I was busy last week and I didn’t get a post up about “Ozymandias”. Now that we have seen “Granite State” it seems pointless to write at length about it. “Ozymandias” was directed by Rian Johnson and it was one of the best hours of television I’ve ever seen. I love Breaking Bad and this might have been the best episode in the entire series.
I really have no negatives with “Ozymandias”. The cold open was amazing. It felt so strange to see Walt and Jesse out in the desert on their first cook. Everything was so simple back then. It was great to see them acting like “friends”. I was amazed to hear that sequence was the very last thing they shot on the entire series. They needed the actors to grow their hair back and for Walt to shave his goatee, so it was the very last thing they shot. I would have thought they shot that way back in the pilot and was saving it. It bookended the series beautifully.
I loved everything about the first half of the episode. I could watch it over and over. Then in the second half we get “the phone call”. Brian Cranston has put on some amazing performances in the life of Breaking Bad, but the phone call scene might be his best. It is the first time he was simultaneously Walt and Heisenberg. He delivered the cold dialog while his face showed sadness and pain. It was a key moment in the series, and Cranston was perfect.
“Ozymandias” might be the episode of Breaking Bad I return to the most after the series is over. There are some really good ones in the first 4 seasons, but this one might be the best. It was great.
Filed Under: AMC, Breaking Bad, Rian Johnson, Television