Thoughts on Breaking Bad..

I finished watching Breaking Bad a few days back. I have always been wary of tele-serials. I'm a binge watcher and I tend to waste days on, watching one episode after another, helplessly hooked. That's what happened with Dexter two years ago- I watched 2 seasons in just over 5 days and felt horrible at the end of it, for doing so.. What a criminal waste of time! So I decided not to watch any other serial except Sherlock (which is brief, crisp and delectable). But then my friend who isn't quick to complement, practically forced me to watch Breaking Bad saying "It's the best thing you will ever watch." And it almost was. In 12 days I finished 62 episodes of cinematic brilliance and moral introspection.

There are generally two kinds of content that I find entertaining- works that are entertaining because of the rarefied craft they exude (films like The Bourne Ultimatum that just enthrall you by their brilliant technique) and works that are entertaining because you can takeaway something from them (quintessential example, The Shawshank Redemption). Very few works manage to pull off both. That is why Christopher Nolan is such an astute director. Take for instance The Dark Knight. It manages to thrill you for its whole duration and at its core, is a moral drama. And it's not just an yet another clichéd moral drama where good prevails at the end. We know how it made us rethink our fundamental premises- Is truth always good enough? Breaking Bad is one such work. Undeniably, the writing is top notch, the direction is excellent, the acting is unbelievably real, the dialogs are epic and the dramatics rival Hollywood. But what makes Breaking Bad truly tick, is the moral element.

When I briefly told my friend the story of Breaking Bad (A high school chemistry teacher turns to a life of crime after being diagnosed with lung cancer, to support his family.), she asked me "Isn't this one of those stories where the character's life goes into a downward spiral?" Ummm, yeah.. But it's complicated. I wouldn't be doing justice to a show this complex, by summing it up in 20 words. I have always prided myself on being a morally clear person. Rarely do I find myself in moral conundrums. I have never been an advocate of the gray argument. I knew the whites and I knew the blacks and I was pretty provincial in labeling the grays as pathetic attempts at passing off blacks.  For all his subterfuge and his declarations that though he might be on the side of the angels, he sure wasn't one of them, Sherlock Holmes was on the side of the angels. It was pretty obvious for all of us to see that Sherlock was white. Dexter had his share of blacks but was pretty much akin to Sherlock in that he was a white canvass with a lot of big, black spots. They weren't gray in the truest sense. Breaking Bad is a different monster all together. It has little concern for the blacks and much less for the whites. It deals predominantly with the grays and the patch of gray between the white and the black is anything but fine. It, in my opinion, is the first thing that I saw, that was truly gray. When I say this, I'm not talking just about the duality of its characters but about the duality of their every act. The characters don't just do good things and bad things. Everything they do is both good and bad, both white and black at the same time. Every enormity will have a twisted justification and every seeming magnanimity, some hidden malevolence.

So, what are the takeaways and moral reconsiderations that this drama, that follows the transition of Walter White from a rookie "cook" to a consummate badass drug kingpin going by the name of "Heisenberg", that albeit being gray is incontrovertibly a story of decadence, offered me? Well for one, despite its decadent theme, it is a masterclass on taking control of your life. Walter White is the typical middle class guy- he represents the frustrations and the fears and the feelings of inadequacy that cripples this portion of the society. He was a genius but he was an accessible genius unlike other geniuses (part of the show's success). I could relate to him despite his ingenuity. His transformation is so organic that it is an inspiring in an odd way. I'm not glorifying the act of breaking bad. Breaking Bad is supposed to be a "cautionary tale" in the words of Bryan Cranston, the man who plays the character and it should be taken as such.

 The admiration is simply for the man who conquers his fears, stops playing victim, takes charge and accomplishes what he set out to do and not for the methamphetamine cook. Speaking of meth, we come to another pertinent question- where do we draw the line between what's legal and what's illegal? If anything that causes harm ought to be outlawed, I could make a case for banning cigarettes and alcohol and pizzas and burgers and what not! I'm sure I'm missing something there but I don't know what. And another moral defense that Walt uses throughout the show, until the last one is "Nothing is wrong if one does it for his family." I was so glad that at least when the series ended, the writers made him get honest with himself and be done with that flawed logic. Oddly enough, even when you know he was treading real close to the blacks, you want him to win. You know you shouldn't be rooting for him but you do and it is precisely during these periods, that the show excels and acts as a moral touchstone. Why am I cheering for this guy? Am I right? How flexible is my code? 

Breaking Bad isn't a waste of time- it is a classic, the same way literary works are. You don't crib about the length after you're done with it because you are able to see the painstaking meticulousness with which it was crafted. You are able to see the ingenuity of it's plot, the solidity of its characters and the respect the creator has for the consumer. You are forced to reconsider your moral premises. It is a work that demands to be actively noticed and dwelt upon. It affects you. So much so, I set out to write a critical review and it turned it out to be a rave. So, if you are up for an ethical challenge and want to have kickass entertainment on the way, I suggest you start with Breaking Bad. But if you're one of those nonplussed types who always have a lot on their heads, then I'd give the advice Walt gives in one of the series' most memorable scenes, "Your best course would be to tread lightly."