In this thread I was challenged to watch the first episode of the television show Breaking Bad. This was issued to me in response to my assertion in the thread that contemporary television, excuse me, blows chunks.
I have watched said program, and will now attempt to offer a fair assessment:
(Please note: After spending more than an hour on my first review, it was lost in the ether just before I posted. I am trying to resurrect what I said word for word without my obvious frustration at this event becoming too apparent.)
First the good things about the program:
The show uses ordinary looking people. Well, ordinary by Hollywood standards anyway. It’s a step in the right direction from the usual Barbie and Ken doll casts of today’s offerings.
The dialog is believeable and flows naturally.
The premise is interesting, if somewhat flawed. I say it’s flawed because I find it difficult to believe that the main character after apparently being such a straight arrow for so many years, (he’s a Nobel Prize recipient, or nominee, for heaven’s sake) would immediately turn to a life of crime upon being told that he has terminal cancer. Now, this is not an automatic dismissal, if one brings suspension of disbelief into play. After all, Hogan’s Heroes had a totally ridiculous concept, and yet was quite an enjoyable show. From what I’ve read, Breaking Bad is considered to have some claim to being a dark comedy, so we must keep an open mind about premises.
Now, the bad things, in my opinion:
The characters. The main character, Walter, is a man so emotionally stunted that he manages to keep the news of his terminal cancer completely to himself. He tells no one about it, not his wife, his son, his friends, relatives, coworkers, nobody. This sort of detachment makes a character difficult to identify or sympathize with. Walter spends long stretches staring into space, unable even to work up enthusiasm for a handjob from his wife.
Admittedly, no one would want a handjob from his wife, a cardboard cutout, casting call, ice bitch of a spouse. Walter’s son, named Walter Jr of all things,
is physically disabled, but otherwise little used. There is a scene where Walter Sr comes to the rescue of his son by bullying his son’s bullies, but the scene is played so emotionally flat that there’s a real “so what?” quality to it. The entire scene is immediately forgotten anyway, and the ice bitch who witnessed it, remarks later to her sister that her husband has gotten “so quiet” lately.
Walter’s bigoted brother-in-law is more interesting, but only because he’s loud and bigoted. Anyway, he’s not used much here. Walter’s partner in crime Jesse is a non-entity, a sulking, slacking, gang-banger type. The bad guys are typical bad guys.
As for the story, you can nitpick on questions about why a Nobel Prize recipient or nominee is washing cars when he has a job teaching high school, or if his financial situation is so bad, why does he use his last $7000 to buy an RV simply on his incompetent partner’s say so. However, where I found the story to become really laughable is Walter’s actions after he kills the bad guys by concocting poison gas in the RV meth lab.
A casually discarded cigarette has started a small fire in the desert underbrush, and Walter is afraid the fumes of the meth lab in the RV will ignite. (Or so I surmise. The story becomes rather unclear here.) Walter has gas masks, and one appears immediately on his face. Obviously the thing to do is to get into the RV and drive it down the road a bit, out of harm’s way, correct?
But Walter, Mr Impreturbable until now, barrels down the desert in the RV like he’s filming a remake of Bullitt, bouncing around manically, shaking up all those volatile chemicals he’s hauling, until he finally runs off the road into the ditch. Why? Beats me. At least he was nice enough to put the other gas mask on his reluctant accomplice Jesse.
After recording a drippy speech to his family on his cellphone, Walter hears sirens in the distance. Thinking it’s the police, he makes an unsuccessful attempt at suicide. But the sirens turn out to be fire trucks, although how fire trucks were summoned so quickly in the middle of nowhere, and by whom is never explained.
Perhaps the fire department was watching Walter’s mad RV rampage from a helicopter, and were convinced that the brush fire he was escaping from must’ve rivaled Yellowstone in 1988 to produce such panic in such a emotionless man. It really was a pitiful little blaze though. They must’ve felt silly to bring three trucks to it.
The episode ends in some cliched nooky between Walter and his ice bitch wife. Well, you must justify that mature theme disclaimer somehow, you know.
As to whether I will feel compelled to continue watching this series, as I was dared not to in the above cited thread, I think I can restrain myself, thank you.
Sigh. I must continue my lonely quest to find television that doesn’t suck.
