Well, Brad Paisley’s got the hat, and one right smart herd of creative cattle. Today marks the release of his ninth album of original material, “Wheelhouse,” and judging from the initial buzz, he seems to have stepped into the fecal residue of one of his cows.

Perhaps the most controversial is a duet with LL Cool J – “Accidental Racist.” Hold on. Let’s stop right there. A duet with LL Cool J? About what, exactly?

Well, the Confederate flag, Reconstruction and a Civil War that, let’s face, it, never ended -- and worse, shows no sign of ending.

Just the subject one might expect from one of Red State America’s biggest stars. Maybe, Brad, you can explain why?

“The red flag on my chest somehow is like the elephant in the corner of the South.
And I just walked him right in the room.
Just a proud rebel son, with an 'ol can of worms
Lookin' like I got a lot to learn but from my point of view.”

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One thing that strikes me is how much Gilligan is the anti-Walter White. Unlike his fictional creation, Gilligan is generous in recognizing the contributions of his fellow workers, and has a very accurate perception of where he is, why he is there, and where he is going. But as you will see, this sets up a problem that is mirrored in the drama of “Breaking Bad.” Gilligan and his team are stuck with their characters, their actions and the consequences of those actions. In some profound way, Walter White and his extended family have achieved a life of their own, and in the case of Season 5.1, as you will see, this led to some dilemmas that were not totally solved.

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This is the dilemma that Vince Gilligan and his cohorts have grappled with. How do you sustain interest in a lead character who becomes more and more repellant as time goes on? How many different ways can the people around this lead character express their revulsion without contaminating the viewing audience? Ultimately, in a time-tested cliché heard by every writer of every drama at one time or another, who are we supposed to root for?

Who indeed?

Vince Gilligan is an admitted Stanley Kubrick fanatic. And this entire season reflects that fanaticism. There are great Kubrick movies, and not-so-great Kubrick movies, but even his lesser films are brilliantly crafted. And they all contain what Kubrick called “non-submersible units” – scenes that are so powerful they overpower any flaws in story, dialog, plotting and casting.

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“Say My Name” is another massive dose of rancid, as the curdled dreams of Walter White drag a major character into dignified oblivion. How “Breaking Bad” is going to go for nine more hours, without a mass suicide of its loyal viewers is beyond me, but I’m here for the ride.

Few series do desert standoffs better than “Breaking Bad.” The gang that argues too much to shoot straight meets their rivals in yet another tense face-off. And in this episode teaser, we get one of the most fantastic yet illogical confrontations ever. That is, if you think, as I did, that Walter’s argument about the purity and excellence of his product is reason enough for a network to program – wait – sorry – for a rival gang to distribute it.

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The genesis of the dangerous game that drives “The Hunger Games” is somewhat more complicated. It is the end product of a true cultural Cuisinart. Some point to the Japanese novel and film “Battle Royale”; others to the over-the-top Italian movie “The Tenth Victim,” based on Robert Sheckley’s 1953 short story. Then, there is Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Richard Dawson’s greatest hit “The Running Man,” or Stephen King’s other futuristic nightmare, “The Long Walk.”

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Vince Gilligan has admitted that he and his writers view writing “Breaking Bad” as a game of Vulcan three-dimensional chess. If so, last week’s “Dead Freight” was a sacrifice move, that allowed all of the pieces to arrange on that game board in precisely the right fashion. Make no mistake. The precision and plotting of “Buy-Out” redeems the excesses of “Dead Freight,” and (almost) makes that last move worthwhile. Last week’s overblown heist plot turns in on itself in “Buy-Out.” Something is not pulled off, but rather, an attempt is made to pull out, in this case, via a brilliant exit strategy that would clearly allow all of our players to escape with their lives and a nice pocket o’ change. What could possibly go wrong? Of course.

Walter.

The rollercoaster of doom crests the top and begins its final 10-episode plunge into the darkness.

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Well.

The gob it is smacked.

“Dead Freight” is not only one of the most problematic and flawed episodes of “Breaking Bad,” it also contains the single most devastating sucker punch in a series known for throwing them.

For 47 of these 48 minutes, I was worried. With all due respect to “Shark Week,” I'm certain that I saw a fin in the water for “Breaking Bad.”

And then.

In order to adequately describe this episode, I am going to take it as presented, and not reinterpret it through the filter of that last minute. Although what happens then changes everything, it still does not excuse the previous 47. Nits will be picked, but “Breaking Bad” has always demanded close attention, for better, and in this case, for worse.

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Upon the release of his 1993 film “The Age of Innocence,” Martin Scorsese described his Edith Wharton adaptation as the most violent movie he had ever made.

I really didn’t understand what Scorsese meant until I watched the latest installment of “Breaking Bad.” Now, not much happens here in the way of action. There are no acid baths, diabolical schemes or even good old-fashioned meth cooking. But the exquisite tension between Walter and Skyler White reaches a kind of crescendo. The façade of their relationship has long been cracked. Now, the foundation is revealed to be totally rotted away. Time, the real star of this episode, is not on anyone’s side. It is a one-year commemorative edition hour where we take stock of just how far things have deteriorated, and just how much farther they have to go.

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How do they do it? How can we remain hard-wired to like “Breaking Bad” and some of the most appalling characters ever to appear on dramatic television? One answer is easy: Stockholm Syndrome. We identify with our captors. Crime does not pay, but it does pay out for our interest, with dividends. It is one thing to describe a character as being smart, or to have them talk smart. It is quite another thing to actually have them do smart things. And Walter’s genius under pressure has rarely been so well on display as in the third episode of this final season, “Hazard Pay” -- another in a distinguished line of “Breaking Bad” how-to episodes.

One of the sneaky joys of “Breaking Bad” is how Walter White and Jesse Pinkhams’ problems become our problems – continually putting us in the unenviable position of rooting for them. Whether that problem is disposing of a henchmen’s body in acid, jumpstarting the stranded “Crystal Ship” RV with a home-brewed battery or figuring out how to erase a hard drive by “Magnets, bitch,” we are continually placed in the queasy role of rooting for the Bad Guys while hoping that the good guys lose. And like the monkey pulling a lever to get the right banana, we get rewarded when our heroes win. It's forbidden fruit that's tasty and strangely addictive, if occasionally rotten.

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To a dedicated legion of fanatics, and I am one of them, “Breaking Bad” carries that significance.

Last Thursday, as it has over the past four years, “Breaking Bad” garnered a slew of Emmy nominations. The next morning, I spoke with Vince Gilligan, the creator and show runner of “Breaking Bad.” “Breaking Bad” fanatic that I am, this conversation was akin to traveling on the “Way Back Machine” to the Nashville studio as Dylan recorded “Blonde on Blonde,” and asking him, between takes, “Just what the hell is a “Curfew Plug, anyway?”

And then, to have Dylan answer, candidly.

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But Walter White is not looking too hard.

The great thing about “Breaking Bad” is the way that it sweats the details, and rewards intense scrutiny. This week’s episode calls in a lot of outstanding loans, and invests them immediately. Like the season premiere, “Madrigal” was written by Vince Gilligan, and as with all of his episodes, we’re in good hands.

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This quote comes to mind as I settle in to serve as genial ringmaster of our weekly "Breaking Bad" conversation. Few works of art have ever been so rewarding of viewer involvement. Over the past four seasons and 46 episodes, Vince Gilligan and his colleagues behind and in front of the screen have created one of the greatest serial dramas ever conceived in any form. Like Walter White’s product, "Breaking Bad" is pure, powerful and wildly addictive.

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As I read Dwight Allen's piece "My Stephen King Problem," my personal bat signal went off when I came across the reader comment that “this is the most rambling, dull, unfocused and self-absorbed piece I've ever read in Salon.” Hey, I thought, some guy is stealing my act! And then, suitably outraged, I read the article. Which brings up an entirely different kind of outrage.

How shall I put this diplomatically?

Allen’s article isn’t just a bile-drenched, meandering hatchet job, it is a hatchet job with a rusty, dull blade, devoid of insight into anything other than the insecurities of its writer.

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"The Artist" was a much-beloved phenomenon last year. An exquisitely crafted love letter to the lost Art of Silent Film, it levitated into the hearts of some audiences -- including just about all the critics and the ever-unreliable Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Why then, does it feel like such a chore to watch? And why do I feel guilty even thinking such a thing, let alone writing it? It’s like kicking the adorable Uggie the Dog.

Michel Hazanavicius approached this project with the most noble of intentions. To transport modern movie audiences back into time, by lovingly re-creating the vocabulary of the silent film. He succeeds totally in that department. But is this a round trip really worth taking? For "The Artist" seems like the master thesis of an absolutely brilliant film student, who really, really wants to impress the faculty on just how well he has done his homework. Hazanavicius has been candid on how he obsessively studied the silent film masters. Murnau’s "Sunrise" and "City Girl," and Chaplin’s "City Lights," were his textbooks, and it is clear that he read them well. Too well. There is the thing, and things about the thing.

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When Andrew Stanton’s magnum opus "John Carter" was released just two short months ago, you’d think he had committed some kind of original sin. Just about every article or review dwelled on the fact that either A.) the film was going to lose a massive amount of money, or. B.) Disney was insane to entrust a massive studio blockbuster to some naïve “artist."

Talk about self-unfulfilling prophecy.

The history of Hollywood is littered with artists going one Bridge Too Far, a distinguished field of creative carnage that began with D.W. Griffiths’ "Intolerance." The story is simple. Having gathered their chips through some mega-success, deranged creative types bet their stack on a personal epic. "Jaws" begets "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," a win, and then, Steven Spielberg craps out on "1941." "The Godfather" gets topped by a sequel, but soon "Apocalypse Now" comes staggering from the jungle. Francis Ford Coppola was lucky enough to make it out of that casino, but then, had to return to Vegas for "One From The Heart," the opening act of the slow-motion dissolution of his career. And of course, there is Billy Wilder’s corrosive masterpiece, "Ace in the Hole," a cynical treasure that cost him most of the goodwill he had earned from the previous 10 years of commercial success. We won’t mention "Heaven's Gate," as that is too damn easy. But, I will say, deep inside Michael Cimino’s deranged epic there is something mesmerizing. It deserves to be taken on its own terms as an deranged vision, clearly made – if not made clearly -- by some kind of cinematic idiot savant.

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It was hard to read anything about “We Need to Talk About Kevin” without some reference to its distinguished antecedents in the “there’s something about that boy, June” school of demon child cinema. "The Omen," "Rosemary's Baby" and "Problem Child" all got their time on deck, but one film in particular gets mentioned, for it invented this entire genre. And that film is Mervyn LeRoy’s 1956 epic "The Bad Seed." This is one of those movies embedded in our consciousness that perhaps should stay embedded and not actually be pried loose.

Which brings us to this week’s double bill. “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” just out today, is an unrelentingly grim, absolutely depressing, difficult-to-recommend-to-anyone work of sublime, essential filmmaking. Say again? OK. In the words of Preston Sturges, there is “nothing like a deep-dish movie to drive you out into the open.” “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is that kind of movie, an absolutely brilliant work of narrative and deliberately elliptical narrative storytelling. It takes this trope of the bad seed and plants it so it grows into some kind of hallucinatory kudzu. It cannot be easily eradicated once it is experienced first-hand. Not since Billy Mumy wished those pesky adults into the cornfield in one of the all-time creepiest works of TV Noir has a demon child been depicted as being quite so, well, “hellish.”

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By stripping down Lyndon Baines Johnson to his essence, Robert Caro has himself become an American legend. Since the publication of "The Path to Power" in 1982, Caro has transformed LBJ’s life into a cautionary tale of Shakespearean dimensions. In some wonky circles, the release of a new volume is heralded like the Summer of Love release of “Sgt. Pepper's.” Can Caro possibly top his “Revolver"?”

I am proud to be one of those wonks.  Anticipating the release of "The Passage of Power," I went full-metal LBJ, and reread every word of the previous 1,040 page “prequel” – “Master of the Senate.” Much like catching up on the last season of “Mad Men” before the new one begins, I time-traveled like the hero from the new Stephen King JFK-themed novel back to 1958, as the Master Senator (and Master Biographer) prepared for their rendezvous with world history.

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In the words of noted musicologist Steve Jobs, "It was the chemistry of a small group of people, and that chemistry was greater than the sum of the parts. And so John kept Paul from being a teenybopper and Paul kept John from drifting out into the cosmos, and it was magic. And George, in the end, I think provided a tremendous amount of soul to the group. I don't know what Ringo did.”

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That’s a simple question that any work of art must ask and answer. But for the political biopic, this question is fraught with complications. Is the point to: a) Re-create accurately the life and likeness of a famous person? b) Take what is larger than that life and likeness and bring it down to an accessible level? Or c) Just reinforce an audience’s existing preconceptions? And what happens when you get d) None of the above? Well, you get "The Iron Lady."

It’s not easy to pull off a successful historical biopic. From Ben Kingsley’s nobly soporific "Gandhi" to Bruno Ganz’s ignobly Hitler-iffic "Downfall," where Ganz’s climactic tantrum has been remixed, biopics risk breaking the law of unintended historical consequences. And please, don’t mention Daniel Day Lewis’ incoming "Lincoln: The Bearded Years."

It would be heretical to argue that Meryl Streep’s third Oscar for best actress wasn’t deserved. Streep is a flawless actress and technician, and her supernatural gifts for getting inside the skin of her characters are well displayed here. But, you know what? Who cares? In "The Iron Lady," Streep is all dressed up, with no place to go. And it’s not her fault.

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Cameron's CGI-fueled saga of the great ocean liner's fateful encounter with a North Atlantic iceberg, and of the storybook shipboard love affair between upper-crust Rose (Kate Winslet) and raffish, working-class Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio), definitely opened up new possibilities in cinematic spectacle -- but not everyone sees that as a good thing. Despite its massive popularity, massive Oscar haul and overwhelmingly positive reviews overall, "Titanic" is a divisive film among critics, with those who hate it complaining loudly about the immense length (3 hours and 14 minutes!), stagey dialogue and flat characterization.

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