We just finished Breaking Bad last night. Camino is next. Then Better Call Saul.
This show was like going through a Choose Your Own Adventure where every turn brings on the worst possible outcome. It was completely and totally brutal and unflinching. It was incredibly well written, directed, and acted. I'm amazed at how good it was. When it was time to sit down and watch a new episode, my wife and I would say to each other, "Are you ready to see the worst thing you've ever seen?"
I mean, it was like, if you think you know brutal, this will be worse. If you think you know evil, this will be worse. Everything was so extreme, and somehow they'd find ways to make it genuinely hilarious. I remember at one point thinking "Terminal cancer is not funny, so why the hell am I laughing my ass off?" There was enough balance from the intensity, especially with characters like Badger and Skinny Pete, to take you off guard for the next gut punch. Just perfectly done. I'm just hearing Badger go "I thought we could hang out." God, it was so funny.
I kept referring to the main character Walter White as an evil MacGyver. Bryan Cranston was truly great, but the show stealer to me by far was Aaron Paul. I don't know why, but when I look at that guy, I don't expect anything from him as an actor. But I am so dead wrong to feel that. He is like a force of nature. My wife kept telling me he goes through every emotion on the planet in that show, and she was so right. Now I just want to see everything that dude has done. He's absolutely the most surprisingly good actor I've ever come across. I saw he's in a movie called Decoding Annie Parker with one of my favorite actors, Samantha Morton, so I'm absolutely going to see that. I mean, I'll just go on a run of this dude happily.
But Dean Norris was another one who was just fantastic, and Jonathan Banks, and a truly remarkable performance by the dude with one of the coolest names I've ever heard: Giancarlo Esposito. I've seen a ton of stuff with him, and he's always been a character actor, so I was surprised and very happy to see that he is capable of so much more. He was unbelievable in this.
And this is making me reassess television in general. Maybe there's just a level of quality out there that I didn't know. I'm so damn curious to see what else could be hidden on television with quality as high as Breaking Bad, with great acting, directing, and writing. And the thing that makes the directing part of this so impressive is that this is TV, so there is this group of directors on the show, but they were all so good. The stand out to me was definitely Michelle MacLaren. But I mean, there were many times I forgot I was watching a show, because it felt like a great film. At times it was absolutely an homage to Michael Mann at his best, but in general, it was just very well done drama in every way.
