Like the West Wing before it, I had completely missed out on the phenomenon that was Breaking Bad as its story unfolded over five seasons. As I notice that friends have only recently caught up with it, I can only assume that this was the reason no-one in my acquaintance was telling me about this much-watch program from the US. Better late than never I say, so, over the course of a couple of weeks enforced TV consumption facilitated by a broken ankle, I positively gorged on BrBa, gulping down episode after episode. And now, here I am on the other side of the journey and, I have to say, what a journey it was!
In Walter White, his creator, Vince Gilligan, has found a character that, whilst growing more ruthless, more egotistical, more selfish as we traverse the arc of the story, still retains a massive attraction for the viewer. Whilst Walter becomes a monster, causing heartache, destruction and death all around him, there is still something recognisably human there: even when he has just lied or sold a friend out to the 'bad' guys (a very relative term in BrBa), I still never completely lost sympathy for Walter. He is a modern-day Frankenstein's monster, whose genesis (it would seem) lays in his memory of a youthful indiscretion where he sold a future fortune for s few thaousand dollars in rent money and whose growth is triggered by the diagnosis of terminal cancer: years of frustration and bitterness held in check through respectable normality suddenly break loose and Walter sets forth on a mission to reclaim the crown.
Whilst amorality - or, at least, severely twisted morality - seems to run throughout the story, most of the characters are not completely bad, but instead find themselves wrestling with their consciences when they should be truly 'bad'. Nearly every character will make at least one very key wrong decision during the story because of a sudden burst of humanity or because they let a trait such as pride or greed influence their choices. Similarly, there are no simple 'good' characters: the real world is too complicated for anyone to simply don a white hat and be the hero. Even the figures of authority are shown to be flawed and conflicted. I guess it comes down to 'compromise': whilst a character should fully commit to certain actions, too often, they take into account other factors and try to implement a compromise action. As the dead-eyed Mike observes, you need to be going in full measure, not half measure. Compromise causes so many problems…
Apart from Walter, there is a truly great bunch of key characters involved in the story who all have proper meat on their bones so as to make them integral to the richness of the story-telling and not mere cogs designed to propel the story forwards: Jesse, Walt's right hand man, all cocky and full of bravado but, as we find over the course of 5 seasons, is actually sensitive and not cut out for the world that Walter creates; Gus, the drug kingpin who appears calm and calculating with a backstory that is hinted at but never fully explained (the scene which involves him getting undressed before donning protective gear is absolutely riveting in its precision - what is about to happen?); Skyler, Walt's wife who is, in turn, kept in the dark, then finds out about Walt's 'other' life as a drug lord, becomes a participant in Walter's world before, finally, rejecting Walter and choosing to protect her children; Saul, the clown-like but effective lawyer who keeps the shaky enterprise and warring factions on course throughout. The list goes on…
On top of the great writing and the great characters, however, I have to mention three other aspects which make BrBa very special. The production design is brilliant - use of different colour pallates for different characters at different points in their stories or to signal their emotional state at a point in time. The direction and editing are top notch with many memorable set pieces and use of objects to frame the action. Special mention here, too, for the pre-title vignettes, some of which were straightforward, but others were absolutely and gloriously out there (I'm thinking especially of the narcocorrido about Heisenberg - genius!). Which brings us to the music used throughout the series. The choices used for various scenes were almost always spot-on and often used tunes that are a little more 'off the beaten track' rather than using overworked standard selections. Tommy James and the Shondells "Crystal Blue Persuasion" anyone?
All in all, a very involving and satisfying story which for me, in it's 4th and 5th seasons and, especially, the finale, demonstrated a brilliance that came across like an explosion happening in ultra slo-mo: an inevitable conclusion, but a thing of terrible beauty while it unfolds before our eyes. I'm really glad I finally caught up with it but, as with most things that are enjoyable, there is a sadness that it is now over, even though it was right to stop where it stopped and in the way it stopped. Pretty much perfection.
