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OT: Breaking Bad, Bingeing and "Cartel TV Series" (MINOR SPOILERS)

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Still living somewhat "under wraps" in these ever-more-interesting times, I used Netflix to watch the entire series Breaking Bad, then its "follow up two hour movie" made 6 years after its end (El Camino). Now I'm watching the "prequel series," "Better Call Saul."

The "wackiest thing" about my Breaking Bad watch was how it seemed to be a "current show" but as I checked the airdates...I was watching a series that was STARTED 12 years ago -- well over a decade. I gave thought to the things I was doing, the people I was with, the job I had "back then" and it was a very weird sensation. "So this series ENDED before I started new aspects of my life?" Streaming and bingeing these shows allows one to "live in the past" WITHOUT living in the past.

And it got wackier. Female lead Anna Gunn(who plays the long-suffering wife of high school chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin Walter White) was on another series I liked -- "Deadwood" -- and I checked up on THAT series and it was over 15 years ago. These TV actors and actresses just move on from series to series to series.

I was aware of Breaking Bad during its first run. It ran on AMC on Sunday nights sometimes concurrently with AMC's other big show, Mad Men - -and I chose Mad Men to commit to. Still, it seemed that Breaking Bad was getting good reviews -- and more Emmies than Mad Men, and I decided that some way, some day, I'd catch up.

In preparation for Breaking Bad, I read a chapter on it in a book about television -- by David Thomson, that interesting but not-always-right critic whose prose is rich and delightful but whose viewpoints are sometimes crazy(he thinks Psycho is not good after Marion car sinks and that there can be no believing Norman's split personality thing.)

Thomson found "Breaking Bad" to be a masterpiece -- and he found it better than The Sopranos. I loved The Sopranos -- I've watched the whole series about three times and many individual episodes many times, BUT..

...having finished Breaking Bad, I will AGREE with Thomson, if only in a particular way.

"Breaking Bad" IS better than The Sopranos in one specific way: it has an ending. One doesn't waste the whole series on a "you decide" black out final scene. It ends.

And better than that, BEFORE it ends, Breaking Bad makes sure that every bad guy is killed, every malefactor is punished...justice is served here as it wasn't on The Sopranos, wasn't on The Americans(a show about murderous Russian spies in American suburbia) and isn't in real life.

Indeed, Sopranos showrunner David Chase not only famously refused to give The Sopranos and ending...he delighted in letting characters and plot lines simply disappear. In interviews about doing this, Chase was defiantly "pseudo-arty" ("Why should I give you scenes of closure like every other TV show? That's not what happens in real life") Breaking Bad proved Chase to be not only arrogant, but a bit stupid: in REAL life, characters like the Rapist and the Russian would NOT have just disappeared from the scene without consequences for SOMEBODY. Breaking Bad makes sure that there are consequences for EVERYBODY.

So as a story, Breaking Bad is better than The Sopranos. And certainly more "violent and exciting" than Mad Men(a series which ran 6 seasons without a single murder, because it couldn't have them.) But in other ways, Breaking Bad is a bit more predictable and simple than The Sopranos. And it could never get something that was "The Sopranos" alone to get -- a constant undercurrent of really good comedy, and a constant sense of "real people."

As The Sopranos gave us "life in New Jersey," Breaking Bad gives us "life in New Mexico" and each series fascinates, accordingly. So THAT's what it is life to live in the trees and bleakness just above and next to New York? So THAT's what it is like to life in a desert, rocky community.

Breaking Bad reveals its "plot tempo" early on and sticks to it for five seasons(six, counting one of those "split season" end runs.) The plot tempo is this: "How are they going to get out of THIS one?" Episode after episode finds our "heroes"(NOT - -they're manufacturers of the most virulent and poor-people-killing drug of all, meth) facing some sort of danger that MUST end with their death(s) -- and yet(of course), every time, they wriggle out of it, escape and (sometimes) turn the tables and kill their foes. The Sopranos pitted Tony the Boss against encroaching outsider mobsters each season, but didn't put him in life-or-death cliffhangers on a weekly basis. Breaking Bad, does.

This made for a fun, suspenseful, easy-to-watch series that truly reveals "the wonderfulness of binge-ing" as one episode flowed into the next and all I had to decide was how many to watch tonight(usually, two.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

One season of Breaking Bad ended with a character pointing a gun at someone. The "binge" took me right into the first episode of the next season and that character was still pointing that gun...and something happened. In real life...it was FOURTEEN MONTHS before the audience got to see what happened with that man pointing that gun. There was something more satisfying about waiting only 30 SECONDS to see that next season...

I found the rhythm of the "binge" to create(for me at least) the same sensation I get when I read a long mystery novel. The early chapters are slow, patient going -- but as the story accelerates to climax, much as I start turning the pages faster and reading more pages -- I found myself wanting to watch MORE episodes in a block to "get this thing to the end."

Will I ever be able to "wait a week" for the next episode again? Or to wait FOURTEEN MONTHS for the next season? Maybe not. I've got more shows to binge.

Watching Breaking Bad, I realize how influential it was on later series. I can name two in particular: "Ozark"(with Jason Bateman and Laura Linney as Yuppies turned Cartel money launderers) and Bloodlline(about how a Black Sheep Son returns to his Florida family and emeshes them in his drug dealing schemes -- also with the Cartel.)

Breaking Bad, Ozark(which isn't done yet) and Bloodline(which only lasted three seasons) all have the same structure: "How are they going to get out of THIS one?" and by using the Mexican Cartel as the most savage and merciless of employers...create a lot of suspense. Alas "imitation is the most sincere form of television" and I really feel that Breaking Bad got there first and best.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The characters. Well, Tony Soprano started it: The Bad Guy as Anti-Hero. Once Tony pulled that off, we got the Evil but Fair Town Boss of Deadwood(Ian MacShane), the enigmatic cheater and family man of Mad Men(Jon Hamm), and now Walter White(Bryan Cranston), a weirdly cold-but-neurotic high school chemistry teacher who contracts terminal lung cancer and decides to become "the best cooker of meth" in the American Southwest to provide money for his family when he dies.

And then the cancer goes into remission but..Walter can't stop cooking. Some of this is because the Cartel won't let him; some of this is because he doesn't really WANT to quit.

Showrunner Vince Gilligan calls the plot "How Mr. Chips turns into Scarface" and that's as good a premise as any. As a "gimmick" the series forces star Cranston to Go Bald for most of its run(the chemo), but cannily adds TWO more Bald Guys(Walter's brother in-law and Hot Dog DEA Agent, Hank; and Deadpan Mob Enforcer Mike the Cleaner) so as to keep a lot of bald round heads on the screen at all times (they even make Walter's young, trouble assistant Jessie butch cut HIS hair into near baldness; that' four.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

For me, Walter White is too whiney and self-involved(understandable, given the cancer) to match Tony Soprano of the Deadwood Town Boss as a "fun" villain. And his conflicted young charge (Aaron Paul as Jesse Pinkman) spends a lot of time crying or catatonic given the Evil He Must Do. Neither Walter nor Jesse are too fun to hang out with, so Gilligan offers a "second tier" of great characters to surround them: Bob Odenkirk's ever-resourceful lawyer Saul Goodman("Better Call Saul") Jonathan Banks' Mike the Cleaner(machine-like in his ruthlessness and willingness to kill; possessed of too much honor and common sense not to like); Giancarlo Esposito's Gus(Gustavio) Fring -- a soft-spoken, still-in-manner criminal kingpin with his own ability to commit Murder Most Foul; assorted Mexican Cartel bosses and killers(including handsome Stephen Bauer from Scarface, older and puffier but still handsome.)

And two very weird, very deadly character added in the final season: blank-faced Jesse Plemons as Todd(who kills children and single mothers with apologetic matter-of-factness) and Laura Fraser as the Beautiful Flibbergibbet Lydia (who wants anybody and everybody who might endanger her to be killed -- but doesn't want to see the results.)

I think it ends up being that galaxy of criminal types SURROUNDING Walter White that make Breaking Bad a good watch. He has a family too: Anna Gunn as Sklyer White (who drew entire websites of hate for the character); a very emotional son with cerebral palsy played by a young ACTOR with cerebral palsey. A baby daughter.

And "the in-laws": Hank the bald macho DEA guy and his ditzy wife(Skyler's sister.) Putting "the law" this close to the crook was a great touch...and another series would steal it(having an FBI agent as the next door neighbor to implanted Russian spies on The Americans.. ANOTHER show that didn't end with the satisfying payback that Breaking Bad gives us.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Showrunner Vince Gilligan figured out a way to use the more "fun" characters of Breaking Bad in a new context: a series called Better Call Saul, which largely happens BEFORE Breaking Bad, and which allows characters who die on Breaking Bad to "come back to life" earlier. (The old John Travolta gambit from Pulp Fiction.)

Speaking of Pulp Fiction, stars from ANOTHER QT movie -- Robert Forster(Jackie Brown) and Michael Bowen (Jackie Brown, Kill Bill) are on Breaking Bad..and Forster got to reprise his Breaking Bad role in the two hour follow up movie(made 6 years later) called "El Camino". It turned out to be Forster's final role before dying, and it was a fine role, well steeped in the warm, deadpan practicality of Forster's performance in Jackie Brown and in ...the remake of Psycho as the psychiatrist.

There, I did it. Got Psycho connected to Breaking Bad, OT or not.

Though I might add this. Whereas Psycho famously kills Arbogast off screen and below the frame at the end of his murder sequence(albeit with a slash to his face first), Breaking Bad has one scene in which a character coldly and slowly uses a box cutter to slice open a victim's throat, lifting his head to spray bystanders with blood. We came a long way, baby...in how bloody knife violence could be shown.

[–] tsrts (396) 4 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

One of the very cool things about Breaking Bad was that some of the suspense scenes were as good as it gets. When you think of suspense, you think of films, but not TV shows as much.
Hitchcock would have been very impressed with Breaking Bad.

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Yes! This is one of the reasons that a post on Breaking Bad isn't entirely "OT" to Psycho or Hitchcock. (Very few OT posts are NOT connected to Hitchocck in some way.)

Perhaps the kind of "simple, pure suspense of Hitchcock" is too SMALL for our modern day CGI comic book extravaganzas. Working in the "intimate" medium of prestige cable television, Breaking Bad could take the time to do the kind of smallish-scale, ultra-suspenseful, carefully shot and cut stuff that Hitchocck did.

Two examples come to mind:

ONE: At least two set-pieces involving an evil man in a wheelchair who cannot speak(due to a stroke). But he CAN ring a small bell on his wheelchair(like a motel office bell for the clerk!) and close-ups on him ringing that bell are very, very suspenseful en route to pay off.

TWO: A very suspenseful "great train robbery"(in which the engineers must not even know that they are being robbed -- or of WHAT.) Great suspense, unexpected problems -- and links not only to Hitchocckian suspense but the very suspenseful train robbery sequence in the middle of "The Wild Bunch"(1969.)