We’ve waited six. years. for. this. There are few things I would wait six years for, but the Breaking Bad movie sequel is one of them — esp when it’s centered around our little bad boy bae Jesse Pinkman.
And the movie *is* all it’s cracked up to be. El Camino picks up right where BB left off — and it doesn’t skimp on any of the violence, dark humor and anxiety-inducing eeriness of the original series.
So let’s get down to it. Allow me to walk you through the new Netflix creation that is equally as captivating as the five-season show itself.
Netflix gives us a brief refresher of the show — TG, since it’s been six freaking years. Then we basically begin at the end: Pinkman recklessly speeding away in the El Camino, laughing like a mother freaking maniac as he realizes that while yes, he did escape, he now has to figure out what TF to do. Which is essentially the entire movie.
We’re also shown a brief scene where Mike tells Jesse that if he were in his shoes, he’d escape to Alaska (a lil foreshadowing, if I may).
“Start fresh, make things right,” Pinkman says.
“No, sorry kid. That’s the one thing you can never do,” Mike replies.
Ya, no shit.
Jesse — looking like a sexy, homeless lumberjack — drives immediately to see Badger and Skinny Pete, where he shovels Ramen in his mouth like a drunk college student who just got home from the bar. It’s obvious that Jesse is very unwell. He has what seems to be a PTSD episode, even pulling his gun on his two friends. And he’s seen SHOWERING with his gun. (Also, this series has me so desensitized that my first thought was: “Isn’t that going to rust?”)
Pinkman has no time for rust concerns. He has to get rid of the El Camino, and Skinny Pete comes up with the plan. (God bless Skinny Pete, honestly.) He gives Jesse his car and leaves the El Camino at his house, prepared to lie his skinny ass off to the feds. That is true friendship, ppl.
Jesse heads to Psychopath Todd’s apartment, which is taped off, for obvious reasons.
The film is also flooded with flashbacks — mainly from Jesse’s time trapped in Uncle Jack’s cage like an imprisoned zoo animal. This particular flashback alludes to what Jesse is doing at Todd’s: searching for his stash of money.
In the flashback, Todd lets Jesse out of his cage for the day because he needs “help” with something — which is what you say when you ask someone to pick up your dry cleaning, not when you murdered your housekeeper because she found your hidden drug money. And Todd is telling Jesse this story, completely nonchalantly, while making a can of Campbell’s soup to share.
After the housekeeper incident, Todd had to find a new hiding spot for all his cash, and he told Jesse it would be where no one could ever find it.
Since present-day Jesse is like a Hardy boy gone [very] bad, he accepts this challenge. He finds the money after tearing apart the entire apartment, but he’s not the only one looking for it. Two men posing as police officers tie Pinkman up until he convinces one of them to let him go and give him ⅓ of the cash (seriously, he’s very persuasive). Also, Jesse recognizes this particular man as Neil, the welder who helped create his life-sized cage at Uncle Jack’s.
Jesse takes his cash and goes to Ed Galbraith, AKA that one old guy from Season 5 who helped Walter White get a new identity — you know, like the witness protection program, but a very illegal one that benefits criminals. Jesse is short $1,800 and leaves in search of the money he needs for his fresh start.
He ends up going to the welding company where Neil works and literally just asking him for the $1,800, which is a Bold Move, if you ask me. Neil wants to handle things “like the Wild West,” which means they casually shoot each other and see who dies first. Jesse shoots Neil dead before he even has the chance to move. And that’s the last time we see Jesse Pinkman kill anyone.
Jesse takes the money, burns the place to the MF ground and watches it go up in flames from the rear view mirror.
And you find yourself rooting for him, which is crazy, because he’s still doing bad things. But he has to do these bad things in order to save himself!?? El Camino has you debating who actually deserves a fresh start — can we collectively as a society compile all the do-overs we’ve given past fictional characters for frivolous things like not acting on the love of their life, or choosing the wrong career path, etc. and gift them to Jesse Pinkman, who is the only TV character actually deserving of a new life? BB really has you empathizing with the drug dealers of the world.
Which is when we get another flashback — to a time where the camper still existed, where Jesse was still fascinated with his newfound income, and where Walter White was still Walter White, not Heisenberg.
It seems like simpler times — Walter is so different from our last memories of him. He’s questioning Jesse on his future, urging him to go to college and major in business. You almost forget that he had this side to him, that at one point it was all about simply paying for chemotherapy and surviving cancer.
“You’re really lucky, you know that?” Walter says to Jesse. “That you didn’t have to wait your whole life to do something special.”
Jesse is struggling so hard to get his life “back” — or to get a new one, basically. He’s trying so badly to be a good person, and you can see it through the entire film — like when he could’ve killed Todd, who honestly deserves to die, but he didn’t. Or when he says goodbye to his parents over the phone. He doesn’t want to be like Walter, and you actually feel for him, regardless of all the meth he’s helped cook or all the people he’s killed along the way.
This flashback summarizes the whole storyline of BB: how Walter White and Jesse Pinkman basically switched identities entirely. It’s almost hard to even process the moral unraveling of Walter White. Walter took everything from Jesse that ever made him care about being alive. It’s like watching Cady Heron become Regina George. But with drugs. And murder.
Finally, we see Ed driving Jesse to Alaska. Jesse’s given a new name (Mr. Driscoll), a new social security number (which Ed makes him recite BACKWARDS — can other people actually do this???) and a fabricated backstory where he can start over as someone else entirely.
Before they part ways, Jesse hands Ed a goodbye letter to be mailed to Brock, which breaks my tiny heart. Then we see Pinkman driving away, looking very at peace in a cream turtleneck (Mr. Driscoll be dressin’).
And we get our final flashback: a private moment between Jesse and Jane, where she advises him not to go where the universe takes him, but instead to make those decisions for himself. A perfect narration to Jesse taking control over a new life, after very quickly losing complete control over his old one.
And then it’s all over (for us, anyway). The ending that we and Jesse Pinkman deserve.
(We can only hope that somewhere, Walt Jr. is enjoying his pancakes, drowning in the money his asshole father left him, not a care in the world.)
