Well, here it is: July 14th is upon us which marks the eve of the beginning of the final season of Breaking Bad on AMC.
This is something of an almost holiday-like-event in America it seems- er, at least to many of us. With nearly 3 Million Fans on the show’s Facebook page alone, it’s safe to say this show has a little bit of something for everyone, myself included. I know people from all walks of life who love this show. I think this is for many reasons. As my dad has always said, the great movies, great show series of our lives- the characters that stick with us- all of these stem from one thing.
Great writing.
The show, created by writer Vince Gilligan is no short of a genius in my humble opinion. It’s said that he was turned down when pitching the show by nearly every Network imaginable. Well, chalk another one up to ambition & an undying belief in his lead character, Walter White played by Bryan Cranston. If you haven’t seen it, here’s the premise of the show in a nutshell version, taken from Wikipedia:
Breaking Bad is the story of Walter White, a struggling high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with advanced lung cancer at the beginning of the series. He turns to a life of crime, producing and selling methamphetamine with a former student, Jesse Pinkman, with the aim of securing his family’s financial future before he dies.
The reason for the show’s success is no mystery to me. The characters, ranging from Walter, being a meth cooking former high school chemistry teacher, to Jesse Pinkman (played by Aaron Paul) with his rough outer shell & emotional soul- are REAL people to us. I say REAL people in that they display all the different aspects of human nature itself, depicted in the show by amazing dialogue, as well as the silent, semi-unimportant seeming scenes in which we see their true colors, if only for a brief moment. We grow with them, know their secrets, & identify.
Unfortunately, not having cable means that I am a Season behind the rest of the world. Having cancelled my cable a little over a year ago, I watch Netflix daily. However, after much research, I’ve found that Season 4 will be on Netflix streaming as of tomorrow. If one more day of anticipation doesn’t kill me, I will be overjoyed.
I decided to write this post after finding this story this morning about someone who built a recreation of some of the scenes (namely the meth lab seen in later seasons) out of Legos, accompanied by the RV meth lab as well pictured here, by Orion Pax.
Not only is the show great for the reasons listed above- it’s just that it’s so three-dimensional. The actors BECOME those great characters to a T. Also, the show is somewhat of a social statement in itself, as it’s based around this man- a law-abiding citizen all his life- who, upon finding out he has cancer, decides to change things up for the sake of his family. As a culture, we don’t pay teachers nearly what they deserve. And so Walter resorts to becoming a criminal by putting his chemistry skills into a more profitable business- drug production. Why? So his family wouldn’t be left penniless when the cancer eventually killed him. And we’re not just talking about any drug here; we’re talking about METH for god’s sake. If you’d have told me years ago that a character who’s good-guy-turned-meth-cook-bad-ass would soon be thought of as a kind of every man’s anti-hero, I doubt I would’ve believed you.
