Broken Man

We know why the show is called Breaking Bad. It goes back to the very first episode when cancer-afflicted, unfulfilled middle-aged high school science teacher Walter White decides to get into the meth business.

His former student, Jesse Pinkman, becomes a partner in the scheme but fails to understand, "Some straight guy like you, giant stick up his ass, age what - 60? He's just gonna break bad?"

Walt first retorts that he's only 50. He then says, "I am awake."

So we don't know the old Walt (except for a handful of flashbacks), but the current Walt is not only beyond repair, he is beyond belief.

Is it that the character is broken, or have the show's creators made him that way? It's an important distinction. If Walt's behavior is unbelievable to the show's fanatic audience, then maybe the show has jumped the shark.

****CAUTION-SPOILED****

In Season 5 Episode 6, "Buyout," it all comes the closest to full circle that the show has ever been. It's done through talk - which I don't like, but it's done with Jesse in Walt's living room of all places where his wife could walk in at any moment - which she eventually does.

The scene where Walt pulls a James Bond/MacGyver to escape handcuffed detainment is more believable than the scene where he reaches into his darkened soul to tell Jesse his reasoning behind the refusal of a $5 Million buyout.

It doesn't explain why Walt has decided to live at home while Skyler won't allow the kids to live in the same house, rather than living in the place he had originally moved out to and already owns. Except that we are expected to believe that he is stubbornly going to turn her.

And the same logic applies to Walt's dogged determination to press Jesse and Mike to continue their operation, rather than simply sell out for millions each.

As much as we love the series, we are begging Walt to be sensible. But he's just as obstinate with us.

Jesse references their conversation from the Season 2 premiere "Seven Thirty Seven," when Walt had figured out the math that $737K was all the money he needed, before the cancer killed him, to set up his family.

Jesse asks Walt if they're in the meth business or the money business. Walt seethes that he's in the "empire business." Jesse asks if that's really something to be proud of.

Walt rants about the one time he sold out in his past, trading in his stake in "Gray Matter" for a few months rent, while his partners Elliott and Gretchen Schwartz built a multi-billion dollar business.

So in just a year's time (theoretically), Walt's motivation changed from his family's security to being king. It's an unrealistic transformation. Unless Walt had already broken bad, and the misery inside him was just looking for an excuse to express itself.

That's if the writers can make us believe that the sympathetic anti-hero we've been rooting for is actually, truly evil.

Ramp Up Your Enthusiasm

It is Season 7 of Larry David's ground-breaking comedy, but unlike other shows which traditionally jump the shark at this point, Curb Your Enthusiasm is still getting better.

Forget for a moment that Larry David and HBO hoodwinked NBC out of a Seinfeld reunion, which begins its story arc this Sunday. Forget we're going to see Jerry Seinfeld act (not Jerry Seinfeld's act) for the first time in years. Forget we'll see the possible redemption of iconic comedy actor Michael Richards.

This would still be Curb Your Enthusiasm's best season ever, and we're only two episodes in. CAUTION - SPOILERS.

First, Larry's quest to break it off with Loretta while she's undergoing cancer treatment has been brilliant. And just because Loretta just left Larry, taking her kids and Auntie Rae with her, doesn't mean "LD" has seen the last of her.

Especially since Larry's real soulmate Leon (Loretta's brother) isn't going anywhere. Leon said they were Leggos (interlocked). Leon will surely be goading Larry into confrontations, to "get up in that ass" for some time.

Meanwhile, Larry's best friend/manager Jeff Green, who we always knew was a sex fiend, has gone beyond the bounds of the conventional comedy. Two weeks ago he bedded Marty Funkhauser's sister, who was a mental patient. Larry was traumatized by the cries of "Fuck me fat boy!" while he was in the house.

Then last week, Jeff's intolerable wife Susie went down on him in the car on the way to party, causing a wreck that Larry happened upon.

But the best individual exchange, what the show is all about really, was when Larry broke a pair of glasses while hugging his former next-door neighbor in the cancer doctor's waiting room.

It wasn't just typical of what happens regularly to our protagonist, but was able to weave in money, insensitivity, guilt, shame, disgust and cancer.

Conventional wisdom is that George Costanza channeled Larry David on Seinfeld. I really think Larry's character is a mix of Jerry and George, the unwitting and the unscrupulous, the shlameel and the shlamazel.