I was in Turkey when Breaking Bad started airing on CNBC-e, in original, subtitled. This was the only channel with such features, and I was glad it exists and bought distribution rights for many more. I had a lot on my hands then, so, I wasn’t all eyes and ears watching the pilot. Besides, a crime drama with Malcolm in the Middle‘s Bryan Cranston and the newcomer Aaron Paul? Let’s be serious. Anyway, I was wrong.
Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul (Jesse Pinkman)
As Vince Gilligan, Breaking Bad show’s creator, said once, during the last season, a show centering on a middle-aged guy who makes a modest middle-class income is not attractive. The fact that this fifty-something guy gets his news that he’s dying of cancer in the first episode was not sexy at all. Also, taking his chemistry knowledge and, with the motivation that he’s dying, decides to cook crystal meth, the nastiest, most nonredeemable drug there is was the third thing that doesn’t plead for a future TV hit.
Breaking Bad – Plot
Back home, I completely changed my mind and my views. Breaking Bad is one of the best TV shows ever made. Why is that? It is a piece of life, as quirky as it comes, and the screenplay is flawless.
Bryan Cranston as a Chemistry Teacher
The plot is simple. Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher finds out he has lung cancer. He panicked at the thought his family will be left on the streets because his teacher’s salary was only small change compared to the needs that were to come. He took a second job at a car washing center managed by a Romanian. He was married to Skyler (this reminds me of Heroes, but here doesn’t matter), a strong-willed lady who has a very dumb sister. Unfortunately, the sister is married to a DEA agent, Hank, a smart-ass bald guy, who never missed the chance to ridicule Walt on his softness. Much worse is that Walt and Skyler’s sick son venerated his macho uncle, Hank. What nobody knew or ever considered, is that Walt is a genius. On one of his walls hanges on an award which stated: “Science Research Center/Los Alamos, New Mexico/Hereby recognizes/WALTER H. WHITE/Crystallography Project Leader for Proton Radiography/1985/Contributor to Research Awarded the Nobel Prize”. Impressive, isn’t it?
On his 50th birthday, during his celebration’s evening, his brother-in-law, Hank, switched the TV set to a news channel where he has been featured as the chief contributor to a DEA raid where a methamphetamine lab was dismembered and no less than $700k were hauled in cash. “I’ll take you to one of these raids, you can watch us knock down a meth lab… Get a little excitement in your life, he, he.”
Bryan Cranston (Walt White) and Dean Norris (Hank Schrader)
What I said about my interest in the show at the beginning, was only because I wasn’t taking hold of everything happening on the screen, I was cooking (some food, not meth, yo), I had my mind away from the screen. Re-watching the pilot, this time undistracted, I realized that it prepared you for almost everything coming next because a genius of Mr. White’s caliber is rarely a “light” man. A large quantity of money and underground fame rarely didn’t act as an aphrodisiac.
Breaking Bad, another Poster
After that raid with Hank, Walt decided to partner up with Jesse Pinkman, one of his former students, to cook crystal meth on a big scale, to achieve the necessary funds to cover his family needs after his death. From that moment on, everything is just history, with some chapters when Walter became Heisenberg and apparently loses his scruples, and Jesse slips down to morality mostly because he thinks he hasn’t anything more to lose. A colored, ignorant, frail character this Pinkman, and definitely very interesting. It seemed to me during the whole show, that Jesse was just a pray. First for Walter, then for everyone else, culminating with Todd’s uncle Jack.
Cast
Bryan Cranston is Walter White, the breaking bad genius. Anna Gunn is Skyler White, Walter’s wife. Aaron Paul is Jesse Pinkman, Walter’s partner in crime. Dean Norris is Hank Schrader, Walter’s brother-in-law, a DEA agent. Betsy Brandt is Marie Schrader, Hank Schrader’s wife, and Skyler’s sister. RJ Mitte is Walter White, Jr. Bob Odenkirk is Saul Goodman, a lawyer. Steven Michael Quezada is Steven Gomez, another DEA agent. Jonathan Banks is Mike Ehrmantraut, a fixer. Giancarlo Esposito is Gustavo ‘Gus’ Fring, a junk-food network’s owner, and a drug lord. Charles Baker is Skinny Pete, one of Jesse’s junkie friends. Jesse Plemons is Todd, a deceiving psychopath. Christopher Cousins is Ted Beneke. Laura Fraser is Lydia Rodarte-Quayle, another deceiving psycho. Matt Jones is Badger, another one of Jesse’s companions. Krysten Ritter is Jane Margolis, one of Jesse’s girlfriends.
Giancarlo Esposito and Jonathan Banks
Just Some Thoughts
A lot of questions remain unanswered in the end. A new movie coming as a sequel was already released, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, but that’s about Jesse. Not a bad piece either, I’ll review it maybe later. I haven’t watched yet the collateral show “Better Call Saul“, where maybe a few things will get clarified.
I’d like to talk a little about the general impression I had and it’s only more polished now. “Crime doesn’t pay” is not always a general rule, but applies here, in Breaking Bad. The family notion had also too little significance, I couldn’t grasp it. Walter Jr, the cerebral palsied son, venerated more his officially gun firing licensed uncle than his brilliant father. Nobody, no member in his family ever appreciated the sacrifice Walter did before becoming the Heisenberg. By the way, the nickname Walt choose comes from Werner Heisenberg, one of the quantum mechanics pioneers. He participated together with Niels Bohr, in the secret Nazi German nuclear weapons project during WWII.
Bryan Cranston with his Heisenberg Hat
[source for all pics: imdb.com]
Walt’s wife, Skyler, didn’t respect him, but maybe she never hated him, not in the end either. The son’s behavior, “Flynn”, is absolutely depressing. Unfortunately, not only his behaviour but his acting was saddening as well. I didn’t understand what did they want to prove by casting a real paraplegic to play a paraplegic? It wasn’t credible at all, on the contrary, along with the scenes with Marie Schrader, Skyler’s sister, all his apparitions were totally boring. As for the Schraders, it was credible until Hank shows to be devilishly smart. So smart, that he was dying inside for not having figured out sooner his brother-in-law with “a brain as big as the state of Wisconsin” was “The” Heisenberg. He was totally henpecked, his wife being so silly, she wasn’t even funny. She was mainly annoying or just dull.
Breaking Bad Poster
Walter White is the anti-hero, all right. He was humiliated as a teacher in class, by a bunch of retards, he was more humiliated by two of the retards at his second job, as a workman at a car washing plant. He was robbed by his contribution to a future multi-billion chemical corporation. He is looked at with pity and contempt by almost everyone he knew. He has 3rd-degree lung cancer. Besides, a lot of small other annoyances contributed to his decisions, because in a pretty short time, crime started to pay!
An Overspoiling Trailer
The biggest unsolved question of them all (unresolved after El Camino as well), is the following: after government hauled as much as it could from Heisenberg’s money, where, or, who will benefit of all the rest of it ($65-70m), taken by Jack’s Aryan gang?
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