Fun with lung cancer

Yesterday I finished watching the second season of Breaking Bad, created by Vince Gilligan and starring the brilliant Bryan Cranston. I absolutely love Breaking Bad! It's all about a lowly high school chemistry teacher who gets lung cancer and so in an effort to raise money for his treatments as well as for the future of his family he turns to manufacturing drugs, crystal meth to be specific, assisted by an old stoner student of his. The first season ended after only seven episodes, with a really mean cliff hanger that left me itchy all over. This time we got a full 13 episode season, which tied most of the loose ends from the previous season and then went on to even awesomer heights. It's brutally honest and very dark, in a real-life suburban kind of way. I can't even begin to describe Bryan Cranston's work on the show. I've always liked him in that Malcolm show (have you heard about how the kid from that show was recently arrested for slicing off a hooker's left ass cheek with a chainsaw while he was high on Benadryl?), but that was nothing compared to the level of craft he displays on Breaking Bad. He *is* Walter White. I don't think I'll ever be able to accept him in any other role. It truly is the role of a lifetime. I wish Mr. White could've been my high school chemistry teacher, instead of that fat anal retentive asshole who forbade the use of correction fluid in our notebooks and gave us insanely long multiple choice tests. Hell, I'd have probably hated chemistry class anyway. A chemistry lab is a pretty scary place when you have an acute fear of sinks. Aaron Paul is pretty good as Jesse the stoner, who gets an especially hard time this season, being the show's main punching bag. I guess that's what you get for having a fried egg for a brain. Dean Norris is pretty entertaining as Walter's DEA brother-in-law, a very familiar character actor whom I can't really recall seeing anywhere specific. This season Jesse got a new apartment that came equipped with an adorable little landlady, played by the lovely Krysten Ritter. Cute, isn't she? Too bad she won't be reprising her role in the third season. Choking to death on your own vomit with a needle in your arm can do that to a character.

Krysten Ritter, not pretending to be a corpse

I can't really take anything that doesn't have a complaint hotline number on the label, so recreational drugs that are currently illegal are pretty much out of the question. For now, beer works just fine for me. As long as there's enough of it, I'm good. Sort of.