"Cancer Man" is the episode right in the middle of Breaking Bad's first season and these 50 minutes are really rather boring aside from some new character information and good dialogue. And don't expect any major twists in the plot: after Walt and Jesse have temporarily parted ways, both of them don't do much more than some talking with their respective families. With this, we meet Jesse's parents and younger brother for the first time, and see Skylar, Walt Jr., Marie, and Hank reacting to Walt informing them about his cancer.
As the biggest focus is on the characters in this and the next episode, I've come to realize how unspectacular this show's lead characters were at this point. Once you've understood the basic mentality of them, there's not much new to find. Maybe it's that these couple of episodes in the middle of the season have a worse screenplay than the rest, yet I still think that the characters' normality can be counterproductive when the only things happening are conversations. However, this only attributes for some parts of "Cancer Man". There was a lot of stuff in this episode I found really entertaining, especially the satiric look Vince Gilligan took at Jesse's family. Another highlight was the scene before the opening credits that had the great Hank Schrader doing his job as a DEA agent and while doing so, unwittingly talking about Walt, whose product has got quite famous in Albuquerque's drug culture. And, of course, our two protagonists arguing in the Whites' yard was just awesome.
Altogether though, "Cancer Man" is clearly not as good as the first two and the last two episodes of season one and next to Walt's (realistically impossible) bad-ass moment at the end, there really wasn't any big moment.
As the biggest focus is on the characters in this and the next episode, I've come to realize how unspectacular this show's lead characters were at this point. Once you've understood the basic mentality of them, there's not much new to find. Maybe it's that these couple of episodes in the middle of the season have a worse screenplay than the rest, yet I still think that the characters' normality can be counterproductive when the only things happening are conversations. However, this only attributes for some parts of "Cancer Man". There was a lot of stuff in this episode I found really entertaining, especially the satiric look Vince Gilligan took at Jesse's family. Another highlight was the scene before the opening credits that had the great Hank Schrader doing his job as a DEA agent and while doing so, unwittingly talking about Walt, whose product has got quite famous in Albuquerque's drug culture. And, of course, our two protagonists arguing in the Whites' yard was just awesome.
Altogether though, "Cancer Man" is clearly not as good as the first two and the last two episodes of season one and next to Walt's (realistically impossible) bad-ass moment at the end, there really wasn't any big moment.