"Breaking Bad" Review

As a child, some grown ups would tell me that television rots the brain. While this is true of some shows, there is one in which I can feel new neural connections being formed as I watch it. That show is "Breaking Bad."

It is the story about a man named Walter White (Bryan Cranston), who is a very smart high school chemistry teacher. He is the typical suburban father with a wife and son who love him and another child on the way. His wife's sister is married to an agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency, or DEA, named Hank Schrader (Dean Norris).

At the beginning of the show, the family is gathered for Walter's birthday party. Hank is very excited because of a recent drug bust in which a ton of money was confiscated, and they are watching it unfold on the news. This is how Walt realizes just how lucrative of a business selling meth would be.

Meanwhile, he is doing things legally and not getting much to show for it. His job as a teacher does not make him very much money at all, and in order to make ends meet, he works a second job at a car wash. He hates it there! He is forced to do grunt work with a stubborn employer who constantly bosses him around.

To make matters worse, he finds out he has lung cancer. He does not necessarily want to go through chemotherapy, but he wants to leave some money behind for his wife and children. Even with the two jobs he has, there is no way for him to do that. This is especially true when he quits his car washing job on a day he is feeling particularly ill.

This all leads him to want to do something immoral for what he considers a very moral cause: he wants to make meth.

Because Walt is a very intelligent chemist, he knows how to go about making the highest quality meth product in existence. However, he does not know the ins and outs of illegal drug business. He needs to work with someone who can help him with that.

He finds this person when Hank takes him on a ride along. They go to a drug bust in which the DEA captures a meth cook. The cook is actually working for another person, who Walt recognizes: Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul, who gives us Idahoans pride), Walt's former student who had previously dropped out of high school.

Walt talks to Jesse about becoming partners, and after some reluctancy, Jesse agrees. They make a batch of very pure meth, and selling it arises complications that end badly.

That is a lot of how the show goes. Walt tries to make money by selling meth, and this leads to a lot of different conflicts. Even when he thinks he will get out of the business, there is something else that pulls him back into it.

When his product is put on the map, he goes by the pseudonym Heisenberg, who is known for wearing a black pork pie hat.

Walter's moral sense declines throughout the show. He becomes a different person. He becomes greedy and kills people who get in his way. His justification throughout the show is he is doing it for his family. However, in the process, his actions cause danger for the people he is trying to help.

The show goes into the family dynamics because of what he is doing. It affects his relationship with his wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn), in a negative way. Even when she does not know he is cooking meth, she knows something is going on, and she is scared of what it might be. She loses more and more trust as he becomes more and more evil.

There is also the dynamic between Walter and Hank. As a DEA agent, Hank starts noticing this pure meth going around, and he knows the name Heisenberg. However, he does not suspect Walter for a minute. The writers could have very easily made Hank a total idiot, but he is not. He is so right about so many things while he is investigating the case. The one thing he cannot seem to grasp is who Heisenberg is.

Another thing the writers and the directors get right is the use of foreshadowing throughout the episodes. In one scene, Skyler's sister, Marie (Betsy Brandt), lays a baby down in a crib, and she talks about how the baby needs to lie in a certain position so she does not die in her sleep. Later in the very same episode, a person who recently injected herself with heroine dies in her sleep for the same reason Marie was talking about. This is a very significant part of the story, and it was interesting how the writers figured out a way to explain what was going to happen in such a subtle way.

In another episode, a character is tracked because of the GPS on his phone. This is something that is not explicitly stated, but there is another scene in the episode where they mention GPS tracking in phones. It is so subtle, but the audience immediately knows what is going on.

There was a review I watched by Siskel and Ebert about a movie they did not like. In it, Roger Ebert talks about how he does not like it when a movie will assume the audience is stupid. After watching that, I realized "Breaking Bad" has the exact opposite effect. With its brilliant use of foreshadowing it assumes that the audience is intelligent. In fact, after watching the show I feel smarter for having connected so many things without being told explicitly what is happening.

It is no secret that this show is very well acted. Bryan Cranston alone won three Emmys in a row for Best Lead Actor in a Drama Series for this show. Before that, he was nominated three different times for an Emmy in Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series when he was the father in "Malcolm in the Middle."

After watching some episodes of this show, I wanted to see what he was like on "Malcolm." Not only was he good in that show, but plays the most hilarious character. The man is very good at physical comedy. In fact on IMDB's "Breaking Bad" page, it says the producers were so used to him being goofy that they did not consider him at first.

I am glad he got this role because I believe no one could have gotten it as well as he does. He has proven with "Malcolm" that he is perfectly capable of being an average suburban dad. That is how his character is supposed to be at the beginning of this show. However, he also takes it to the next step, taking on at least one more identity as the fearsome drug lord, Heisenberg. His performance is so good, that he is scary in some moments, and likable in others.

Another stand out performance is Aaron Paul as Jesse Pinkman. An interesting fact about him is Jesse was originally intended to be killed off by the second season. However, his performance blew the writers and producers away, so they decided to keep him.

Paul does a great job portraying Jesse and all his complexities. At first, he is just another drug addict who has never amounted to anything in his life. However, as the show progresses, the audience starts realizing that he is really the only character we like. He becomes torn apart as he is forced to do some very dirty deeds, and he wants out of the business towards the end of the show.

It also becomes apparent that children have a special place in his heart. There are several moments in which children are harmed, and this always angers Jesse. He absolutely hates how desensitized people working in the drug business are to harming them. This causes a lot of tension throughout the show.

Anna Gunn also does a great job with what she has to work with. Her character is very controversial. She comes off as rude sometimes especially when she is dealing with her husband. However, when you actually look at what is going on with the rest of the show, she really cannot be blamed. Had Walter been doing the right things, they would never have been in this mess, and their marriage would have been happy.

My thoughts on the final episode (warning: spoilers)

When I first watched the last episode, I was not sure what to think. In the end Walter dies and Jesse gets away. However, it feels like Walter got off easy. I really wanted to see him go to prison for what he did, and I wanted to see more about how people saw him.

After watching some other reviews of what other people have thought of the final episode, I realized that it really is the perfect way the writers could have ended it. The fact that it was not what I expected makes it even better.

The final episode reaffirms the fact that this show is first and foremost a modern-day tragedy complete with a tragic hero. When I learned about tragedy in high school English class many years ago, my teacher told me the tragic hero is supposed to be someone the audience likes and can identify with. That is exactly how Walter is in the beginning. He is a family man and a high school teacher. He never intends to hurt anybody, he just wants to support his family. Anyone who has ever struggled with money can identify with this character.

In the final episode, there is a brilliant scene in which Walter talks to Skyler. Throughout the show he says that everything he does is for the family. However, in this scene he corrects himself and says he did it all for himself. He accepts the fact that he hit rock bottom with his life and that this is the end.

This acceptance of the man he has become is what affirms how tragic the story really is. He has given up going to the top. His only goal now is to tie up some loose ends before this miserable life he has created ends.

Another thing I learned in my English class is the tragic hero always has a tragic flaw. This becomes apparent when he admits that he did everything for himself. His tragic flaw is pride. There are so many other things he could have done for his family including swallowing his pride and taking the money his rich ex-girlfriend and her husband offers him. However, he does not want their money because they previously cheated him out of a business he could have made a ton of money in. Him saying that he did it for the family is just him making justifications of what he knows is wrong, and it is one of the many lies he tells.

It is important that we study tragedy in our society because it is meant to teach us a lesson. In "Breaking Bad," the lesson is that making grave mistakes and not seeking to make amends right away leads to a life of darkness. It lead Walter White into a life where he is a danger to his family, and it ultimately leads to his death.

My rating for "Breaking Bad" In case you have not guessed, I give this show five out of five stars. It is a brilliant show all around. It is considered by many to be among the best television shows to ever come out. The writers are very intelligent, and it makes the audience feel intelligent watching it.

Content: This show is rated TV-MA on Netflix, which is equivalent to an R rating. Because it is about the drug culture there is profanity throughout the show. Several episodes feature characters saying the F-word, and in at least one instance that I can remember, that word is used in a sexual context. There is also quite a bit of sexual content. In one episode, there is a disturbing scene in which one character almost rapes another. At the beginning of the second episode, sexual sounds are heard, and there are several episodes portraying a man and a woman in bed with each other. At the beginning of one episode (I believe it was the one entitled Más in season 3), some characters attend a strip club with topless women wearing pasties over their nipples (it is a long scene that you can skip easily if you desire to do so). There is also some bloody violence in many episodes. It is a very interesting show, but just be warned about the content. It is definitely intended for an older audience.