Breaking Bad

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Television is evil.  It is obviously ruining The Perfect Dog.

This is all our kids’ fault.  They insisted that my husband and I are completely out of it (new evidence of their favorite point!) when they belatedly discovered that we’d never watched a single episode of Breaking Bad.  The final astounding, culture-changing episode had aired, and we both shrugged and said “Never watched it,” months after the series had gone away.  They, on the other hand, were still talking about how fantastic it was.

We didn’t even know enough to be humiliated; they’ve alluded to our boring-as-cement lives for years.  However when our siblings and friends agreed with them that the series is must-see-TV, we finally caved and started watching it on Netflix.
Here’s where we went wrong: we didn’t realize the dog was watching it, too.  He looked so innocent.  He pretended to be sleeping.  Yeah.  He was obviously observing how Walter Sr. fooled his family by pretending to be a harmless high school Chemistry teacher all the while refining his meth-manufacturing technique and becoming a drug lord.  Check the first picture: notice how Scout lies on his back in a pose of total nonchalance.  What you can’t see is that his head is carefully angled so he can take in the TV picture through his slitted eyes.

doga1

It was after Season 2 that we started noticing how often Scout was shooting out the doggie door.  Especially in the early evening.  We bragged to each other, “How cute!  How helpful! What a good dog!  He’s chasing squirrels out of the garden.  Wow, he sure is fast.”  It was much later–after we’d argued about which one of us had failed to thaw something for dinner or buy some needed grocery–that we realized that neither one of us has dementia yet; we’d both thawed something for dinner, or bought butter, or cookies.  Faster than the human eye can register motion, night after night, Scout snatches something from the counter and makes off with it out the doggie door.  We figured it out because the ice cap has finally melted enough in these parts for us to find the plastic wrappings he’d craftily concealed in the shrubbery.
Did I mention he’s put on weight?
I tried leaving him threatening notes.  I’ll include a picture of how well that worked.

doga2

We’re finally in the last season.  Scout isn’t even pretending to sleep during the episodes now.
Yep.  Breaking bad.

 

 

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6 Responses to Breaking Bad

    • I bet you’re just a total softie for dogs… . I wouldn’t know anything about that 😉

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  2. Thanks for the illustrated lecture! LOVED the snapshots.

    I myself have never seen an episode of BREAKING BAD, and in fact tend to avoid series which are an extended presentation of one long story. I just can’t commit myself to the necessary time. I take it you guys — all three of you — are enjoying BREAKING BAD. There was a time when I felt out of the loop because I’d never watched an installment of THE SOPRANOS. Fortunately, the one time I took a peak, that particular episode turned out to be a rather stupid one. Two wise guys take a third into the woods in the snowy dead of winter, assassination is on the agenda. The victim-to-be makes a break for it, however, and when they realize he’s gone the other two guys give chase — and THEY CAN’T FIND HIM! IN THE SNOW! Clearly this was written and directed by some native Los Angelenos who had never traipsed through snow in their lives, and therefore had no conception of how one leaves a trail of foot-tracks IN THE SNOW. (Did I mention it was snowing?) Anyhow, that saved me from feeling the need to watch any more SOPRANOS episodes.

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    • I don’t remember that! and I confess, we watched the entire series. Scout evidently caught it, because he got bored with human stupidity and napped during multiple episodes. How did we native New Englanders fail to notice such an obvious error?

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      • Quite likely because, by that time, you’d gotten so invested in the characters that the occasional plot lapse wouldn’t disturb or distract you from your absorption in the over-all ongoing saga. That’s what the best dramas can do.

        (I was just re-reading a reminiscence in one of musician/actor/author Oscar Levant’s memoirs about the time he and composer/critic Virgil Thompson attended a studio screening of a movie about a jazz musician (Kirk Douglas) who finally drops dead while straining to hit an unreachable high note on his horn. The lights came up, tears were streaming down Thompson’s face and he said, “What a piece of shit.” This struck Oscar as a remarkable combination of emotional involvement and critical objectivity.)

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