Breaking Bad Review and Predictions - SPOILERS of Season 5 premiere

mark.leonard

Enjoyed this on our podcast last week so I thought I'd post it here.
One of our podcasters, Shaun, does a weekly segment where he reviews in-progress tv shows, below is a segment transcript for Breaking Bad



After The Credits – Breaking Bad

“A guy like you doesn’t just break bad for no reason” Walter White started out as a chemist, a husband and a father who got cancer and made a dangerous decision to cook meth to earn enough money to support his family before he died. Looking at that basic story premise all we see is a solid foundation for a family crime drama with a fish out of water arc for its main character. All the tropes are there, the unknowing wife, the naïve son, the baby on the way as a symbol of that which needs to be protected. What makes Breaking Bad the most critically acclaimed, socially popular show of our time is that Walter White was broken all along.
Like the protagonist of a Shakespearean tragedy Walter is defined by his hamartia, the tragic flaw that surely must lead to his inevitable downfall. Heisenberg is the anthropomorphisation of Walter’s pride, his pettiness, his need to win, to be the king of whatever castle he finds himself in. His villain’s journey incites character development brought to life by Breaking Bad’s superb cast, all of whom grow out of their pigeonholes gracefully, none more so than Aaron Paul’s Jesse Pinkman. Jesse became the audience proxy and the moral compass for Walter and for the fans. His performance was so likeable that after filming two episodes, series creator Vince Gilligan decided not to kill the character off as had been previously planned. So Jesse grew out of his odd-couple plot device and moved into becoming the ultimate victim of Walter’s machinations. Some secrets still remain buried between the two, and their shared criminal enterprise ensures that their fates are linked together for better or for the far more likely worse.
Which brings us to endings. We caught a brief glimpse of Walter at age 52 in the premiere of season 5. With a full head of chemo free hair and no wedding band, he sits alone in a Denny’s. He goes to the bathroom and buys a gun. It’s not the only one he has. We wonder who it’s for. Walt himself has said that without his family everything he has done means nothing. It seems then that he is set to lose it all. As human beings we’re forced to ask ourselves what punishment befits a murderer, a drug lord, a gangster. As fans we hope that there is hope left for him yet. We hope too for Jesse Pinkman to find some solitude from the sins that Heisenberg has caused him to commit. In this critic’s opinion I think Walter’s end will be not at the barrel of a gun, but a fate that he will find far worse. His pride will cause him to underestimate someone, or better yet, he will simply be bested mentally by someone at least slightly more virtuous than him. I see Walter sitting alone in the Albuquerque desert. We pull out and see his orange jumpsuit. We see the gangs of criminals avoiding his path and gaze. Without a word he will gaze at the vast emptiness, and then at the prison. He will make it his new castle. His new empire. Nothing but a new challenge. For he is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look upon his work ye mighty and despair.