El Camino is a new Netflix feature following up events from the final episode of Breaking Bad. Dan Slevin asks whether it is necessary (or just welcome).
Aaron Paul returns as Jesse Pinkman in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie for Netflix. Photo: Netflix
When Breaking Bad finally completed its fifth season in 2013, it seemed to most viewers that there wasn’t much left for the show to say. Walt was dead, Saul was in hiding and Jesse had escaped. (A tiny minority of viewers were desperate for more ambiguity and claimed that the final bloody shootout with the Aryan Brotherhood was a figment of Walt’s imagination, thus opening the possibility of more stories involving Walt/Heisenberg, one of the great anti-heroes of modern storytelling.)
The creator of the show, Vince Gilligan, did choose to go back to the well with a prequel featuring the tragicomic lawyer Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill in four seasons (so far) of Better Call Saul. This was a very fine choice because Saul, as a supporting character in the original, had plenty of gas left in the tank and an actor (Bob Odenkirk) who was getting surer-footed with every appearance.
Now we have a sequel-proper, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, which does the job of following the immediate aftermath of Jesse’s unlikely escape and at the same time filling in a few gaps on what might have happened to him while was held captive.
Photo: Netflix
Is it essential or even necessary? No. Is it welcome, though? Yes. My wife and I settled in to an extremely satisfying evening on Friday, returning to the frightful Albuquerque that we have come to know and love. While the film contains plenty of what you might call ‘fan service’ – returning characters and locations – the fan service is really in the film’s existence itself. While we wait … and wait … for season five of Better Call Saul, El Camino gives us another fix.
It’s also an extremely well-made film, if that helps. Written and directed by Gilligan, you can see how his skills behind the camera have improved over the 11 years since Breaking Bad started. Scenes are constructed elegantly, much of the story is shown rather than told, and the widescreen cinematography (Marshall Adams) seems to suit the big skies of New Mexico better than the traditional 16:9 TV ratio used by the show.
Matt Jones as Badger and Charles Baker as Skinny Pete are just two of the characters that return for El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie. Photo: Netflix
It’s also a great tribute to Aaron Paul’s Jesse who was increasingly abused by the story as season five progressed (heck, as all of the seasons progressed). If it’s true what they say, that the hero of your story is the one who suffers the most, then Jesse is the real hero of Breaking Bad.
Many of the other themes of the show are still in place – morality, consequences, family – I was struck by how much of the film and the show are taken up with negotiation. Whether it is pleading for your life at the hands of a demented drug dealer, negotiating a split with a taciturn meth wholesaler who is also fried chicken retailer, or Walt trying to see his kids when Skyler’s patience with him expires, there is a constant shifting of power and control and some of the best moments are those when the rug is pulled from under the cockiest characters.
We may never go back to Breaking Bad – although the subtitle El Camino is “A Breaking Bad Movie” not “The Breaking Bad Movie” so who knows – but it was great to have a chance to visit with it once again.
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Story is streaming now on Netflix and is rated 16+ according to their own rating system.
