Breaking Bad - TV Review

I am honestly just in a state of awe. Not like after I watched Gods of Egypt at the start of November this year, but a different kind of awe. I just watched something that made me feel so many things and left me so content and fulfilled. There have been a lot of things I have experienced and this been like nothing else. You know like how your parents (or you are parents/ older individuals) talk about something that's changed a generation or become such an icon that it's molded a generation? That is what I have just gone through for I think I have just finished watching one of the greatest TV shows I have ever (and might ever) see: Breaking Bad.

Breaking Bad is the story of Walter White, a high school science teacher who one day discovers he has stage-three lung cancer. The treatments however are very expensive and can take a majority, if not all, the money needed for the rest of his family to live a happy life. Soon though his brother in law, Hank, who works for the DEA, tells him of a meth lab he busted and the insane amount of money that could have been made from all that methamphetamine. This gives Walt an insane idea: Start cooking and selling his own meth in order to secure his family's financial future before he dies. To do that though he teams up with a former student and social delinquent, Jesse Pinkman, and the two turn to a life of crime by becoming meth cooks. They get deeper and deeper into the drug underworld of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and soon Walter and Jesse are doing their best to survive the countless dangers of their new, illegal careers.

You have to have been living under a rock to not heard of Breaking Bad. It was given an 86% on its first season and 100%s on its other four seasons on Rotten Tomatoes, ranked #4 on highest rated TV shows on IMDB, and has won countless awards for its acting, editing, directing, and overall greatness. To be honestly I felt so ashamed I never got into it sooner. But it was only until a few years ago that I began to take my analysis of digital media to a more professional degree. But that I've gone through all five seasons of Breaking Bad I feel something I haven't felt in a very long time: overwhelming satisfaction. After going through season 8 of both The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones (then later Fear the Walking Dead season 5) I lost a lot of my innocence and gained a some bitterness towards some shows and their inability to stick proper landings or just devolve into childish plot-lines. But Breaking Bad, throughout every season, never let me down and always kept me eager, almost frothing at the mouth for more. So with that, there will be some small spoilers. You have been warned.

The main reason for this is the characters and I got to talk about our main two protagonists first. Bryan Cranston as Walter White is perfect. I am going to use that word a lot in this review, but he is so damn good in this show and I was mesmerized by his performance. While I haven't watched much of him and know him a bit from Malcom in the Middle, where he's very comedic. I've also seen interviews with him and he seems a very nice person who can be a little goofy (though his antics made laugh ridiculously hard). And yet in this show he's giving it 110% at being serious! The way he grows from a tired science teacher to a kingpin meth dealer and criminal mastermind is truly amazing, being both loathsome, yet sympathetic. You can see him always under stress from trying to cook meth while keeping his double life a secret. Plus as he gets deeper into drug underworld it starts to change him and he makes him perform some really vile, monstrous things. Yet he believes they're necessary to protect his family's safety and finances. George R. R. Martin, the man behind Game of Thrones/ A Song of Ice and Fire, has stated:

“Walter White is a bigger monster than anyone in Westeros." (2013)

The man who wrote the Red Wedding, twins that fuck each other so much they spawn three children from their incest, a family whose main notoriety is them skinning their prisoners alive, and crippled a child of 8 (or 10 if you're watching the start of the show), says Walter White is more of a monster than any of his characters... That is frightening, but also true as the show gets into its later seasons. At a certain point near the end of the show I started to think, "Wow, I really liked this guy? What the hell... he's turned into a horrible, evil person." Yet I still wanted to see more of him and his story.

Then there is Jesse Pinkman, played by Aaron Paul. Another fantastic performance that has won a lot of award, Jesse starts out like one of the wannabee gangsters who acts all tough and is kind of a loose cannon. At first he's stupid and hotheaded, but quickly Walt's seriousness changes Jesse and he matures as the show grows on. But it also hardens him and breaks in him several ways, making him both care about the people close to him while being uncaring for those around because he has suffered too much to really give a shit about anything. He just keeps being punished physically and mentally and it's very tragic to watch. It's really damn sad to watch him go through all this over the course of the show, but it also makes him more relatable as Walter becomes more corrupt. By meeting new people and learning more on how to live other than his laid-back, asshole lifestyle from before meeting Walter White. Aaron Paul just really sells this character, but in his youthful attitude, but also the mature and beaten down man he becomes as he and Walt's meth business keeps getting bigger.

To be honest there is not a single weak link in the casting, it is all top notch. Anna Gun as Skyler White, Walter's wife, was incredibly believable in her performance as a wife who has to deal with eventually finding out that her husband is a meth dealer/ cook. Dean Norris as Hank Schrader, Walt's brother-in-law and a DEA agent, can be both very funny while also dead serious in his performance. Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman, a crooked strip mall lawyer, has so much charisma to him, so much charm to his performance it's no wonder he got his own spinoff show called Better Call Saul. Giancarlo Esposito as Gustavo "Gus" Fring, Chilean owner of a fast food fried chicken restaurant chain and who's secretly a high-level drug distributor, can go from sweet and charming to the most cold, serious, ruthless person ever with a snap of a finger. These guys and all the rest of the cast put on some incredible performances. It's no wonder the show won so many awards for acting. Everyone has fantastic chemistry with one another, especially Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul.

Now I've talked about them a lot, but what is it really that has made people consider a lot of these characters some of the best ever shown on television? What's the secret to this show that made people keep going back and see a family man become an almost evil monster? I've narrowed it down to this: The characters are flawed and they have goals. Walter, for example, despite becoming smarter and wiser on how to survive his secret, criminal life, is very bitter, prideful, and selfish, even before he took up cooking meth. Hank, despite being very good as his job in the DEA, becomes obsessive over his work and can be quite oblivious of his actions bringing harm to other people. Every character in this show is flawed in some way, whether it's emotional, physical, mentally. Even some of the nastier characters have a few positive traits and goals to them that make you want to care for them, but you know they got to die or else some of the characters you care more about are going to die sooner. Only in the last season was there a group of people I just couldn't find any good character traits for, but you'd have to be blind to not notice how horrible they are (and how much you want them violently murdered). These character flaws make these people incredibly realistic that it almost feels like this was a real thing, that this actually happened in real life.

Another aspect of the show that makes it feel so real is the science behind it. I've seen some shows that say they're realistic and have people from all sorts of scientific fields helping in the production, but there are always at least a few episodes that go over the top with certain matters and that loses some realism. Not with Breaking Bad. Now I'm not an expert in chemistry, but the way the show handles its science, from cooking meth to dissolving bodies in plastic bins to making frickin' bombs is explained in ways that just made it feel so real. With Walter being a science teacher he knows a lot of chemistry and other neat tricks. In fact in the second episode of the series, after Walt and Jesse think they kill two people, they bring the bodies to Jesse's house and Walt is going to melt down the bodies with hydrofluoric acid and has Jesse get some plastic bins. However we find out that Jesse does not buy the bins because he can't find one bin enough for whole human body, so he tries dissolving it in the bathtub. The acid eats through the tub and the floor and liquefied flesh just melts through the ceiling and I almost vomited when I first saw that moment. That moment so early in the show just immediately tells us that there is real science in this show and we need to take it seriously.

The whole feels very grounded in reality despite being a work of fiction. If I had never heard of the show before watching it and somebody say me down, showed me a few episodes, and told me this was based on real events, I'd believe them. Every episode, even the filler episodes, have this writing that just makes them so believable. The conflicts aren't over the top like suddenly the FBI are chasing people through the streets or some massive political bullshit, but really grounded conflicts that really get our characters into the thick of it. There is a filler episode called "Fly," about a fly that gets into Walter's lab and he is possibly overreacting to the fly, saying it could contaminate the meth they're cooking, so he and Jesse send a whole day trying to catch this fly. It sounds silly, but eventually Jesse talks about how his grandmother, who also had cancer, started hallucinating that a possum that had been taken away by animal control during her early cancer stages was still under the house making noises. We, the audience kind of question if the fly is actually there or if Walt is seeing things because the cancer is screwing with his psyche. I just love the writing for this show. Additionally, it can really drop some heavy surprises, like you think you know what's about to happen and it does happen, but definitely not the way you think it's going to happen.

Beyond all of this the show looks incredibly beautiful. The cinematography is really damn good with beautiful close and wide shots, plus some very close up shots. There is one scene where these two guys are just laying on a huge pile of money like it's a bed and... wow, that moment was both hilarious, but also made me want to know what it would feel like. There is a bit of saturation changes in certain scenes, but they're done just enough to really make everything pop out without looking out of place. Even some of the handheld(?) scenes were very stable and caught of lot great moments. It's also edited very well, the shots in action sequences or high-tension scenes were blended together very cleanly, showing the audience what's clearly going on. The production of the show as well is very high with lots of fantastic practical effects, well designed and iconic sets, and just a ton of getting everything to look right. The meth labs especially, whether they're in a real lab or a Winnebago. There is some digital effects, but a majority it is practical and it looks really damn good! It's just amazing that there are still shows that can mostly rely on real sets and there is still hope that such shows can still be made now.

Breaking Bad is a perfect show. Fantastic cast, incredible writing, a plot that is both unique, out there, and grounded in reality, and very strong directing. Every episode kept me excited for the next one and so tense what was going to happen. I kept holding my breath in over what was about to happen and that happened in almost every single episode of the masterpiece. The characters felt amazingly real, like real people I could care about. When the final episode ended I felt so sad, but also so happy that it ended with such a perfect ending. It wasn't dragged out or ended too soon, it ended the way it wanted. If I could give this show a grade higher than a perfect score I would, but I can't soooooo...

Tentative Score: 10/10

Definitive Score: 10/10

Man, can't wait next year to watched El Camino and see what happens to Jesse Pinkman. Plus I got to catch up on the newest season of Better Call Saul. Also, while it doesn't relate to Breaking Bad, Bob Odinkirk is going to be in a John Wick like movie called Nobody and apparently he trained for two years to learn how to fight seriously. That sounds fucking awesome!