Getting To The Bottom Of The Bottle: 25 Best Bottle Episodes

Photo: AMC

Breaking Bad – “Fly”

Some fans grew a little impatient with this episode, as it marked a jarring slow-down of the third season. This episode was a skidding halt to an lot of building tension that led Jesse and Walt to an underground lab, cooking an insane about of meth for their boss and financial backer, Gus Fring.

The episode takes place solely in the underground lab in which Walt becomes preoccupied with finding and killing a fly buzzing around. Seemingly to contain contamination, Walt becomes obsessed with locating and eliminating the insect. He halts production, causing a dangerous slowing in production, while Jesse pleads with him to come to his senses.

It’s a break from the plot-heavy previous season, and although fans didn’t love the change in pace, critics adored it, calling it (arguably) the best of the series. It was definitely a polarizing episode, dividing fans into two camps: those who found its allegorical nature fascinating, and those who thought it was just generally boring.

Some Breaking Bad theorists think this marks Walt’s transition into “the danger.” Until this episode, we still see Walt struggling to maintain a balance between his new life and his old identity. The obsession with eliminating the fly suggests the beginning cracks in Walt’s morality and the decent from “everyman” to “antihero” to “bad guy.”