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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: May 30, 2010
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Breaking Bad, “Abiquiu” (Season 3, Episode 11). [Stream on Netflix.]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Breaking Bad was such a sensational and talked-about TV program because it was good at a LOT of things. It was a crime drama, a morality play, a family tragedy, a dark comedy — all of them riveting to one degree or another. It could also rip your heart out of your chest at a moment’s notice. Not often, of course. Breaking Bad deployed its sentimentality judiciously and with a sharp edge. Walt allowing Jane to die at the end of season 2 was a tremendously pivotal moment, both for the character of Walt (and the audience’s relationship to him; for many, that was a turn-the-corner moment that he could never come back from) and for the show itself. Jane was a ray of hope for Jesse, and by the end of season 2, the audience was really rooting for him. Seeing that hope get snatched away was tragic.
And so, a season later, using the specter of Jane was an effective shorthand for the show to hit the audience right in the gut. Breaking Bad became known for its use of the cold open as a kind of short film, connected to the rest of the episode thematically but not necessarily narratively or even chronologically. The cold open for “Abiquiu” features a flashback scene between Jesse and Jane. On one level, it’s a grace note, both for the Jane character (we’d missed her and Krysten Ritter’s performance) and for the Jesse/Jane relationship. Finally, we got to see them go to that Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit that they’d been talking about last season. The results, especially Jesse’s response to fine art, were predictably delightful.
Of course, cold opens can’t last forever, and the stinger attached to this flashback was the realization that Jane was gone, Walt was at fault, and Jesse had no idea. The episode itself saw Jesse meet the next woman whom Walt would violently take away from her. This is the episode where he meets Andrea. But that’s a whole other tragic Jesse Pinkman tale.
