Breaking Bad’s most controversial episode is also one of the series' best once you understand what it’s saying. “I hate bottle episodes. They’re wall-to-wall facial expressions and emotional nuance. I might as well stand in the corner with a bucket on my head.“Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi) onCommunitymay be an oddball, but he’s generally right about bottle episodes. A bottle episode in a TV show is one where the story is contained to one or a few cheap locations and the cast is narrowed down to only a few of the main players.
Fewer sets, lower stakes, and fewer characters mean there is more money left overfor the rest of the season. Do you want to see a zombie attack in Kansas City inThe Last of Us? Well, you’re going to need to spend a quiet episode with just Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett falling in love to pay for it. As Abed says, bottle episodes are filled with character moments and subtle details.The best bottle episodes, likeBreaking Bad’s notorious third-season episode, might disappoint in the moment, but in retrospect, are viewed as the masterpieces they are.
The Bottle Episode Might Feel Like A Waste At First
“The Fly” isBreaking Bad’s bottle episode, and also one of the show’s most controversial. Episode 10 of season 3, “The Fly,” is set in the middle of Walter (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse’s (Aaron Paul) employment with Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito). The meth-cooking job the pair have landed is beginning to look just like that, a job.
An overworked and bored Walt shuts down meth production when he discovers a fly in the lab, and he and Jesse spend the next two days together, underground, hunting the elusive housefly. Only Cranston and Paul appear in the episode. Though Anna Gunn’s voice as Skyler is heard, it’s reused audio from the second season episode, “Phoenix”.
The episode comes right after the episode where Jesse decides to start skimming from Gus, and Skyler confronts Walter about his part in the murder attempt on Hank (Dean Norris). Viewers were expecting the next stage of that story. Instead, they got a seemingly unrelated episode with only brief allusions to the main storyline. In that regard, it’s a disappointment, andits high review scores make it a controversial topic for fans of the series.
“The Fly” Gives Insight Into Walt & Jesse’s Characters Like No Other Episode
Walter And Jesse Are Both Unfulfilled In This Role
As many reviewers noted, however,“The Fly” is crucial to understanding Walter and Jesse, as well as getting a hold on their relationship, now that they’ve been working together for a significant amount of time. Walter hated his monotonous life before he began cooking meth, and now he’s once again found himself as just another cog in the system. In his boredom, he fixates on something that’s not really a problem: a fly. By the end of the episode, he doesn’t even seem to care, “it’s all contaminated”, a good description of his life in general.
Jesse, for his part, is beholden to Walter’s whims and gives him the benefit of the doubt even when he shouldn’t.
It’s an episode that digs even deeper into each man. Walter is hyperfixated on figuring out a problem that only he can see, and even if he’s correct,his ferocity and unstoppable march towards a solution create problems of their own. It’s only when he’s drugged and his narcissism is artificially cleared away that he can even begin to admit a mistake. Jesse, for his part, is beholden to Walter’s whims and gives him the benefit of the doubt even when he shouldn’t. He swats away Walter’s attempts to apologize about Jane just as he swats the fly for Walter.
“The Fly” Sets Up The Rest Of Breaking Bad
Walter Begins To Understand What He Really Wants Out Of The Meth Business
“The Fly” is critical for setting up the rest ofBreaking Bad. It’s an episode that marks something of a halfway point in the series. Jesse’s theft of meth is not going unnoticed, and Walter tells his assistant that even he won’t be able to save him from Gus, though as it turns out, there’s virtually no one who can save themselves from Walter. At the same time,Walter is beginning to realize that this job with Gus, though lucrative, does not bring him what he really craves: freedom and power.
It’s just like he is back at Gray Matter, forced to work with others who don’t bow down to his superiority. Walter likes the attention, the danger, the spotlight; he’s good at it. Stuck in a basement with Jesse, he grows bored and listless at the ease, so he creates artificial problems. The housefly is not the end of it. His problem is Gus and the job itself. Even after swatting the insect, he wakes up later that night and sees another fly. It’s a summation ofBreaking Badand an exclamation point on the exceptional episode.
Breaking Bad
Cast
Breaking Bad, created by Vince Gilligan, follows a chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin named Walter White (Bryan Cranston) as he attempts to provide for his family following a fatal diagnosis. With nothing left to fear, White ascends to power in the world of drugs and crime, transforming the simple family man into someone known only as Heisenberg.
