Idiot Boxing: Breaking Bad full rewatch (2008-2013)

I was relatively late to the Breaking Bad phenomenon. Of course I had heard about it's popularity and critical accolades during its initial rise to prominence back around 2010. But it wasn't until the series was nearly wrapped up in 2013 that I started playing catch up by working through the entire series. As most people, I found it thoroughly engaging, entertaining, and highly original. I enjoyed it enough to know that, at some point in the future, I would likely rewatch the entire series again.

Well, after three excellent seasons of the spinoff prequel Better Call Saul and recently channel surfing my way into one of the more memorable scenes from Breaking Bad earlier this year, the time came. Thanks to the marvel of modern streaming, the entire five-season, 62-episode series is sitting right there in Netflix just begging to be binged. So binge I did, not being completely sure of just how much I would enjoy the entire (roughly 46-and-a-half hour) ride on a second time.

In short, the show was even better the second time.

It speaks highly of a story, whether in literature or other media, when it is still compelling after you know the key plot points and the ultimate outcomes for the characters. Breaking Bad is a prime example of this. The first time I watched the series, it took about two seasons before I realized that Walter White was not some sort of sympathetic anti-hero who would eventually see the light. Rather, he was a warped, angry, vicious monster buried deep within the exterior of an impotent suburban schlub. Over the course of the series, he makes one decision after another which peels back another layer of the sad sack exterior to reveal a person dying to be "the man," but almost never wanting to admit his selfish urges to others or even himself. Though White commits some rather heinous acts in the first season, one could somewhat justify them as acting out of desperation. However, as the story progresses and White thrusts himself deeper into the world of mass production and distribution of the lethally addictive drug crystal meth, it becomes clearer that it is all just the means through which he hopes to upstage everyone whom he feels has slighted or underestimated him over the course of his adult life. These gradual revelations are compelling to watch, even as unsavory as they are.

One consistently compelling aspect of the show was its constant focus on problem solving - a theme as old as human storytelling itself. And Breaking Bad was masterful at it. Still, this was only window dressing compared to the deeper narrative at work. The tale of Walter White himself can be seen as rollicking, eerily dark and violent American tragedy. In classic Greek tragedy fashion, White is a man possessed of true genius-level talent - in science and chemistry, to be precise. It is quite clear that he could have been, and in fact at one time nearly was, a force for exceptional good in the world. And yet, for reasons we can infer related to White's own pride, he turned his back on a chance to have a career filled with tremendous rewards, both intellectual and financial. When the show essentially picks up nearly two decades later, we eventually gets hints and clues as to how much of Walter's humanity still exists, in contrast with the bitter, vengeful, selfish, and extremely dangerous creature we see revealed. While there are plenty of moments during the course of the show when it is easy to see Walter as a thoroughly corrupted force of pure evil, there are also just enough moments when the little that is left of his compassion show through. These moments keep Walter from ever becoming a one-dimensional villain, and the story is that much stronger for it.

Jesse and Hank, two of the best-formed and best-acted
characters you're likely to find in any TV show. Actors Aaron
Paul and Dean Norris brought every bit of intensity, tragedy,
and comedy to life through these dynamic forces in the show.

While the focus on the protagonist carries much of the show's powerful story, any successful 60-plus episode drama needs compelling secondary and tertiary characters, and Breaking Bad has them in spades. On this second viewing of the series, I had a much greater appreciation for Jesse Pinkman's story arc, along with Aaron Paul's ability to bring it to life. While Pinkman is, along with virtually every other character, a damaged person, he is arguably the most well-rounded and sympathetic of a varyingly bad lot. His journey from being a burned-out, slacker druggy into and through the world of deadly-serious, top-level illegal drug manufacturing is as carefully told as Walter White's. It is eminently fascinating to see Jesse try to navigate just who he is, who he wants to be, and how he deals with some of the despicable acts he performs at the behest of the vastly more capable and domineering figures around him. In an odd way, he emerges as the closest thing to a real soul that the series has, and it is through Jesse that disturbed protagonist Walter White's story meets its complex and poetic conclusion. Almost on par with Jesse is Walter's brother-in-law Hank, whose character and story arc I appreciated even more this time through the series. Beyond Pinkman and Hank, the show boasts a treasure trove of other brilliant, if terrifying and warped, characters. Whether it was ice-cold drug kingpin Gustavo Fring, dead-eyed security expert Mike Ehrmentrout, sleazebag lawyer Saul Goodman, or any of the many other colorful players, by its third season the show is teeming with people whom you are dying to see again.

As if a great narrative and characters aren't enough to make for a great show, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan clearly put a premium on using the medium of film to great visual effect. As we've also seen with this show's prequel series Better Call Saul, every episode features at least one segment of purely visual storytelling. These are often done with some of the most consistently excellent opening scenes in TV show history, with nearly every one coming at you from a different visual and narrative angle and asking you to figure out just what the initially bizarre or cryptic images are telling you about the greater story. It is easy to find shows that overuse dialogue and exposition to tell their stories these days, but it is far more difficult to find shows that have the patience and respect for their viewers to use the moving picture to engage the audience in the ways that Breaking Bad did from the very start, with a tidy-whitey-clad Walter White barreling along a deserted desert road in a shoddy RV, wearing a gas mask. That's the kind of imagery that begs one to keep watching to see just what the hell is happening, and the show maintained that approach to storytelling for its entire run. Nearly every episode starts with a trippy, puzzling sequence of imagery, sans dialogue, that begs you to sort it out and pulls you into that chapter like any great opening line of a well-written story.

Just one of the many vibrant and initially enigmatic images
seen in an episode's opening sequence. Such intros became
a hallmark of the show, and acted almost as primers to get
us viewers' brains warmed up.

These days, if you ask people who watch TV what the best shows of the 21st century are, chances are that Breaking Bad will be, along with The Sopranos and The Wire, among their top five. After working my way through the entire series again, I can certainly see why. While someone could nitpick here and there, the show was the work of meticulous story craft and visual tale-telling. Although it is a serious commitment to watch nearly 50 hours of an entire series, I won't be surprised if, some years down the line, I fire it all up again for a third go-round. I simply cannot come up with higher praise than that.

On a more general side note, I'm thrilled to be in a time when certain networks in the U.S., most notably HBO, AMC, and FX, have finally figured out that the greatest shows do not need to run in indefinite perpetuity, until the profits start to sag. When one looks at what most people consider the very best TV shows of this "Golden Age of Television," one notices how they had a relatively short lifespan: roughly fifty to sixty episodes. That's all. And now we're even seeing shows like Fargo, which is constructed into mostly stand-alone seasons comprised of a tight, expertly crafted ten episodes. We TV viewers are in a great spot if more networks continue to follow the example set out by shows like Breaking Bad and its brethren.