Noiseless Chatter Archive

Hey everyone, let’s talk some more about El Camino ! See, Breaking Bad had an extremely good hook in the fact that no viewer could ever be certain what would happen to the characters next. Death (and worse) was a very real threat. Foreshadowing and misleads were interchangeable until the moment when, suddenly, finally, they were not. Part of what kept viewers tuning in was the desire to know what might happen next. El Camino could have had a similar effect on viewers, if it weren’t for the fact that “Where does Jesse go now?” isn’t all that intriguing a question. The film, I think, did realize that, which is why it spent so much time in the past. The problem with those scenes set in the past, of course, is that we know Jesse escapes the Nazi compound. There’s very little opportunity to wonder what happens next. We’ve seen it. And we’ve seen that he’s already moving on to new adventures. Why do I bring this up now? Because Better Call Saul had to find a solution...

I promised a review of El Camino , but that was before I saw it. It’s not that I have nothing to say about the film; it’s more the fact that anything I could say about it would be informed by my feelings about Better Call Saul . Of course, I’ll explain. El Camino is a sequel film to Breaking Bad . It’s on Netflix, so go watch it if you haven’t. It follows Jesse Pinkman through the aftermath of “Felina,” which sounds like a great concept. Except, really, the aftermath doesn’t end up being worth following anyone through. Walt’s world and the horrors with which he ravaged it felt huge in Breaking Bad . Of course they did; they were the focus of the show. The characters that came into his life and the ways in which they changed (or had change visited upon them) would certainly agree that the reign of Heisenberg was enormous, impactful, and cataclysmic. With just a little bit of distance, though, the events of Breaking Bad were what David Byrne might refer to as a tiny ...