I am a big fan of nostalgia.
Let me be clear, this does not mean I am a fan of the overly-nostalgic lists Buzzfeed has been putting up on their website over the last six months. That is not nostalgia. I've seen the lists. "How Great it was to be a Kid During the 90's" or "How Being a Middle Schooler in the 21st Century was the Best Time to be a Middle Schooler". These lists (or running stream of pictures from our pasts with quirky one liners and captions) are not nostalgia. No, instead these lists are a sad attempt at creating this unique emotion in their readers.
What is nostalgia? Nostalgia is when you yearn for the pass, not just when you miss it. It's a sentimental longing or a wistful affection for a time period in the past. When I look at a Buzzfeed lists and I see a picture of a Motorola Razr I don't feel nostalgic. I don't suddenly wish I could swap my iPhone and all its apps for 2003's premier cellphone. Now, if I wanted to revert back to a Razr, that would be nostalgia. However, since I am more far more content to stick with my iPhone, these lists and their pictures are just a glimpses of a memory from an earlier time.
Lately, Breaking Bad has pulled on my desire for Nostalgia. It might be that I recently re-watched the show's earlier seasons or it might be that the show has taken such a tailspin from its earliest days. Regardless, the opening of Vince Gilligan's latest masterpiece, "Ozymandias" immediately plays on my recent nostalgic feelings. The previous episode ended in a shoot out. This episode opened with a flashback to the pilot episode of BB. A flashback to Walter and Jesse's first cook, in the exact spot where the bone chilling and ever-climactic shoot out of episode 13 occurs, is brilliant. The footage of a Walter formulating and delivering the first of many fibs to a clueless Skyler is flawless.
The feeling that overtook me in this opening scene was true and honest nostalgia. I yearned for those moments. For Walt, for Jesse, for Skyler. Things were much more simple for our characters at the time of this flashback.
Walter had hair.
Bogdan still owned the carwash.
Jesse still wore beanies and baggy hoodies.
Vince Gilligan's scripts had not yet included the killing of a single character.
The simplicity of my favorite characters' lives in the pilot episode made me wishfully remember their lives at the time of the flashback. To a time, merely one year earlier, in the very same location, where Walter had first started to "break bad". Where Walter still needed to lie to Skyler to hide his actions (rather than threaten her life by swearing he'd kill her, the same way he did Hank, if she crossed him).
The following scenes created an even more magnified sense of nostalgia. With the quick pull of a trigger, Hank Schrader was gone. The character who had once provided continual comic relief and occasional racist remarks to an otherwise dark and morbid TV show had been killed like many characters before him. At no point before the death of Hank did I ever wish the characters of Breaking Bad could go back to the time period where we first met Walter White & Co.
Before Hank knew about blue meth.
Before Hank knew about Gus Fring.
Before Hank knew about Walter's involvement.
Before Hank knew Uncle Jack had already decided to pull his gun's trigger.
This, my friends, is nostalgia. The powerful desire to go back to a different time period. The problem with these Buzzfeed lists is that they simply lead viewers to revisit a simpler time in their mind. However, these time periods, more simple or not, are not more desirable than our current state. The current state of Walter, of Jesse, of Skyler, of Marie, of Hank; these are not simpler times. Instead, the moments from the opening flashback in "Ozymandias" are the times we truly wish our characters could just go back to.
Gilligan knows the power of nostalgia. Of real nostalgia.
The emotions I have allowed to develop within me since those earliest scenes have now manifested in a nostalgic yearn to return the lives' of Breaking Bad's characters to a different time. These building emotions have created the perpetual desire that things could revert back to an easier time as quickly as they went array for our characters. These desires are unrealistic, but that's one of nostalgia's greatest powers.
It makes you want something that is, well, impossible.
Walter White will make his return to Albuquerque soon.
To the house he raised Walt Jr. and Holly in.
To the house where he had an emotional break down in his crawlspace.
To the house where he cultivated a Lily of the Valley plant to poison Brock.
To the house where things were, once, simpler.
Will it be nostalgia that wills Walter back home? Or, will it be the need to address unfinished business?
The massive machine gun in his trunk from Season 5, Episode 1 seems to hint at the latter, however; we know the power of nostalgia and the influence it has on all of us. Character and viewer alike, nostalgia can overtake us and make us want something that very well is entirely unrealistic. Nostalgia won't just create a faint memory of an earlier time, but will instead create a burning desire to return to the time of the memory.
In the opening scenes of Season 5 we see Walter seated at the bar of a Denny's restaurant. Walt tells the waitress that he is celebrating his 52nd birthday and, in doing so, begins rearranging his bacon strips into the number 52.
I have to wonder.
What has Walter White feeling nostalgic?
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