Breaking Bad: Better Late than Never

I am the danger! I am the one who knocks!

This is a post I've been meaning to write for a while now. For years I heard that I just had to watch Breaking Bad, that it was brilliant and groundbreaking. It's not that I didn't believe these people, it's simply that I didn't get into it from the start and often assumed I'd never get a chance to catch up. Last New Year's Eve I finally sat down and began the Saga of Walter White as he transforms from a nebbish chemistry teacher into the ruthless crystal meth kingpin, Heisenberg over the course of six incredible seasons. From the opening seconds of the pilot in which  an RV driven by a man wearing only his underwear and a gas mask careens wildly over a desert road, I was instantly hooked. My addiction to the show only increased as I followed Walt on his bloody rise to the top of the crystal meth empire. By the time the curtain fell on this bloody saga of crime and corruption in the American Southwest, I was finally convinced of what so many fans already knew: Breaking Bad is the most perfect show in television history.

From the outset creator Vince Gilligan's goal was to take an all around nice guy like Mr. Chips and gradually and plausibly turn him into Scarface. Over the course of the two years in which the events of the show take place, Breaking Bad accomplished this metamorphosis with frightening success. Walter White begins the series as a milquetoast man living a life of quiet desperation despite the love and support of his beautiful wife Skylar and teenage son Walt Jr. who suffers from Cerebral Palsy. Despite being a chemistry genius, Walt walked away from a life of exorbitant wealth and success and settled for teaching chemistry to a bunch of bored high school students. When we first meet him, he's about to turn fifty and has, by all indications, given up the ghost and resigned himself to a life full of regret. All this changes when on his fiftieth birthday he's diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. This is the final blow, the wake up call that snaps him out of the coma which has become his life and causes him to suddenly "break bad." Fearing he won't be able to leave anything behind for his family and learning how much money can be made in the meth business from his DEA brother in law, Hank, he decides to put his chemistry brilliance to good use cooking the purest meth the world has seen.


Walt and Jesse taking a beer break in between cooking.

It's at this point where we meet Jesse Pinkman, a former burnout student whom Walt discovers is in the meth business under the name Captain Cook. When Jesse's partner is arrested by Hank, Walt tracks Jesse down and suggests they partner up, saying "you know the business, and I know the chemistry." Hoping to avoid being turned in, Jesse reluctantly goes along with his former teacher and it's not long before they acquire an RV and drive out into the desert to cook. Over the course of the show, Walt and Jesse's relationship veers wildly from periods of friendship to deep hatred, backstabbing and violence as Walt becomes more ruthless, manipulating and lying to Jesse in order to keep him on his side. Despite this however, neither one can bring themselves to kill the other; through it all Walt has a fatherly love for Jesse even as his actions continue to shatter Jesse's life. By the end of the series, their roles are reversed; Jesse is shown to be the one with the conscience and heart, unwilling to go along with Walt's deadly schemes while Walt does whatever it takes to keep the meth train running.
At its core, Walt's transformation into a ruthless criminal represents the essential failing of the American dream, the desperate belief that we in this country can have it all. Despite his incredible potential, Walt walked away from his dream life and instead played it safe, settling for a normal, middle of the road existence. Although he has a beautiful wife, a great son and a nice house in a quiet neighborhood, he's filled with the resentment of feeling that it's all beneath him, especially when he's reduced to teaching elemental chemistry for a meager wage. With Walter Jr's medical needs and an unplanned baby on the way, Walt is forced to take a second job doing demeaning work at a car wash. Walt's underlying resentment and anger at his situation lies dormant for years, building pressure until the final blow of his diagnosis. Bryan Cranston, known prior to Breaking Bad for his wacky comedic chops, is consistently brilliant in subtly emphasizing Walt's sense of failure as his real incentive for breaking bad at fifty. The more Walt attempts to provide for his family the more he hurts them by lying and being distant. When Skylar finds out what he does, she threatens to leave him and tear the family apart, which ultimately pushes him deeper into the business.

The show does a wonderful job of showing all the repercussions, both short and long term, of Walt's actions. Every decision he makes in the meth business has serious, life shattering consequences for everyone around him, especially Skylar and Jesse. Not one character is untouched by the collateral damage that Walt leaves in his wake and that's another great theme of the show: the idea that every action has ripple effects which spread outward exponentially. As Walt's soul corrodes and he slips further and further into his Heisenberg persona, all those around him are affected. Take his decision to let Jesse's girlfriend Jane overdose. Walt goes to Jesse's place to try and save him from meeting that same fate, but when Jane starts choking on her own vomit, Walt's initial instinct is to turn her on her side. Just as he's about to do so, he hesitates and we get the sense that there's another part of him, Heisenberg, convinced that it's best to let Jane die to give Jesse a much needed wake up call. More important to Heisenberg however, is the fact that Jane threatened to reveal who he really is, so it's easy to see that Walt acted in his own interest. Cranston does an incredible job of silently conveying this as the point where the old Walt truly dies and Heisenberg takes over. Walt had killed before but it was always in defense of his life.  Little does he know that letting Jane die will cause her bereaved father, an air traffic controller, to space out on the job, leading to a mid-air collision of two 737's right over Walt's neighborhood. Walt's indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people. As Walt transforms into a power hungry, egotistical drug kingpin, his actions gradually shatter the lives of the very people he originally intended to help.

By season 5, having successfully killed all the other threats to his position in the drug world, Walt has become the very kind of person he was terrified of in season one. When it comes to cooking his famous blue meth and raking in the dough, nothing will stand in his way. As he says in Season 5 when Jesse tries to convince him that they should take their money and leave the meth business for good, "I'm in the empire business." It's here where Walt's true motive for what he's done comes to light; despite his continued claims that he did it for the family, the truth is he did it to satisfy his own ego and get even for the life he believed was owed him. Therein lies the essential fallacy in the belief that one can have it all. To have it all, one must usually do terrible things. Throughout its run, Breaking Bad so artfully and powerfully conveyed many deep and complex human themes, giving us a main character that we initially sympathize with and gradually come to hate even as we still often find ourselves rooting for him. The characters in Breaking Bad force us to face a mirror and recognize the same impulses and frustrations within ourselves. We can see ourselves in each character at one point or another as they struggle to grapple with the shocking ramifications of Walt's actions. More than any other show, Breaking Bad shows the potential darkness that lies in the human heart and the corrosive effect of unchecked power and ego that can turn any person into the very danger that we fear.    

Star Wars Strikes Back in The Force Awakens

Photo Courtesy of www.starwars.com

For Star Wars fans like myself, it's been far too long since we visited that galaxy far, far away. Yes, in the early 2000's we got the prequel trilogy, but with the exception of a few moments of satisfaction sprinkled among the three films, most fans were somewhat disappointed with how things played out in the years before a New Hope. Nothing in the prequel trilogy could really live up to the feelings that diehard fans still have when they see Luke's Lightsaber fly into his hand for the first time, see him battle Vader for the first time and learn of his true heritage or the moment when Vader comes back to the light side and tosses the Emperor into the core of the Death Star. These are but a few of the scenes from the original trilogy which still send a wave of joy rushing through every Star Wars fan; these are the reasons we fell in love with the characters inhabiting this strange galaxy all those years ago.
 With Revenge of the Sith finalizing Anakin's transformation into Darth Vader back in 2005, the Star Wars saga, at least cinematically speaking, seemed complete. Sure, there are countless novels and comic books which told of stories following the events of Return of the Jedi, but it seemed doubtful that fans would ever see any of these stories brought to life on the big screen. Well now, thanks to J.J. Abrams and crew, fans can once more travel to that galaxy far, far away in Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. The film's been out for almost a month now and has already broken every previous box office record, including surpassing Avatar as the highest grossing film of all time. I myself have seen it three times and have come to love it more with each new showing. It manages to recapture much of what fans loved about the original trilogy, but with the flawless special effects of the prequel trilogy. From the first, blaring notes of the instantly recognizable opening score, I felt the same giddy excitement I felt when I was a kid; instantly I felt myself transported back into the Star Wars galaxy at light speed. Picking up thirty years after Return of the Jedi, Force Awakens gives us a new oppressive regime in the form of the First Order, which rose from the ashes of the Empire as well as the old Rebel Alliance, now called the Resistance and secretly supported by the New Republic. In the midst of all this, Luke Skywalker, the last Jedi has mysteriously vanished with both the Resistance and the First Order hoping to find him before the other does.
Despite the lapse in time between films, Force Awakens does an excellent job of bringing us back to a galaxy which feels so familiar in its strangeness while at the same time allowing new fans a chance to jump in fresh with several new characters who already seem to fit right alongside their legendary co-stars. Chief among these new faces, is the mysterious Rey, played by the adorable Daisy Ridley, fast on her way to becoming a household name. Rey is a strong, self-reliant scavenger on the desert planet of Jakku who, much like Luke in A New Hope, gets swept up into an epic adventure when she meets BB-8, a rolly-polly little droid containing info that can lead to Skywalker, and Finn, a Stormtrooper who deserts the First Order and ends up on Jakku. It's not long before Rey and Finn cross paths with a few familiar faces, most notably Han Solo and his trusty first mate Chewbacca, both looking as good as ever. The re-introduction of these iconic characters as well as the Millennium Falcon are sure to send a surge of nostalgia through any longtime fan, but what's even more remarkable is how well the new characters mesh with these legendary characters, feeling as though they're the next generation of adventurers continuing the path forged by the original characters.

Rey: a new hero for a new generation.
Photo Courtesy of www.hngn.com 

The film also introduces a couple new dark side villains in the form of Kylo Ren, a one time student of Luke's who turned to the dark side and his new master, the mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke. Ren has a serious case of hero worship for Darth Vader, even having recovered Vader's burned up helmet from the forest moon of Endor. Of course, Ren has a long way to go and in Force Awakens comes across more as an impatient, moody adolescent trying to act like his idol. I believe this was a deliberate choice and one that illustrates the inadequacy we feel when trying to live up to our heroes. Ren is an interesting foil to Rey because unlike him, Rey is not trying to be like anyone; she is simply herself at all stages, trusting her instincts and strengths, which is one of the reasons she's such a crucial figure in the film. No one knows for sure yet who Rey really is, but certain clues dropped in the film make it clear that she has some deep connection to the Force and the original characters. My first thought was that she's Luke's long lost daughter given her natural force abilities, but this seems to be too obvious to be the truth. Only time will reveal the secret of her cloudy origin. 
The film has no shortage of thrilling chases and dazzling space battles reminiscent of the terrific dog fights in the original films. From the scene in which the Millennium Falcon flies again for the first time in years to a squadron of X-wing fighters duking it out with TIE fighters, you feel as though you're right back in the midst of the action. Abrams brings the same adrenaline pumping action to the film that he brought to his Star Trek films, his previous space saga resurrection.
There are so many call backs to the original trilogy, both little and small which make the film a treasure trove of easter eggs for scouring fans. From seeing Luke's blue lightsaber once more to reuniting with Princess (now General) Leia, C-3PO and R2D2, the film establishes a strong connection to the past while pointing the way forward. Even so, Rey is the highlight in a film that has no shortage of highlights and I for one can't wait to see where they take her character in future films. Her character is almost like Luke Skywalker for a new generation although she's much stronger and more independent than Luke was in A New Hope. Finn provides much of the bountiful comic relief much in a way similar to Han Solo, but even so, both characters are unique and have many of their own distinct qualities and I look forward to seeing the two of them continue the journey begun in the original trilogy. The Force Awakens is the perfect film to reintroduce the Star Wars Universe to a new generation while also bringing long time fans back to a place of familiarity and renewed excitement at the possibilities which lay in store for our beloved characters, both old and new. With The Force Awakens, much like A New Hope 38 years before it, fans both old and new can once again take their first step into a much larger world.