It wasn’t until I was inundated with trailers about the season finale of the show “Breaking Bad” that my interest was piqued. Not surprising, most series I see a season or two late when I can stream multiple episodes in an evening. (Not like in junior high, when kids would come to school and talk about last night’s episode of Man from U.N.C.L.E. and if you were one of the unfortunate to have missed it, WELL!)
From the first episode of the first season, I was hooked. How did a show that was graphically violent about drug dealing (not my normal genre) connect with me?
1. Walter was a high school chemistry teacher. Teaching math to ninth graders for several years linked his and my world on a science-math-logical level. I understood Walter’s day job intimately.
2. Walter was given an advanced stage cancer diagnosis. Check.
3. Walter received chemotherapy, lost his hair, was sick from the treatment. I was a bit surprised drugs like Zofran and such weren’t giving him more relief, but other than that, I walk that path. (My hair loss was on another journey.)
4. Anxiety and stress oozed from the scenes, his worry about how his family would not only experience his life through cancer, but even more importantly was his concern about their life without him. He was driven to do what he perceived was caring for their future…I know I know.
5. Along the way, Walter lost his moral compass, falling deeper and deeper into a character that gained power over his life through cooking meth. Self-preservation, which he could’t control for his cancer, meant no-holds-barred for Walter as he established a successful drug business. Each episode he teetered on the brink of death in the drug world or discovery by his family or the law, and while these situations were tense, I found them hysterical. Oh no, I would cry, look what he’s doing now? Walter became a different Walter who manipulated and schemed to be in control. Out of control body, but an in-control mind. When I told my family I liked this show, I was asked if I was cooking meth in our shed. I suppose if I bake bread, make marshmallows from scratch, and brew root beer, meth wouldn’t be too much of a stretch? Cooking math would be more like it.
Even as Walter became more unlikable and he destroyed his family on so many levels, I still admired the show Breaking Bad. Here was an advanced stage cancer protagonist who, unlike a sweet angelic character on Hallmark Hall of Fame who fought his/her cancer valiantly, was counter-culture, an anti-hero for those with cancer. Break the mold, Walter. Empower me.
Just last week I finished the series, and it didn’t disappoint.
Stage Left..........Stage Right........Stage Four 