While waiting for the third Hollow Crown....

[selenak]

I can savour the fact the impending s5 premiere of Breaking Bad brings on lots of media goodness to enjoy:

Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul present the newest trailer at Comic Con. Which has an epic Mike, Jesse, Walt scene in it. Can't wait to see it in context!


Bryan Cranston lists thirteen favourite scenes for Walter White , from all four seasons. His comments as to why these particular scenes are thoughtful and interesting, which, as someone who listened to a lot of audiocommentaries for many a show I can tell you, isn't a given if you let actors comment on their own stuff.

In one of these periodic "fanfiction exists?" utterances, an an article picks out three examples of Breaking Bad fanfic. (Of which there actually isn't much on the internet, about 80 or so stories, maximum. I know because I looked back when I finished marathoning. :)


And speaking of fanfic, a non-Breaking Bad rec: The Bones is a very poetic River Song character portrait.

Comments

[kaffy_r]

Thanks for the rec!

So many folks I know really enjoy Breaking Bad that I wish I had a desire to see it. Sadly, I have such a visceral response to its core ... I was going to say subject, but Walter is its subject ... let's say such a visceral response to the object of the subject's interest, that I can't approach it at all. It's somewhat akin to the reasons I'm not interested in Dexter, I suppose; the ability to connect in any way to someone whose Extremely Bad Behavior is at the core of the story is lacking in me.

I don't think it's just that they're bad guys. Perhaps I'll leave it at something that I'm sure would make me seem very mundane and tiresome to many folks; I can't connect to stories - especially long drawn out series - in which evil is done and the evil-doer is not stopped, and quickly. I see evil-doers continue apace and unstopped, sometimes even worshipped, in the real world. I can't deal with it, no matter how brilliantly done, or even how much I might be missing of enrichment to my own life by refusing to watch, in my fictional entertainment.

[selenak]

I understand what you're saying. There are some stories I feel about similarly; for example, this is why I loathe The Player by Robert Altman. What used to make a difference for me in Dexter (no longer, as this quality is gone) and still does with Breaking Bad is that, among other things, the story never loses sight of just what its subjects are doing and never stops offering alternatives and characters who make other choices as well. In its first season and to a degree stll in its second, third and fourth (but then not anymore), Dexter had that, plus it did question whether or not its main character could genuinenly change. (One of many reasons why the quality declined was that Dexter forgot all the lessons he learned, see also, in non-lethal form: House.)

Breaking Bad,though there are some parallels in that the main character is a criminal doing villainous things, has one key difference in the set up. When we meet Dexter, he's already a serial killer. We later find out why, but he's already killing on a regular basis when the show starts. When we meet Walter, he's a high school teacher who doesn't play at being harmless, the way Dexter has a mild-mannered lab geek facade, he is harmless (though he has the potential not to be, as some scenes show). Pilot!Walter isn't the Dalai Lama, but he's not a bad person, either, and one of the reasons why the show works for me the way it does is that you can see the transformation from that Walter, who is absolutely horrified and sickened the first time he has to take a life and needs nearly two episodes to work himself up to that point, to the one capable of letting a woman choke in her own vomit step by step without making me feel "no, human beings don't react that way, this isn't plausible". (In retrospect, it's also amazing how Walter's monologue at the start of the pilot, when he's teaching chemistry to his students, about how "chemistry is seen as the study of matter, but I prefer thinking of it as the science of change, of growth, then decay - transformation" is basically describing teh show's program.)

As opposed to Dexter, which started with a strong ensemble and then let the supporting characters decay more and more (which robbed me of people to emotionally invest in), Breaking Bad starts out Walter centric and then builds up its ensemble more and more, which is important beause it does allow you to care for these other people who have partly quite different developments from Walt. One of my initial worries/questions when starting the show was whether it would take the cheap way out and make the cops look worse than the criminals in order to make us root for the later. But they don't. By and large the Alburquerque drug squad is shown as a dedicated bunch, and Hank while not catching Walt himself does track down several other key criminals, and is shown as a brilliant detective. Jesse who starts out seemingly as the fumbling comic relief grows into someone not only with greater moral awareness than Walt but someone whom you hope will as opposed to Walt make it out of the show alive and in some form at peace (Walt's death, one way or the other, is a given, just as Laura Roslin's was on BSG - when a character is introduced by being given a death sentence, you have to deliver in the end). Skyler by now is deeply compromised and has started to accumulate her share of guilt, but she also reacts significantly different to Walt to similar situations, and I hope that she, too, will find a way out. And so forth. Most importantly, so far the show never gave me the impression that as opposed to Dexter, it started to buy into its main character's self rationalization. Walt isn't glamorized by what he's doing. He's not a "cool" character a la Quentin Tarantino. And that's what keeps him believable.

Now if you were watching, this may all not be enough to make up for the fact that the central character is in the business of, as the show itself puts it, making poison, and entertainment should never be torture, so I'm not saying this to make you watch it: just to explain why I do.

[kaffy_r]

Thank you so much for this really astute and articulate response. You're outlining for me all the reasons that I could see "Breaking Bad" as a high quality and totally worthwhile piece of art and entertainment, and why I could see that later seasons of Dexter aren't.

And this:

Most importantly, so far the show never gave me the impression that as opposed to Dexter, it started to buy into its main character's self rationalization. Walt isn't glamorized by what he's doing. He's not a "cool" character a la Quentin Tarantino. And that's what keeps him believable.

... impresses me.

I still can't bring myself to watch, but I truly enjoyed this essay.