My dad always said there is no worse bad guy than a good guy who turns bad. So true.
So what's Breaking Bad all about?
[spoiler alert]
It's about Walter White, husband, father, high school chemistry teacher (but once Nobel prize team researcher -- so a kick ass achiever who settled for less, much less), stubborn, proud, depressed, middle aged guy. Depression has been Walter's second skin for some time, so much so that maybe he doesn't even know it himself. Or does he? Or does he care? But bottling up isn't healthy, we all know that, all he needs is a reason to explode. And that reason is soon served when he discovers on his 50th birthday he has terminal lung cancer. So Walter's beige clothes and beige car, his beige job and beige reason for living suddenly explode into a variety of colours and a full blown mid-life crisis, which actually feels like real living, for once. He's pressed for time, he needs to make cash quickly in order to leave something for his family before he checks out. So he teams up with Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), a small time meth dealer and Walt's ex high school student. Together they make an explosive duo. They cook meth, they push it, they make cash. Then it escalates. A lot. And fairly quickly. They have to kill, cook, sell, cook some more, steal, borrow, lie, kill again, live and let die, cheat, sell some more, cook large, cook blue, and in the process they have to be really close, but get on they do and they don't. Love and hate mix together in a highly volatile recipe, maybe with a touch of Stockholm syndrome thrown into the mix (well, just a touch, neither holds the other captive, if not psychologically), and a dysfunctional father-and-son type of relationship is born.
The 4 series of Breaking Bad so far are a real roller coaster of emotions and events. The blue meth powers the story, like every respectable MacGuffin should do, but really it's about the ride. The ride of a life. Walt's life, as he tries to live more than one at once when he sees the finish line on the horizon. So Walter White and his alter ego Heisenberg, master chef of the blue stuff and urban legend of a kind, destroy everything on their path as they ride into the sunset. But golly is it a spiffing fun ride of destruction or what? And isn't destruction just part of life after all? New things are born from the ashes of others. It's chemistry.
Bryan Cranston is absolutely amazing as Walter White, a role that has won him 3 Emmys in a row (and if you only know him as the goofy dad in Malcolm in the Middle you are in for a big surprise), Aaron Paul as a Sancho Panza to Cranston's Quixote is great too, the two obviously have great chemistry together (I can't put it in any other way, I tried), but the whole cast is simply, hands down, truly awesome. Two of my personal favourites are Bob Odenkirk and Jonathan Banks, a colourful, capable, logorrheic, criminal, lawyer the former and an old sea wolf, dirty PI/hitman the latter. But every one in the cast, in leading roles as well as small parts, is fantastic. The same goes for the quality of writing, directing, photography, music, you name it. I can but imagine the positive environment cast and crew must work in. The show apparently runs on a very tight schedule, from pre to post production, so to do such a remarkable job they must be more than happy to get to work.
If you haven't seen Breaking Bad yet... sorry for you. I have not heard a single bad review of the show yet, so if you heard a lot of hype about it, believe the hype. Yo! (Sorry, couldn't resist).
