At first, I thought that 'Breaking Bad' went wrong because the drama was played out over too many seasons. The premise of a high-school science teacher who becomes a meth cook had its dramatic elements, but was primarily comic due to the sheer unlikelihood of the situation. As the audience to a drama, we want to identify with the characters, and we can't sympathize with a protagonist who acts without reason. We did have sympathy for Walter White as a cancer patient in a last-ditch effort to leave money for his family. We wanted him to succeed as a meth chef, and we are only willing to consider his moral dilemmas to the extent that we excused his crimes. Breaking Bad should have placed its protagonist in juxtaposing situations involving drug users, like the season-one relationship between Walter and Jesse. The show should have been about Walt considering the effect of his actions and his interactions with people who use drugs. Instead, the writer thought to make a cinematic crime drama, not the episodic, serio-comic look at a teacher, a man in mid-life, and an apparently upright citizen coming to terms with his hypocrisy and accepting others. In season one, Walt has contempt for Jesse, and we hope that this tense relationship continually resolves itself in camaraderie. Instead, the partners in crime hate each other more, and the conflict makes for a ridiculous spectacle as the series lays waste the best aspect of its first season. VInce Gilligan began with 'The Sopranos' before helming this project, and it is easy to see how a plot about the criminal mind of a high school science teacher was derived from the plot about the average suburban life of a mobster. In the latter, we sympathize with a criminal because we see a vulnerable life behind the goombah violence. In Breaking Bad, we lose sympathy with a vulnerable character becoming an egomaniacal criminal and ruining lives. In the Soprano house, there were few household secrets, and no insufferable moments of vile anti-drama when an audience hates the protagonist. The writers here should have allowed Walt to keep his secret throughout the series, which might have ended when his wife found out. Indeed, the initial story wasn't played out long enough. I find it almost unfathomable that five seasons of a show about making drugs might elapse without the main character even considering to try some. At most, the show could have revealed that Walter was associating with odd individuals and possibly using drugs. The series could have portrayed Walt's teenage son in admiration of Walt's young friends, or a wife who disapproved but was led toward consideration. A plausible familial drama would have been one in which a wife disapproves of her husband in a midlife crisis, condescending to youth. If that led to a divorce, the writers could have created ancillary drama about marriage and children. Anna Gunn would have played an estranged wife, not be wasted in the role of a domestic hostage. She fears for her children's safety, totally despises her husband, but never reports him to the police despite having every reason and opportunity to do so. One wishes that Bryan Cranston had found his character as insufferable as it became. This show was ruined by its early notoriety, and a writer encouraged to take himself too seriously. This is still TV, and the novel idea that Breaking Bad was TV art licensed the stupidity and boring suspense that ensued.
Review of Breaking Bad
