A while back I had heard about the AMC hit show Breaking Bad. Initially, I wondered at the appeal. The synopsis I heard was that a burned out high school chem teacher was diagnosed with cancer and decided to start either selling meth or making meth. That's all I really knew. I wasn't sure of the attraction it held for viewers. Then the show started appearing on Netflix and the promo shot for season one always caught my attention with the fierce look that Bryan Cranston (Walter White) has for the shot. I started poking around at IMDB and Amazon to see what kinds of reviews it was getting by viewers....
Start side note - I generally only go by viewer reviews rather than actual "critics" because I am a firm believer in populist opinion when it comes to my entertainment. Critics are usually all caught up in things that I either don't care about or am not smart enough to understand why they matter. Similar to using Consumer Reports to decide my dishwasher purchase, I would rather use the 1700 reviews on Amazon than the small lab of nerds at Consumer Reports. - End side note
The show received huge and gloriously loud praise from a massive amount of viewers. On IMDB, it has a 9.4/10 based on 214,478 viewers. 9.4?!?! To give some context, Seinfeld has an 8.9/10 from 98,578 viewers and the original 1977 Star Wars has an 8.8/10 with 535,074 viewer reviews. To me, this represented a show worth looking into.
Another tipping point was that it aired on AMC, the home of another favorite of mine; The Walking Dead. AMC also happens to be the home of Mad Men, though I am not as big a fan of that show.
So, since I was looking for a new show to occupy my mind while I trudged out miles on treadmill, I thought I would take a looksee at this, apparently, highly enjoyable show.
Episode 1 (Pilot)
The show starts off engaging enough. There is a man in his whitey tighties wearing a gas mask madly trying to maintain control of a Winnebago while barreling down a deserted desert road. It gets more interesting when you realize there is another person in the passenger seat who appears to be unconscious with a gas mask on, as well. Mr. Underwear ends up running the RV into a ravine along side the desert road. When the dust settles, the viewer can hear sirens in the background and the under dressed man departs the RV, leaves a cryptic message on a video camera, places his open wallet next to it, walks to the road and levels a .45 down the road in the direction of the sirens. Cut to opening credits...
Yeah, I was engaged. Who's the middle aged dude in the desert in his undies? Why the seeming suicidal mentality?
The show goes on to show the previous 3 weeks that lead up the desert scene and it all becomes clear... sort of. I will leave the rest of the episode to be viewed by whoever is reading this and will move on to my thoughts about the show.
The shows primary cast is made up of (in my mind) four characters. Walter White (Bryan Cranston) who plays a dried up middle class chemistry teacher at a public school in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He isn't a very likable character as he is weak and pathetic. He has a persona of a man who has been beaten down so many times that getting back up is just too much of a bother anymore. Walter's wife, Skyler White (Anna Gunn) is newly pregnant and seems to be a nice enough character but very overbearingly motherly in a sweet way. She isn't a vulture, but rather a woman who has grown accustomed to taking care of a man who has grown apathetic about life. Their son Walter White, Jr (RJ Mitte) is clearly handicapped physically. It appears that all his mental faculties are intact, but due to his physical handicap, he must use special crutches and also has a speech impediment. The last character I want to mention is Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul); Walter's drug dealer sidekick. This guy is probably my least favorite character and that probably means that he is doing a good job. He is a whiny coward who loves to hit the pipe and holds everyone around him responsible for his actions.
When Walter discovers that he has terminal lung cancer he begins to evaluate his life. He realizes that he has nothing to leave his family. As it stands, he works as a high school teacher and has a second job working at a car wash. At both places he is similar to the character Milton Waddams (Stephen Root) from Office Space... Well, maybe a little more personality than that, but not much. Yet, he contains the same "just below the surface" passive aggressive nature. You can tell that Walter is on the edge of blowing something up. Walter ends up doing a "ride along" with his obnoxious DEA agent brother-in-law, Hank Schrader (Dean Norris), to a drug bust because of his growing curiosity regarding the Crystal Meth trade. Walter had heard from Hank that these meth dealers could rake in hundreds of thousands and Walt gets the idea that maybe this is something he could do.
The idea comes to fruition in the partnership of Jesse and Walter. Walter, being a chemist, sees an opportunity to make meth better than any of the street amateurs are currently doing and gets Jesse to work with him since Jesse has the street contacts. Well, Walter was correct and he made a product more pure than anyone else is making and the trouble begins there...
My intention here isn't to tell you what happens in each episode, but to tell you about my feelings regarding the characters in each episode... This task is now seeming to big, though. Let's settle for hitting the highlights and if you get more, consider it a bonus.
The thoughts I finished the pilot with were:
1. New Mexico looks like a seriously dreary place to live. I have been to Albuquerque before and it just as dry and desolate as the shows represents. Constantly blazing sun. All shades of brown. Heat radiance off of every surface. Maybe there are some that think that is beautiful, but I am not a fan of that landscape.
2. Walter needs to recapture the essence of being alive. The shows writers do an excellent job of helping the viewer to feel suffocated by hopelessness. This is a sign of quality film making. The angles and sounds (or lack of). The blank stares and closed spaces all work to create a feeling of claustrophobia within Walter's life.
3. Jesse does an awesome job of reminding me of a childhood growing up in dirty streets around dirty people. He is all about himself and his own wants. He is scummy and unworthy of pity in the first episode.
4. Walt, Jr is still a bit enigmatic in the first episode. Questions remain around how he became how he is. Was it birth or an accident.
5. Hank Schrader is a very unlikeable character. He's loud and arrogant. He demeans Walter inadvertently through his inability to relate to the humanity around himself.
Those are my thoughts for Episode 1...
No comments:
Post a Comment