Monday, April 28, 2014

Monday, April 28th, 2014--5 pm

Hello,

a few things:

1. Below you will find the handout from our class discussion today. Those who were absent may want to get additional notes that are not on the handout from a fellow student.

2. I realized after section 7's class today that I did not mention the issue of tense. Just a reminder that you always want to remain in present tense unless it is illogical to do so. Specifically, in out of class essay 3, you want to stay in present tense when referring to a scene. Example: Walter destroyed Tuco's headquarters. Better: Walter destroys Tuco's headquarters.

3. If you are unable to submit a rough draft of essay 3 today, I will still accept rough drafts during this week.
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English 20---C. Fraga

Thinking back over out of class essay 2…

This is just a partial list of issues that continued to show up in many final draft student essays from the out of class essay 2 assignment. The majority of these errors are ones that we reviewed in class after I returned out of class essay 1.

Please consider the following when conducting your final editing and proofreading of out of class essay 3. (Obviously, you will ALSO study my comments on your previous work.)

(We will review sentence structure issues on Wednesday)

· Check the Unacceptable Errors handout—both the unacceptable errors listed AND the information that follows the list.

· One main idea per paragraph.

· A topic sentence of a paragraph introduces the main idea of the paragraph. This means that the topic sentence cannot be a question or a quotation.

· Follow MLA format exactly. I realize that it means having to pay close attention to details; however, this is one of the best preparations for working in the “real world,” no matter your area of interest. Having to follow protocol from an employer is something you will find yourself having to do very often.

· For every general statement that you write in an essay, be sure that a specific statement closely follows.

· Using an abundance of words to state something that can be written in a lot fewer words REALLY impacts clarity and readability and retention. If I have noted wordiness as an issue in your work, please take the time to review my editing. I always provide at least one example for you of how to eliminate excess words.

ANNOUNCEMENT!

NEW UNACCEPTABLE ERROR

BEGINNING WITH YOUR THIRD OUT OF CLASS ESSAY.

If there is any evidence that you did not run a spell check program, I will deduct 10 points from your earned score. In other words, the first time I encounter a word that is misspelled and a spell check program WOULD have caught it, 10 points will be deducted. (if I encounter more than one word that a spell check program would have caught, I will not deduct any MORE points—just 10 points for the first one I come across.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Second posting for Sunday, April 27th--1 pm

Hello again,

below you will find the results of out of class essay #2. All four sections are combined in the results. It does not include scores of students who have not yet submitted this assignment. The scores are from 115 essays graded.

38 students earned 90% or above.
39 students earned between 89% and 75%.
29 students earned between 65 and 75%
10 students earned between 0 and 64%

200= 1
198= 1
197= 2
196= 2
195= 1
194= 3
193= 2
192= 1
191= 1
190= 2
189= 1
188= 3
187= 5
186= 3
185= 1
183= 1
182= 1
181= 3
180= 3
178= 1
177= 1
172= 1
170= 1
169= 1
165= 1
164= 1
162= 1
160= 1
159= 3
157= 1
156= 1
155= 6
153= 1
151= 1
150= 9
149= 3
148= 5
147= 2
146= 1
143= 1
142= 1
140= 6
139= 1
137= 1
134= 1
133= 1
132= 1
130= 4
128= 2
125= 1
124= 1
120= 2
112= 1
100= 1
80= 1
0= 1

Sunday, April 27th, 2014--noon

Greetings...

a few things...

If you plan to revised out of class essay #2, the first revision is due by this Friday, 2nd. Please follow the guidelines for submitting a revision.

Although there is nothing actually recorded on the syllabus for this Friday, there IS still class. We will be looking at student essays from the out of class essay 3 assignment you are currently working diligently on....:)

See you tomorrow.

Friday, April 18, 2014

Friday, April 18th, 2014--5:45 pm

Greetings,

below you will find the assignment for Packet #9--due on Wednesday, April 23rd.

The topic of immigration does not really emerge in the Breaking Bad series until future seasons, but it is an issue that is very current and very misunderstood. Therefore, it is a subject worthy of exploration and discussion.

PACKET #9 ASSIGNMENT:

Three readings:

1. "The Obama Administration's 2 Million Deportations, Explained"
by AJ Vicens (Mother Jones magazine--April 4, 2014)
(full text below)

2. "Pros and Cons of Illegal Immigration"
(link below)

3. "Saying No to Deportation."
April 9, 2014 issue of Sacramento State University's newspaper, The State Hornet
(link below--PDF file--be sure to read the entire article; it begins on page 1 but continues.

The Obama Administration's 2 Million Deportations, Explained

Hardliners say Obama is soft on immigration, but advocates call him the "deporter in chief." Which is it?

By AJ Vicens | Fri Apr. 4, 2014 3:00 AM PDT

President Obama's recent announcement that his administration would rethink its deportation policies [1] and practices was welcome news in some quarters. But Obama's words didn't do much for immigrants rights activists, who have taken to calling him the "deporter in chief" and are planning a series of rallies [2] around the country tomorrow, April 5, urging the president to suspend future deportations.
That's because the Obama administration is either flirting with or has crossed the 2 million deportation mark. It took George W. Bush, whose administration faced greater political pressure to clamp down on immigration, nearly two full terms to reach that number; Obama hit it in slightly more than one. Here's a brief explainer on Obama's deportation milestone:
What exactly do we mean when we say "deportations"? The government measures deportations in two broad categories: removals and returns. Generally, removals are more serious and carry deeper legal ramifications than returns. Removals are orders issued by a judge, while returns, though also serious, are less strict and allow a person to apply to legally return much faster. (Many people caught at the border used to end up as returns, but that has changed in recent years.) So, although it can be confusing, when people talk about Obama's record-breaking 2 million deportations, they're really talking about removals. According to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data, there was an average of about 40,000 removals each fiscal year from 1892 to 2008. Fiscal years 2009-12 saw an average of about 396,000. The surge in deportations came in the mid-1990s during the Clinton administration, and has been on a steady rise ever since.
How do Obama's numbers compare to those of previous administrations? Based on the DHS data and a Bloomberg Businessweek [3]report [3] from late last year, the Obama administration has carried out roughly 1.8 million removals in his time in office through September 7, 2013. That's less than George W. Bush's overall total of slightly more than 2 million, but even conservative estimates of the number of deportations in fiscal year 2014 would have Obama crossing that mark right about now and on pace to crush it by the end of his presidency. (The number represents total removals, not the number of people removed; one person could be sent back to their country of origin several times.)

How has the removal/return breakdown changed over time? Due to shifts in immigration enforcement policies [4] beginning in the mid-1990s, the number of removals has gone way up while the number of returns has dropped, a trend that has accelerated in a dramatic way since the mid-2000s. Removal numbers jumped in 1997 following the passage of 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act [5] (IIRIRA), which gave immigration officials much more power in enforcing immigration law and ultimately deporting people. For example, the government deported nearly 70,000 people from October 1, 1995, through September 30, 1996. The next fiscal year, that figure jumped to more than 114,000 and has risen steadily from there. The most recent full fiscal year of data (2012) put the total at 419,384. Incomplete data for fiscal year 2013 added another 343,000.
The 1996 law also gave immigration officials the power to review immigrants' status and decide their fate in cases when a prior order of removal exists. In those instances, an immigration official can reinstate an order of removal without any judicial review [6], offering little recourse for an immigrant. The 1996 law also created the legal framework for the 287(g) program [7], which allows state and local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws. In 2005, the federal government introduced "Operation Streamline [8]," which allowed immigration courts to hear and decide the cases of dozens of immigrants at a time.
The effect of these escalating policies, among others, has created an environment in which it's easier for an immigrant to qualify for a removal versus a return, and easier for the government to choose that route, says Ben Winograd, an immigration attorney at the Immigrant & Refugee Appellate Center. "In terms of how immigration enforcement is carried out, it's really a crossing of the Rubicon," Winograd says.

Who is being deported? In an analysis of fiscal year 2013 immigration removals, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement found that 59 percent of its removals (roughly 217,000) involved people who had previously been convicted of a crime. Most of the 152,000 deportations involving people without criminal convictions (about 84 percent) happened at the border, which technically extends 100 miles into the country's interior. ICE officials claim the agency emphasizes deporting people who are recent illegal entrants, fugitives, or who pose risks to national security or public safety. A March 2011 ICE memo stated that the agency only had the capacity to remove 400,000 people per year, so it had to focus its efforts. Three months later, then-ICE Director John Morton called for "prosecutorial discretion" in less serious immigration cases, but researchers and immigrant rights advocates said the policy was inconsistently applied, at best.
It's also true that many deportations involve parents of US-born children. Between July 2010 and mid-October 2012, the most recent period with data available, people with US-born children were deported more than 200,000 times. In a March 2012 report to Congress, ICE estimated that about 100,000 parents of US-born children were deported between 1997 and 2007.
So what are immigrants rights advocates most upset about? As immigration enforcement efforts have shifted to become more stringent over the last few years, the evolution from mostly returns to mostly removals has harsh real-world consequences. In protesting these changes, immigrant rights groups have focused on the impact they have on families.
"Any day now, this administration will reach the 2 million mark for deportations," said Janet Murguia, the head of the National Council of La Raza, when she criticized Obama earlier this month [9]. "It is a staggering number that far outstrips any of his predecessors and leaves behind it a wake of devastation for families across America."
The statistics, on their own, could be misleading [10], and some have said advocates like Murguia are simplifying the situation. It's important to note that many of the Obama administration's removals happen along the 100-mile border zone, and that interior deportations have dropped significantly during Obama's time in office. But still, the shift in policy from returns to removals carries significant legal implications for immigrants and has a major impact on people who get caught trying to reenter the country.
Many immigrants come to the United States trying to work and send money to their home countries. ICE's top five countries of origin for removals in fiscal year 2013—Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic—received a combined $36 billion in remittances in 2012, according to World Bank estimates. [11] Along with supporting families back home, many support families and businesses here in the United States.
The emphasis on removals has created a perilous situation for undocumented workers increasingly rooted in the United States; now, they can be charged with felonies if caught illegally reentering the country after a formal order of removal. A recent Pew Research Hispanic Trends Project [12] report notes that a growing portion of convictions in federal court are people convicted of immigration violations. In 1992, immigration offenses made up just 5 percent of federal convictions. By 2012, that number had jumped to 30 percent, most of which were convictions for illegal reentry.
"Individuals who come back after being deported, or come back after being returned, primarily they're coming back for a reason," says Karen Lucas, a legislative associate at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "Our system has been broken for so long that such a large percentage of the 11 million [undocumented] really do have roots in this country."

Source URL: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/04/obama-administration-record-deportations

****************************************************************************

2. "Pros and Cons of Illegal Immigration"

http://immigration.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000842

*********************************************************************************3. "Saying No to Deportation."
http://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/statehornet.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/b/ef/bef6217a-bfff-11e3-b678-0017a43b2370/53456fb0e2fbb.pdf.pdf

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Read ASAP. Wednesday, April 16, 2014--7:15 pm

Greetings,

we covered so much in class today that it completely slipped my mind until the 11 o'clock class.
Below you will find the two handouts from today's class as well as a new assignment due on Friday, THIS FRIDAY, April 18th.

(For those who did not attend class today, be sure to contact another student to get notes. Of course, this is always what you should do when you miss a class session. :)...and a few of you have been doing a lot of missing. The dept. policy is that if you miss more than six classes I can drop you...just something to think about...:)....)

ASSIGNMENT DUE FOR FRIDAY, APRIL 18TH:

1. At the top of the paper, type: Musings on Immigration
2. Then, record what comes to mind when you hear the word "immigration."There is no correct or incorrect answer.
3. There is no requirement as far as format: some students create a list; some write a paragraph or more; some have a combination of bulleted items and text. There is also no minimum or maximum word requirement.
4. It is ESSENTIAL that you do NOT put your name anywhere on the paper.
5. It MUST be typed.
6. When you arrive to class on Friday, there will be a sign up sheet. Place the assignment on the table and be sure to sign your name. This is worth 25 points of the 50 points for Group Work on Monday, the 21st.
7. If you are planning to not be in class on Friday, you may NOT email me this assignment. It must be anonymous so it must be typed and submitted IN PERSON.

***********************

English 20, Spring 2014, Instructor: C. Fraga

Out of Class Essay Assignment #3 (200 points)

Assigned: Wednesday, April 16

Optional Rough Draft Due: Monday, April 28 (please send via email in a Word document, no later than 5 pm)

Due: Monday, May 5

Requirements:

• MLA format

• If you utilize any outside sources (not required) you must follow MLA format for in- text citations, Works Cited page, etc.

At the very least, you must have a Works Cited page that lists Season 1 of Breaking Bad.

• Attach your Viewer’s Journal (all 7 entries) to the back of essay when submitting. Reminder: if a Viewer’s Journal is not submitted, 20 points will be deducted from your earned score, and you cannot make up those points during a revision.

Before we began viewing the first season of Breaking Bad, I assigned a Viewer’s Journal. You were to record your observations and any other notes you wished in order to eventually select a character to focus on more carefully than others. However, as we have discussed, your first few journal entries, or perhaps more than a few, might just be summary plots and notes regarding several different characters.

This Viewer’s Journal will now be a valuable source as you write your last out of class essay for this course.

Assignment:

Write an in-depth character analysis of one of the characters in the first season of Breaking Bad.

Your essay must include the following:

• Assertion(s) about your character

• Evidence from the episodes that support your assertions (how did you come to the conclusion(s) you did regarding this character?)

Your supportive evidence might include but is not limited to:

• what others observe/say (or don’t observe/say) about the character—either directly or in private

• the actions of the character in particular situations

• the reactions/responses of the character in particular situations

• what drives this character

• what terrifies this character

• what pleases this character

• what does this character long for

• what does this character need

Your thesis must be assertive…it is YOUR opinion as a viewer of these episodes.

· Whether or not you LIKE or DISLIKE this character is not an issue in this essay.

· Whether you LIKE or DISLIKE the series is also not an issue in this essay.

Proving to the reader that this character has the attributes (good, bad, layered, shallow) that you assert he or she has is your goal.

Keep in mind that your reading audience HAS viewed each of the seven episodes so avoid writing extensive summaries of each episode.

Your thesis might read something like this:

Once Walter learns of his terminal cancer and begins cooking meth, he appears very unstable and irresponsible; however, his behavior truly represents a very determined, loving, highly intelligent and moral father and husband.

or…

Marie is a very insecure and lonely woman who is unhappy and uncomfortable living in the shadows of her power-driven DEA husband and her happily married and very bright sister, Skylar.

Note: if you have viewed other seasons of Breaking Bad, you may use supportive evidence from those seasons, but you must make it very clear the information is from a different season.

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English 20, Spring 2014

Sample intro paragraphs from out of class essay #3--these samples are considered strong, engaging introductions.

A chameleon uses camouflage to blend in with its surroundings and to avoid its enemies. Chameleons are not considered dangerous, and they survive by merely “flying under the radar.” In the first season of the television series, Breaking Bad, Jesse Pinkman is portrayed very similarly to a chameleon. He adapts to situations that might normally trigger anxiety and convinces himself that everything is copasetic. He adopts the role of “gangster drug dealer,” so that he blends in with his peers. Jesse relies on this facade to hide his genuine personality; deep down he is an insecure, lonely boy who desires the attention and acceptance he did not receive as a child.

**************************************************************

As soon as the pants go flying in the first scene of Breaking Bad, the symbolism begins. The flying pants of the main character Walt -- how he “doesn't wear the pants” and conversely, how “the pants come off,”-- we are introduced immediately to strong themes of dichotomy and transition. Outside of the intelligent writing, the depth and complexity of the characters is also a huge part of what keeps the audience engaged. Walter White is a perfect example of why viewers become so addicted to the series: his character is richly developed and contradictory, and this multifaceted character cleverly travels between two very dichotomous worlds. In one reality, he is a seemingly submissive “cancer man” and in another he is a “bad ass” maker of meth.

**********************************************************************

Often when a beautiful piece of art is viewed, the viewer is transfixed and desires to know even more about the piece. An artist possesses a certain skill level in order to produce something extraordinary, something that keeps the audience begging for more. The trouble with being an artist is that one cannot go back and fix a brush stroke once the work is completed and framed. In the television series Breaking Bad, this is the problem Jesse Pinkman faces. As much as he would like to go back and change his past, he never can, and this shapes the person that he has become as a young adult. On the exterior, Jesse appears to be a worthless, uneducated criminal, but beneath the surface he is still a boy who feels inadequate, searching for the affection he never received from his parents.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Saturday, April 12th, 2014--8:30 pm

Greetings,

Below you will find the two readings that comprise Packet 8, due to be read by Friday.

Also, because of my absence last Wednesday, a few reminders for this week:

1. As always, be sure to bring your Viewer's Journal to every class session.
2. Please continue to bring your notes from the lecture on how to read critically this week.
3. Please bring any notes you may have taken while watching the TED Talk from Packet 7.

PACKET 8
(TWO READINGS. FULL TEXTS FOR BOTH ARE BELOW.)

Tuned In: 'Breaking Bad'

New AMC offering has promise but missing details muddle plot

Sunday, January 20, 2008

By Rob Owen, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Last summer AMC finally became known as something other than "the cable network that ruined classic movies by adding commercials" with the critically acclaimed period drama "Mad Men." As with other cable networks, AMC is seeking to define itself through original programming. "Mad Men" was the first salvo, and "Breaking Bad" (10 tonight) is the second.
While definitely not the tour de force "Mad Men" was, "Breaking Bad" puts forth a distinctive premise. High school chemistry teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston, best known as the dad on "Malcolm in the Middle") is diagnosed with inoperable, terminal cancer and decides to provide for his family financially by squirreling away as much money as possible. To accomplish this, he teams with small-time crystal meth dealer Jesse (Aaron Paul), who's also his former student.

'Breaking Bad' When: 10 tonight, AMC.Starring: Bryan Cranston.

Created by "X-Files" veteran Vince Gilligan, who wrote and directed tonight's premiere, "Bad" has its moments of dark humor, but it's largely a morose drama that covers familiar ground: characters with anti-hero tendencies leading double lives.
Viewers have been down this path before with "The Sopranos" and "The Shield," although "Breaking Bad" is more directly comparable to FX's "The Riches" (poor band of gypsies pose as a wealthy family) or HBO's "Big Love" (polygamists attempt to keep their lifestyle a secret to protect the wholesome image of dad's hardware store chain).
In "Breaking Bad," Walter doesn't immediately share the cancer diagnosis with his wife, which would be a sensible first step. Instead he keeps it a secret through the first three episodes made available for review.
Maybe Walter's decision to withhold the bad news is rooted in the characters and their relationships, but "Breaking Bad" only hints at why Walter, who is 50, may be uncomfortable sharing the diagnosis with his wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn), who is at least 10 years younger and pregnant with their second child. Perhaps future episodes will fill in the blanks, but a TV series must dole out morsels of character motivation often enough to keep viewers tuning in, and I'm not convinced "Breaking Bad" does.
In another instance where the series hints but fails to provide clarity, "Bad" introduces Walter's teenage son (RJ Mitte ), who suffers from a physical ailment, but his specific medical issues are unclear (the press notes say he has cerebral palsy). Then there's Walter's second job at a car wash, which remains similarly unexplained. Does he need extra cash to cover his son's medical bills? In the first three episodes, "Breaking Bad" offers no concrete answers, rendering the show frustratingly oblique.
Regardless, Cranston is a revelation. His performance as a mild-mannered, wildly intelligent, possibly henpecked family man is the primary reason to recommend "Breaking Bad." Cranston's Walter is a thoroughly decent guy who is prone to doing the right thing.
In next week's episode Walter finds himself in the unfamiliar role of captor to a murderous criminal. Rather than immediately killing the guy, the high school teacher makes a sandwich for the constrained captive . Walter slides a plate across the floor to the prisoner and follows the food with a bucket (to be used as a toilet), toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
Walter also takes pride in his work, even when it's illegal.
"You and I will not make garbage," Walter tells Jesse of their drug-producing joint venture. "We will produce a chemically pure and stable product that performs as promised."
In such rare instances, "Breaking Bad" achieves a perfect moment of nerdy believability, but too often the series fails to provide details that would help explain its characters' illogical choices.

TV editor Rob Owen can be reached at rowen@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1112. Ask TV questions at post-gazette.com/tv under TV Q&A.

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Speed Demons: Breaking Bad

New series traffics meth labs and fatherly love gone awry

By Robert Abele Wednesday, Jan 16 2008

Comments

Expect a fair amount of hype for Breaking Bad, a new series on AMC that traffics in some grim subjects — namely terminal disease and crystal-meth production. But this infectious, crazy blast of bitter humor, wild storytelling and pungent melancholy about a beleaguered family man should also earn its television keep for managing to steer clear of sentimentality or simple moralism. What this sharp if unsettling show wants to meet head on is middle-class angst, the quiet desperation that starts to unravel in the upstanding when their obligations suddenly seem insurmountable — or what happens when the folly of controlling one's destiny starts to resemble the riskiest of lab experiments.

Our guide into this world is Albuquerque, New Mexico, science teacher/husband/father Walter White, played by a helmet-coifed, moustached, stiff-bodied Bryan Cranston as if he'd never spent seven loosey-goosey years of wacky dad-dom on Malcolm in the Middle. Amazingly, Cranston exhibits no performance residue from that popular comedy, even though the first frantic moments of creator/executive producer Vince Gilligan's pilot appear to hint at a Tarantino/Coen Brothers-style misadventure. Khaki pants fly through the air as we pan down to see an RV peeling away across a lonesome desert road, with what look like bodies and liquid sloshing around in back, a passenger tied up and out cold in front, and a panicky driver wearing only underwear and a gas mask. Walter is the guy at the wheel, and after crashing the RV in a ditch, he grabs a camcorder, shoves a gun in the belt of his Haneses and, in the unforgiving New Mexico sun, proceeds to tape a teary goodbye to his wife and son — but only after addressing the feds to say that the video is not an admission of guilt. As sirens in the distance get increasingly louder, Walter does his best imitation of a movie antihero and points the gun toward whatever fate awaits him. Cue the main titles.

On your standard TV show, this is when we'd be introduced to the cop protagonist assigned to take down the runaway lawbreaker. But after everything from The Sopranos to The Shield to Dexter, cable has conditioned us all to broaden our acceptance of who can lead a series and to even relish the stories of flawed criminal souls, and Breaking Bad— with a slang title that actually means defying convention — is one more such journey. So Walter is indeed our guy, and the rest of the pilot proceeds to lay out the three weeks leading up to his crisis stance in the desert. He's turning 50, he can't get his bored students interested in chemistry, his teenage son Walt Jr. (RJ Mitte) has cerebral palsy (but, more naggingly, is a smart-ass), he's alienating his pregnant wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn), and finances are such that this once-promising science whiz — he has a plaque at home congratulating him on research that eventually led to a Nobel prize — has to moonlight at the car wash. It's a rutted, Bush-era portrait of dashed dreams and soft-boil resentment, depressing in its pressurized blandness, even before a coughing Walter collapses on the floor of the car wash and gets a diagnosis of inoperable lung cancer.

click to flip through (2)

Exposed: Bryan Cranston on the run as a science teacher turned meth-lab entrepreneur.

Exposed: Bryan Cranston on the run as a science teacher turned meth-lab entrepreneur.

More About

Breaking Bad

Bryan Cranston

American Movie Classics Company

New Mexico

Keeping the news to himself, Walter realizes his condition will likely send his family into a financial abyss. And then a switch goes on. Inspired by a news report of a meth-lab bust that uncovered scads of cash — led by his obnoxious brother-in-law, a DEA agent named Hank (Dean Norris) — and emboldened by a chance encounter that reveals a former student of his named Jesse is a successful meth dealer, Walter initiates (via blackmail) the idea of teaming up with a meth lab: matching his chemical smarts and access to materials with Jesse's trade knowledge. Naturally it's an odd-couple partnering that earns more than a few laughs at first. A safety-first Walter insists on an emergency eyewash station where he and Jesse cook, and is frustrated at Jesse's ignorance about which flasks are for mixing and which are for boiling: "Did you learn nothing from my chemistry class?" he grouses. At the same time, Jesse's suspicions about the motives of this man he once pegged as a middle-aged prig suddenly turn this wigga-talking drug capitalist into a concerned business spouse.

"It's weird, is all," says Jesse, played with a great, whiny brio by Aaron Paul. "It doesn't compute. If you've gone crazy, or depressed — I'm just sayin' — that's something I need to know about. Thataffects me."

Walter will only cryptically respond, "I'm awake."

You may think this all sounds like Showtime'sWeeds. I prefer to think of it as the twisted version of the current flick The Bucket List, where instead of rascally old short-timers filling their final days with self-help-sappy to-do items like "Laugh till you cry" and "See something majestic," you have Walter putting at number one: "Provide for my family by making money off a national scourge." And in execution the two series have hardly anything in common. Weeds and its subdivision-mom-selling-pot scenario ultimately play like empowerment farce, even when weaponry is drawn and lives are threatened. Whereas Breaking Bad— shot with a muted palette and frill-less camerawork, like a low-key indie you'd discover at Sundance — is more a gallows-humor tragedy, a scary mixture of quotidian verisimilitude and sheer gruesomeness befitting a launch into a dark business and a lead character who can see the writing on the wall. Because as darkly funny as the idea of the show is, shit goes wrong instantly for Walter and Jesse, and disgustingly wrong by the end of the second episode. Then there's the irony that in prying open a side of him he never thought to explore, Walter may only be increasing the amount of pressure in his life, not to mention setting himself up for a scrutiny he never thought he'd suffer as a mild-mannered nobody.

The material is a fresh gamble, and the cast is uniformly solid, but I wonder if it would work quite as well without the supertalented Cranston, who it must be said is giving it his all. The role requires him to look useless, essentially — it's a sense of style Ned Flanders or the BTK Killer would envy — yet he also must suggest a churning wave of conflicting emotions that covers rage, humiliation, acerbity, caring, strength, biting wit and punishing solitude. It's a true tour de force.

In class, we see Walter at his most animated, trying to position chemistry to his students as the study of change, letting on that he finds it fascinating because its continually reformulating elements mirror life's cycles. "It's growth, then decay, then transformation!" he says to a mostly uninterested audience, before dispiritingly shutting off the flame shooting up from the gas valve on his desk.

Sometimes it's an explosion, too, and Breaking Bad — which may feel less like a TV series than a collection of freaky updates on a damaged, stumbling soul — could wind up being one of the more toxically exhilarating shows to corrupt the programming schedule.

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