One of our favorite filmmakers is the Coen Brothers. (Yes, we know there are two of them, but they're a two-for-one deal). "Miller's Crossing," "Fargo," "The Big Lebowski". . . the list goes on and on. As you can imagine, then, we adore the television show the Coen Brothers produced(even if they were calling themselves Vince Gilligan when they came up with it), "Breaking Bad."
We just finished watching season 3 on DVD, and we have concluded that, right now, "Breaking Bad" is quite simply the best show on television.
Let's start with the acting. We have raved in this space about two-time Emmy-Award winner Bryan Cranston. Over the last three seasons, we have watched his character, Walter White, transform from mild-mannered high-school chemistry teacher to hardened, take-no-prisoners mastermind in the Southwestern drug trade. His performance is seamless. And as good as Cranston is, he is supported by an ensemble that provides acting lessons week in and week out.
The two other central characters in the show are Walt's wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn), and Walt's on-again-off-again partner in meth production, Jesse Pinkman (Emmy winner Aaron Paul). Like Walt, these characters have sweeping story arcs. Skyler spends the first two seasons pregnant, struggling to support Walt as he faces terminal cancer yet at the same time wondering where the money for his treatment comes from and worrying about his increasingly erratic behavior. When she discovers Walt's secret life, she is torn between her impulse to turn him in or at least distance herself from him and her realization that he has, after all, adopted criminality as a way to provide for his family after his inevitable death.
Jesse undergoes even greater transformations. When we first meet him, he is a lowlife high-school dropout selling chili-pepper infused meth on the streets of Albuquerque. When he partners with Walt, he begins to develop a sense of pride and professionalism in his criminal pursuits: If you're going to cook meth, it might as well be the best meth possible. After witnessing the death-by-overdose of his true love, Jesse gets clean, but rather than turning over a new leaf, the newly sober Jesse becomes even more coldly rational and efficient in his criminal planning. . . .
Except.
Even while implementing a plan to sell drugs to members of a recovery group, Jesse becomes outraged--truly, morally outraged--when he hears of a gang using children as hitmen and drug-runners. When he confronts Walt about his own complicity in these activities--"Are you OK with this?!?"--the moral center of the show has completely shifted from the former upstanding citizen to the junkie drug dealer. It is no mean feat for a television show to pull off such a smooth and, yes, believable transition.
Among the supporting cast, Bob Odenkirk plays Saul Goodman, Walt and Jesse's criminal defense lawyer--which is to say their defense lawyer who is, himself, thoroughly criminal. Never has a sleazy lawyer been so enjoyable to watch. Giancarlo Esposito is terrifying as Gustavo Fring, an apparently upstanding pillar of the community who also happens to be the biggest drug kingpin in the Southwest. And in season 3, we see quite a lot of Jonathan Banks as Mike, Gustavo's enforcer/fixer, who in an episode entitled "Half Measures" recites one of the best monologues we've heard on television.
In recent years, long-form dramas have frequently been compared to novels. "Breaking Bad" is the most classically novelistic of these shows. For three years, we have watched the unfolding of one single story. The very first episode provides the tale's unambiguous starting point: Walter White's diagnosis with terminal cancer. Eveything that subsequently occurs follows like a series of dominos knocked over by that first moment. Furthermore, in the story's beginning, is the embryo of what we can only assume will be the show's end: Walt's death. The man is living on borrowed time. In season 3 his cancer seems to be in temporary remission, but we the viewers know that Walt will most likely die in the end. We ache for him as he struggles to do what he can for his family. And, religious or not, we feel terror for the state of Walt's soul: How far down the road to perdition will he travel? Would it be better for him to die before whatever decency he once possessed is gone for good?
Aside from these questions, the most fascinating aspect of the series is the ever-shifting relationship between Walt and Jesse. They have a partnership, a friendship, even a sort of father-son dynamic--and at times they also truly despise each other. Whatever their relationship, though, it is apparent these two men have--in a show that often deals with chemistry--an unbreakable electromegnetic bond. What they are willing to do for each other makes the ending of season 3 one of the most thrilling cliffhangers in TV history.
Some people we have spoken to express reluctance to watch "Breaking Bad." They are turned off by its depiction (though we hasten to mention--not its glorification) of the world of meth dealers and junkies. We acknowledge that the show can be brutal at times. Nevertheless, if you have not already started watching this show, we suggest you give it a try. Season 4 starts a week from Sunday. We suspect, if you get your hands on the DVDs of seasons 1-3, you will watch them very quickly. The most addictive thing in "Breaking Bad" is not the meth, it's the show itself.
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