‘Bad’ boys are back

Millions upon millions of fanboys have been waiting. They have been sitting next to their Netflix and downloading sites, eagerly anticipating Walter White’s next move. Because this is the final eight, heading to the last episode of Breaking Bad, Vince Gilligan’s twisted tale of a meth-cooking high school science teacher and his feckless partner.

Why should audiences care about a character who cooks methamphetamine in a roving lab, lies to his family and gets deeper and deeper into trouble with drug dealers, police and Drug Enforcement agents?

Because Walter White — played by multiple Emmy winner Bryan Cranston — is that modern anomaly of television: a TV hero (or anti-hero) who openly shows you his worst sides, stripping away every layer of likability until you wonder how he can technically still call himself a human.

Bad boys have always been popular. But White starts out a sympathetic soul: a low-paid teacher with a second job at a carwash, just trying to make ends meet for his wife and son. A milquetoast, one who never says an unkind word or has an unkind thought. Then the lung cancer diagnosis: Stage 3A. For a guy good with chemicals, the only option left to provide for his family after he’s gone seems to be cooking meth.
He joins up with Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), a hapless high school dropout who knows about markets and distribution. Their friendship goes through the five stages: mutual antagonism, mutual interest, mutual need, mutual care, and mutual respect. By season five, the final season of Breaking Bad, Jesse has gone from lowlife scumbag to slight redemption; he’s still in possession of a soul, even as the fatherly Walter White snuffs out every last vestige of his own.

As the first half of season five ends, White is locked in a Raskalnikov-Petrovich game of cat and mouse with his brother-in-law, DEA Hank Schrader, who’s accidentally glommed onto Walt’s secret identity. Like Crime and Punishment, the web of crime and gradual unraveling of Walt’s soul spins out from an experiment: to see what he can get away with.

Now, as the final eight episodes commence, we flash forward (as the series often does) to kids skateboarding in an empty concrete pool. The camera draws back to reveal it’s the White residence, now boarded up  and condemned; White arrives in full beard and head of hair in Jesse’s Chevy Monte Carlo and slips through the chain link fence to inspect the place; the walls are spray-painted with one word — “Heisenberg” — Walt’s drug kingpin moniker. What follows is as ingenious as the previous 54 episodes.

It’s been noted that we’re in the golden age of dubious television heroes. Reality shows might be part of it — who can say who’s good or bad on reality TV? Then there’s the onslaught of good/bad characters initiated by Tony Soprano: the Don Drapers, the Walter Whites. Guys who dare you to deny their redeeming qualities, even as they live out male viewers’ most ruthless fantasies.

By the final eight episodes, it’s unclear whether or not Walter White has any redeeming qualities. What began as a mission to protect and provide for his family turns into a twisted game of intelligence and pride: how to outsmart his rivals, how to provide the best product on the market. On his terms alone.

It must be hard to go back to being a man after such lengthy battles.

Even his creator finds it hard to continue liking Walt. “I have kind of lost sympathy for Walt along the way,” Gilligan told The Guardian. “I find it interesting, this sociological phenomenon, that people still root for Walt. Perhaps it says something about the nature of fiction, that viewers have to identify on some level with the protagonist of the show, or maybe he’s just interesting because he is good at what he does. Viewers respond to people who are good at their job, even when they are bad.”

Much has been made of the symbolism of the show: the all-seeing “eye” (whether it’s the teddy bear in season two or the constant use of surveillance cameras); the pervasive baldness in Breaking Bad and its ultimate meaning. The show is rich in literary merit, but I would suggest that much of the appeal of Breaking Bad derives from the joy of pure storytelling: What will happen next? From a tiny germ, Gilligan has developed an addictive world of sleazy lawyers (“Better Call Saul!”), sympathetic killers (Jonathan Banks as Mike) and people who are unexpectedly human, even as our hero becomes less so.

Creator Gilligan has thoughtfully framed the last eight episodes around a helpful discussion question: “How long can anyone stay on top?” It’s a question that applies to the ratings juggernaut of Breaking Bad itself, as much as it does Walter White: as each succeeding season has raised the stakes, not only of storytelling but of television itself, it’s maybe best that Gilligan’s show calls it quits and lays down the final hand. For a show that few thought would get beyond a first season (HBO reportedly passed on Breaking Bad, joking, “Have you got anything with child molesters instead?”; AMC picked it up and scored big), the offbeat story has hooked a lot of viewers, with almost double its audience for the beginning of this final season. How long can you stay on top, indeed?