Breaking Bad has been unfolding in a manner that I would never have expected from watching its first season. I remember being apathetic towards the image most shown in early advertisements for the show; a pantsless Bryan Cranston holding a pistol in the middle of the desert just didn’t pique my interest. The early episodes of the show certainly carried more humor than this last season has (though a laugh track and quicker edits help). What has kept me coming back is the complexity of the characters and the arc of Walter White as he compromises his identity in dancing on ambiguous moral ground. Throw in a knack for bold, attention-grabbing cold opens, and you’ve got yourself proof of a golden age for television.

Weeds bears the same premise as Breaking Bad: mild-mannered suburbanite enters the drug trade to provide for their family. But where Nancy Botwin has remained chipper and relatively stakes-free, Walter White just tailspins further into the abyss.

In the wake of his decision last season to literally stand back and let his partner Jesse Pinkman’s girlfriend die, Walter is stuck living with the brash choices he’s made. When diagnosed with cancer, he lived like there was no tomorrow because there truly wasn’t, taking half measures because he didn’t expect to see the day they’d come full circle on him. With his cancer now in remission, Walter must clean up his own mess. Over the course of the season, he’s remained passive, watching it all break down around him as Jesse spirals into nihilism and his brother-in-law Hank is hospitalized by a pair of hit men whose original target was Walter.

Narratively, this season has been about pulling the scope outward, yet keeping the focus tight. Walter starts working directly for kingpin Gustavo Fring, who is first presented as the owner of a fast-food chain. Gustavo’s umbrella gradually opens over the course of the season until we discover everyone’s complicit, from the private detective employed by Walt’s lawyer Saul Goodman, to Tomas, the ten-year-old gang initiate who shot Jesse’s friend Combo last season.

By adding new meaning to established characters and events, the show’s writers can send the characters in new directions. This gels with the themes of action and consequence that run through the entire series. Because Walter feels responsible for the emotionless shell that was Jesse Pinkman, he keeps Jesse close. And because of Jesse’s guilt over allowing Combo to be shot and cooking the drugs that Tomas now sells, he takes actions that come back to Gustavo, and the consequences sit squarely on Walter shoulders. This literary technique of deepening the story rather than widening it is what makes the drama of Breaking Bad so effective.

As everything comes to a boil, Walter finally takes a full measure by murdering two of Gustavo’s dealers, who employ (and eventually murder) Tomas. The speed of his Aztec (a car which is my favorite touch of many in the entire series) plowing down the gangsters and the finality of his point-blank bullet into one of their skulls says it all: Walter is not going to stand to the side any longer. But, as this season’s finale indicates, we can only expect that Walter is going to have to answer for his choices soon.

Tags: AMC, Breaking Bad, breaking bad finale, Bryan Cranston, season finale, television, Walter White

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 at 5:19 pm and is filed under Chapter 1.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.