Breaking Bad

 I've got bored with doing health updates and am craving something non-health-related, so wanted to talk about Breaking Bad, and not just because I claim a certain stylistic brotherhood with Walter White, and we both have cancer.

No, I had been looking forward to this because I knew that I would have plenty of getting better time when TV and books would be my main game, and so many people have been telling me that if you are going to watch one TV boxed set this has to be the one. And step forward my friend Geoff who lent me the entire set of programmes on (lots of) DVDs

I had heard it was very good, and ten or so episodes in I can confirm that the rumours were correct. It scores highly on all the things that you would want from a TV show, but what it really majors on is the development of characters, and especially the Brian Cranston role as Walter White/Heisenberg.

Essentially this is a man who, though he loves his family, feels that he has ended up in a dead end, teaching chemistry in High School while no more talented colleagues have become millionaires. And when he then gets a terminal lung cancer diagnosis, he starts to change. Starting first from the wish to protect his family's future, he tiptoes over into doing things he would never have dreamed of (cooking meth). And at some point as the unavoidable peril and violence of this new world starts to impinge on his plans, you see the first inkling that it gives him a thrill. And then he starts to like it. And gets good at it.

And the things that made him a good scientist and teacher, the logical, thoughtful approach, are suddenly turned to the questions of this new world. How to make the most money from the drugs, how to deal with the psycopathic characters who float to the top in this world. And at a key point early on, he realises that he needs to kill someone. And he does.

The beauty of the writing and direction is that all the characters, and especially Walter, seem like real people as they develop. And the thing that you "couldn't imagine Walter doing" gradually becomes possible to imagine, then likely, then the only logical outcome.

Breaking Bad can be viewed as a rattling yarn, which it is very good at, but at its heart it is a moral tale and a tale of morals. And quite early on it makes you realise that all the things you yourself would never do could be negotiable in the right extreme circumstances.  

So I have to thank my illness for something else now. I have read a few great books already and now I am watching a great television programme, and enjoying the hell out of it.