AMC’s series Breaking Bad has been buried under heaps of awards and praise in its three seasons so far. Among the accolades, the show has garnered 3 consecutive Emmy awards for Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Bryan Cranston’s turn in role of Walter White, and for good reason. Breaking Bad is a showcase of great television in almost all aspects, from editing to cinematography, but it’s the development of White that makes the show so fascinating. Cranston embodies a character unlike any I’ve ever seen before on TV, and acts the part with such conviction it’s hypnotizing to watch.
Walter White is an average suburban Albuquerque family man, happily married to his newly pregnant wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) and teaching chemistry at his son Walter Jr. (RJ Mitte)’s high school when he is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. The news hits Walt like a wrecking ball and immediately sends him into an unbearable fit of denial. However once this passes he accepts the inevitability of his death and starts to worry for his wife, his unborn child and his teenage son coping with cerebral palsy. On his current salary Walt can’t afford proper treatment for himself or provide a comfortable life for his family after he dies, but the prospect of his wife struggling as a single mother is unacceptable to him. Lost and looking for a distraction, Walt accepts the offer to ride along with his brother-in-law, DEA agent Hank Schrader (Dean Norris), while he works a case. During a drug raid conducted on a nearby house Walt discovers one of his burnout students, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), escaping the arrest. Out of options and severely depressed, Walt confronts Jesse about his drug trade, intrigued by the prospect of easy money. Jesse explains the in and outs of being a methamphetamine dealer, and Walt offers to use his chemistry expertise to cook much higher grade meth for Jesse to sell. Working together, Walt believes he’ll be able to pay for enough treatment to satisfy Skyler until he dies, and hide away enough money for his family to remain relatively well-off. Obsessed with this goal, Walt sinks deeper and deeper into an underworld he doesn’t understand, driving away the loved ones he’s trying to protect and falling hard into the life of a depraved drug lord.
Walt is one of the most captivating characters on television because of his unrelenting spiral into the depths of the meth trade. Driven by morally decent aspirations, he allows himself to do deplorable acts, many of which fail to provide adequate or expected results. Despite this, Walt continues to fall further and further to irredeemable levels, until the current state of the show, where he may have finally stepped over the edge. The casting of Bryan Cranston is a genius move in translating this to the viewer. Cranston is almost universally known for playing the wacky, naïve father in Malcolm in the Middle, and reclaims a bit of the same traits in the first minutes of Breaking Bad’s initial episode. However his talent makes the incremental criminal slide feel effortless and natural. Adding to this is Walt’s aforementioned intentions, which provide the crux of Breaking Bad’s thematic conflict; Walt is a loyal husband, a caring father and a good man, but inexplicably his determination to do right by them is exactly what causes him to lose his family, and it’s made worse because Walt can’t see it all happening. Meanwhile, his distance from his own loved ones translates his familial bond to the drug trade, most noticeably with Jesse, who slowly takes the role of his own son, Walt Jr. It’s a wonderfully dark character arc that pulls no punches.
I’ve always described Breaking Bad to friends unfamiliar with it as sort of a cross between Weeds and Dexter, in that it’s a show about a parent turning to drugs in order to provide for their family, but dealing with more mature subject matter and more complex themes. However I don’t think that analogy does Breaking Bad justice, because neither Weeds nor Dexter treat their protagonists as faithfully as Bad does Walt White. There just isn’t another show on television willing to explore the lengths to which a character will go to get what they want, and do it with as much tragic satisfaction as Breaking Bad. Season 4 starts next month and starting July 17th, AMC will be my weekly dealer. I think you should develop the habit, too.
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