What Breaking Bad Meant to Me
I was watching a Chucky marathon on AMC when I saw a saw a trailer for a show about a terminally ill chemistry teacher who turns to cooking meth amphetamine in order to provide for his family after he’s gone. My first thought was: A channel that syndicates old movies is putting out its own programming? How can this work? Then I remembered another show I’d recently heard of, also on AMC, about ad execs in New York, and I seemed to recall that the critics had warmed to it.
The trailer played again later that day, during Seed of Chucky, and I thought to myself, Damn, that’s some extreme subject matter. I should probably check this show out. Where have I seen that guy before?
After watching the pilot, I didn’t know how the creators planned on stretching a series out of the story. It had been like a made for tv movie. The protagonist had tried to kill himself. But Vince Gilligan had a plan. He was telling a finite story with an ending that he’d already envisioned. It wasn’t merely entertainment for entertainment’s sake. It was something much more.
When many other smartly scripted dramas were trying to thread together expansive casts of characters that were representatives of whole communities, Breaking Bad stuck with the nuclear family and the very few characters in its periphery. I’ve always loved that about the show. How they were able to keep that dynamic fresh and interesting still awes me.
It was intelligent. It was character driven, and it was full of symbolism. Everything mattered. The shots. The music. The color scheme. The costumes. The characters’ mannerisms. Blink and you might miss something very important. I’d think about an episode for days afterward, and I’d love to discuss it with my friends in depth. Dissecting episodes even brought me closer to my father living across the country. It restored my faith in quality television. I felt every emotion on the spectrum at one time or another. Even the most prescient of viewers couldn’t have predicted some of those plot twists. It showed humanity at its best and worst, favoring clarity over ambiguity.
It was a cultural phenomenon, and we probably won’t see a show of its caliber again anytime soon. Maybe not even in this lifetime.
