Breaking Bad: Is There a Right or Wrong Way to Watch Something?

Spoilers for the most recent episode.

After one year spent in the universe of Breaking Bad, who thinks that Walter White has become the most awful person on the show?

Vince Gilligan: "As unpleasant as some of these tasks he has taken upon himself have been, there is something else that drives him. And that is this need for power. This need for feeling potent and feeling important in this little world he lives in.  And to that end, he does what he would probably describe as a lot of unpleasant things. He rationalizes his behavior, and says that what he does, he does for his family. But, in fact, he does what he does for self-aggrandizement, to make himself feel important. So as the killings progress, they take more out of Jessie [sic]. They seem to bother Walt less and less."

Bryan Cranston: "Cranston adds that he understands some of the character's impulse, but only to a point. 'It's not so hard for me as a man to get into that survival instinct, or protecting your family,' he says. 'Most men take on that responsibility. But the thing that is difficult for me to accept is his whole ego. His hubris and greed and avaricious nature are foreign to me. I have to allow myself to go there and have him become the peacock that he is.'"

Jonathan Banks: "I don't think he loves Jesse at all. You're talking about Walt? I don't think Walt cares for anybody...A sociopath feels no guilt in their actions and what they do...I think he's been a sociopath since the time in the gym when he justifies the airplane crash - with 'Well, there have been worse crashes. More people have died.' That is the classic sociopath."

Aaron Paul: "I think he's definitely taking us down...and he just knows how to manipulate everybody. He has everybody on his little strings...he just wants to be the king. That's it. It's just a power trip."

The critical pulse: He's a controlling megalomaniac, a monster underneath a regular suburban dad mask, relentlessly badgering and mocking, someone Gilligan is unbelievably committed to [making us] hate, and a mix of arrogance, greed, intellectual vanity, and male insecurity that drove him to kill the old Walt and replace him with Heisenberg.

Who doesn't? I dunno, maybe take a quick trip through Twitter and see who's least popular there? (Or skim this poorly argued Slate article, which totally misreads the last four episodes.)

I'm framing this discussion through Skyler because she acts as a mirror to what Walt's plan was from the very first episode. He started cooking meth as a way to provide for his family after his death; in his eyes, it was a market he could easily assimilate into and slip out of once he'd pulled down enough money to allow them a comfortable post-Walt life. Skyler is the only person in the cast who is able to put this into perspective, since Walt Jr. remains obliviously enthralled by his father and Holly is a dumb baby. She is the only character who takes Breaking Bad back to its first seed, morally questionable action in defense of loved ones, and her presence serves as a painful reminder of how far Walt has strayed from this goal. She has her own goal now, explicitly announced - she's taking morally questionable action in defense of loved ones - and that puts her in direct opposition to Walt. The most recent episode portrays her as her childrens' most staunch defender, which earns her Walt's fury and scorn and promises of greater trouble down the line. How odd.

The Dark Expressions of Breaking Bad

Spoilers for the most recent episode.

I've wanted to write about Breaking Bad for a while now, an urge reinvigorated by its excellent fifth season debut (made even more encouraging by its strongest ratings ever, so Dish Network can suck it). Whenever I rack my brain for something about it to focus on, I always return to the imagery: potent, subtle, dark, occasionally surreal. The visuals of the show exemplify its unique qualities, serving as the grim scaffolding upon which its writing and acting and sound rest. This is a collection of scenes from last night's episode that I think drive home what makes this show so special.

A quiet call-back to happier times. Walt is teetering constantly on the verge of personal apocalypse, so it comes as a surprise that this isn't a secret signal or mushroom cloud but instead a way to remind himself that it's his 52nd birthday. (This comparison could also be read as Walt emancipating himself from Skyler's nasty-ass veggie bacon. Walt Jr. says it smells like Band-Aids, but it looks like dog jerky and that's all I need to know.)

Toasting himself in the mirror with a glass of scotch while watching over his daughter. He's just secured a major victory, but who is there to celebrate with anymore? This is the most paternal, warm thing we see from Walt this episode, a phantom of the loving father he was a year ago - and it's punctuated by his immediate realization that oops, he's still in deep shit. No rest for the wicked.

Hank Schrader is a beast. Ambling through the burned-out meth factory, cane in hand, we know without so much as a word that he's going to figure this out before anyone else does. Much like Walt, he has undergone significant personal change by means of traumatic event after traumatic event. Once an embarrassing caricature of threatened masculinity, he's now an astute DEA superstar. All it took was the constant derision of his colleagues, a look into the brutality of the cartels, repeated gunshot wounds, paralysis, and Marie giving him a handjob in the hospital.

"C'mon, c'mon. Be nice. Let Gwendolyn in there. Gwendolyn don't eat, nobody eats."

Vince Gilligan has this odd way of making New Mexico look like an alien planet. The show and its characters are often locked into interchangeable suburban monotony, but shots like this give character to the stage for all this drama. It isn't Weeds or Law and Order, but something far more harsh, barren.

This is a nauseating follow-up to one of Season Four's most darkly comic images: Ted Beneke sliding headfirst into a counter and, presumably, dying. Except he didn't. Breaking Bad has an unmatched penchant for deriving horror from humor and humor from horror. The first exchange is demonstrated by the reveal of a completely ruined man, stuffed with metal and hooked up to machines...


...and the second exchange, by this sequence. You get about two seconds to laugh at this ridiculous turn of events before you realize how screwed Walt and Jesse actually are. The show derives absurdity from misfortune regularly, to the point where control simply becomes an illusion. The life of each character is ruled by chaos, a reality that none of them can confront. What do you think made Walt laugh so hard at the end of Crawl Space?

The superimposition of dark secrets on happy exteriors. This probably drives the "IS GUS GAY?!" question home a bit too hard, but it serves a more important purpose. Like Walt, Gustavo Fring was a man toying with forces that proved far greater than himself, and they devoured both him and the things that he cared for. It's a microcosmic representation of truths that Walt has spent five seasons learning the hard way.


And this isn't from last episode, but just because I love it, here's the opening to Fly from the fourth season.