Let me take you back to summer 2010, when the television show Lost is coming to its climactic and convoluted end. Though I am sure most with a level head would agree that Lost…well…lost its charm shortly after the third season while the masses still wanted and were begging for an end. And an end we got. Jack laid on the Island with the dog while everyone cheerfully met in a weird, dreamy church. Not what we were really looking for but we’ll run with it. What do television viewers know anyway. The point is is that Lost was one of the most popular shows of its time and even through today, almost four years later. Now we have Breaking Bad, an explosive and gripping drama revolving around the characters of Walter White and his cohort Jesse Pinkman on their path to a kingdom of riches via a glass road (meth).
Of course the series is all done and the show could not have captured the minds of viewers around the world with any more intensity than it did. On top of being the most popular television show, it reveals to us that a show that makes and spends money does not need to suck complete ass such as The Walking Dead or Dexter–I know this is a dissenting opinion. People love that serial killer with horribly written dialogue and all those zombie murders with deplorable character creation and lousy acting. But hang in here with me.
Vince Gilligan had a story: Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher with a cancer diagnosis, begins cooking meth with a former student–a perfect tv fodder. The astounding thing was that Vince stuck with the realm of the real. Characters fit into scenes, even when the characters did not fit themselves. This is the beauty of the building of Heisenberg’s character. Being exposed to violence and the drug biz in the early seasons, you see a man you would never see selling meth, that nervous high school teacher. Slowly but surely Walter White changes who he is given the extreme circumstances. This all occurs with stunning reactions and thought patterns from all characters and actors. Even in the extreme it feels normal and we should not question it. The writing itself resembles the stage plays of Strindberg and Ibsen, with life-like characters and emotions set in a tangible world. More often than not we are left, or I am left, speechless at the ridiculous conversations held in a zombie apocalypse.
Another plus to the Breaking Bad being one of the best shows to grace our TV screens next to Mad Men is that it ended. Yes, it ended. And not with the misleading, “Oh, but this guy did this so there has to be more” or “What did it all mean: Were they really cooking meth or was it all in the baby’s head?” It ended the way Vince Gilligan wanted the show to end. Walter was given two years at most to live and roughly in that time span he died and along with the story. Remember you can’t take it with you, even if it is a multi-million dollar meth business.
With the end of Breaking Bad and the story that had fans pent up with tension for so many years we look towards the future. I am not saying that Breaking Bad was the only good drama along with Mad Men, but it seems to be one of the few. Game of Thrones exists, but to be quite honest that comparison is apples to potatoes and its own article. Though some with there to have been more of a closer with characters such as Jesse, but the show started with Walt and ends with Heisenberg, as Vince intended it.
