thus spake drake

Thursday, October 03, 2013

Breaking Bad - Felina: One little kiss and Felina, good-bye

A dying man in a snow-covered car with only an old Marty Robbins tape to keep him warm.

We've had a few days now to process the series finale to Breaking Bad and while initially it seemed there were two camps -- those that loved it for its closure and those that appreciated it but found it too tidy -- I've found myself, with a scant few, in a third camp.

This third camp starts in the 'too tidy' camp and intellectually works its way to the other camp by either re-interpreting or re-working creator Vince Gilligan's intentions. And it all starts with the episode's title and song it references.

Marty Robbins' song "El Paso" features a gun-toting narrator who's smitten for a Mexican girl named Feleena* and, in jealous rage, murders another of the maiden's suitors. Our narrator high tails it out of town, sequestering himself until his never-ending desire for Feleena draws him back to El Paso, where he is shot trying to make to see his infatuation one last time. One of the more relevant facts about this song is that the first-person narrative is being told by a dead man. Feleena miraculously is by his side as he dies, giving our anti-hero the closure he desires.

*Gilligan has stated he took liberties with the spelling to make it an anagram of 'finale.'

If you look at Feleena as a metaphor for Walter White's hopes and desires, the love he had for his time as Heisenberg is well apparent, and dying in the metaphorical arms of his precious meth lab only confirms this. This imagined death is much better than dying inside the volvo, a death more likely to have happened.

And this is where I left this post off at the time of the writing, before becoming entangled in the 'day job' again. I'm posting 'as is' to both preserve the moment and to provide this dying blog a pulse, however faint.

Monday, April 08, 2013

Mad Men "The Doorway:" Blue Hawaii

Don (Ho) contemplates the pu-pu of his former life.

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to think here, having been led through two hours of metaphorical hoops that started out as an odd Brady Bunch episode and ended at a destination that wasn't far from where we left off last season (or the season before, for Don anyway). But... Mad Men is indeed back!

It's six months or so later from where we last left off -- now late 1967, at a point where we've thankfully skipped over the "Summer of Love" (with only the fungal spread of sideburns to show for it). "The Doorway" uses the title as a metaphor for all sorts of passages. There's the a dance at the doorway of death to start the episode -- likely meant to trick you into thinking Don was having heart attack -- in the form of Don and Megan's doorman. Metaphorical-hammer-to-the-head much? There was an actual death, of which Roger took the emotional brunt of after manifesting the "doorway" metaphor in his therapy. (No good title inducer goes unpunished.) And there's the advancement of careers for Peggy (at new agency as head copywriter), Megan (now a soap opera star of sorts) and Joan -- who has broken Sterling Cooper Draper ~~Price~~'s glass ceiling yet still can't garner the respect of Harry (who looks like he just stepped off the set of Bewitched).

Musically, there's a lot I haven't digested as of yet, but the final song -- as is often the case -- has its own story to tell. Elvis Presley's rendition of "The Hawaiian Wedding Song" serves as a nice bookend to the Don scene on the beach along with the movie it was from, Blue Hawaii, being about a soldier's journey upon returning from war (an intentional parallel for Elvis himself at the time). Throw in a little infedelity (with an older, time-travelling Lindsay Weir!) and add to that the movie's location being the very same Waikiki beach we see Don and Megan on and you have what is pretty much the perfect song.

Elvis Presley - "Hawaiian Wedding Song"

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Prince slays "Bambi," brings retired blogger back from dead

Fittingly enough, it took me 17 days after the fact to catch up to Prince playing Jimmy Fallon earlier this month. The new single, the power-poppy "Screwdriver," is the 'plug' he played on the network, but it's the Purple One's bonus rendition of "Bambi" (from 1979's Prince, video below), that has folks talking -- and me waking up this blog.

Am I back? I don't know. Inspiration is one thing, but time is another thing entirely.

Watch more video from the Staff Picks channel on Frequency