TV Retrospective: Breaking Bad Series

Bryan Cranston

For many, we are in the final week where Breaking Bad can be discussed without spoiling anything. While there have been many articles, podcasts, and gif images thrown around saying it all, I would like to think that the community is reverent enough to respect those who are still catching up. It is hard, though, as "Felina" left to show on a high note, wrapping up science teacher Walter White's (Bryan Cranston) story in the only way it could, and reviving the career of Badfinger in the process. Being hailed as the new novel, AMC's gamble with this show has been impressive to the point where six years ago, the show's season one finale drew in a little over a million viewers and on Sunday reached 10 million. Few shows in history have had that trajectory. So what makes this show so special then?

There is a lot that could be said about Breaking Bad. Many argue that its realism and the theme that actions have consequences is its real charm. There's even the notion that Walter's anti-hero nature and landmine personality gives the show an edge of anything goes. The show never played it safe, but in theory, so did Low Winter Sun, which has become the punchline to every joke about subpar TV. There was so much more to it, and it could largely be that it took the drama TV idea and created an anti-thesis: it worked itself out of corners every week instead of stopping when they got there. It was very much in the Walter vein, even from the first episode where he uses science to escape death. Many points on the show do feel a little much and rely on suspension of disbelief, but it was never overpowered by the human emotional center.

My essential take on Breaking Bad's arch was that it was all about its title: breaking bad, or disobedience. Walter epitomizes what selfish choices to make meth and kill everyone in their way can do. As the camera pulls away from him for the last time, he has completed his own story. He is broke, dying in a meth lab with no chance of running from his identity. His legacy is no longer about his family, but that he was the meth kingpin of the southwest. He lost his family, including the death of his brother-in-law that had been chasing him the entire time, and with cancer practically killing him, there was no chance of a happy ending. What made the show exciting is not only how despicable he slowly became in an impressive transforming way, but that it was also a look at the downfall of the American Dream and how it plays into disobedience. Walter essentially lost out on the chance to make billions for the company Gray Matter and when cancer ate him up, he had to act fast to achieve the American Dream: provide for his family. Even if it was more for him, the proposed $737,000 quick turned into millions and his soul was taken with it. In a nutshell, it was the American Dream in time of a recession and the desperation to become rich any means necessary.

The other take on everything is in Walter's partner Jesse: A junkie high school drop-out who sells meth and says bitch a lot. He was already on a bad track, but somehow Walter, who started off the better of the two socially, gave him a reason to live, at least for half of the first season. Jesse was initially supposed to be killed off, but managed to survive based on actor Aaron Paul's charismatic chemistry with Bryan Cranston. He soon began getting his own stories, and episodes like "Down" and "Peekaboo" succeeded because of Jesse's growing moral core. He still smoked and did shady things, but there was a sense of growth. Albuquerque to him became a nightmare akin to the Vietnam War where seeing junkies get smashed by ATM machines and children getting shot convinced him that he was not fit for this atmosphere. The disobedience was shrinking and "The Danger" (as Walter called himself in "Cornered") was keeping him from fully breaking good as it were. The basic idea that the show began doing around season two is that where Walter was breaking bad, Jesse was breaking good. It broke stereotypes by showing the decline and rise of morality in the least likely suspects. In "Felina," Jesse may be scarred and never able to recover, but his goodbye telling Walter to "Do it yourself" in reference to dying, he broke the last chain of his loyalty. He was now able to break out and go into the world without being chained to his past. His last moments may have been overshadowed by Walter, but he officially broke good.

With these two opposing viewpoints, it seemed like the perfect operation all along. However, the drug community is not necessarily one that needs glorification. Movies have been doing it for years with stoner comedies. This show managed to land in a middle ground, both romanticizing and exploiting the horrors of the business. With D.E.A.'s Hank also serving as the show's cat and mouse imminent threat, this show just didn't attempt to show the world from the villain's perspective, but everyone's. Hank had his own traumatic experiences after working temporarily in El Paso in "Negro y Azul" and his sendoff was a shock, as it meant that with three episodes to go, it was no longer a cat and mouse game, but officially on Walter's head to come to terms with his actions. Even Skyler became a strong independent woman in the face of Walter and is probably the most noble character because she tried to keep the family together like a mother should. In fact, the only flaw in the series was Marie's temporary kleptomaniac phase. I have no explanation for that other than the show's scrapped attempt to claim that even good people do bad things.

Left to right: Cranston and Aaron Paul

The moment that the show officially went from just highly addicting to actual poetry came in the season two finale "ABQ." Nowadays, people spend hours dissecting the episode titles of every season, wondering what the connection is. You can thank season two for taking it to that level. While season two is quintessentially the best because everyone in my top 10, save for one character, had been introduced by this point. We had yet to understand the menace of Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), but we had the show at its peak of creativity with Jesse in a relationship with Jane (Krysten Ritter) and Walter finally starting to be taken seriously. "ABQ" was a culmination of the season where Walter finally proved that he wasn't going to let anyone stand in his way, not even the cancer that seemed to come and go throughout the series. Probably the most admirable from a writing standpoint is the cryptic message parlayed through the season via a pink teddy bear floating in a black and white swimming pool. If you followed the episode titles in which they appeared, it spelled "737 Down Over ABQ." Four episode titles that held a double meaning, as "Down" reflected Jesse's lowest point to that date. It also was the moment where everything felt connected. The Wayfarer plane crash story happened indirectly because Walter watched Jane die, which not only changed the town, but sent Jesse into a downward spiral that only got worse. Even his new girlfriend Andrea (Emily Rios) wouldn't be long for this world, as she met her fate in "Granite State." Those four titles paved the way for cryptic messages for the remaining three seasons, though not on as grand a scale. While there was some sense of continuation in season three with pairing episodes like "No Mas" and "Mas" and "Half Measures" and "Full Measure" reflecting evolution, these themes were slowly devolved to just singular episodes, the most notable being "Gliding Over All," which wouldn't make sense to anyone not familiar with Walt Whitman's work, which eventually got Hank onto Walter's trail.

The supporting cast was also phenomenal. Beyond the central players, the show had this odd habit of turning one time performances into crucial cast members. Mike (Jonathan Banks) went from being a clean-up guy in "ABQ" to a crucial player whose famous "No half measures" speech remains the pinnacle of the show's dialogue writing. Gus as the villain was an accident, as creator Vince Gilligan's initial plan was to have Tio (Mark Margolis) continue the Salamanca villain trend. The show is an example of happy accidents largely because they didn't plot everything out on day one. They played it by ear and as a result, iconic characters like Mike, Gus, and even Jesse all were a crucial part of the show. Even shorter lived performers, like Gale (David Costabile) popped up from time to time, serving as Walter's deus ex machina with a pretty great karaoke video and a bunch of damning evidence against Walter. The show didn't make you care necessarily for one person, but by adding vulnerability to everyone else, Walter's rise to power seemed more and more evil. Yet, Cranston is too charismatic to not make him magnetic as a character.

The show was very smart on how it decided to lay out the universe. Even if tended to fly by the seat of its pants, it always had a sense of where it was going. Along the way, it managed to make Albuquerque into the most majestic place in the world. It is fortunate that the show show in New Mexico as opposed to Los Angeles, as originally intended. It allowed the story to become more of an isolated feel where the world isn't as voyeuristic or familiar. It required long drives and plenty of open spaces where business meetings took place. This would come into play after season three, when Gus would tell Walter to play ball, or he will kill their family. It was also the perfect set-up for episodes like "4 Days Out," which required the idea of an RV being broken down to actually hold plausibility. In Los Angeles, it wouldn't work as well, but in the desert, it managed to feel more secluded and allowed the characters to grow not only in their meth making ways, but also in the uncomfortable down time that came with it. Those moments in "4 Days Out" where the two are learning to work as partners reveals a lot, notably about Walter's true motives to Jesse.

It was also a show of visual poetry. As cryptic and fun as the show titles were, the episodes themselves were also just beautiful to watch. The show started off early doing time lapses and montages that were upbeat examples of drug dealing. These were all beautiful in their own right, but the true gifts didn't come until time had progressed and the show's time lapses became used more as narrative devices. Meth cooking went from stylistic mixes of tubes and chemicals to having this sheen of coolness. In "Gliding Over All," the show managed to hit two of the show's strongest montages with "Crystal Blue Persuasion" and "Start Over Again." It took the level of what could be told in an hour-long program and amped it up by showing the growth of Walter's empire and distribution of months into five minutes. It was beautiful, and the cinematography was gorgeous. Even the less crucial scenes had some benefit of camera majesty with the point of view shot. While it could be considered more of a gimmick, the average episode of Breaking Bad had shots that would seem impossible to film, including shots coming out of dryers, rolling barrels, underneath the actual meth, and much more. It created a perspective that seemed to make the process seem cooler, but also just make the world that much more authentic.The show changed the way that TV could be filmed by borrowing things that have been done in movies for years. In episodes like "Ozymandias," the metaphorical hell is visualized through cues that included making the desert seem more bleak, and also featuring continuity of Walter's pants that were lost in "Pilot" found in the foreground of one shot. The show's success at continuity is beyond astonishing and it shows how attention to detail was something that gave the show some edge.

Along with the cryptic titles came the show's most interesting concept: color theory. Since the beginning, it almost seemed like the color choices were deliberate, with the slow progression from one phase of color to another showing Walter's slow loss of self and into the pale, empty man that he became. It is gradual and unnoticeable to the casual viewer, but it did raise a lot of great concepts. For years, many wondered how Walter's daughter Holly would die because she was garbed in pink. Pink was considered to symbolize death throughout the show's existence. Walter was wearing pink when the Wayfarer events happened in "ABQ." There were many other examples, but Holly was epitomized as wearing pink. It left many to wonder what exactly would happen. As I predicted, absolutely nothing, but with the introduction of color theory, we got the sense of identity that went beyond words and actions. This universe felt realized in ways that an X-Files alumnus wouldn't be assumed to follow. Even Marie's slow descent from purple into black almost showed a sense of mourning for her departed husband. 

The final thing that gave the show an edge is that it had one hell of a soundtrack. Thanks largely to Thomas Golubic and Dave Porter. Porter is one of the show's most powerful secret weapons by the compositions that he made. The most notable one that comes to mind is "Crawl Space," which turns Walter's shrieking laughter into a haunting, pulsing nightmare with a hemorrhage waiting to burst. The score brought an intensity to the scenes ranging from aggressive and maddening to eerily calm with a chimed effect. When creating the theme, Porter described that he created it by conceptualizing Breaking Bad as a neo-western. It explains the small twangs and banging drums that have since become one of the shortest, most iconic pieces of music in modern TV history. Golubic is the music supervisor, who was responsible for every song choice imaginable. As a person who subscribes to the class that a song can change a scene and give it more of an impact, this show was a prime example of how a tune shifted mood. Golubic was a master, mixing hip-hop, pop, classic rock, mariachi, and even Italian songs into the show and giving it a sense of personality that was distinct to each and every character. Gale singing Italian in his apartment was probably the single-most important moment in sympathizing Gale because without actual description, we saw just who he was: a nerd. Like most characters, he was taken too soon, and I thank the Italian song largely as solidifying him in that camp. Of course, the moment that rings truest for Golubic's success is the final moments set to Badfinger's "Baby Blue." The moment could have been played for bleak farewell, but somehow this ending of a man who lost it all for selfishness became a love song about Walter dying for his beloved mistress. It is a powerful scene because as a dead Walter stares up into the sky, we think about everything he did and feel remiss by the highs and lots of of lows that this character has brought us.

Jonathan Banks

The show ran the gamut of emotions. Most of all, it made you feel like the worst people were somehow sympathetic. I believe that this is a story about morals and the consequences that come with actions. As previously discussed, I think the shock more came from desperation for the American Dream and how you lose yourself in it. Of course, this has been the theme for almost every great American work from Citizen Kane to F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." While Breaking Bad is arguably more stylized and niche, it deserves to be in those ranks of works that reflected something about us all in times of recession. We may not be drug lords or running car washes, but we try to get by. In a way, the final moments of "Felina" are poetic because for two years, we have followed Walter try and achieve that dream, and he has succeeded in a roundabout way. He may be more notorious than famous, but he dies with a legacy that people will forever know him for, even if he gave it all up for noble causes. He may have ruined lives, but the capitalist nature of Walter were given up in the end because he realized that this was it. He had nothing to live for. He could either go out with the cancer, or find another way. In a way, he freed everyone of his annoyance. It is a sad way to think, but it is an extremist viewpoint of how many people have given up small parts of themselves for their dreams of financial living. It is only shocking because Walter did it by facing death every other episode. It made him sort of badass, but also just human. We may disagree with him, but even his post-"Blood Money" story of trying to be a good person reflects what we all strive for: that past innocence once we reach a place of comfort. It never comes back entirely.

I am not saying that I loved every minute of this show, but even the weak spots are captivating and full of memorable moments. While I particularly love season two, I feel like season three was a step down and too much contemplation. Even then, you had episodes like "One Minute," "Fly," "Half Measures," and "Full Measure" to compensate. The show never lacked in story because it was all impressively progressing slowly but surely. With plenty of quips and memorable lines, the show never lost sight of what it was going for, and that may be its biggest success. It even managed to gain viewers and end on a very strong final season. It is easy to take this show for granted as a result, and sometimes I do, but the complexity that goes into color theory, song choices, cryptic titles, great supporting characters, and consistent memorable surprises are all what made the show so likable, even for those like me who never would go near a pile of meth. While it arguably never showed the proper side-effects of the product, it was about moral corruption of the distributor, which is a far more interesting concept. It may have benefited from crazy meth heads, but like the ending, this was all about Walter, and while I have as many questions about the show as I did before, Walter's story is over. Part of me desired an episode, to be ballsy, for the show to have killed off Walter and it was just everyone dealing with his legacy. In a way, I feel like that is the open ended aspect of the show. We know everything about this one man, which was the goal. But its up to you to figure out everyone else's racket.

The show ended as strong as it began, with striking imagery that challenges entertainment to follow to not just be an imitator. In fact, the success story of Breaking Bad almost suggests that anti-heroes are on the way out. Low Winter Sun will never be able to be the next Breaking Bad no matter how hard it is advertised. AMC's other premiere show Mad Men is about to deal with its last season. There aren't too many flagship programs to keep the steam going, and who knows what the next hit is going to be. Will any grasp audiences the way that this show did, capturing the zeitgeist more and more, thanks to the capability of Netflix and other streaming services? It is impressive that the show managed to be so good, and while I support Vince Gilligan's next move, this feels like a phenomenon captured in a bottle. We'll never have anything like it again, even if just because we'll see it as a copycat. I'll probably recap the spin-off Better Call Saul, but like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., it does feel like a gimmick that won't payoff. 

In closing, Breaking Bad may thrive not only as a great show, but a dissection of morality and character evolution. It only lasted 62 episodes and it was thankfully due to being ignored by every other network. In that time, I have been captivated, wrote 71 pieces on the show, and built my own empire of fandom for it. Even playing "Baby Blue" nowadays gets me choked up. Not since Soap have I felt a season was so aware of its goal that it succeeded in spite of potential devastation  While Soap never made it to season five, Breaking Bad did, and while both ended in a hail of gunfire, we'll always know what happened to Walter White (though we do technically know what happened to Jessica Tate because of Soap's own spin-off Benson). I wonder how time will treat this show, though right now it seems to be full of life and minor details to discover with every rewatch. Hopefully with time, more and more people will join the conversation and this will be recalled fondly through catch phrases, memorable scenes, and just being able to prove that with enough effort, a show that had the dumbest premise on a channel known for showing reruns of old movies could actually succeed. 

Most of all, Breaking Bad was the show that got me into dramas. It got me to overlook Bryan Cranston as the guy from the grating Malcolm in the Middle. It got me to appreciate character and plot devices over the actual show's plot. I may have been stuck in a spell of admiration to the point that I only began hating Walter after "Confessions," but the ride was something that I don't regret doing. It has filled up a lot of nights thinking of new theories and watching reruns to find new gems. The show went out on top, and I look forward to one day watching the series in a long marathon and maybe having the ending strike more of an emotional chord than it already had a powerful attempt on. 71 articles on Breaking Bad, and this is the end of the road. It has been great, and while I feel a void in my passion, at least I have the memories and the culture that pushed TV into bizarre new places: the desert, a nursing home, and even a meth head's house. What show could possibly be that great and still take me there? I cannot wait to find out.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5