Breaking Bad (#4)
Yeah, bitch! Magnets! Or, rather, a little bit about one of my favorite shows.
It’s always fun to see how shows are described, as it often really doesn’t tell the story in an “elevator pitch” sort of way - but that’s not the case with Breaking Bad. Here’s the IMDB description:
A high school chemistry teacher diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer turns to manufacturing and selling methamphetamine in order to secure his family's future.
That’s a pretty good synopsis, and I think it’s compelling enough that it got most folks thinking … um, WHAT? I need to check that out. Certainly, that was the case for me. But of course, that’s not the whole premise. The Breaking Bad universe and story got much larger, as the novelty of a high school teacher learning how to make crystal meth and selling drugs to provide for his family can only run so far.
Or, can it? Let’s back up.
Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is the aforementioned high school science teacher. His son, Walt. Jr (RJ Mitte) has cerebral palsy, and therefore some increased needs, both emotional and financial. Walter even has a second job working at a car wash to help make ends meet. His diagnosis is untreatable, with a best-case scenario of a few years to live. His wife Skylar (Anna Gunn) goes back to work as a bookkeeper when it’s clear that the family’s finances are going to increase as she’s pregnant when Walter gets his diagnosis.
Walt’s reaction to Skylar returning to work is telling - he finds it humiliating that he can’t provide for his family. We also learn rather quickly that he’s just missed out on generational wealth, having sold his share in a biotech startup with his friends from Cal Tech. The $5,000 he made from that sale would have translated into hundreds of millions of dollars, and White understandably has regrets and is bitter about it, as he now struggles to get by on his teacher’s salary. He KNOWS his own talents and feels like he’s never been properly recognized for them.
All of this sets Walter in a direction most would never consider - he’s looking for money, quick. His brother-in-law Hank (Dean Norris) is a DEA Agent, and focused on the meth trade, talking about how it’s easy money - until he steps in. He just confiscated $700,000 in one bust - and offers to take Walter on a ride-along. When Walter accepts that offer, he recognizes an ex-student of his, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) escaping out a window. He realizes he can combine his chemistry expertise with Pinkman’s connections, and produce and sell meth to set his family up.
That’s the premise for the whole series. Along the way we meet some legendary characters - Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) is a drug kingpin with Mike Ehrmantaut (Jonathan Banks) as his right-hand man. Both of them are low-key terrifying in a way you probably rarely have seen on TV. (In fact, this show may have a true ethos, which is nothing is quite as scary as silence and a dead stare from someone you know is dangerous.)
Lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) is the lawyer to the cartels as well as many low-level criminals, played so deftly and comically that it earned Odenkirk a a spin-off in Better Call Saul. And there’s many other recurring characters or characters who show up for a brief amount of time, played by folks like Bill Burr, Jesse Plemons (as Todd, or “Rickie Hitler” as he’s called by Jesse), Krysten Ritter, Steven Bauer, Robert Forster, Danny Trejo and many others.
Along the way, we learn a few things:
Walter is really, really good at this - and the crystal meth he creates is instantly legendary and in high demand
Walter really, really LIKES being good at this, and enjoys both the praise and the fact that people have started to fear him (or, rather, the “Heisenberg” persona he creates to hide behind). He’s also very egotistical - he doesn’t want his “reputation” on the street sullied by slightly inferior product, etc. He bullies people he has absolutely no business bullying and often creates problems that never needed to exist.
There’s no way this is going to end well.
If I was going to create a new TV list of my favorite characters (and please, don’t let me start down that road), Jesse Pinkman would be high up on that list. He’s such a fantastic, sad character - he’s been unloved, he doesn’t feel highly about himself, but he has skills and heart and just wants happiness. He also gets his ass kicked so many different times and ways, it’s always almost comical, but mostly soul crushing as he gets broken, completely and thoroughly. Aaron Paul is tremendous here, and justifiably won several Emmy’s for his work. (The fact that he almost always refers to his partner as “Mr. White” from when he was his student is also pretty charming.) What’s crazy is that show runner Vince Gilligan has acknowledged that without the writers strike, which shortened their first season by a few episodes, they would have killed Jesse off towards the end of that season - which would have dramatically hurt the show, to say the very least.
While we’re on the characters, it’s worth pushing back on the hate against Skylar - Walter’s wife is very much against his plan as she learns about it, and in the final season it gets turned up a notch in a very offsetting, realistic way. I don’t know what it says about our culture that many viewers were anti-Skylar for being so unsupportive and negative when her husband is producing and dealing meth and bringing the real risk of violence against her and her family into their home. Walt gets more and more disconnected with the reality of what he’s doing, while Skylar is more and more horrified by it. She’s on the right side of this, folks. I was also much more impressed with Skylar’s sister Marie (Betty Brandt) on a rewatch - all I really remembered is that she was always wearing purple and she was a downer - and her husband Hank (Dean Norris), who can come across as a bit cartoonish but is actually a fairly deep character whose boisterous personality masks a damn good detective and person.
Part of what distinguishes Breaking Bad is its unique visual storytelling. We see this literally from the pilot episode - we see a desert sky open up and slowly realize that falling into frame is … a pair of khaki pants with a belt on them …floating down from the sky. Then, rapidly we are in an RV speeding down the street, driven by a guy wearing only a pair of white brief underpants and a gas mask. He’s not alone in the RV. Another guy wearing a gas mask is passed out in the passenger seat, while we vaguely see another person (or two?) lying in a bunch of liquid in the back and also holding a gun. The RV crashes, the driver gets out and puts on a shirt (that was tied to a sideview mirror, records a video for his family - then takes out the gun and points it towards the sound of police cars driving his way.
I mean…yeah, I’m IN.
Even past the visual side of things, the way the stories are told in Breaking Bad make it a masterpiece - Season 2 begins with us seeing a pink teddy bear floating in a pool. We keep seeing this in snippets throughout the season - and when it’s finally revealed what it is, and why it’s important, it’s much more impactful if we’d seen the story evolve linearly. A scene early on in Season 1 involving a bathtub and hydrofluoric acid is one that no viewer will likely ever forget, being both horrifying and hilarious at the same time. And the creative ways we see some characters meet their demise was unlike anything I’d really seen before.
Breaking Bad lasted five seasons and I honestly don’t think there’s a bad episode in there - there’s not really even a mediocre one in the bunch, if I’m being honest. Every week was just yet another masterpiece, and I try not to use that term lightly. The show and seasons were always layered with mysteries and I won’t even tread towards spoiling any of them here. Even the pilot episode starts with the scene I described and then goes back in time to show you how we got there. There are tons of plot lines that Walt solves with science (including that bathtub episode), and it’s always clever (even if it’s not ALWAYS scientifically accurate, it turns out).
If for some reason you’ve skipped this, or think it’s a one-trick pony, I implore you to treat yourself to one of the very best series ever made.
How about you? Did you love this show as much as me? Let me know in the comments.
Here’s the list thus far. We’re getting close!
Yeah! I loved it! And when it’s all over and done with we’ll look back and say, “That was Great Television”!