I could’t bear to watch anymore. It was painful. But I couldn’t look away. It was compelling.
I was re-watching Breaking Bad for the first time since the show ended it's initial run. I'd reached the final season. There was so much pain. So many lies. So many deaths. It was a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. Watching ruined lives was agonizing. But what theater.
For me Breaking Bad is the best drama that television has ever produced. Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is also one of its -- here we get into a trouble. What adjectives can possibly suffice? Greatest? Most fully-realized? Brilliant? Compelling (that word again, it’s all over any attempts to describe Breaking Bad)? Intriguing? Frightening? -- characters of all time. And beyond that the Walter/Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) partnership not only provided the most fascinating relationship in television history but perhaps in all of fiction.
Jesse and Walter was the ultimate love/hate relationship. But what incredible love and what horrible hate. They plotted and threatened to kill one another but they also saved each other’s lives, each pleaded for the other. They were father and son. They were bitter adversaries. They were partners. They were rivals. They were teacher and student — figuratively and literally. They needed one another. They each suffered because of the other. They got into a knock-down drag out fight. They gave one another gifts. A strange and awful symbiosis.
Walter’s transformation from mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher to drug kingpin is the heart of Breaking Bad. His descent into evil is gradual yet with fits and starts. There are shocking moments along the way. One thing Breaking Bad does so well is provide moments that make viewers gasp — even upon a second viewing. (How many times, I wonder, did I audibly gasp while watching the show?)
Yet through it all Walter is somehow remarkably relatable for a person who breaks so bad. We revile him and root him on, transfixed by his fascinating metamorphosis. Understanding his initial motives, mesmerized by his brilliance. We feel equal measures of compassion and revulsion. But we want to see what the hell he does next and how he does it.
Then there are the shocks. Did he really do that? Did he really concoct that amazing story about his disappearance? Did he really watch a young woman choke to death on her own vomit when he could have helped her? Did he really order the murder of a former co-worker? Did he really shoot his ex-partner, Mike? Did Walter really just kill those drug dealers? Did he intentionally poison that kid? Did he really say that? What beggars belief is all over the show. And the accumulation of lies. The deceptions. The false promises. It's overwhelming -- but never rings false.
Walter brought down virtually everyone around him. He turned Jesse into a veritable punching bag absorbing terrific physical and psychological beatings -- unimaginable ones -- before mercifully saving him at the end (arguably a classic case of too little too late). He drove his wife Skylar (Anna Gunn) nearly mad with worry, fear and internal conflict. Compelling her to share in the lies and deceptions. Skylar became a reviled character to many viewers who bristle at the sight of a woman standing up to evil or succumbing to it. She did both. Skylar could be hard to watch, particularly when she went cold and self-harmed through smoking cigarettes. Walter was all blood, fury and fire and she the ice maiden, tortured by the loss of normalcy. A defeated woman who carried on just the same. Sitting in the dark smoking so maddeningly placid. And oh how icy her words to Walter could be. But sharp and awful, and deserved.
Some of Walter’s victims were unsympathetic, such as the drug lord Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) who was vicious, sometimes sadistic and interested only in the bottom line. His veneer as not only a respectable business man but one who enthusiastically supported worthy causes, among them the DEA, was chilling. He felt so real, so contemporary. Such an honest kind of evil hidden in plain sight.
Then there was Walter’s brother-in-law the DEA agent Hank Schrader (Dean Norris) who was Inspector Javert to the elusive Heisenberg (White’s nom de plume). Bigoted and coarse he is difficult to sympathize with, until the moment he’s killed by the hell brought down by Walter.
And what of Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) himself a remarkably complex character who saw Walter for the disaster he was? That Walter killed him -- an especially unnecessary death -- was both sad and fitting. How else could it have gone for Mike in Walter's world? Mike was gruff, unsentimental and himself unafraid to kill. His secretiveness kept us from understanding him, but we appreciated him all the same. (His character has gotten a good fleshing out on BB's sequel, Better Call Saul.)
What did we learn from Breaking Bad?
Choices.
There’s an expression I abhor: be careful what you wish for, you might get it.
I much prefer: be careful what you do, one never knows the unintended consequences.
Pruning a tree in your backyard might have unintended consequences but they are unlikely to cause death or ruin lives. Getting into the meth cooking business to provide for your family after a cancer diagnosis risks a horrible whirlwind of unintended consequences. Walter reaps what he sows and what a bloody harvest it is. Surely the miscalculation that he can make a highly addictive and destructive drug and live happily ever after sets the whole shitstorm in motion.
(And here's the political commentary: with a decent health care system in the United States, none of it would have been necessary.)
Walter initially dips a toe into the illegal drug business then goes for a swim. He dives so deep that it becomes impossible to get out — even when he quits once and for all. He nearly drowns Jesse in the process. Jesse who becomes, ruminative nearly to the point of catatonia, at times resigned to his fate at times struggling to survive. My god, Jesse, what did you do deserve this? That's right, you made league with the devil.
Breaking Bad provides action, adventure, drama and excitement aplenty. It is also a great source of moral questions to explore and debate. Fine lines. Yes, it has a bit of everything, a lot to offer a lot of different kinds of viewers.
We also get a breathtaking array of brilliant acting performances. Cranston and Paul in particular put on master classes. It’s a good thing too because their roles required nothing short of brilliance. An actor must dig into the very soul of his/her craft to fully articulate these characters who are so embroiled in life's internal and external madness. Gunn, Norris and the rest of the cast are revelations with a highlight being Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman, Walter and Jesse's fast-talking morally ambiguous attorney. His character and performance were worthy of Breaking Bad’s sequel, Better Call Saul which has its final season beginning next month.
But what struck me most with my second viewing of Breaking Bad was the brilliance of the writing. Credit here goes to creator and show runner, Vince Gilligan (who is working similar magic with the sequel). The writing provides continual surprises without every going off the rails or violating the integrity of the characters. Very little in Breaking Bad strains credulity and we’re so wrapped up in the story and characters that we accept every incident, every storyline, ever shift in focus. Everything that is surprising later seems to have been inevitable.
The writers were at their best in fashioning characters who were both believable and fantastic and whose actions were always consistent with who they were.
From here I could go on and laud the directing, cinema photography, editing and everything else that makes a great production. Everything worked in sync. The production values were not merely good, as is the case with virtually everything that makes it on TV these days, they were exemplary.
As I noted at the outset it became a rough go for me toward the end. I never hesitated — indeed I usually rushed — to watch the next episode and I enjoyed it thoroughly but watching the total disintegration of the characters was grueling. Indeed it was harder with the second viewing when I knew what fates awaited them. I also felt more engaged with the characters and felt their pain, fictional though it was.
(It was fiction, wasn’t it?)
I became so engaged in the story that it seemed part of my life. Breaking Bad entered my dreams and existed on the outer edges of my consciousness as if the characters were colleagues or neighbors who I regularly encountered.
I love several TV dramas of fairly recent vintage: Ozark, The Wire, Better Call Saul, Orange is the New Black, The Gilded Age, The Sopranos and Succession, but nothing matches the way I feel about Breaking Bad.
A show for the ages.
(Dedicated to my youngest daughter who also thinks that Breaking Bad is the best TV drama ever.)
