I’ve been a fan of television since the 70s, when bits and pieces of shows first started trickling out as though they were tail-ends of meteors and the grand spectacle was yet to come in a kind of reversal of magic. It came alright, and I was snared forever. So when I say Breaking Bad has been the best thing that ever happened in my unreal life, I say it with deliberation.
When I first started watching, I was intrigued but not riveted….then I saw the second and third episodes and it was like discovering Angry Birds. What was the fuss all about, I asked myself when I began playing the game; still flinging birds at pigs at 2 am I knew the answer. The answer to what makes Breaking Bad the revelation it is is probably less direct of a hit; there are so many nuances, so much fun, so much terror, where do you begin?
Probably with Bryan Cranston. But it’s the premise, too; the idea that Walter White, a hen-pecked, pedantic Chemistry teacher, when given the news no one wants to get from his doctor, slowly loses his idea of Self and morphs into the most powerful drug dealer around (although Mr White would say, “I’m a manufacturer, not a dealer”), and it’s tragi-comic. He ‘breaks bad’, as every moral code he ever lived by proves to be a will o’ the wisp, gone as though it had never been.
The way Cranston plays Walter is the most eerie experience. The measured tones, the still-teacherly lectures and long-winded explanations whether he’s discussing murder or meth, makes you sit at the edge of your sofa with your mouth open, shaking hand pressed to quivering heart. He dresses in pleated trousers and his boring shirts are buttoned up almost as tightly as he is. Even his walk is careful.
Now if you recall Cranston from his Malcolm in the Middle days, you’ll understand the extent of his genius. It’s echoed by the whole cast but that’s like saying your voice shouting Hello! into the Grand Canyon matches the Grand Canyon. Aaron Paul as junkhead Jesse Pinkman has, nevertheless, become more famous than Mr White for his unmistakeable phraseology, as in “Yo, Gatorade me, bitch”. How do I know? Because I, like everyone else, use Pinkmanisms indiscriminately. I found myself saying “A villa in Tuscany? I say we just move there, yo” to an unsuspecting individual a few days ago. He should be grateful I didn’t comment on Georgia O’Keefe’s art.
But this cast is astounding, many of whom I’d never heard of. Just watch Anna Gunn as the wife turned calculating sidekick and you’ll know why she got the Emmy a few weeks ago. The inlaws Hank (Dean Norris whose character matches Walt’s in brilliant manoeuvring) and Marie (Betsy Brandt who is now on The Michael J Fox Show) are also tainted in the end by the same madness that has gripped Walt. Hank will use Jesse ruthlessly to get Walt, and Marie in her forever-purple cocoon, will cheer from the sidelines. Laura Fraser as Lydia and Giancarlo Esposito as Fring, one with her OCD criminality, the other with his frozen menace? You stare at them like a gasping fish watches receding waters. Love Matt Jones and Charles Baker as Jesse’s entourage but my personal favourite has to be sleazy/breezy lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) whose lines have to be heard to be believed.
It’s the shades of grey everyone has lurking inside them that you will remember when the show’s finale is aired a few days from now, for India viewers. Walt, monster that he is, thinks of Jesse as a son. There is a beautiful bit when his own son Walter Junior hugs him and immediately after Walt calls Jesse to try and retrieve the situation without any more people dying. Jesse touches something in Walt that no one else can reach. Perhaps because he knows Walt better than anyone else, or because Jesse retains a shining goodness within despite what he has made of the life he was gifted. Which is not to say that he won’t be thrown to the wolves but only if Walt finds his back to the wall and has exhausted all other avenues. I expect the worst.
The best I’ve already found in the writing on the show. Cranston can make even a handful of words sound menacing. Take, for instance, Hank discovering who Walt is and saying he doesn’t even know who he’s talking to anymore. Walt looks at him and replies quietly, if that’s true, if you don’t know who I am, “Tread lightly”.
Or killing two men who were in the way, he turns and tells Jesse: “Run”.
Like Walt later tells Skyler: He’s not the one who’s in danger, “I am the danger”.
There are moments no viewer will ever forget: Thugs seeing a mountain of money and just for a few moments lying down on top of it so they can recall the feeling in their twilight years; Walt watching Jane die, and weeping; Skyler saying she can do nothing but wait…for the cancer to come back and claim Walt and save their family from him.
Then there is the homage to Tarantino and the Coen brothers’ Fargo; the endless but gripping talk, Jesse’s friends stoned and pontificating about the Star Trek Energise scenario for hours being a case in point, or Ted running into the furniture and making you want to laugh at a moment that is highly inappropriate.
Other TV shows you enjoy but when it’s over, it’s over. Creator Vince Gilligan needs an award they haven’t created yet.
But it’s Cranston we will all return to when talking Bad. There is nothing worse than reaching the end of your life, looking back and seeing a wasteland (the Ozymandias episode was so clever on so many levels). Cranston reached the motherlode at an age the rest of us would be looking for retirement homes. He’ll be missed, yo.
Sheba Thayil is a journalist and writer. She was born in Bombay, brought up in Hong Kong, and exiled to Bangalore. While editing, writing and working in varied places like The Economic Times, Gulf Daily News, New Indian Express andCosmopolitan, it is the movies and books, she says, that have always sustained her. She blogs at http://shebathayil.blogspot.com/