For those of you who have been wondering where this column has been for the last few issues I’d like to apologise. A slightly gnarly accident while cycling left me with my right hand in a sling for a few weeks. There’s nothing more depressing than being off work while being totally skint and unable to play computer games, guitar or write. Actually now I think about it there are a lot of things more depressing, like maybe cancer. Perhaps I should have taken a leaf from the book of Breaking Bad’s Walter White. As the series begins, high school chemistry teacher Walt is also moonlighting in a somewhat humiliating role at a carwash to make ends meet for his family. When Walt is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer he doesn’t curl up in a ball and feel sorry for himself, he doesn’t go running to his friends or family for help, he does the only sensible thing that can keep his pride intact and provide for the future of his family when he’s gone and as I’m sure we all would, begins a new career cooking up crystal meth in a caravan.
It might not seem like an obvious career choice for a mild mannered family man to take. The whole point of Walt’s abrupt handbrake turn on the highway of life is a reflection of the cancerous cells within him. Just as the onset of cancer is triggered by otherwise normal cells in the body becoming suddenly malignant, Walt has a sudden change of character. It’s easy to understand this change the more we learn of his past, of his accomplishments and losses, of the times he has been passed over and the opportunities he has passed up. Despite any of these regrets, Walt is clearly very happy with his wife and son and their life together, and it is his drive to protect those nearest him that sends him on a trajectory into a life of crime. To “break bad” is a southern colloquialism meaning roughly to defy authority, cut loose and not give a shit. It might be used to describe someone on a drug binge for the weekend but in this case it applies to Walter deciding that he will no longer take shit from anyone. It’s a thrilling ride watching Malcolm In The Middle’s dad go from downtrodden suburban guy to “Heisenberg”, the badass drug-manufacturing killer, and it’s not always comfortable. More often than not he finds himself in a moral dilemma with no easy answer. It’s kind of similar to Kevin Spacey in American Beauty learning to stick up for himself by sucking down joints, except instead of lifting weights and lusting after teenage girls Walt is evading the cops, stealing restricted chemicals, blowing up drug dealers and dissolving dead bodies in bathtubs. And that’s just the first season.
Breaking Bad takes a different course to most TV series out there. Traditionally the character of the protagonist stays fairly constant while events unfold around him. Walt’s character undergoes a significant and malignant change which leaves its effects felt profoundly in the wider world around him with many of his actions leaving the viewer unsure as to whether they perceive him good or evil. His primary motivation is one of love, to provide for his family, however Walt’s new approach to life sees him alienate his wife and son and bring pain, suffering and sometimes death to those unfortunate enough to cross his path. Not to mention that he is personally responsible for flooding the streets with some of the highest quality methamphetamine ever seen, not a drug that is easily glamourised, generally associated with addiction, violence, psychosis and really fucked up teeth. Walt’s partner in crime Jesse Pinkman takes the brunt of most of Walt’s negative influence, coerced from smalltime meth cook into the role of Walt’s muscle, frequently required to do the dirty work and suffer the consequences of conscience that go along with it. That’s when he’s not taking a beating or rolling around in the bright blue contents of a portaloo. It's really quite touching on occasions when we get to see Jesse happy, and invariably it is Walt’s influence that intervenes to rain on his parade, never more chillingly so than when Walt passively watches Jesse’s girlfriend Jane choke to death and chooses to do nothing. Several of the show’s characters are less than likeable, from Walt’s brother-in-law gung-ho macho lawman Hank to Walt’s manipulative, selfish wife Skyler (who also has a ridiculous name and the yellow eyes of a bird of prey). The most personable character of all in my book would be dodgy low-rent criminal lawyer Saul Goodman, played by Bob Odenkirk (also executive producer of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!) who brings a lot of the levity that lifts the show from its somber subject matter. Goodman even has his own website, one of several pieces of innovative and highly entertaining online promotion for the series.
With the fourth season having just ended and the show already renewed for a fifth and final, it’s almost too tense waiting to find out what might happen next. By the end of the fourth season Walt has wreaked so much havoc and created so many enemies (those that he hasn’t killed already) that danger could be lurking around many different corners whether it’s the Mexican cartels, associates of his former boss, his obsessive brother in law at the Drug Enforcement Agency or the IRS. The biggest threat lays dormant in Jesse since Walt has outdone his own often-questionable ethics with a supreme betrayal in order to manipulate him. I’m trying not to give too much away here to anyone who hasn’t yet watched the show. All I’m going to say is that you should pay special attention to the scene where Walt sits in his garden and spins his pistol on the table, trying to formulate a plan of action. It’s hard to say where future events will lead Walt, Jesse and co. but it’s easy to predict that it will be both gruesome and gripping.