Why Breaking Bad is Better than Most Movies - Prologue
--DISCLAIMER--
Please Be Advised: While I will do my best not to reveal any spoilers within this series of posts, I cannot 100% guarantee that it will not happen.
--READ AT YOUR OWN RISK--
Prologue.
"Watch this," is all he said as he slapped copies of season one and two into my hands. "You'll thank me later," he then said, with a brief pause followed by a wry smile and a reassurance of, "trust me."
His final words resonated as I exited his house, looking down and seeing the dad from Malcolm in the Middle standing in front of an RV, missing his pants and holding a gun. That's peculiar, I thought as I got into my car and tossed the DVDs onto the passenger seat. Little did I realize, that what I would soon watch, would change the way I looked at television forever.
I knew that television had come a long way in its ability to tell good stories. Most of them, however, were not on Network TV. The first ripples of this change came with the The Sopranos in 1999, or at least this was the first time I was truly aware of these changes. The landscape was changing, and it was coming from premium cable networks like HBO. This wasn't the first series that they had produced, but the genre of The Sopranos catered to key viewer demographics, and filled the void that was missing from the big three networks (technically four now, after 1986).
These shows didn't have to follow the standard guidelines put in place under the FCC. They aired an average 13 episodes per season, in consecutive order -- very similar to episodic series broadcast in the UK -- instead of the daunting Autumn to Spring 22 episode schedule where reruns are crammed in between all of the major holidays. They bucked every trend and rule that regular broadcast television followed. But most importantly, story and character were king.
Fast-forward to the Summer of 2010. I've just been handed the first two seasons of a show called Breaking Bad. Now, I'm no hermit. I had heard things about this show. Mostly tidbits here-and-there, but nothing spectacular. But I've never been the one to jump on the bandwagon when it comes to most trends. I'm usually a de-trend setter. So my knowledge of this show was, for the most part, pretty unbiased and uninformed.
For those unaware of what was going on with my life during the sultry Summer months of 2010, I had been on the last stretch of track on the emotional roller coaster known as unemployment. Needless to say, I had a lot of time on my hands. When I arrived home, I sat the DVDs on top of the entertainment center and then forgot about them for the remainder of the evening. The next day, however, they called to me at that dreaded 9 to 11 time slot -- where you have to to start forcing yourself to look for work and the point where you begin to wonder if you've done enough job searching and filling out applications to justify a well-deserve a lunch break.
Then a voice called to me from the entertainment center: "Hey you, over there! Yeah, you." I stopped typing and peered my head away from the computer monitor, looking past the hallway into the living room and the entertainment center. " I see that you've put in a solid two hours of job searching. Why don't you take a break, make yourself a grilled cheese sandwich, plant yourself on the sofa and pop in episode one? It's only 45 minutes. You'll be back to work before you know it. In the meantime, sit back, relax and give me watch."
I shrugged my shoulders in compliance, finished up my last application -- probably answering a batch of questions for one of those soul-sucking personality surveys where everything is related to either employee theft or work ethics -- and strolled into kitchen to make a grilled cheese. Everything else that followed transpired at an alarming rate. Before I knew it, I was finished with the first disc, and just under two and half hours had quickly slipped through my fingers.
"My name is Walter Hartwell White. I live at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane Albuquerque, New Mexico 87104. To all law enforcement entities, this is not an admission of guilt. I am speaking to my family now. Skylar, you are the love of my life; I hope you know that. Walter Junior, you're my big man. There are going to be some... things. Things that you'll come to learn about me in the next few days. I just want you to know, that no matter how it may look, I only had you in my heart. Goodbye."Walter White speaks these words into a camcorder after racing through the New Mexico desert in an RV, while three unconscious (potentially dead) bodies lie inside it. At the end of his recording, the sounds of sirens fill the air and Walter walks to the middle of the road and waits, gun in hand, for his fate to be handed to him.
Then: cut to the credit sequence and the title on the screen states: "Three Weeks Earlier." All I had watched was the opening scene and I was already hooked. Thus began my addiction to one of the best television shows ever created. Over the course of the next few posts, I'll list the Top 5 Reasons Why Breaking Bad is Better than Most Movies.
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