I happily report that just about every preconception I had towards Breaking Bad was wrong. This is, in short, a brilliant television show. One of the best all-around programs I've ever seen. The production value is top-notch, and I particularly like the unusual mix of colors in the cinematography. Rarely has there been a TV show (or a movie, even) with such rich, saturated colors of such a wide range. At times, it looks like Technicolor! The acting, of course, speaks for itself, but that goes for the whole cast, not just lead actor Cranston. He gets the most attention, of course, because he has by far the most screen time (and he's phenomenal in the role), but the supporting cast turns in some great work as well.
A confession: I myself have never used illicit drugs. I tried cigarettes (hated them), and I'll have alcohol occasionally, but I never touched anything else. A few reasons, mostly a complete lack of desire and interest, but perhaps the biggest reason was that I've seen first-hand what drug addiction can do to people. Not to get preachy, and I don't personally care what people choose to do in the privacy of their own homes, but habitual hard drug use changes you... and not for the better. I'll just leave it at that.
That said, what impressed me most about Breaking Bad is the writing. Even The Wire - which is perhaps the best TV show ever made, all things considered - dipped into caricature on occasion with its depiction of drug use. Here, each and every charcter is believable, three-dimensional, complicated, and conflicted. Season Two's depiction of Jesse and Jane, for instance, is heart-breaking. For a while, their drug use is recreational. Then it becomes habitual... Then it just becomes tragic. They want to stop; they know they should stop; they even plan to stop... but they can't. They have to pay the consequences - sometimes benign, sometimes deleterious. And to me, that's how you elevate drug use from caricature to realism to tragedy.
But perhaps what was most surprising is how funny it is. Don't get me wrong, there are some horribly tragic things that happen on Breaking Bad; but more often than not, the show is played for laughs rather than tears or solemn nods. At times, things are so over the top, it even approaches slapstick. That the show can so easily vacillate between genres - to the point you can hardly believe everything is wrapped under the same banner - is a true credit to the script and the actors. Quentin Tarantino prides himself on his ability to jerk the audience from laughter to shock; not only do the writers of Breaking Bad do a better job of this, they manage to do it without compromising character for the sake of cleverness, and they make each scene and tonal transition flow logically from one to the next without the need to break up continuity.
I've hinted at plot details, but let me make things explicit: in the very first episode, everyman chemistry teacher Walter White is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He is dumbstruck. So stupefied, in fact, that he does not even tell his family. They are of modest means: he works as a high school teacher, she is a stay-at-home mom. Additionally, their only son has a congenital birth defect, and they have a baby on the way. Even without such a costly (in more ways than one) diagnosis, they do not have much money to spare. So now Walter is at a crossroads: he feels obligated as a father to share this information with his wife, and he knows it is his place to provide financially... but his health leaves him in no position to do so, and he believes that telling her will essentially damn her to a life of loneliness and poverty.
So Walter devises a plan. A simple plan, but a lucrative one. A plan which carries innumerable risks to himself and his family, but a plan nonetheless, and one he is well suited to. He decides to cook and sell methamphetamine, with the help of former student-turned-drug dealer Jesse Pinkman. But this is not just some fly by night operation: in Walter's mind, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. He tells Jesse that they will only make the purest possible product. Anything else is garbage. Walter's hope is that such purity will allow for higher pricing, which is true, but it also attracts more attention... from all sorts of unsavory characters. And then he comes to find that he kind of enjoys this double life, and is inexorably drawn deeper into the darkness.
Where it goes from there is really quite brilliant. The show is just so thoroughly and logically constructed - just when you think it's going to hit a wall, or there isn't any other place to go dramatically, they catch you with some new, unique twist. Great laughs are had at the expense of Walter and Jesse's ineptitude (they are not the hard-ass dealers they pretend to be), but they also find themselves continually faced with decisions and situations which leave them changed - different men - afterwards.
This is perhaps the "moral" of the story, boiled down to its most basic form: every action has a reaction. Many shows and movies, even great ones, feel predestined - fated. As though the characters themselves had little say in the outcome. Here again Breaking Bad breaks the mould: we see them ruminating, thinking things through, and ultimately deciding on what they think is best... We don't always agree with it, but we can at least understand it. I can't wait to see where they go next.
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