Last Sunday was the season premiere of Breaking Bad on AMC. This marks the first episode of the last half of “Bad’s” final run and with this there are a lot of mixed emotions running rampant within the fans of Vince Gilligan’s television masterpiece. On the one hand, its great to have the best show currently on TV back, but it’s also sad to think that after 8 more episodes the end will be here and a huge void will be left that will be nearly impossible to fill. Breaking Bad very well may be the best drama ever in the history of the medium, as many are saying, and I really can’t argue with them. It’s nearly perfect in all aspects of its production. The performances from the ensemble cast are phenomenal, anchored, of course, by Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul. The writing is unparalleled, with no noticeable “throw away” episodes. The scripts are tight and keep the story moving forward at a fevered pace. All in all, if you can’t see that Breaking Bad is just that good, then I can’t help you.
For the uninitiated, I will be discussing plot points of the show throughout this column, so if you haven’t watched Breaking Bad and are planning on giving it a try, stop here and start watching, cause their will be SPOILERS. You’ve been warned . . . . .
Walter White will go down as one of the greatest villains of all time. But what makes a great bad guy? For me, the more complicated their motives are the better. I’ve never been a fan of the cookie cutter baddie. All evil just because, without any insight into what makes them tick or why they got to be that way. Now, my favorite villains tend to be those that were once good or normal, who through circumstance and/or choice become bad over the course of time. This is how Gilligan himself describes the show. He wanted to have a character that starts off sympathetic and through the course of the series, episode by episode slowly becomes the antagonist instead of the protagonist. There is another character in cinema who follows a very similar path as Walter, and I couldn’t help but consistently think of him while I watched episode after episode . . . . Michael Corleone . . . . The Godfather.
Francis Ford Coppola’s classic film is considered by many to be one of the greatest ever made. The saga of the Corleone family transcended what would be called the traditional mob story and was so much more. By focusing on more on the family dynamics and complicated character motivations, Coppola ended up creating something much more Shakespearean. I think of The Godfather movies more as the history of a king and his children and the failure of his ideals through their choices.
Al Pacino introduced Michael, the youngest son of Don Vito Corleone, to the world back in 1972 and just like Walter he has a complicated attitude towards his family from the start. We first see the youngest Corleone at the wedding of his sister, Connie. In tow behind him he has brought the young Kay Adams (Diane Keaton) who will one day be his wife. He is dressed proudly in the army uniform he wore during World War II, a role he embraced by enlisting after the attack on Pearl Harbor against the wishes of his father. We identify with Michael from the beginning of The Godfather because he establishes himself as being moral. He rejects the criminality that his family has embraced in America. He loves his father and rejects him at the same time.
When we meet Walter White in the pilot of Breaking Bad, we see a man who almost appears to be broken down by life. Chemistry teacher by day he goes to part-time job at a car wash in order to make ends meet. He is a man who seems to love his family but underneath the surface you can already feel the evidence of man who lives a life of quiet desperation. Being diagnosed with terminal cancer forces Walt to take a harder look at what he’s going to leave behind for his family to survive on. After watching a news story about a drug bust his brother-in-law, Hank (Dean Norris), a DEA agent, was involved in, Walt is exposed to the potential of making large sums of money quickly by cooking crystal meth. He finds the perfect partner in a former student who happens to be neck-deep in the trade; Jesse Pinkman.
Walter White and Michael Corleone start their journeys with the same driving motivation; protecting their families, no matter the cost. Walter dives headfirst into a life of crime in order to make some quick money for his family. He wants them to live a comfortable life after the cancer claims his life. Michael’s family is threatened when his father is gunned down in the street. His older brother, Sonny, too headstrong for his own good, threatens to lead the Corleones into a long, protracted war with the other New York families that will most certainly end badly. It’s through violence and loss that both of these men make choices that lead them down a path that will compromise their values and warp their ambitions. They both see their families as threatened and are willing to sell what’s left that’s inherently good about themselves in order to ensure their families survive.
Walter is forced to murder early on the Breaking Bad’s run. When he and Jesse narrowly escape the wrath of the meth dealer, Krazy-8 in the show’s pilot, they imprison him in Jesse’s basement, secured to a support beam with a bike lock around his neck. Both Walter and Jesse know that they have to kill him, but murder is a foreign concept to both of them. After the flip of a coin its Walter who is chosen to do the killing. He is slow to perform this grizzly duty, even bonding with the drug dealer and almost allowing him to escape. But ultimately Walter does his duty and kills for the first time. We’ll see as the show goes on how much easier it is for him to accept murder as part of the consequence for the business he has chosen to be in.
Michael chooses to murder when given the opportunity to get revenge against the man who ordered the hit on his father. In a magnetic scene he sits confidently in a leather chair in his father’s study and calmly explains to his brother and other members of the “family business” how he could kill both Virgil Sollozzo and Capt McClusky at a pre-planned meeting to discuss peace. It’s clear to the audience even then, that Michael is the smartest Corleone, but he also shows for the first time his ruthlessness. He takes his first step towards the dark when he murders both of these men with a pistol hidden in the bathroom. The scene is infamous in the history of cinema. It’s a moment I’m sure that is studied over and over again in film classes around the world on the perfect combination of lighting, sound, editing, and performance. This moment, combined with the later death of his first wife, Apollonia, is when Michael “breaks bad”.
The topic of when Walter White “breaks bad” is up for debate. Certainly he commits many crimes early on in the show, but through it all Gilligan makes us still sympathize with his plight. The moment for me, when he ceased to remain a man I could relate to, happens in Season 2 when he is faced with the decision on whether or not to act and save the life of Jesse’s new girlfriend, Jane (Krysten Ritter). Walt clearly is not a fan of Jesse’s love interest. He sees quickly that she is distracting Jesse from his work, cooking with his former teacher. Jane and Jesse have also started taking drugs together. One night Walt stops by Jesse’s house to find the two lovers passed out in bed after shooting heroin earlier. Jane unconscious, begins to choke and Walt, watching over in the darkness of the bedroom makes the conscious decision to not intervene and help the dying girl. By letting her die, Walt retains his place of influence in Jesse’s life and in his demented mind, protects his young partner from a bad influence who would have only made him into even more of a junkie. Maybe Walt was right, but his decision to allow an innocent to die, erased most of the compassion I had for him.
At the end of The Godfather, Michael Corleone ascends to the throne that his dying father leaves behind. In a classic montage we see Michael stand as godfather to Connie’s baby at a Catholic baptism ceremony while each of his enemies and the threats to this family are wiped out one after the other in quick secession. This scene is mimicked to great effect in Breaking Bad, when Walter White finally destroys the legacy and loose ends left behind by his arch-nemesis, Gus Fring (an awe-inspiring performance by Giancarlo Esposito), by killing all 11 prisoners who are the only ones who can tie him to Gus’s meth empire. He does this in a coordinated hit that takes just over 2 minutes to execute. The comparison cannot be overlooked.
There are so many ways to tie these two characters together that I could probably go on writing for another thousand words. But for now I’ll just enjoy these final episodes of what is truly THE television drama of a generation. I’ll also be excited to see how Walt’s journey will end. How will Walter White pay for all of the bad things he’s done, to himself and those around him? Who will he take down with him on his descent? Will he be forced to kill Jesse or Hank, like Michael killed his own brother, Fredo? There are so many ways this could play out, and I have confidence that it’s going to be brilliant. So, here’s to two of the greatest villains in pop culture history, and how they were made, not born . . . . bad.
the jayaffair 