Blood, Meth and Tears: Musings of Another Breaking Bad Addict in Withdrawal

It all started in the desert of To'hajiilee, where Commissioner Gordon stood in his pants, frantically toting a firearm in manner that seemed to scream, “amateur in over his head.” I’d seen the iconic image a few times, and it had always piqued my interest, but it wasn’t until it formed the basis of a mandatory anti-money laundering CPD seminar that Breaking Bad queue-jumped the dozens of other shows competing for my limited telly time and took over my life for a goggle-eyed month. A coinciding iTunes sale of the series’ six “deluxe” box sets helped.

The brainchild of noted X-Files staff writer Vince Gilligan, Breaking Bad is a drama that defies categorisation. By turns thrilling, comic, and cripplingly sad, the series takes a mild-mannered, middle-aged chemistry teacher and turns him “into Scarface.” What’s so remarkable is that it does it plausibly, perhaps even inexorably, and without ever turning the viewer against him fully. Indeed, I found myself championing him for almost four of the show’s six years, and still sympathising with him intermittently thereafter.

Diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in the series’ pilot (which, in of itself, rivals most feature films in terms of its quality, if not length), Walter White makes the poor decision to “break bad” in an attempt to provide for his pregnant and up-to-her-eyeballs-in-debt wife and teenage son. Exploiting his Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”)-employed brother-in-law’s expert knowledge of the drug trade and a compromised former pupil’s connections, Walt starts to cook the purest methamphetamine that Albuquerque has ever seen. And, right under the nose of his brother-in-law, his reluctant partner in crime starts to pedal it.

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Breaking Bad’s lofty reputation is built largely upon its nuts and bolts; the endless schemes and bellyaches that kept me glued to four or five shows at a time stretching out long into the night. The show’s first season is a compelling, semi-soap opera that tells of a liar trying to pull the wool over his loved ones’ eyes as he struggles to make meth pay for medicine. The longer Season 2 is a beautiful and thrilling concept piece that begins to drive the show into the nail-biting, hard-hitting sphere of 24, culminating in a set piece so massive in every sense that the viewer struggles to see how the writers could ever up the ante - but up it they do. Indeed, year three is probably the show’s finest, and undoubtedly its edgiest. The introduction of the Mexican cartel and Gus’s super-lab give it a sense of sheer scale that it had previously lacked; scale that is mirrored in the incredible, game-changing character developments that revivify the series’ most important relationships. 

Season 4 is billed as Walt’s thirteen-part game of chess with the cold and clinical Gus (played by the Oscar-worthy Giancarlo Esposito), and it’s exactly that - if queens are pipebombs and pawns are children. What’s commercially billed as ‘Season 5’, but technically is only its first half, is the most show’s most thrilling year by far - it’s Breaking Bad’s version of Revenge of Sith; the end of Walter White and the rise of Heisenberg. The eight-episode 2012 run, the so-called ‘Final Season’, is Vader cooking in the lava, excruciatingly drawn-out and examined from every possible angle.

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Beyond its procedural / plot-driven aspects, I really admire what Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently would call, “the fundamental interconnectedness of all things.” Huge, life or death moments turn on a quirk of coincidence or a forgotten thread - an incriminating book in a bathroom, a bereaved father’s momentary inattention, or even the lust-fuelled cooking of a tax swindler’s books. I’d say that the storytelling is chemical in its reactions, were it not so hard to predict.

What earns Breaking Bad its place in the highest echelons of television drama though is the beating black metaphor that is its heart. As the shadow on Walt’s lung grows, so does his “Heisenberg” alter ego. As the cancer eats away at Walt the teacher, Walt the husband, Walt the father, the kindness and altruism that was once the catalyst for his questionable actions is lost to egotism, fear and odium. Haunted by the business decisions of his past, Walt begins to see his product as less of a means to an end, and more of end in itself. Even his friendship with Jesse, arguably the only good thing borne of his life of crime, is ultimately lost to spite. In the end, it becomes so plain that even Heisenberg can see it for himself: “I did it for me,” he admits to a broken shell of a wife, and it’s the first true thing that he’s said to her since his diagnosis.

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I can’t praise enough the performances of the entire cast, from Bryan Cranston all the way down to Charles Baker and Matt L Jones, better known as Skinny Pete and Badger, but a few warrant extra special mention, chief amongst them the series’ lead. The Malcolm in the Middle and Dark Knight trilogy alumnus is so damned credible that it hurts; I wouldn’t have thought that anyone could have taken what was essentially my dad (and they do look uncannily alike), a dedicated teacher with a real love for his subject, if not for his pupils, and slowly twist him into a crime lord. Anna Gunn is every bit as good as his wife Skyler, and her job was almost as tough. Mrs Heisenberg had to be ultra-tough yet vulnerable, principled but compromised, and she’s exactly that throughout. Unlike Walt, who loses viewer sympathy as the story nears its end, the viewer never stops caring about her.

Aaron Paul’s role is similarly multifaceted. Initially pegged as a self-interested junkie and no more, the writers were quick to dig beneath Jesse Pinkman’s tired, “Yo, Mr White!” exterior and explore his troubled upbringing, eventually developing him into almost Heisenberg’s mirror opposite - a man who wants more than just instant gratification, money and status. Jesse and Walt are bound in completely different directions; Breaking Bad is where they briefly coincide. And if there’s a crumb of hope in its ending, it’s that Jesse will, somehow, make good.

Perhaps the series’ true breakout star though is RJ Mitte, without whom it would be all too easy for viewers to lose sight of Walt’s purpose. Walt Junior, or “Flynn”, perfectly and poignantly captures a loving teenage son faced with the prospect of losing his father, and all the hope and desperation that goes along with it. What makes him a particularly effective character is that he’s not whiter than white, if you’ll pardon the pun - he’s still a teenager trying to buy booze underage and impress his peers. But always there with him is a sadness; one that I don’t think that even Walt’s qualified success in the series finale, “Felina”, will ever remove.

Finally, there is one performer who really surprised me; one who, from the pilot, I saw as playing a bit of a cliché. Dean Norris’s Hank starts off as a crass caricature of the rough and tumble American cop stereotype - he’s all guns and donuts, with the odd lewd, manly gag thrown in. As events unfold though, he becomes nothing short of a bloody hero - and despite many stumbling blocks along the way too, both mental and physical. Again, much like Cranston, his journey is painfully believable. In the end you feel like he’s your brother-in-law - and you want him to win.

 

But nobody wins with meth; nobody wins by breaking bad, not in the long haul. Whether you’re cooking crystal or your boss’s books, whether you’re a bent lawyer or just a hired heavy, in the end you’ll lose. And that’s Vince Gilligan’s point. It ain’t bad karma, it’s science: A leads to B leads to C. And never before has it been expressed so engagingly, so dynamically... so chemically. And never will it be so again.

All six deluxe edition Breaking Bad box sets are available from iTunes in 1080p HD for £12.99 - £23.99 each. The first episode is often available for free (much in the same way that the first shot of heroin is often given away for free).