"Breaking Bad" Smokes the Competition

There are very few shows on television I consider worthy of my attention. In fact, you could count the number of these programs on one hand—specifically the hand of Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown. Two of these “shows” are Red Sox and Patriots games, so that should tell you what I think about the state of American television.

But in this vast and barren wasteland of cookie-cutter sitcoms, self-righteous talk-show hosts, and mind-blowingly idiotic reality TV shows with patently absurd premises, there is Breaking Bad on AMC. Breaking Bad—created by former X-Files producer Vince Gilligan—is quite simply the best show on television. How do I know this if I don’t watch other “hit” TV shows? Recall your Philosophy 101 course and St. Anselm’s ontological argument. Remember how he spoke of “that than which nothing greater can be conceived?” He was referring to Breaking Bad. So was Plato when he wrote of the ideal Form of a television drama. So who am I to question the wisdom of a monk and a philosopher?

Now nearing the end of its second season, Breaking Bad centers on the life of Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a fifty year-old high school chemistry teacher who is totally overqualified for his job. In the first episode of season one he learns he has terminal lung cancer. Worried that his pregnant wife Skyler (Anna Gun) and teenage son Walter Jr. (R.J. Mitte) who has mild cerebral palsy will be in dire financial straits once he is gone, he hooks up with his former slacker student and druggie Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) to cook crystal meth and sell it on the streets. Eventually, Walter is persuaded by his family to try to fight the cancer by undergoing a very expensive and what is at first a none-too-promising treatment regimen. Ironically, Walter’s decision to fight for his life indirectly puts his life in danger because in his eyes, he has no choice but to keep cooking meth with Jesse to pay for his treatment. All the while, he becomes more deeply involved in the dangerous world of drug dealing, and stares into the face of death on a few occasions.

The penultimate episode of season two aired on Sunday, and it featured the most powerful scene in the entire series thus far. I know I’ve already summarized the basic plot of the show for those who aren’t familiar, but this scene is worth recounting. If you haven’t seen it yet, this paragraph contains spoilers, so consider yourself warned. At the beginning of the episode Walter sells almost forty pounds of meth he and Jesse made for $1.2 million (causing him to miss the birth of his daughter), but he is reluctant to give Jesse his share because he is genuinely concerned that he will blow it on drugs. This leads Jesse to tell his recently relapsed girlfriend Jane—who introduced him to heroin—all about what he and Walter have been up to, prompting her to call Walter and threaten to tell the police about his meth-making if he didn’t give Jesse his half, which Walter then does. But Walter returns to Jesse’s apartment soon after, apparently to have a serious talk about his drug use. He finds Jesse and Jane in bed, both too high on smack to wake up. Suddenly Jane—who is lying on her back—starts vomiting and choking. Walter immediately rushes over to her side of the bed and extends his arms to turn her over when…he pauses. And slowly he withdraws his hands and proceeds to stand there and watch her choke for what seems like an eternity until she is choking no more. He covers his mouth, even shedding a tear at his necessary inaction.

While it was likely that Jane never would have gone to the police, she knew too much just the same; plus she was a drug addict, and as Walter’s buyer told him in the previous episode, “You can never trust a drug addict.” Walter is too smart and pragmatic to let a fluke opportunity such as that pass him by. It was him or her. Advantage Walter. He is a survivor. What was remarkable about this scene was that it managed to be so powerful and badass without a word said or a shot fired. The lesson here is plain enough: Walter is scrupulous only when he can afford to be so. The rest of the time he is practical.

What I love most about Breaking Bad is the rampant depravity in just about every episode. The show’s very name is a colloquialism from the American south which means “going wrong.” Indeed, Walter breaks bad out of sheer necessity. Jesse has already broken bad by the time Walter teams up with him. And obviously the shady characters these two encounter in their dealings aren’t saints, including their newfound shyster lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) who’s as sardonic and funny as he is crooked. Even Walter’s family is not immune. His wife Skyler seems to be on the verge of having an affair with her boss. His sister-in-law is a chronic shoplifter, maybe even a kleptomaniac. Oh and by the way, Walter’s brother-in-law Hank (Dean Norris), with whom he has a tense relationship on occasion, is a DEA agent who happened to come upon Walter’s product in a bust. It turns out the DEA is astonished almost to the point of admiration at the purity of his crystal, and naturally they set about tracking down this mythical meth-man they know only by his alias: “Heisenberg,” so chosen by Walter after the quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg. It was he who formulated the famous uncertainty principle, which states that it is impossible to measure simultaneously both the position of a particle and its momentum. The more that is known about one of the properties, the less can be known about the other. Walter's choice of alias is quite instructive.

Does all this sound implausible? Maybe on paper, but the compelling storyline and its subplots are made convincing and brought to life by a skilled cast led by the estimable Emmy-winning Cranston, who makes Walter White the most dynamic character on television, fictitious or otherwise. He is extremely intelligent and mild-mannered, but as viewers know, Walter has actually had to kill two drug dealers because they were probably going to kill him. Despite the death he encounters with almost startling regularity, Walter is undeterred.

A vast majority of the reviews of Breaking Bad praise it, and rightfully so. Unfortunately the reviews themselves are bad, as many of their authors have the irritating tendency to allow their own fragile conception of morality taint their understanding of the show, such as this dink who says Walter is in denial about his “unspeakable crimes.” This could not be more wrong. If he were in denial he would be a very boring character. That Walter is very much aware of what he has been doing is precisely what makes him the most interesting person on television. He knows all too well what he has done and why he has done it. Yes, I’m sure for Walter his expensive cancer treatments help him to justify it all in his mind, but I get the sense that justification or no, he would be able live with himself just the same. In fact, he even tells Hank at one point that since he was diagnosed (and started cooking and knocking off dealers) he’s been sleeping better than he ever has.

Or how about this blathering buffoon, who is so taken aback by the actions of our protagonist that he describes Walter as “a guy we’re no longer sure whether to love or to be frightened of.” Rather than concern ourselves with whether we like Walter or are frightened by him, how about we just appreciate the character for what he is, instead of getting caught up the maelstrom of his misdeeds and criminal activity?

But what kind of reviews can you expect from a media that is aesthetically compromised by puerile concerns for morality? As H.L. Mencken once noted, Americans are entirely incapable of examining a book or a play, or in our case a television show, in terms of its artistic merit alone. This silly urge to pass moral judgment on characters in fiction precludes a mature understanding of the work at hand. Morality in Breaking Bad takes on only a secondary consideration, ready to be sacrificed and compromised when the forces of necessity and fate warrant. And that’s what makes the show so damn enthralling.

- Max