Monsters of Television

“Ding!”

Noel did a write-up of Breaking Bad Season 1 back in April but, unlike him, I’ve always been intrigued by the show but never got around to actually watching (whereas he caved to peer pressure). Part of it was because I have a tangle of other shows that dominate my weeks and part of it was that I have absolutely no excuses whatsoever. I’m inherently lazy and the thought of sitting through another show was just too much. Not to mention I had a feeling a show about a dude with cancer paying the bills by selling meth would have the same marathon effect on me that Six Feet Under would have: clinical depression and a number of medications just to stay stable.

But, happily, Breaking Bad is different than I expected and doesn’t make me feel like a raincloud-haunted iota. There’s action! Drama that’s not cancer-related! Comedy that works and doesn’t just elucidate the hopelessness of the characters’ situations, further driving you into an existential tailspin! No, Breaking Bad is a different kind of show. As most of you probably know because you’ve watched it already.

If you haven’t watched it, let me tell you now that this intends to be spoilerific (terrific in spoilers). I ask that, at the very least, you catch up on the episodes in the title (since I’m writing these posts before any knowledge of the show’s future) since, as witty and charming as I am via prose, the series itself is far better than my analysis of it.

Especially since I’m going to, inevitably, compare it to Chuck and Weeds. You write what you know.

Read on, you cool babies!

Noel broke his posts down by episode but I’m grouping Season 2 into threes and I’ll figure out what to do with the prime number of episodes later. Besides, it really works for the first three episodes of Season 2, where we definitely have a theme and that theme is a tweaked-out psychopath our heroes are indebted to for distribution. The villain named Tuco is a complicated man, one who vascillates between professional respect for Walt and his desperate need to feed his hands with the blood of weaklings as if his fists operate as separate, leeching entities. All that is wrapped in a short-fused, stereotype of a man. He’s Guillermo from Weeds except more underhanded, less trustworthy, and completely lacking a soft spot for country club housewives. As far as we know.

He more a force than a character. What the junkyard scene in Season 1 finale (and the weird, kind of jarring, reshoot of the same scene to open Season 2) does in a superior way is convey to us the loss of control Walt and Jesse have over their enterprise. Tuco can’t be reasoned with (unless you have surprise explosives) and he certainly can’t be ururped or surpassed unless he’s cold and in the ground, and, with the untimely end to No-Doze by fist, we know immediately there’s no way out of here except to kill the guy in charge. You know. Again.

This is as good as time as any to mention one of the reasons why this show reminds me of Chuck, besides the amount of tweaking Jeff probably does on his days off. Breaking Bad employs the time-tested story of a person that is uncommonly good at a thing for which he is least likely to have a capacity. Chuck turns out to be preternaturally able as a spy. Nancy Botwin (from Weeds), despite some bumbling, is able to grow her business with some luck and some created opportunities to the extent that she’s not only able to go international but also reluctantly creates a dynasty. Walt’s pathology should turn him away from doing these very bad things (his understanding of chemsitry alone should put him in an ethical quandry when considering putting something as dangerous as meth on the streets) but different sides of his complex personality, combined with a nothing-to-lose attitude from the cancer, make him the perfect storm of cooker and businessman. He is perfectly suited for the position even if it is the most unlikely.

The exploration of that is what separates this show from Weeds and Chuck. The premise of those series offer their leads showing off their natural talents and even letting those natural talents get them into trouble on occasion. Their desperate need for comedic balance, however, forces them to avoid any real demonstation on how this shift deeply affects the protagonist. There were a few episodes in the middle of S3 of Chuck where it looked like they might examine how hardcore spyin’ was going to make Chuck lose his Chuckness but they backed off of that rather quickly. Nancy becomes more willing to sacrifice those around her as she gets deeper and loses some of herself but her state of mind is never given the attention Walt’s is. In fact, there are some that may argue that Nancy is singularly reactionary and just too single-minded that she can’t conceive of doing anything else that may pay less but offer more legitimacy and safety. Easily, Breaking Bad could’ve based everything on Walt’s struggle with what’s he’s possibly doing to our nation’s youth by cooking meth. But that’s never even a question. What the show is more concerned with is how much he likes what he’s doing. His underused knowledge of the thing he loves most in this world is a commodity again. He’s useful. Better, he feels alive with the sense of danger.

The show also does a great job of differentiating between Walt’s feelings of revival with his criminal pursuits and when those pursuits make him feel like he’s drowning helplessly. To wit, the scene in Season 1 where he takes his unsuspecting wife from behind or when they have sex in a school parking lot, citing the reason it feels so good is because “it’s illegal.” Those are clearly moments based on his happy side of drug-dealing. On the other hand, examine the similar scene where Walt tries to force himself on a bemasked Skylar, her voice turning quickly from hesitation to fear. Clearly that was less about an explosion of emotion he wanted to share with his wife (or just inflict on her depending on how you look at it) and more about trying to regain power in any form he can. There’s no justification for nearly raping his wife but these are the kinds of things in which this show decides to deal with no need to balance a slapstick comedy B-story.

While the complicated characters don’t really extend far beyond the protagonists at this point (kudos to the show for making Jesse a substantive character, though — he could’ve easily turned out more like Dizzer from SVU), they’re enough to keep me interested. The reign of terror Tuco inflicts on them throughout these three episodes (even after he dies in the second — “Bit By a Dead Bee” is like an epilogue) shows the desperation and humanity in Walt and Jesse while simultaneously showing how Walt is capable of doing despicable things in spite of who you think he is. These two constantly fall into situations based on their talent and uncanny presence in the right place at the wrong time and that is their road to ascension. Sure, they bumbled into getting pinched by both of their distributors but dealing with those obstacles garner them a reputation and mythology. We know this because Hank’s DEA side of the show makes sure we keep track. Even though Walt and Jesse’s adventures are sometimes comical, they represent real strides in the rise of a criminal organization.

Noel and I were talking about this the other day (he’s starting to get further along in the show than I am), how Hank could’ve been portrayed as that know-nothing, all-brawn officer that’s always one step behind Walt but he’s not. He’s very good at his job, knows exactly what he’s talking about. Hank tracking Walt and Jesse out to the desert and ending Tuco is not nearly as unbelievable as it could be. He can’t see the truth only because it’s obfuscated by his own trust and instinct, an instinct that would usually be dead on except Walt, not just lately but probably his entire life, has been wearing sheep’s clothing. He’s always been a wolf but has never had an opportunity to seize upon his strengths. So Hank is left to chase shadows until he thinks outside the box and sees where all the clues point.

The terror caused by Tuco was good drama for Walt and Jesse, a character-building series for Hank, but one of the things it also did was reestablish why Walt is doing all this in the first place. Once he returns home and his plan of subterfuge works, seeing the missing posters at the bus stop and spying on his family (when he goes back to the house to hide the cash box) are pretty poignant moments. Without an obvious word about it, without anything ham-handed or pandering or manipulative, Walt sees what life would be like without him. As much as we can see how much Walt is enjoying his criminal life and feeling “alive” for the first time, this tender side is also very, very important to (1) how much we like Walt and (2) to make sure it doesn’t turn into Weeds where the term “family” becomes loosely defined as a collection of people that insist they care about each other despite actions to the contrary. Perfect way to do that, particularly framing it with the painting of the man rowing away from loved ones.

Future posts won’t be this long, I swear. And probably more funny. I wanted to get this stuff out of the way up front though so I can discuss things like Badger humping a drum of methylene or how Tuco crawling out of the pit reminded me of Shredder in Secret of the Ooze in the other posts without feeling like I didn’t address the show overall (but how cool would Super Tuco have been?). I’ll be watching all the episodes up to and through the Breaking Bad Season 4 opener on July 17th. You should probably stick around for that.

Note: The “iota” thing is a reference to Space Ghost: Coast-to-Coast from the episode “Girlie Show”. Space Ghost’s iotas are played by Gleep and Gloop from The Herculoids. There’s no way I expect you to know that. Oh, there’s a video.