AMC’s Breaking Bad: Gutsy, Fresh Television

A meek, depressed high school chemistry teacher, Walter White, revivifies and mans-up by cooking and selling methamphetamine. 

Premiering Sunday, January 20 at 10p, Breaking Bad is another daring series from AMC, the network responsible for Mad Men (my pick for best 2007 drama).

In a media universe of the moth-eaten, the warmed-over, the formulaic, Breaking Bad is gutsy, groundbreaking, fresh television.  With Breaking Bad and an upcoming second season of Mad Men, AMC (along with Showtime) is poised to wrest the gold standard of scripted drama from the hands of venerable HBO.

        Shot on location in New Mexico, Oscar-winning cinematographer John Toll (Braveheart, Legends of the Fall etc.) photographed the pilot in bleached colors, eschewing the sweeping pink sunsets and ubiquitous turquoise skies.

At first you think, how can Breaking Bad series creator Vince Gilligan (X-Files)  possibly make this controversial premise fly? 

(Vince Gilligan)

But Gilligan sets the tone in an opening sequence as spare as the desert landscape:        

White, a brilliant chemist, tries to convey his passion for the art of chemistry to a class of apathetic high-schoolers.  They’ve tuned-out.  One defiantly scrapes his chair across the floor after being told to return to his seat.  It’s an understated and wrenching moment.  White is invisible.

Like so many silent middle-class Americans, he lives on the margins, just one illness away from bankruptcy.  He works after hours in a humiliating job - a car wash - to earn some extra money to support his pregnant wife and special needs son.

When illness strikes – a lung cancer diagnosis – driven by fear, humiliation, and a deficient health insurance plan, Walter breaks bad.  He makes a desperate move to secure his family’s future and partners with a former student to produce and sell meth.

And White just happens to mix up the best meth.  He’s a meth-whisperer.  He takes great pride in his work.

There are many small, bittersweet moments.  By the time Gilligan is finished stacking one-by-one his building blocks of motivation  - in just 45 minutes or so - Walter White’s impulses are entirely clear.  You sympathize with Walter White.  You cheer for Walter White.  You want Walter White to win, in spite of his criminal enterprise.

Walter White will resonate with audiences.  It’s character development on par with Dexter.

AMC is taking a risk with this series and I’m sure there will controversy due to the subject matter.  Ignore it.  The producers say they haven’t overlooked the ravages of this drug, nor glorified the lifestyle.  There will be negative consequences.   The DEA, including a DEA chemist, even advised on some scenes. 

Viewers should pay attention to the real undercurrent here:  a metaphor for what’s happening to our middle class and why they’re being driven to the brink. 

The craggy Bryan Cranston is perfect as Walter White – middle-aged, bottled-up, and simmering.  Like the Mad Men characters, he yearns.

Cranston’s varied resume runs from the dentist in Seinfeld to the brittle, one-armed Colonel in Saving Private Ryan.  In Breaking Bad, he cavorts a lot in his underwear, brazenly displaying his love handles.  According to the press materials, Cranston decided the character should have "gone a little to seed" and he packed on about 15 pounds for the role.  But as the story and the chemotherapy progresses, Cranston looses both hair and weight.

Walter teams up with Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), one of his former students who is more vulnerable than tough.  Jesse flunked out of chemistry, and maybe high school, and drives a fast car with a license plate that says “THE CAPN”.   Walter begins to form a distorted father-son bond with Jesse.

Walter’s devoted pregnant wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn), eeks out some spending money by selling trinkets on Ebay.

Still, for all the heartache, Breaking Bad is a dark comedy.  Walt’s loud-mouthed, gun-lovin’, hot doggin’ brother-in-law - DEA agent Hank Schrader (Dean Norris, Little Miss Sunshine) - kills time on stakeout by speculating on a suspect’s ethnicity.  

"Oh, you exuberant Mexicans," observes Schrader.

"Uh, uhhh!  Capt. Cook.  That’s a white boys name!" asserts Schrader’s Hispanic partner.

"Tell you what. I got you $20 bucks that says he’s a beaner," says Schrader as slaps down a twenty on the dash.

"You’re on!" counters his partner.

As they go in for the raid, Schrader hums a few bars of Wagner’s immediately recognizeable "Ride of the Valkyries," a laugh-out-loud moment because the tune conjures Apocalypse Now.

Okay, so at this point we know that Schrader is loud-mouthed, gun-lovin’ AND racist.

The denoument is wickedly funny as Walt careens through the desert in his RV with two dead bodies sliding around in the back.

This series wouldn’t be quite as interesting, however, without RJ Mitte as Walter White, Jr, the special needs teenager.  Mitte was born with cerebral palsy and this young actor is handsome and vivid.  Walter Jr. is a smart kid, with a snarky sense of humor, and you know from the first moment why Walter Sr. is driven to protect and provide, even at great cost.

The New Mexico landscapes are bleak, and Walter’s meet-up with Jesse outside the bank, as Walt hands over his life savings to buy the RV, is especially barren. 

Walt’s house is dark and his last name is White.  Dark/White/Bleak.  That probably defines the complexity of Walter – doing something so horribly wrong for all the right reasons.

Check out this cool preview on the AMC website with clips from the pilot.  The periodic table crumbles into tinkling meth crystals.

A short promo here: