I need to re-watch Breaking Bad. Not to annoy anyone on a fine Monday, but were we all a bit taken in? Do you ever walk around thinking “I must watch that again?” I don’t. It’s been a while, and looking back, Breaking Bad doesn’t seem as crazily amazing as it did on the first watch.
Fair warning, this article is loaded with spoilers!
The first season was a great piece of television. It had a brilliant premise – dying chemistry teacher makes meth. Instant intrigue. It capitalised on that premise, too. The image of Walt in his white underpants got burnt into the pop-culture consciousness pretty much straightaway. Remember being shocked at the discovery of Bryan Cranston? Turns out the dad from Malcom In The Middle could act. Who knew? None of us. It was great. It was a rocking season The acid bathtub, the basement strangling, fulminated mercury? Hells yeah. The series finale had ten million viewers and a lot of promise. The next four seasons made for some seriously engrossing television.
We could go on a long time about the highlights (remember the ATM?), but with a little distance, some of Breaking Bad seems a bit more miss than hit.
Fulminated Mercury
Walter can make Meth and throwable explosives. Why does he not think about that more often? It may have come in a little handy later on in the series, but he never goes back to his ability to cook bombs. Cook bombs. Why didn’t he bomb more people more often?
Jesse just leaves the Show
Jesses’ love, Jane, dies in season two by Walts’ hands. It’s an utter betrayal and difficult to watch. Jesses’ response is a natural, human one – devastating grief. He goes into rehab and tries to cope with his self-hatred. This is accurate writing, but Jesse just checks out of the show. Now, I know he checks out of the show in the show, but he also, out of the show, checks out of the show. I remember a stretch of Jesse doing a whole lot of nothing. Did this frustrate no-one else?
Walt’s character and the Fly Episode
The entire arc of Breaking Bad is a Scarface story – the descent of a good man, the making of a monster. Solid stuff. The fly episode was supposed to be this micro-cosmic metaphor of Walt’s mental degeneration and feelings of being trapped. Was it that? All I remember is an episode that didn’t go anywhere. It’s a metaphor all right, a metaphor for over-rating things.
Gus
Gus Fring blew me away (no pun intended). The idea that a drug lord could be so mild-mannered and hidden in plain sight was excellent. Not only was the idea great, Gus was beautifully realised by Giancarlo Esposito. What irks me now about how Walt handled Gus is – why did Walt not seem to see the value of what Gus had created? Walt knew he’d eventually get killed. The cat-and-mouse game between him and Walt was tense and interesting, but when Gus wasn’t a threat anymore, Walt started to act out of character. His academic pragmatism was gone, and he started botching up the infrastructure that Gus created. Walt had the chance to take the throne but he didn’t, because… reasons? I think it would have made some compelling television if Walt had decided to take the reins for real.
The Nazis
The Nazis. With Gus gone, the series needed a new big bad. You don’t get much worse than Nazis. Looking back, they seem a little like low-hanging fruit. Gus was characterised as a businessman, a cook and a person who used to love. The Nazis were more clear-cut than most antagonists had been previously. You could argue that the twins were pure evil, but they added an element of gothic horror to the show. They brought the almost supernatural violence of the Mexican Drug world into Walts’. Even their silence is a stylistic choice to heighten an eerie quality. For storytelling purposes, the twins escalate things. The Nazis are just Nazis. Pure bad. If Walt was in charge of Gus’ operation, we could have had more fully rounded antagonists.
Bad Break Up
These are my main bugbears, the things that I think about at the kitchen table on a Sunday. Sure, we saw the pizza thing and the pink Teddy and Mike the Hitman. We all loved it when it came out. Breaking Bad just doesn’t pop into my head when I when I think about what to watch. However, In researching this article I came across a lot of things I had forgotten but remember loving.
Remember the shootouts, Hank’s minerals, the head-on-a-turtle, Jesses’ party house, the ricin? How about Saul? Or Youel? The low-rider bouncing post-gunfight? Great stuff.
I just don’t know if Breaking Bad is as good as I remember. Time to rewatch it.
What’s your take?
