Breaking Bad, the seduction of evil and subversion of the viewer

What do you think of Vince Gilligans extended treatment and ultimate redemption for Jesse in El Camino?

Do you think he tried to rectify Jesse's past indiscretions with his captivity by the White Brotherhood gang to make up for it?

I still view Jesse as a criminal who probably should have been either jailed for life or killed by those he did business with.

Good post , all true.
I guess people just like to imagine what it would be like to be a criminal and live an exciting life -on-the-edge , and get rich at the same time.
Hence bank robbery films.

op, i found BB way too dark, and that (after season 2) i was usually rooting AGAINST walt and for whatever minor character was featured in a given episode.

i just find it hard to pull for a character who is actually sincerly mean and hateful, and harmful to innocent people. like a MFer who tortures dogs or birds for fun. that's a sick fuck IMO and this is how i felt about walt after a while. so i struggled to finish the whole series, but i did really enjoy season one and mostly season two. the pilot rocked, when he was a bonafide underdog. he was actually quite likeable at that point. me, i wish the whole thing had gone in a different direction, and somehow kept walt's virtue intact in spite of making and selling meth. i mean, yes i get it, what gilligan and them were trying to do. it just doesn't jive with my personal sensibilities.

LTUM .02

Good analysis.

Is it okay to do the wrong thing for the right (perceived) reasons?

Can evil acts ever be redeemed through good acts?

How do you cast judgement on someone while knowing that you'd probably do the same in identical circumstances?

Are good and evil absolute or relative? Can you forgive one man's minor transgression if it prevents an even bigger transgression.

These were all questions that the series wrestled with and, thankfully, let us come to our own personal conclusions about.

I began watching 'Breaking Bad' just a couple of weeks ago. I almost quit the series about midway in Season 1 Episode 4 because it all just seemed so depressing. It was actually Walt's impromptu torching of the loudmouth jerk's car with the squeegee on the battery trick that made me think, "Now it's getting interesting" and kept me watching.

As someone else mentioned, the whole "getting rich as a criminal" theme is something that fascinates many (maybe most) people at some time or another. It isn't that we (most of us) admire or want to emulate Walt necessarily, or that we don't ultimately turn a blind eye to the human destruction his "product" is causing - Vince Gilligan certainly can't be accused of glamorizing meth use - but the forbidden nature of the enterprise, the cat and mouse game between the criminals and the authorities and all the suspenseful "almost getting caught" moments are highly entertaining.

My all-time favorite t.v. series is 'Sons of Anarchy' and regardless of how much you loved or identified with those characters, at the end of the day you had to admit, as Jax did toward the end of his life, that they were criminals and bad guys. Jesse says pretty much the same thing about himself in one episode, and Walter's angst about his own actions is visible on his face much of the time.

I'm midway through Season 3 at the moment - Hank has just been put in the hospital by the two brothers from Mexico, and Walt has managed to get Jesse installed as his new assistant at Gus's high tech lab.

"Who is that actor?" side-note: In the episodes just before and after Walt's cancer surgery, the surgeon is briefly seen, and his face was so familiar. It took me a couple of minutes to place him: 'Glen' from 'Raising Arizona', Sam McMurray. The man is a very in demand actor - almost 200 screen appearances on IMDB.

I agree. One of the show's best qualities is its play with the "grey areas" of morality and how everybody has good and bad and can change either slowly or sometimes in haste.

There's a conversation between Walt and Hank about Cuban cigars, prohibition, and crystal meth which highlights this theme well.

The performances and the writing are equally creditable for keeping us, as you say, "rooting" for Walt and Jesse even though they are capable of heinous acts.

It's a mistake, though, to write off anybody completely. That's the other side of the coin. Walt does something AWFUL, but he clearly loves his family. Maybe not to the extent he tells people (or himself), but he does love them. He liberates Jesse at the bitter end. He hates himself for what he did to Hank. He is evil more often than not (particularly as the show goes on) but not 100%. Jesse, too, keeps trying to be better, and failing, but trying and trying.

I think the lesson of the show is that we are all capable of good and bad. We are corruptible and redeemable. We have choices to make and we should match our priorities with the good, not with the evil.

Hank is one of my favourite characters precisely because of his later "good guy" traits in juxtaposition with his "jock bigot" stuff we see from the word "go". He's a "man's man" in the worst ways - at first - and only later on do we witness how he really is a protector, provider, and caring husband and uncle (and brother-in-law). Yes, he is inappropriate in speech and attitude sometimes, but he brings a lot of good will to the table.

Another great example is Marie, who is a pretty model citizen, but is a kleptomaniac and catty.

What a great show.