Culture

As the wildly acclaimed show winds down its final season, one fan prepares us for the inevitable withdrawal

I have feelings about a TV show that are unnatural. I want to marry Breaking Bad. I want to have and hold it, in sickness and in health. I want to love and to cherish it, till death do us part. It is not a normal obsession, but I am pretty sure there are a few million other fans that feel the same way.

The Wire might have been more realistically gritty and said More Important Things About Society; The Sopranos might have been more epically operatic; Mad Men might be more literary with sexier characters. But Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad is just everything. It is a show that fuses all that you want from a work of cinema—tightly written scripts, scene-stealing actors, the best directors working in television, along with gorgeous, breathtaking cinematography and an ominous soundtrack—to become something grander than just a really good TV series.

"The Wire might have been more realistically gritty and said More Important Things About Society; The Sopranos might have been more epically operatic; Mad Men might be more literary with sexier characters. But Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad is just everything."

That old Hollywood attitude of looking derisively at TV as the “small screen” feels awfully silly after you’ve seen Breaking Bad, which has not had a single bad season during its five-season run; only seasons that are uniquely more amazing. One person I know likes to apply the slogan from Dan Savage’s pro LGTB youth awareness campaign to Breaking Bad. Just wait, she says: “It gets better.”

Every week, my heart races and swells with joy as I watch Walt, Jesse, Hank, Marie, Skyler and Saul connive, plot and scheme their way through a tangled methamphetamine underworld set in sunny Albuquerque. I get a warm fuzzy feeling when Bob Odenkirk’s slick lawyer Saul says something ridiculous but totally true, when Bryan Cranston’s Walter White defeats an enemy with cunning and science, when Aaron Paul’s Jesse Pinkman punctuates a sentence with an exultant, “Bitch!” I think about Breaking Bad leaving my TV screen on September 29th, and I genuinely feel sad.

Each week after an episode ends, I punch the air with my fist. I feel like I need a post-viewing cigarette. It is so satisfying. Why? How do I love thee, Breaking Bad? Let me count the ways.

I love to hate our protagonist-turned-antagonist, Walter White, the cancer-ridden high school chemistry teacher-turned meth drug lord, who is like no one we have ever met before. He is a self-loathing, pride-filled, insecure and arrogant cretin, whose knowledge of chemistry turns in him a modern-day (fallen) superhero with superpowers. (As Jesse would say, “Yeah, science, bitch!”).

Yet even as Walt becomes more evil, there are more evil people than him still, like the dirt bag neo-Nazis we hope he somehow defeats, even though he’s the genius who hired them to kill Jesse using his special brand of demented logic: “I want what you do to be quick and painless, no suffering, no fear,” Walt says, as if a hit on a former friend could be like euthanizing a beloved pet.

I love the characters, all of them—these sordid, colorful underworld figures who demolish the usual trope that fact is better than fiction. When Breaking Bad’s writers create a secondary or tertiary character, they go big—as big as David Lynch or Quentin Tarantino do in their most celebrated tour de forces. The Cousins, the twin killers who dress sharp and kill with mind-numbing precision are Lynchian archetypes. The world’s most anal-retentive drug lord, Gus Fring and the wise “clean up” man, Mike, seem like they could come from a Tarantino film. But only Gilligan’s cast can dream up a man like Todd, the creepy sociopathic killer with remarkable manners. And to think, most of these characters don’t appear till midway through the series.

"I want what you do to be quick and painless, no suffering, no fear, Walt says, as if a hit on a former friend could be like euthanizing a beloved pet."

In sports, a team with a deep bench has better odds than a team with a few high profile, over-paid stars. Acting wise, Breaking Bad has the deepest of all benches. It’s not enough that the show has Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul as its two leads, both Emmy winners multiple times over. No, you also have Bob Odenkirk, as the perfectly slimy criminal criminal lawyer; Anna Gunn as Walt’s shrewd wife; Dean Norris as Hank Schrader, the cocky yet lovable DEA brother-in-law; and two stunning character actors, Giancarlo Esposito as Gus and Jonathan Banks as Mike.

And then there’s Tio Salamanca, played by Mark Margolis, who was nominated for an Emmy with a performance in which he didn’t speak, but rang a bell with his finger. Breaking Bad’s actors are that good. They are able to convey rage, hurt, distrust, love, and kindness, often with subtle shifts in their voices, a tiny glance of their eyes, a change in body language—in other words, the sort of nuance that usually wins people Academy Awards.

I love how Breaking Bad vacillates from action-adventure to comedy to serious drama, often in the same episode, and sometimes even in the same scene. As grim as it can be, Breaking Bad is often darkly funny; indeed, Dean Norris has said he originally thought it was a comedy. You will laugh, even as you flinch.

"And then there’s Tio Salamanca, played by Mark Margolis, who was nominated for an Emmy with a performance in which he didn’t speak, but rang a bell with his finger."

Gilligan refers to Breaking Bad as a modern Western, and the director of photography Michael Slovis makes it look like one. Filled with wide shots of the desert landscape, through Slovis’ eye, the desert is beautiful and menacing. Slovis, who came on at the start of Season 2, has said that he sees the photography as its own character—and now, it’s hard to imagine Breaking Bad looking any other way.

Visually, the show has a palette normally seen only in film—using nearly black lighting during quiet moments, and hyper-saturated, almost bleached out colors for big action sequences. Visual signatures like the haunting, surreal vignettes that open each episode (the most famous of which is Season 2’s pink teddy bear, missing an eye, floating in a pool), and fisheye shots of boring household objects lend it a playful, whimsical style. Doorknobs, Roombas, gas cans, flies—they all get their close-ups.

As we hurtle toward the series finale, everyone is certain that we are in for a jaw-dropping, and satisfying ending. But, while I am anticipating the ending of Breaking Bad with the fervor of a bloodthirsty vampire, I have to face the inevitable: the loss of my fictional friends, and the grief that will follow it. While Saul is getting a spin-off, recreating the magic of this particular combination of characters and these twisted storylines will be a tall order. Perhaps, I’ll try to replace the hole with the flawed Homeland, attempt to get into Sons of Anarchy or finally start watching Game of Thrones. But they’ll just be my TV rebounds. Thank heaven for Netflix, and reruns.