'El Camino' is a cushy victory lap for 'Breaking Bad'
For Jesse Pinkman, Breaking Bad ends on a bittersweet note of ambiguity. He's speeding down the road away from the meth lab where he was held prisoner, away from the toxic partner who sucked him into this life, his face twisted into a hysterical scream of exhilaration and anguish.
But what, exactly, is he driving toward? Who does he have left to turn to? Where could he possibly go? What could he do next? Is he really free, or did we just witness a few fleeting moments in which he thought he was? The show left it up to the viewer to decide those things -- for six years. Now, El Camino has arrived with definitive answers.
If any series has earned the right to a victory lap, it's probably Breaking Bad.
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie is designed to please Breaking Bad fans. It's all about Jesse, a beloved character who was nevertheless overshadowed by Walt throughout the series. It's got tons of new information to offer about his post-Breaking Bad life, and it's generous with callbacks to older episodes. If you've never seen the series before, this is the worst place to start. If you have, you'll thrill at certain familiar faces, places, even props.
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The best reason to watch El Camino is that it's simply fun to be back in this world again, with this character again. (Sure, Better Call Saul is still on the air, but it's too far removed from the specific events of Breaking Bad to really feel like Breaking Bad. Plus, it hasn't aired an episode since 2018.) Aaron Paul eases back into the role of Jesse like he's slipping on an old glove, playing the full range of Jesse moods from buoyant to beaten to badass, and his work here is a reminder that he deserved every Emmy he won, damnit.
And writer-director Vince Gilligan, who also created the series, clearly hasn't lost his grasp for the nuances of this universe. El Camino has the notes of tragedy and terror you remember from Breaking Bad, but also the dark sense of humor, the motley collection of oddball characters, the nerve-wracking juxtaposition of the horrific and the mundane.
All this familiarity makes El Camino feel comforting, in a way the original series never did. Not because the things that occur in it are particularly pleasant (they aren't) but because after six years, our view of it is filtered so heavily through nostalgia. If you loved the series during its original run, El Camino is a perfectly lovely way to spend two hours.
But "perfectly lovely" wasn't why we loved Breaking Bad. The original series pushed us into strange and uncomfortable places, daring us to keep rooting for Walt even as his actions got less and less defensible, shocking us with the sheer depravity of his behavior, confronting us with the collateral damage of his ego (including literally everything that happens to Jesse). Its spinoff, Better Call Saul, bowled us over by revealing the depths of Jimmy's soul, and continues to break our hearts as we watch him lose it bit by bit.
El Camino does have surprises, but they're superficial: Oh, so that's what happened with that thing. It has no real purpose beyond informing you of Jesse's whereabouts, and no new insight into who he is or what he's been through. The plot has the cadences of a vintage Breaking Bad storyline -- here is Jesse backed into an impossible corner, and here is Jesse doing the hard work to get himself out of it, and now here is Jesse backed into another impossible corner -- but it lands with all the gravitas of a DVD bonus feature or a spinoff web series.
Which, to be fair, isn't such a terrible thing. If any series has earned the right to a victory lap, it's probably Breaking Bad, and if any character within Breaking Bad has earned an indulgent two-hour spinoff, it's definitely Jesse. There's nothing about El Camino that is essential; while it won't tarnish your memories of the original series, it won't reframe or enhance them, either. It's a nice ride with some old friends. Sometimes, that's just enough.
