Season 1
And I’m guessing you’d have to add to Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul (pictured) and Anna Gunn to the “creator’s” list, because I don’t think this show would have achieved the same greatness as it did without them. You possibly could have had a different person as his wife, but part of what they all achieved was something that was earned through time and growth as actors. In her case, it came to be the ability to be one of the most unjustifiably hated actors on the show, and maybe of all time. But we’ll get to that because I’m rewatching it, and as I go through it, I want to make some observations that I didn’t notice the first time around.
I didn’t watch it when it ran. I don’t think I’ve watched any series during its run, except maybe Seinfeld, and when I started watching that I had already missed 3 years of it.
[N.B. Because of the length of my posts, and my overwrit
Speaking of which, Seinfeld is almost where you have to start, because both Bryan Cranston and Anna Gunn had roles on that show. Cranston was a dentist — Tim Whatley — and was he always the same dentist, because sometimes he seemed like he was a different dentist? Anna Gunn was one of Jerry’s many, many dates who he believed, because of George, was secretly dating his cousin Jeffrey, from the parks department. (It turned out to be a meter woman kissing the forehead of a horse.) Jeffrey was the cousin who seemed to have this fantastic and varied career of whatever Uncle Leo, presumably Jeffrey’s father, wanted to throw in Jerry’s face, like getting the lead in The Parks Department production of The Mikado. (What!?)
Anyway, before I get lost in Seinfeld absurdity, Breaking Bad is a term that Jesse Pinkman, Walter White’s former chemistry student, uses to help us understand what the pilot/series is about. “You want to break bad?” means, “purposely go from being a good person to a bad person.” I’m not sure if it was a real term when they used it, but Jesse, who understandably confused by his former chemistry teacher telling him out of nowhere that he wants to cook methamphetamine, asks him why.
What Jesse actually is bringing to the surface, and which will color every single thing for the rest of the series is the fact of that Walter is proud. He is too proud. He cannot explain why he wants to cook meth, he just wants to do it, no questions asked. He is too proud to say that he has cancer. He is too proud to say he is dying of cancer. He is too proud to say that he doesn’t have good health coverage that won’t pay for his cancer treatment. He is too proud to say that he can’t afford to pay for his coverage. He is too proud in every which way imaginable. Breaking Bad is actually a question. Why are you breaking bad? And maybe in a less plot-oriented way, “Why are you becoming bad?”
Just to get it out of the way, the premise is that Walter has inoperable lung cancer. It’s treatable with chemo and radiation, but it’s essentially stage 3b which is not quite hopeless but which, again through Jesse, we learn that it’s spread to his lymph nodes so there are probably multiple tumor growths.
First important note. This show was filmed before Obama was president and he and Nancy Pelosi, plus a majority of democrats, created Obamacare. He might never have “broken bad” had Obamacare existed. But this is a question which, in the second season in episode 6, I think it is, where Walter asks his brother in law Hank, what makes people become criminals. But this point, Walter is also wondering “Why?” Being such a jerk he probably thinks that it was someone else’s fault, and I think it was also in episode 6 or 7 when he gets a visit from a former colleague who he believes ripped him off. He will ultimately throw all the blame for his downfall at this woman and her husband and ultimately, at the woman herself, for not preferring him. Pride again.
Second important note. Although their roles were still teacher and student — kind of a relationship that doesn’t really change no matter how old you get — there is a critically important moment in the 2nd episode where Jesse and Walter flip a coin. The coin toss is to see which person is going to get rid of the body of Emilio by melting it in a heavy duty plastic bucket, and the much more horrible task of killing the gangster they have chained by the neck in the basement. Walt loses the toss and has to kill the gangster, while Jesse goes to Home Depot to look for a bin.
Even though he has technically already killed one person, Emilio, by causing an explosion of poison gas in their mobile meth lab, that killing was done out of desperation and when Walter was about to be killed himself. It was not a cold blooded killing and, in fact, when they thought both Emilio and “Krazy 8” were dead, he, Walter, wasn’t spending too much time feeling bad about killing these two drug dealers.
In the 3rd episode, they take to their tasks. because he couldn’t find the right size plastic bin, Jesse does his part by pulling up Emilio’s body into the bathtub and filling it with acid. (The tub later develops an enormous hole, dissolves the floor underneath, and the entire mess of body and guns come crashing through to the next floor. Some of that mess leaks through to the basement where Krazy 8 is being held prisoner.)
Walt, however, almost gives in to his human empathetic impulse to let Krazy 8 go, because they’ve had a few conversations, Walt has cut the crusts of the bread off the sandwiches he’s given him, and Krazy 8 has guessed without prompting that Walt has cancer. This is the first Walt has been able to talk about it aloud. Then, just as he’s about to let him go, Walt realizes that Krazy 8 still intends to kill him, so he grabs the bicycle lock that’s latched around the guy’s neck and pulls on it, choking him until he is dead.
Though their relationship may have been defined by the teacher/student dynamic, this coin toss determined Walter White’s fate to become a killer and a murderer. I don’t know what his “body count” will be by the end of the series, but by episode 3, it’s already 2. Jesse is not a killer, and it’ll be interesting to see if he ever kills in the series, because I actually can’t remember him killing anyone, while I do remember Walter White impassively watching Jesse’s girlfriend die from choking, I think it was, as well as his killing an entire cartel through some Odysseus like trick, and then a kind Hamlet-like, “kill em all” scene at the end of the series.
Breaking Bad is a series about the fall from good to evil, but so far — six episodes into this rewatching — it is a “breaking bad” brought about by excessive pride. He uses the excuse that he must provide for his family after his death, as well as pay for the cancer treatment in an era when no one had access to adequate health insurance.
But as will become clear, especially through his relationship with his wife, it is Walter’s excessive pride that causes him to go bad. The original definition of pride was “belief that you can exist without the aid of God.” At least that’s what a teacher told me. I’ll look it up.
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