I’ve never understood why funerals need be such glum affairs. Personally, I want to be cremated and have my ashes sent evenly to medical colleges across the country. I also want a dub step contest.
But my sense of mirth pales in comparison to Shay Bradley, an Irish Defense Force veteran who passed into the great beyond with perhaps the greatest practical joke in funereal history. I doff my plague mask to you, sir.
One of the beauties of Breaking Bad TV series was that no truth occurred without consequences: dead bodies needed disposing; stolen money had to be laundered; sins did not go unpunished.
And so it goes with El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, the searing new film from Netflix and series creator Vince Gilligan. Taught, tense and forever-time-hopping, Camino is a fitting bookend to one of the finest shows ever on television.
Written and directed by Gilligan, Camino deftly maintains the momentum of the series, even though it ended six years ago, thanks to star Aaron Paul, who always gave the show its sense of levity and, despite being a meth-sling dope dealer, likability as Jesse Pinkman. Despite some missteps on the big screen recently like Need for Speed, Paul demonstrates his range again in Camino. The movie looks terrific, sounds great and if you’re a fan, is filled with references and cameos that are sure to amuse show diehards.
Like many Breaking Bad episodes, Camino picks up immediately where the last scene left off. In this case, its aftermath of the 2013 Breaking Bad finale, with Jesse driving away from the bloodbath that left a lot of neo-Nazis, and also Bryan Cranston’s Walter White, dead. While some series viewers may have assumed Jesse drove off into the sunset, true Breaking Bad fans know the series settles for no such tropes. Jesse remains a fugitive in Camino, on the run from both cops and criminals, who are sometimes hard to tell apart.
Bad was always a stylish thriller, and in Camino, Gilligan directs just as energetically with a bigger-looking budget and flashier pyrotechnics. In many ways, Camino serves both a reunion show and an alternative series finale (although the original one was terrific).
But make no mistake: with Walt left for dead in the Bad finale, Camino is Jesse’s story through and through. Flashbacks allow dead favorites like mentor Mike (Jonathan Banks), girlfriend Jane (Krysten Ritter), and Walt himself prod Jesse toward a lifestyle change: “Only you can decide what’s best for you,” one character advises him.
But what’s best, Jesse and Camino decide, is a little retribution sprinkled with a lot of freedom. It’s a simple theme, and fodder for countless films and TV series. But in Gilligan’s hands, you’ll find little that resembles a stereotypical film or series.
Part of what makes Camino hum is not the continuation of a compelling story, but the unexpected prequel-izing it does with characters we thought we knew, particularly Skinny Pete (Charles Baker) and Todd (Jesse Plemons). We knew Pete was surprisingly sophisticated (he once memorably tickled the ivories in a BB episode), but Camino establishes him as a near-paternal friend. Baker is mesmerizing; at a little over two hours, it’s a shame Camino couldn’t fit him into more scenes.
The true jaw-dropper, though, is Plemons (Fargo TV series). Todd was always an only-half-detestable killer who was hardly one of the series’ multiple evil geniuses. Here, though, his sociopathic tendencies are on full display. In one scene, he sings the virtues of a bystander he killed without a second thought. In another, Plemons provides the funniest scene in the movie as he drives down the highway after an atrocity, crooning to Dr. Hook’s Sharing the Night Together, signaling like a kid for a passing big rig to sound its horn.
Camino‘s final showdown lets Gilligan indulge his love of movie Westerns, which always informed the series. It may feel reminiscent of the show’s final episode, Felina, with its meticulous planning and execution. But, like Felina, it’s an example of the pinpoint technical proficiency and directing that runs through Camino.
If any elements of the movie disappoints fans, it may be the lack of surprises and plot twists. But this is, after all, supposed to be Breaking Bad’s final exit. Gilligan couldn’t afford any more questions that needed answers.
Instead, Camino‘s larger purpose may be for us to moderate our perspective about the show. Gilligan always described the series as Mr. Chips becomes Scarface, which was always Walter’s story. But perhaps Gilligan realized just how much narrative truly belonged to Jesse. And if you believed Jesse got short shrift in the finale, Camino goes a long way to making that narrative equitable. Either way, fans will remember just how good it can feel to break bad.
I’ve had a marsupial problem of late.
Technically, I guess it’s Esme with the problem. Lately, she’s been bringing baby possums into the house. She’s like a possum hoarder.
Perhaps it’s that the babies look like her fur toys. Maybe it’s her maternal instinct. Whatever the reason, she’s been taking to bringing them into my living room and just leaving the curled rat lookalikes in my living room, curled, apparently dead but not really. So far, she’s ferried three indoors.
Initially, I was horrified by what I thought was a rodent problem. The last thing I need is a rat cousin dropping by with its diseases and inquisitiveness and appetite.
But then I began doing a little research, and now I just feel sorry for the little guys, which are most likely young ones who lost their grip on mom. I learned they’re not rodent at all, but pouch-equipped animals much like the kangaroo and koala bear.
What’s more, I learned that ‘playing possum’ is a misnomer. Turns out possums aren’t faking being unconscious; they really slip into mini-comas when they’re stressed or startled. They get what genteel Southern belles used to call ‘the vapors;’ they literally faint, sometimes for hours. And sure enough, after carrying the babies outside with a garden shovel and watching them through my patio door, I’d see them gently rouse from their comas and sluggishly walk into the darkness.
Now I can’t help but like the little guys. I mean, what a short stick they seemingly drew in the Darwin lottery. If your irresistible inclination is to faint when you’re approached by a predator, you’d think you wouldn’t be long for existence. But my assumptions were way off. In that spirit, this week’s Factslaps concern my new favorite marsupial:
When they fall into a coma, a possum lays unconscious with its mouth open, teeth bared and tongue out. But a picture of a possum fainted doesn’t really do it justice. To get the full experience, you need to be standing over to it to smell the putrid odor it emits when pretending to be a corpse. The smelly substance it secretes from its anus is just one more reason for foxes and bobcats to look for their dinner elsewhere.
Even if possums aren’t the cutest creatures in the forest, they should be a welcome addition to your backyard. Unlike other mammals that carry ticks, and therefore spread Lyme Disease, possums gobble up 90 percent of the ticks that attach to them. According to the National Wildlife Federation, a single possum consumes 5,000 of the parasites per tick season. That means the more possums that are in your area, the fewer ticks you’ll encounter.
While most animals look at a snake and see danger, a possum sees its next meal. The animals are immune to the venom of nearly every type of snake found in their native range, the one exception being the coral snake. Possums take advantage of this adaptation by chowing down on snakes on a regular basis. Researchers have been trying to harvest possums’ antivenom powers for decades. A few years ago, a team of scientists made progress on this front when they recreated a peptide found in possums and and found that mice given the peptide and rattlesnake venom were successfully protected from the venom’s harmful effects.
While possums aren’t totally immune to rabies (a few cases have been documented), finding a specimen with the disease is extremely unlikely. Marsupials like possums have a lower body temperature than the placental mammals that dominate North America—in other words, their bodies don’t provide a suitable environment for the virus.
Thanks to their whole acting-and-smelling-like-a-corpse routine, opossums aren’t known as the most sanitary animals in nature. But they take cleanliness seriously: The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife writes that possums, like house cats, use their tongue and paws to groom themselves frequently and thoroughly. Possums largely lack sweat glands, and this behavior is believed to help them cool down. It also has the added effect of rendering them odorless (when they’re not secreting stinky predator-repellent, that is).
One of the opossum’s most recognizable features is its pair of opaque eyes. Opossum eyes do have whites and irises, but because their pupils are so large, their eyes appear completely black from a distance. The exaggerated pupil dilation is thought to help the nocturnal animals see after the sun goes down.
It was long assumed that possums like to keep to themselves, but a study published in the journal Biology Letters suggests they have a social side. Researchers at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil observed some possums in captivity sharing dens even if they weren’t mates. In one case, 13 white-eared opossums of various age groups were cohabiting the same space. The scientists suspect that male and female possums living in the wild may even build nests together as a way to trigger the female’s reproductive hormones.
