Let me just say--Vince Gilligan is a flippin' genius. I've had a screenwriter fetish for him since he wrote my favorite X-Files episodes (possibly my favorite of the 90s) "Home" and "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" which to jog your memory involved an inbred team of brothers that kept their quad-amputee mother under the bed as a sex snack and Alex Trebek as a Man in Black, respectively. That and about thirty other classics.
And really, in some ways Breaking Bad is all Gilligan's rotten small-town cheerfulness wrapped up in his increasingly sophisticated and cinematic lens. In fact, I have to echo the finally (two weeks ago I couldn't find a single one) tons of positive critics when I say: "Holy crap this is AMC? As in re-runs of It's A Wonderful Life AMC of yore?" Yeah not anymore.
And Bryan Cranston is ungodly great in this role, Walter White, the uber-mild mannered high school chemistry teacher that is dealing with his pregnant Ebay-entrepeneur wife, disabled son, and oh yeah, terminal lung cancer with the same blank, beaten facade til somewhere along the line he snaps--and becomes the man he was always meant to me.
Flashbacks in future episodes bear this out, but all you really need to see are the first, brilliant minute of the show, where Cranston in all his glory is kitted out in a gas mask, tighty whitey underwear, tearasses out of a wildly careening RV, and pulls a gun out of his saggy waistband and aims. Here is a guy who really embraces death, and starts doling out his fair share of it too.
Aaron Paul as White's former/future student Jesse Pinkman deserves some serious props too and if there's any justice, there should be casting agents knocking his door down as the new Colin Farrell or whatever. There's a jumpy, agitated vibe that just screams misguided teenager and yet his soaked in despair meth-fiend downward spiral seems as degraded and world-weary as it gets.
The funny thing is? It's at least as much Walter's fault as his. Here the old steer the young into increasingly fucked up scenarios with little regards to the consequences and Jesse, more than likely desperate for a father figure, obliges. Hapless, and hopeless, he suddenly attaches to his mentor like a gosling to a rubber boot. Walt's at his height when he finally realizes that if he has power over chemistry, and over Jesse and the ripe drug market of New Mexico, he just might have power over death.
At least he'll have a stack of green to burn.
So yeah, what I'm saying is watch it, yeah. I'm definitely more partial to this than reading something about the chairs on In Treatment on the NYT. The series finale is coming soon, but I'm just tickled pink that hard drugs, black comedy and white undies have seemed to found themselves a permanent roost on basic cable.
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Here's the problem: the writers' strike seems to have cut it off in the middle. That was no season finale, let alone a series finale. I'm going to be frustrated if they never wrap the thing up.
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