here. Honestly, her crimes are among the least of anyone else’s, but some people apparently believe that only “badasses” can be interesting characters.
I think it should be a sequel set in DC where she uses her kleptomania both to cope with her grief and to advance in politics.
“You can’t have a kleptomaniac as White House Press Secretary!” “Why not? She’s cleaner than any of the more recent holders of that job!”
Breaking Purple?
S6 of BCS was probably supposed to be that show.
They’ve been foreshadowing Nacho making use of his services for years now.
So when Jesse and Todd are driving out to bury the cleaning lady, they get passed on the highway by a tanker truck. Anybody else think that was the truck Robert Forster hid Walt in on the way to New Hampshire?
That would be so cool.
But Jesse was thoroughly broken in by then – post Andrea among other things – and Walt shipped out a few days after his captivity began.
Or Saul on the way to Nebraska.
That works too. The timeline works either way.
Dead Eyed Opie looking chubby in it was the only thing that threw me off…but then again maybe he put the weight on when he first imprisoned Jessie, felt guilty and binged on Meth after killing the Mom of that kid and that’s why he’s so skinny in the final Breaking Bad episode…
I was fine with Plemons’ weight because he’s so good at playing psychos, he stepped right back into Todd. One of the best parts of the movie was him cruising and jamming out to soft rock, it struck me as a (maybe unplanned) echo of Walter rocking out to “A Horse With No Name.” Maybe the distance between you and Meth Damon isn’t as far as you think, Walter.
Star for Meth Damon.
Someone back in the old Breaking Bad comments came up with it at the time and I’ve tried to keep using it ever since, it’s hilarious.
El Camino’s Todd looks somewhere between Justin McElroy and Andy Richter.
He’s fucking GREAT at it. Also him loving that 70’s AM Gold (which I also love) makes me wonder how much of a monster I potentially am…If you need me I’ll be listening to “Dancing in the Moonlight”…
If he gained 50 pounds in the couple of days between the shootout and when he meets up with Jesse again, the dude has some serious metabolic issues…Jesse also apparently gained weight while he was a meth slave, but it wasn’t all that apparent except for the shower scene.
That would make sense in canon really.
Uncle Jack could care less about him killing the housekeeper yet Todd still risked taking Jesse out into the wild to clean her up discreetly. That could be to avoid the dangerous question of just what the hell he had been smoking….
He was stung by a bee
I think I like your explanation better…
He doesn’t seem to feel anything much, like he regrets killing people, but not in a normal way, just in an “aw shucks, that sucked but I had to do it” way. But he still could’ve gained/lost weight in the period of time established, Jesse was stuck with them for at least 6 months IIRC
I’m just worried that I’m a soul less monster as well due to my affinity for the 70’s AM Gold music Opie was listening to…
I was fully expecting him to go on a five minute monologue on the brilliant subversiveness of Steely Dan (though they’re more partial to FM, no static at all)- Walt already plugged their genius in one episode, so there’s precedent.
Ah, but that’s more “Yacht Rock” than AM Gold, although the two can intertwine at time…plus they actually know who Aretha Franklin was unlike those dumb 19 year olds…I’d pay good money to have heard him go into the brilliance of, I dunno, Bread or Seals and Crofts?
Definitely Bread. I could see their songs going along with the ones he was singing. Summer Breeze might be a bit too popular for him. On an unrelated note Family Guy did a whole episode in tribute to Yacht Rock, it was a bit generalizing but still halfway decent. Thinking more about it not sure if Todd would appreciate ‘Retha Franklin, or the Dan’s jazz focus and adult content, hard to tell if he was in it for the ideology or just the money and casual violence.
I always thought Plemons looked like a young Philip Seymour Hoffman — I never really saw the Matt Damon resemblance. So the extra weight fits — it makes him look more like PSH, who wasn’t a skinny dude.
I know I’m late to the discussion, but I was just watching this again yesterday and wondering to myself “would I even notice how much weight he had gained if they hadn’t so obviously tried to hide it.”They way they shot Todd early on in shadows and clever lighting made me look just that much harder. If they had just shot him normally, maybe I would not have paid it that much attention. jmho
Great article, Donna. I was gutted to see you weren’t reviewing it – having kept up with your Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul reviews, both in real time and in retrospect during rewatches – so it’s fantastic to hear your view on it all.
“Every story Vince Gilligan has set in Albuquerque is a tragedy”Yeah, that’s just how Albuquerque is.
“The secret to his future lies in being able to imagine that he might not be the hero, coping with and conquering whatever the universe throws at him.”But it’s also about him taking control of his actions after being enslaved, right? I thought that flashback to Jane saying she didn’t want to go with the flow of the universe anymore was interesting, because Jesse’s old boss was the ultimate rejecter of the universe’s plans — he believes he and he alone is in charge of his destiny and the show goes all in on the power and limitations of that philosophy. This epilogue seems more conventional in its approach to self-determination. The show took a lot of reference from Richard Stark in its depiction of the criminal underworld and its consequences and the plotting of the movie is very familiar and Starkian, solving one problem just leads to more problems. But the story is more like one of Donald Westlake’s more comical early stories, where a well-meaning but sketchy young guy moves through the underworld and comes out wiser and stronger. Those people and Jesse can definitely cope if not conquer, that’s what he learns from Forster, aka Dad Number 3. My favorite part was Jesse snarling “fuck your kids” to one of the dudes at the welding shop, finally Jesse is not distracted and made soft by concerns for children.
My plan was to see this when I could, but now don’t think I can, learning it was Robert Forster’s last role…and that the film premiered the day he died. I guess I’m one of the few who thought he was one of the greatest actors of his generation, to my mind the best who never got that ONE ROLE that would have put him in a place where the general public knew who and what he was.
Brings to mind the story Walter Matthau told about his first stage role, in college…after the show was over, everybody crowded around the other players and left him alone, so he asked a friend “how did I do?” The guy said “Okay, but Walt…it didn’t seem like you were a real actor. It seemed like you were just some guy who wandered onto the stage from the street.” And Matthau thought to himself “hey…I think I’m on to somethin’ here,” and said that was what drove his decision to go professional.
Goddam, this news ruins my frickin’ day.
Don’t let your love of Robert Forster deprive you of one last Robert Forster appearance.
Maybe later. Just ain’t up to it now. But you’re right, Bull. It’s just that I’ve been on the soapbox about him for longer than I’ve been a small-time professional actor and it had always been my dream to work with him at some point. And now that’s shot. But he’s got my highest accolade: He never gave a bad performance. Every role he had he gave his best to and treated his character with as much or more respect than its author did.
Is it redemption, though? I thoroughly enjoyed El Camino, but I didn’t see it as a redemption story so much as the conclusion of the escape of Breaking Bad’s most sympathetic character. Nothing Jesse does really “redeems” him, he just sort of gets away, and gets a little revenge along the way.
I don’t see how killing two people (even two bad people) stealing Neo-Nazi blood money, and leaving Badger and Skinny Pete to almost certainly go to jail for helping him escape equates to “redemption.” He earned his freedom but he had to make a lot of selfish/amoral/immoral choices to get there.EDIT: I forgot he also manipulated his parents (and emotionally tortured them) to steal two guns. That was some cold, cold shit.
His parents were terrible people, to be fair. And he checked his brother was away before he did anything.
I don’t think Badger and Skinny Pete would go to jail for helping him. He’s only a suspect, not a fugitive, and they could plausibly claim that in the 12 hours or so (?) that he was staying with them they didn’t watch the news.
Aiding and abetting is almost a given.
Well, that’s kind of ruined by the teaser with Skinny Pete, where he’s being interviewed by the cops and basically admits he saw the news and knows what Jessie’s been through. I still dont think they’d go to jail though, right? At least I hope not.
I read somewhere that Skinny Pete might go to jail for aiding and abetting, but it wouldn’t be for an extended period of time. Badger would probably be fine if he doesn’t get caught. Also I don’t think the police had info on Jesse killing Gale, so he’d just be in trouble for being in the meth industry, and he already cooperated with Hank.
As someone else pointed out – they would know Todd was strangled by that chain and Jesse’s prints would be all over it. So they might be after him for the ‘murder’ of Todd.
I read the scene as very much suggesting there may be blowback for Skinny Pete (and poss Badger) based on helping Jesse.That’s why it was poignant, they chose to sacrifice some of their freedom in exchange for giving their friend his.It wasn’t Jesse’s reckless behaviour claiming victims, it was friends (/family) choosing to sacrifice to help each other.
Agreed. It’s really just Jesse’s epilogue. Breaking Bad was really Walt’s story, so there was no room to give him that closure there. But it was still untold, and it gave us a glimpse of how Jesse’s going to move forward after his imprisonment and in a world without Walt.
Jesse + 50 years =
I didn’t know I needed this either but boy…Friday when I got home and watched this it was like eating the most satisfying of meals.I miss not having my intelligence insulted and Vince really does trust your brain unlike many people working in tv and film. There is also just NO filler in any of these shows. Every frame means SOMETHING to the story. No senseless exposition or dragging out the story to sell more more soap. We all knew Jessie had suffered a brutal existence but god his eyes in “El Camino” – It was like watching a 2 hour Sarah McLaughlin commercial for abused animals.- Genuinely painful
How many bullshit five minute long timelapses of the New Mexico landscape were in this bullshit ‘movie?’
Good to see you back, DoBo! Hope you’ll be recapping Season 5 of Saul.
would like someone to explain how the ‘duel’ was redemptive or thematically appropriate. beyond the goofy in-universe explanation (hey, we’re all on drugs!) it seemed like a villain and a scene dreamt up just to give jesse someone to shoot now that walt and the meth bikers were all already shot.
It’s not a redemption story.The movie isn’t about redemption but escape. It’s pretty overt in this given that the first scene of the movie is Mike telling Jesse that making things right is the one thing Jesse can’t do. That, or the fact that the movie features no redemptive acts or events for Jesse whatsoever.I’m struggling to think of a less accurate headline and I think the best I can do is “El Camino does not feature Aaron Paul in the role of Jesse Pinkman.”
Right? Jesse sets nothing right, he just gets out. And that was as much as we could hope for for any of the characters. Many of them don’t get out, they’re stuck in the wreckage left behind.
I really loved seeing Todd again. Plemons is so so good at playing someone who truly doesn’t experience emotions like other people do.
Having had to stop watching breaking bad after like season 3 or so (I had vivid nightmares that included me getting shot up at a mall from a gang of Biker’s that Walt was making a meth deal with, and having to feel myself bleed out all over the cold linoleum floor and feel the warmth of my blood on my skin as I went cold from inside out before I could wake up prevented me from continuing the series), I never got to meet Todd.
I’ve read the wiki and while that characterizes him as being a psychopath, the way he was played made me read him as being somewhere potentially on the spectrum, and that’s why he was able to act so aloof about certain things.
The film is about liberation more than anything else. Perhaps Donna’s headline was influenced by the fact that the climactic event of The Shawshank Redemption is also liberation.
The difference being Andy Dufresne really was innocent.
I don’t know what’s redemptive about brutally murdering two people, and then fleeing to Alaska, while a kid, who is orphaned only because Jesse had the poor sense to date the kid’s mother (thus implicating her in his criminal doings), gets a throw away letter… as if that’ll somehow make up for the shit that Jesse rained down on his life. The movie was well put together, I suppose. But it basically took that last shot of Jesse from the show — him ecstatically driving away — and made it two hours long. It didn’t seem to add much of anything. After Breaking Bad’s season finale, there was a lot of fan speculation about what Jesse did next; for example some thought he went back for Brock, which definitely comes off as a more ambitious, if kind of corny idea. But nope, the reality, apparently, is that he took Todd’s money, and used the same ‘disappearer’ as Saul and Walter. Jesse didn’t blaze his own path, he just did the exact same thing as the old fuddy duddies — except Walter eventually manned up and returned to finish the mess he created, which is more exciting than quietly living an anonymous life in Alaska and sending a sorry-not-sorry letter to Brock.
I have it on good authority that Huell escaped a life of crime to become a Philly-based stand-up comic.
Close.
The movie plays like a modern day western, and I don’t just mean the duel. There’s a sort of timelessness to this kind of story. I loved the measured pace of it as well. It wasn’t a big story, it was an intimate story. A man who just wanted the chance to do and be better.
All I could think about at the end was Dexter, which was not exactly the taste I wanted left in my mouth.
This is a reason why I stopped watching that after a quarter of Season 8. Now scenes set in Alaska are entirely unruined for me. When I see Alaska in a film like this, I think of two more heartwarming/liberating ‘facts’ about Alaska in fiction: 1) Demons are so turned off by Palin that they won’t accept Alaska as payment in demonic deals (Supernatural season 8 episode 2) 2) When you go to live in Alaska you get paid by the oil companies so they can ravage the state’s natural beauty (The Simpsons Movie). Bad for the environment, but good for Jesse’s wallet. And this second fact is probably true irl as well.
At least with this there was some setup to Jesse doing woodworking and specifically mentioning moving there. He didn’t sail out of New Mexico during a hurricane. Which is good as that would’ve raised a question or two
The show should have ended with Jesse getting picked up by the cops and booked for killing Gale.
To echo the sentiments of another commenter, I didn’t NEED to know Jesse’s fate, but I’m glad the Breaking Bad creators/cast gave it to me. I thought the movie was incredibly entertaining and well-paced, the two hours flew by, and in the end I felt like I’d watched a regular—if extended—Breaking Bad episode.
Also, can we all agree Badger and Skinny Pete were the real heroes of El Camino? Talk about friends you want in your corner. Their segment was the best.
Seriously skinny Pete came up with that plan in an instant! And $8200 for the road. Awesome.
Yeah, we always knew Skinny Pete was bright, if only from that piano scene. It was nice they gave him the motivation to actually use and show how smart he is.
In a flashback to the aftermath of season two’s marathon “4 Days Out” cook, Walter paternalistically urges Jesse to go to college, and asks him what he’d study. “Sports medicine?” Jesse throws out, but Walter has something else in mind—business, maybe management. Walter’s vision narrows to the width of a sniper’s scope because he assumes the boss’ job is the only job worth having. But Jesse offhandedly conjures a life spent on the sidelines, taking care of the real stars. He has a different horizon because he never wanted the spotlight.I thought Walt’s reaction was because he had a hard time seeing Jesse in a medical field.
Well, Jessie was a street “pharmacist” so there’s that.
I think Walt might look at sports medicine with some disdain because it seems like a healthy number of “I want to major in sports medicine” types are sort of “sports bro”-y. Like, if you don’t think you can hack it as a professional ballplayer, you get into sports medicine to be close to the game and hang around athletes and get that glamor-adjacent lifestyle. Which isn’t true of everyone who gets into sports medicine, of course, but I feel like as a high school teacher he probably heard a lot of jocks confidently say they could do sports medicine, and now has this mild eye-roll response to the whole field.
(My view of this is very much informed by going to high school in Alabama, where I graduated with many guys who thought sports medicine was their ticket into the world of football.)
Yeah, as a former high school teacher myself, “sports medicine” is one of the common answers that people who haven’t given much thought about a career give. They think they’ll be a trainer for the Lakers and get to watch games in courtside seats, etc. Walter’s intention of steering Jesse into a business degree, as well as forgetting that Jesse graduated, was kind of douchey and self-serving, but I did sympathize with the eye roll he gave when Jesse said sports medicine. If Jesse had said he wanted to be a nurse (say, in an oncology ward, because of the role he played caring for his sick aunt), it would have been believable and heartfelt. But I think the “sports medicine” answer, combined with his attitude in other parts of that diner scene, was to show how immature he still was.
Great review, Donna! I always appreciate your insights when it comes to the BB universe. Jesse Plemons was once again terrifying in his dead-eye shark stare of a complete sociopath. The way he just steps over his cleaning lady’s body while making soup (are you sure you don’t want some?) was just horrific. Asking Jesse to eulogize her, simply because the best he could come up with was “she was a good cleaning lady” showed how glad I was that Jesse strangled him to death during the final episode.
I’d forgotten how TENSE BB was. I nearly had a heart attack from the suspense multiple times in this show. Did I really watch multiple episodes and seasons of this kind of tension? Whoa.
One thing about Gilligan’s shows is that the settings can be characters also. In shows set in NYC some say the city is one of the starts. ABQ is a character in the Gilliganverse. I can also say the RV, Gus’s lab, the White’s and Jesse’s house are all characters in some way. Perhaps Mr. Gilligan would like to create something unlike BB but I like his presentation so I’d check out whatever he does. He’s already done the desert southwest so maybe another environment, say Alaska? And no, let’s not make Aaron Paul the star but perhaps this Mr. Driscoll is a peripheral character in a story with a whole new group of characters and their travails in the last frontier. It might be fun to see the former Jesse Pinkman just living his life while all the drama happens around him and he just enjoys playing video games not having to deal with anything and maybe occasionally giving sage advice.
Not the most essential chapter of the Breaking Bad universe, but Aaron Paul owns the screen and Gilligan’s writing&directing grab you from the first frame.
Plus it’s good to know someone got out, mostly.