I admit that the majority of my unsavory pals would cheerfully take all of their clothing off in a grocery store for pretty much any reason at all. The partners of those in relationships would not think stripping down in a public place was indicative of anything out of the ordinary. Episode 203 of Breaking Bad, “Bit by a Dead Bee”, explores what happens if you live the sort of life where people do not get naked in food establishments. And then you step outside that world where everyone feels they know what to expect.

On Breaking Bad, Bryan Cranston’s Walter White character neglects to mention to his wife when he decides that a dead high school chemistry teacher’s financial potential will be insufficient to care for his family. He neglects to mention to his wife that he might be earning supplemental cash by, ya know, cooking disturbingly high quality methamphetamine and putting his fine mind to figuring out how to distribute to the appropriate drug dealer meth channels without getting murdered or brutalized.

Is not telling his wife what he is up to in his final months before he is likely to succumb to cancer avoiding intimacy? Or are there spaces in one’s existence where it is important to be distinct from one’s partner and autonomous?

Would you fake a psychotic break with public nudity in order to avoid exposing a secret to your family members or romantic partners? If you got starkers inside a large local store, would anyone you know believe this might be indicative of a psychotic break, stepping down the path to madness? Or would that behavior just seem like everything was pretty normal?

Breaking Bad airs tonight on AMC. AMC is free with basic cable.

Do you feel having loved ones makes you stronger of more vulnerable? In “Grilled”, episode 202 of Breaking Bad, hopped-up tweaker drug lord Tuco tells high-school-chemistry-teacher-cum-meth-chemist that he likes doing business with a family man because there is a lot of collateral. My immediate thought is that the fastest way to conquer Tuco would be through his wheelchair-bound beloved uncle Tio. Walter White feels vulnerable and motivated to go along with the abusive drug dealer Tuco, largely out of a desire to protect his own family and his former student/drug dealing partner Jesse Pinkman. He has cancer, so he is less fearful for his own life.

Regarding the cancer, Walt did not want to undergo chemo and such, but he agreed to the unpleasant treatments because most of his loved ones asked him to do so. He may live longer and even better knowing he is loved and wanting to take the time to build a nest egg for his wife, son, and baby on the way. He may live longer and even better for undergoing the chemotherapy.

Walt keeps a second cell phone, one his wife is unaware of, for the purpose of conducting his drug business. He keeps his wife in the dark, partly out of a desire to protect her, and partly out of a desire to appear to be who she sees him as. On the one hand, his wife’s love sustains him and gives his life meaning, but, on the other, his relationship with her leads him to deception and perhaps lead him to a place where he was a high school chemistry teacher eking out a living and not a high rolling research scientist. Perhaps his love for his wife and family lead him to a place where he is manufacturing and selling brilliantly flawless methamphetamine.

I think that a person should choose who to love, partly via an accounting of who, on average or on overall accounting, makes them a better and more fulfilled person than would otherwise be the case. Love makes a person vulnerable in some areas, but real love should make a person stronger in the final analysis. I think.

I’m really looking forward to tonight’s episode of Breaking Bad on AMC.

Breaking Bad is about choices, consequences, and regret. Breaking Bad is about the importance of learning and the application of wisdom. The second season of Breaking Bad starts at 10pm Sunday March 8. If you have not seen the first season yet, you’ve still got time to catch it on On Demand. The pilot episode from season one is available on AMCTV. The basic plot line has mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher Walt White, played by Bryan Cranston, getting into the drug trade with an assist from an overgrown juvenile delinquent former student Jesse Pinkman, played by Aaron Paul, but the clever and beautiful cinematography and the deft characterization and plotting in the writing and the pitch perfect acting all come together to make Breaking Bad so much more than just a fish out of water story. Not that the fish out of water aspect doesn’t get some terrific laughs. Don’t worry because, in addition to ruminations on the meaning of life and self-determination, Breaking Bad also features funny parts, explosions, and fight scenes. Additionally, Emmy winner and CSI alum Michael Slovis does an incredible job as director of photography with the look and feel of the show.

Some of the most entertaining moments are when the expectation is that one character will handle a situation and it turns out that someone else is better suited. But, when you think about, the less obvious character really does have the better skill set. Jesse is charismatic, intelligent, and witty at first glance, but he is weak and having blown off school has limited his options, even as a meth dealer. Walt is retiring and seems more weak and less charismatic at first glance, but he has a more iron core, the sense of responsibility which comes from his loving if overbearing family, and the strength, freedom, and feeling of being on one’s last chance which come from knowing that his lung cancer is probably a death sentence. A lot of it is contextual. A head shaved for chemo can look small and tragic in one context and badass and not to be trifled with in another. Actor Bryan Cranston, once best known as Hal on Malcom in the Middle, won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for his nuanced portrayal of Walter H. White. As things play out, one realizes that Bryan Cranston’s Walt once had a promising and potentially lucrative research career. In the first season, we don’t know yet whether his partners did anything off or if he walked away to start a family or otherwise take the path to a very ordinary life. So, even before finding out he was most likely dying, Walt felt that melancholy creeping sense of being at a stage of life where the questions start sounding less like “what if” and more like “if only”. In a way, the story is about a mid-life crisis ratcheted up to maximum volume, but communicated in a manner which is sympathetic, poetic, and ultimately empowering.

Jesse might be a little lazy and not know his chemistry as well as would be ideal for the local methamphetamine aficionados and he might not be the best at standing up to alpha personalities except in an ineffectual smartass fashion, but he is young and there is clearly potential there. Aaron Paul, as Jesse, and Bryan Cranston play off one another well. The only things I’ve ever seen Aaron Paul in are an episode of CSI and Sleeper Cell where he played Teen #1, but he has guested on like half the shows on television and most notably has an important recurring role on HBO’s Big Love and is appearing in Last House on the Left, directed by Wes Craven which opens this coming week. With Jesse’s character the show becomes not just about middle-aged regrets, but about all the little choices we make all along and all the little deaths by regret we experience. Having the spectrum of Jesse to Walt makes the story very universal.

You can check out Walt, Jesse, Walt’s overbearing but loving wife frustrated writer Skyler White, Skyler’s competitive shoplifer sister Marie, Marie’s super-overbearing macho but well-meaning DEA agent husband Hank Schrader, and Walt and Skyler’s son Walter Jr. who, despite having cerebral palsy, seems far more well-adjusted and content than many of the other characters, on AMC March 8 Sunday at 10pm or later on On Demand. X-Files alum Vince Gilligan created the offbeat Breaking Bad and is credited as having both written and executive produced 20 episodes of the show, so I’m guessing we’ll get to enjoy a third season as well. The other executive producer on the show is Oscar-winner Mark Johnson who has worked on such a large string of hits and great movies that it almost seems like overkill, including Galaxy Quest, Diner, Kafka, Rain man, Donnie Brasco, Home Fries, Narnia, the list goes on.

AMC stands for American Movie Classics because they got their start inexpensively licensing old classic films, but, wow, when AMC decided to get into producing original television, they kicked things off producing two of the best shows ever made by any network with Mad Men and Breaking Bad. I can’t imagine a more impressive start. AMC produced some of the best shows on television last year.

Writer/director/producer Sean Abley’s dark science fiction flick Socket is hitting the film festival circuit now. The world premiere was at the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Fest. It is screening tonight at the Outfest 07 Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.

Although Socket will probably eventually appear under the Gay & Lesbian heading in my Netflix account, it is a straight up genre flick and the genre is psychological horror/dark SF. The basic storyline is surgeon gets hit by lightening. Cute intern in the hospital he is treated at hooks him up with a support group for people who develop cravings for electricity, after events like being struck by lightening. They start a romantic relationship and, of course, it being a spooky movie, everything goes horribly awry.

The surgeon’s cravings for electricity require a more and more powerful jolt for him to get his fix. He figures out how to implant sockets in his and his lover’s wrists. This leads to both a nifty vampire subtext and entertainingly blatant metaphors for things like meth and cocaine-fueled bathroom sex, which are the sorts of topics most amusingly approached in metaphor. The movie is partly a meditation on the nature of addiction, albeit perhaps a tongue-in-cheek meditation.

The best part of the film is indubitably Sean Abley’s masterful ear for simultaneously believable and humorous dialogue. The characters banter with one another in a lighthearted way which puts a smile on the viewer’s face and feels tremendously real, like they are actual sympathetic people you could know in real life. It is pretty rare that I see a movie where the characters are at all recognizable from my own experience, so I really love this aspect. Cute naked vanilla boys also a plus.

Check out the trailer below and, if you are in Los Angeles, stop by Outfest tonight.