On a rewatch or re-rewatch I don’t think Breaking Bad holds up in the latter seasons, but one way it does work is if you imagine it as a litmus test social experiment to see if viewers will actively ignore what their eyes are seeing on the teevee and hate the weirdo science nerd criminal because they feel they’re supposed to, or because they see themselves in him, or because {insert a wide variety of other reasons}.
All Walt wanted to do, from the first episode, is cook up some drugs and make everybody some money, and people were trying to fuck with him and rob him and kill him, constantly. People who were, using the same metrics, much badder “bad guys”. Like, people were furious that Walt killed {checks notes} noted contract killer and Jesse smacker Mike who {checks second set of notes} was trying to fuck with and kill Walt again. If it hasn’t happened already, there will be PhD dissertations using the comparison between critics and commenters on pop culture sites like AVClub and the actual things that happened on the actual teevee show. For somebody like me who’d pop over and read a review or two and a few comments, it was surreal.
Lol they were mad at Walt indirectly getting sex-worker-shaming-and-abusing Hank killed like wat, fuck the police, ACAB mfs!
And speaking of them, my favorite piece of criticism I’ve seen was from people who otherwise loved the show but always asked, hey, what was up with Marie and the shoplifting thing that went nowhere that was kind of bad and weird right? Like, holy shit, Vince Gilligan was trying to say something about the arbitrary nature of crime and how being a “criminal” or not can be largely the result of privilege, luck, and the current sociopolitical zeitgeist, itself a subset of luck (gosh that’s some rotten luck to start your whiskey distilling business in December of 1919), which was also illustrated by the Cuban cigar scenes, the conversations about the aforementioned prohibition topic, a few others, and, wait for it, the entire goddamned main plot of the show involving some good guys doing bad things like providing a product to willing buyers, but then decided, rightfully so it would turn out, the critics and viewers responsible for the show’s success were largely too dumb to grasp even this level of nuance. No srsly, it’s hard to imagine in hindsight but at the end of the 2nd season the show was about to be cancelled until some critics started gushing and it all snowballed into rightfully deserved critical acclaim, and Gilligan said in an interview that he was happy, duh, but found it really weird that people thought of Walt as some sort of bad guy or even antihero, and that he subsequently had Walt start becoming more of a petty ass trifling ass bitch who threw pizzas on rooftops. And, God bless him regardless because it’s easy for me to say otherwise from my vantage point, but it’s really, really hard to look at the critics and fans who love your work and made you rich and famous and say, “Yeah, uh, guys thanks and all, it’s really great, but holy fuck you people are idiots, I mean, I gave you the dumbed down version, like, Hey Look Walt Is Having A Poignant Conversation With DEA Agent Hank About Cuban Cigars Whilst Hank Is Smoking Said Illegal Cuban Cigar, holy shit I wanted to cut off my fingers after writing it like that but it turns even that was too opaque and nuanced for you fucking droolers! God in heaven.”
I haven’t thought about the show in years (and I’ve never typed out a rant like this that’s probably been brewing the whole time) but now, another few years on, after 2020, it really comes into focus how the first season was almost a decade ago and that even though everybody is all woke now and even trying to resurrect the abolition movement and march in the streets and other fun cosplay, BB S01E01 had viewers all like drug-dealer=bad. Yeah dog that ACAB tattoo is sick but you were crying over a fictional cop getting killed on your favorite teevee show like barely a presidential term ago. Thinking about it more, I might have truly lost my mind but I really want to go out and interview ACAB people about Breaking Bad, if I can figure out a way to not telegraph it and get honest takes.
p.s. To highlight the absolute disparity between the second season and the end of the last season, compare the brutal beauty of Walt holing up in the bathroom and writing up a pro/con list about killing Krazy8, knowing he really doesn’t want to but might have to, with one of the final scenes where Skylar rebukes Walt for saying he did it for her and the kids by replying that he did it for himself, with everybody like hell yeah you go girl you tell that big bad Walt what’s what, and Walt not even alluding to the magical alternate universe of a few seasons prior when people can have multiple reasons for doing a thing, and multiple reasons for not doing a thing, and can be tortured and conflicted trying to decide on a course of action. Ain’t nobody got time for that when there’s a weirdo science nerd and CRIMINAL to hate on.
