‘Breaking Bad’: Men

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Walter White replaced the water heater and some rotting wood, but he might as well have been caulking a bathtub. The point is that we just spent an hour basically watching a guy doing some home improvement, and that it made for compelling television is almost absurd.

How does “Breaking Bad” pull this off? Well, by first going back to the mysterious teddy bear opening, this time revealing a little more: two dead bodies beneath white sheets. We don’t know who they are, but we do know that the bodies are in Walt’s driveway. And so the stakes to this season-long teaser have just been raised; we now know that whatever eventually happens will be big, very big.

In a way, that sense of impending doom is really the hook to this series and especially this season. And it’s almost like a bargaining chip with the audience. Like, “Don’t worry, folks. Things will go down and all hell will break loose. But for now let’s just sit down, relax and enjoy this trip to the hardware store.”

In the end, this particular episode was essentially about men. As such, it was simple and straightforward, and that’s part of what made it so funny. Let’s face it, boys -- there is hilarity in our sometimes narrow-minded ways, and this is what “Bad” successfully minded.

Even my mom -- and happy Mother’s Day to all of you out there -- caught this show for the first time Sunday. And this is what she told me: “The women on this show just make so much more sense than the men.” Par for the course, is it not?

And now, let’s look at these latest examples of male behavior:

Walt. His body has betrayed him with the cancer, and life has betrayed him by putting his brilliant mind in a high school classroom while his ex-girlfriend and buddy have gone on to make millions based on his research. Even his teenage son has betrayed him in a way, showing far more interest in the gun-toting life of Uncle Hank than his own. Oh, and the kid doesn’t want to go by Walt Jr. anymore -- please instead call him ‘Flynn.’

Add it all up and Walter White is a man who desperately wants to control something, anything. So what does he do? Well, at a get-well party thrown for him, he uncomfortably gets more pity thrown upon him and then watches Junior/Flynn (RJ Mitte) further admire the stories of Hank’s wild life. Walt responds by getting drunk and making sure that his son goes down with him. When he poured that first shot of tequila for his son, he just looked like the cool dad sharing a first-ever drink with his boy. When he poured the third, he was the devil.

Junior barfed. And Walter managed the slightest of smiles.

The scene was at once ridiculous and astounding, showing how Bryan Cranston can so easily turn from the Walt we love to the Walt we hate just a bit. As an audience, we’re either terrified for him or terrified of him. But even here we somehow understood why he’d done something so awful. The guy had just had enough. Enough of the niceties, the pity. Enough of the lies. Enough of suburbia and the buttoned-down image. And so his instinct was to ruin, to tear everything apart.

He then spent the rest of the episode in repair. Literally. He replaced the faulty water heater of his home, then immediately went to work on the rotting wood in the basement. If he can’t repair his life, he’ll repair the house.

And in one of this series’ most hysterical moments, he at one point shows up in the kitchen for a quick break, buttering a piece of toast while wife and son sit there, eating breakfast and looking at him in his ridiculous outfit of a protective suit and breathing mask. The look that Skyler (Anna Gunn) gives him is priceless. He doesn’t notice. Just eats his toast -- quickly, for there is more work to be done.

“Are you going to work today?” Skyler asked in a classic, stunned deadpan.

“Skyler, there’s rot,” he said. A gulp of orange juice. And back to work he went.

Walt Jr. His reaction to what happened at the party was heartbreaking. He actually apologized to his dad for throwing up in the pool. “No, that was not your fault, not at all,” Dad told him. “Son, I owe you an apology. … Having you drink in the first place was not right.”

“But I kept up, right?” Walt Jr. said to him. “You and Uncle Hank... I drank three,” he said, just like they did. Boys will be boys. We worry about keeping up, about proving our toughness, our bravado.

Jesse. And while Walt Jr. worried about proving himself, Jesse (Aaron Paul) sought the approval and validation of Jane (Krysten Ritter), the girl next door for whom he’s fallen. So even though it was pretty clear that she didn’t want her dad to know about him, he forced a meet anyway, appearing outside when she spoke to her father. She still didn’t give in, introducing Jesse as only the tenant next door.

Later, Jesse sulked. He argued. And when he didn’t get his way, he left. (This is what we do.) He also stayed in his car for a moment, waiting to see if Jane would chase after him to apologize. (This is what we dream, to be wanted, to be pursued, and yet. …) She didn’t.

Later, though, he finally got the validation he needed. After earlier showing Jane his old drawings of imaginary superheroes -- all of them resembling Jesse, of course -- a piece of paper was slipped beneath his door. “Apology Girl,” it read, and the drawing looked just like Jane.

It was one of those times when you smiled and thought, “Well done.” That setup and payoff was superb, one of the sweetest moments we’ve seen in the series.

Oh, and speaking of the writing, who was it that so astutely put the neuroses and workings of the male mind into print and thus onto the screen? I checked to see who’d written this episode.

Ah yes, of course: Moira Walley-Beckett, a woman. Fitting, I think, since women do tend to see us far more clearly than we.

-- Josh Gajewski