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TRAGEDY IN SLOW MOTION: AMC’S

BREAKING BAD
Dan Schoenbrun

6-8 minutos

Bryan Cranston as Walter White on AMC's Breaking Bad

Here we are again, with part three in a series highlighting

some of 2011’s most daring, innovative television. This week,
I’ll be singing the praises of AMC’s consistently shocking and
always riveting Breaking Bad.

Indeed, there is no show on TV more unrelenting in its

exploration of human misery than Breaking Bad. Created by
former X-Files writer Vince Gilligan, the show stars Bryan
Cranston as Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher
who, after being diagnosed with cancer, begins cooking and
distributing meth with the help of a burnout ex-student (Aaron
Paul). If that premise sounds a bit too high-concept and wacky
cable-TV for your tastes, let me assure you, wackiness is far
down on this show’s list of priorities.
Gilligan has spoken at length about his ambitions for the
show, to take a sympathetic, relatable protagonist and track
his gradual destruction, a destruction both of himself and of
the people around him. Or, as Gilligan likes to put it, “the goal
was to turn Mr. Chips into Scarface.” In one scene from the
series’ �rst episode, Cranston’s Walter White touches upon this
mission statement, through the guise of a chemistry lecture. 
He says:

Chemistry is… well technically, chemistry is the study of

matter. But I prefer to see it as the study of change. Now just
think about this. Electrons, they change their energy levels.
Molecules, molecules change their bonds. Elements, they
combine and change into compounds. Well that’s all of life,
right? …It’s solution then dissolution, over and over and
over. It’s growth, then decay, then transformation.

What makes the show such riveting, at times di�cult

television is that it’s not so concerned with the end result of
Walter White’s transformation as it is with the transformation
itself. Imagine a Greek tragedy that unfolds not over a single
two-hour play, but in a series of vignettes released over
several years. Each week, Gilligan asks the viewer, “Why are
you still rooting for this man? Why are you still watching?”
And each week the viewer has less and less of a legitimate
answer. But it’s impossible to look away. It’s serialized
rubbernecking, and the writers know it.

The medium of television is ideal for this sort of cruel game,

and Breaking Bad makes perfect use of its format as a serialized
drama. Over four years, Gilligan and his writing sta� have
built an increasingly complex world, starting with a small cast
in a contained environment, and then pushing outwards to
introduce new assets. These assets include hilariously shifty
lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), cantankerous hit man
Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), and perhaps most
notably, fast-food franchise owner / sociopath drug kingpin
Gustavo Fring (Giancarlo Esposito, who more than deserves an
Emmy for his work this year).

But it’s not just the cast bringing this tragedy to life. Breaking
Bad, one of the few shows still shooting on �lm, is perhaps the
most gorgeous and cinematic hour on TV. A rotating group of
talented directors (including Hard Candy director David Slade
and Brick director Rian Johnson) squeeze every drop of
tension and atmosphere from the proceedings. Not to mention
DP Michael Slovis, who surely deserves a trophy for his artful
manipulation of the show’s bleak New Mexican sprawl. For
proof of Slovis’ prowess, check out this gorgeous scene from
late in season four (and consider whether that shift in light
halfway through was purposeful or a happy accident).

Notice how slow and calculated the action in this scene is;
how the pauses are just as important as the words spoken.
Unlike 90% of the other dramas on TV, Breaking Bad cherishes
silence. The show consistently favors atmosphere over action
(and when the opposite is true, there’s a damn good reason for
it). This is why Cranston, Paul, and the rest of the cast are so
great; because Gilligan and his team don’t rush them towards
a scene’s conclusion.

Check out this cold open (which actually doesn’t feature any
of the show’s regular cast). It’s a perfect example of how the
show takes its time building character motivation, power
dynamics, and tension. It’s also just a beautifully constructed
scene, one that could easily stand on its own as a short �lm.

Breaking Bad has made an art out of the cold open, those
isolated �rst few minutes before the opening credits roll. It’s a
trick that Gilligan picked up from his days on The X Files, but
here he’s pushed it to new levels. When viewers tune in each
week, they never know what to expect to see before the
credits. It could be a tension-�lled short like the above, a
�ashback to decades earlier, or, as in one season two episode,
a music video for a Mexican folk song.

No matter how any given episode opens, it all ties back into
Breaking Bad’s larger story: the gradual self-destruction of
Walter White. This is the show’s greatest achievement: that it’s
managed to grow one coherent, complete story over the past
four years and counting. Even a great serialized drama like The
Sopranos wasn’t able to accomplish such a feat. Recall how
each season would introduce a new antagonist in Tony’s path
(often a rival mob boss), and then have Tony predictably
waste this villain by season’s end. Mad Men, a show that not
only shares Breaking Bad’s network, but also its passion for
atmosphere and tone, falls into similar trappings with its
rotating cast of love interests for Don Draper. After a certain
number of seasons, even the best of shows tend to establish
something of a formula, begin to repeat themselves, tread
water, and lose a bit of their luster in the process.

But Breaking Bad has yet to reach this point. And with the
show ending after its �fth and �nal season next summer, it
seems unlikely to do so. Every season, every episode, has built
upon what’s come before in unpredictable and deftly plotted
ways. The fourth season �nale, for instance, spent nearly half
its running time paying o� the arc of a minor character
introduced three years earlier and appearing only sporadically
since. To maintain an ever-expanding universe like this, a
universe rotating entirely around one man’s tragic and
unending descent, is quite the feat. Breaking Bad continues to
plumb wrenching new depths each week, and the show has
displayed no signs of nearing bottom.