You act like you never saw a severed human head on a tortoise before

…been catching up on all the Seasons 2 – 3 Breaking Bad I missed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iypBTQYnJi4

…and been thinking about how that line was written. It may have emerged from the void whole, but I suspect the writer or writers worked a while before they hit on the word “severed,” which is just right. The prior owner of the head – a compromised drug dealer played by actor Danny Trejo, nicknamed “El Tortuga”  – appears briefly in this peppy parody of a narcocorrido from the opening of the same episode (Season 2, Ep. 7, “Negro y Azul“):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxYrjWMvmdg&feature=related

Or maybe it’s more a satirical homage than a parody… Understanding the storyline helps in interpreting the lyrics, of course, but the video is also a study in the artful manipulation of cheesy out-of-the-box transitions and effects: It’s disarmingly and appropriately cheap-looking and yet brilliantly slick at once.

Watching a whole season this way has a lot to recommend it over agonizing through the story episode by episode, week by week – though the traditional method does encourage the viewer to savor every moment.  Also, the latenight AMC commercials that accompany these earlier season re-runs, ahead of the Season 5 premiere in July, even played back at high fast-forward, tend to be quite depressing: lots of disease, drugs, lawyers, often combined with each other… But that’s also appropriate to the show, of course…

5 comments on “You act like you never saw a severed human head on a tortoise before

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  1. Well when Danny TRejo shows up, you know there will be blood, of course GianCarlo Esposito, as the middle manager, is Chilean, which is symbolic, since they were the original cocaine players before the Colombians

  2. It issort of becoming implausible, how can Walt’s neighbors not notice, he is like the Death Eater in their neigborhood.

  3. Even when it comes to just getting some heavy shit on the air, I still vote for House. On network television, they managed to get the following scene produced:
    An episode about two young kids who turn out to have been accidentally exposed to viagra and are exhibiting adult sexual characteristics leads up to House going to their school. CLOSE on HOUSE saying “Do you have hair on your special part?” Camera pulls back to reveal that House is speaking to a 6 year old girl. She screams appropriately and runs away.

    I’m not sayin’ it’s appropriate network television, I’m just sayin’ it’s mind-blowing that they got stuff like that produced.

    What I like about the tortoise scene is that the guy who has a human reaction to it ends up being saved because he had a human reaction.

1 Pings/Trackbacks for "You act like you never saw a severed human head on a tortoise before"
  1. […] Scott comes a bit of his high HOUSE to embrace the tortoise: What I like about the tortoise scene is that the guy who has a human reaction to it ends up being saved because he had a human reaction. […]

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