Review: The Boondocks “Breaking Granddad”

The Freemans turn into a bunch of Walter Whites! Well, kind of…let’s just call this Breaking Black.

 

In an almost second for second remake of the first few minutes of the first Breaking Bad episode, we have the Freemans in an RV, running from something. Granddad crashes the RV, and the get out of the purple haze. The sounds of sirens are in the background, and Granddad is shooing the kids off. We then get a flashback to three weeks back, where Huey is starting to work on what Granddad thinks is a bomb. Huey convinces him it’s weave cream. They make it to a financial planner, who tell him that he’s flat broke. So, Granddad makes it back to the car wash, getting bitched by Ruckus. At the house, Granddad is trying to go on a date, where Riley narcs on him to Huey. So, instead of going to buy new weave cream, he runs to the garage to get some of Huey’s.

After bombing on trying to get a date, Granddad wakes up the next morning, and to his astonishment, he has a full head of hair. He gives it to Tom, who gives it to himself and Jazmine, and they are trying to get it to the market. Huey comes, and said it wasn’t wave cream, but a bomb. Granddad is trying to find more, but he isn’t finding much. They go to some sketchy ghetto hair place, and Boss Welona is trying to buy it all, but Huey thinks that something isn’t right. After telling her that it’s an explosive, she shows a bunch of haircare product that is acid, contains plutonium, or turns the user’s brain green. It turns out to be a big seller at the salon, so they keep the money train coming. Unfortunately, the news catches wind of a product that is dangerous to the user.

So, it turns out that Da Bomb tripped explosive detectors. The news uses a decoy to show the potency of the cream. He gets a call from Welona, and he goes to return the money. However, she wants even more cream. Huey turns into Walter White, literally, and gets a Winnebago. The Breaking Black RV starts cooking cream, and call Welona. Of course, she pulls a gun, and she needs to tie up loose ends. In another Breaking Bad moment, she wants to learn how to make the cream, and the Freemans blow the batch up, knocking out Welona, and her associate. We get that opening again, this time with context, and the sirens turn out to be fire sirens. Welona and the other guy wake up, and try to seal the RV. Robert says he is going to turn himself in, right as Welona blows the shit out of that RV.

The ode to Breaking Bad in this episode was out of control. There were some of scenes that were almost second for second remakes of the first episode. At the risk of bad word usage, it was awesome. Having Huey and Granddad take the role of Walter, and Riley assuming Jesse was pretty smart. Using weave cream over meth was also smart, because it’s more accessible than meth. Breaking Bad similarities aside, I love how Granddad is doing anything possible to get out from under the thumb of Ed Wuncler II. I’m glad to see this is going to be an ongoing story throughout the season.

I was afraid that the season was going to be all over the place, but so far, the episodes are very tight. Another worry I had was that the jokes were going to be sensational just for the sake of pushing the envelope. Granted, this is only three episodes in, but it seems on par with past seasons too.  I will go on a limb, and say that the loss of Aaron McGruder wasn’t that much of a loss to the show, and this episode proves it.