Breaking Bad 1.01 - Pilot

First impressions are so important. This applies to life, but  I think it applies even more so to our relationships with literary characters. A big goal of literature is to get us to form emotional bonds with the people contained inside, and needs to get that bond formed immediately or risk losing the consumer's interest. Breaking Bad needs you to be sympathetic to Walter White. It needs you to feel that for this pilot to work, and it needs you to feel that for the show to work as a whole. Because once the show gets that sympathy built up, it then conducts an experiment with the viewer. It does whatever it can to try to tear that sympathy down.

We'll monitor closely Walt's behaviour and the intended reactions of the viewer over the course of the season, or entire show if we get there, but in the pilot we are concerned with one thing: how well does it create that sympathy for Walt?

A possible complaint one can have with the set-up of the show is that it is too manipulative. It is not subtle in the slightest to try to portray Walt as a beaten down figure. The benefit of doing this review retrospectively is that I can see how important it is to get this relationship between Walt and the audience formed. The very first we see of him he's pleading with his family as he believes he has seen them for the last time. He's shown as pathetic, possibly in debt, without good health insurance, a pushover. Jesse guesses Walt's age as 10 years older than he actually is, and with that awful caterpillar mustache he looks it. And then comes the kicker. Walt has inoperable lung cancer. That fact forms an instant connection that takes a lot to be broken. When we are introduced to anyone as having cancer, I'm willing to bet we barely ever stop to consider what kind of person they are. They are dying, and that's all there is to it. That person garner's immeasurable sympathy from everyone, no matter what. And it makes it so easy to forgive Walt for his terrible decision to join Jesse and start cooking meth.

That ability to forgive Walt for his original decision is of ultimate importance, here, and the show excels in getting us to do it. We need to have an emotional inlet to this show. If we ditch Walt, if we stop feeling bad for him as he starts to cook, the show is going to fall flat. An external emotionless approach to this show is a much inferior way to watch it. For me, it hooked me like a charm. The show did such a good job making me feel for Walt that even after all he's done I still wanted him to "win" in "Felina <5x16>." I still wanted to him to get the money to his family. I still wanted him to reconcile with Skyler. This all stems from the bond formed in this episode.

The singular focus of this episode works incredibly well for the show as a series, but it also prevents the pilot from being a great episode. The secondary characters are brutally pigeonholed into caricatures. Skyler is the nagging wife, Jesse is the dumb sidekick, Hank is the buffoon brother-in-law, Marie is the awful and blunt sister-in-law. I think there's a bit of intentionality to this, as the show needs to elevate Walt, and an effective way to do that is to deflate everyone around him, but it does make parts of this episode tough. It also hurts any interactions Walt has. The show is great when he's by himself, or even when he's with Jesse, but as soon as Hank or Skyler get prominently involved, it's hard not to cringe. This will get more than rectified over time, but it's a tough bit of characterization to swallow here.

The speech Walt gives about chemistry, and how it's the study of change and transformation is an obvious, but good kickoff to the story Breaking Bad is trying to tell. There's a clever bit of misdirection here that becomes apparent in retrospect though. The change Walt is talking about is not a change within himself, which seems like the obvious foreshadowing, but rather the external changes around him. I firmly believe Walt is the same person when the show begins as when the show ends. But the circumstances he's in, and the people around him, and his external actions as a result of that changes rapidly through the course of the show.

There may not be a better example of that than the scene in the clothing store with Walt Jr. This is such a good scene, as it shows exactly the kind of bravery and even to some degree, ruthlessness Walt is capable of, but keeps him firmly in a sympathetic light. These attempts to run over and demean those he perceives as disempowering him is not a trait that ever goes away. It just rears its head it much uglier forms over the course of the series, such as his disgusting treatment of Gretchen as early as "Peekaboo."

There's other examples of Walt's insecurity, and his spitefulness towards all things that portray him as weak. He rips the Handicap Parking sign off his car mirror because he doesn't want to be seen as handicapped. He downplays his coughing as much as possible, and tries everything he can to prevent himself from going to the hospital. He doesn't tell his family he has terminal lung cancer, just so he doesn't garner that sympathy. Walt wants to be admired, and though he doesn't know it yet, he wants to be feared. This is an interesting contrast to the way the show portrays him and the way it wants viewers to see him. Walt would hate the "Awww...isn't that pathetic middle age man cute?" reaction that he inspires. This aspect of him, the blinding pride he suffers from, is there from the very first episode. It becomes abundantly more clear in "Gray Matter" He is that same man throughout the show. It's his circumstances and relationships that change.

There are two relationships that change significantly over the course of the show, and in both cases, the change is for the worse. The starting point for the relationships is seen in this episode, as well as foreshadowing for how they are going to change. First, there's the obnoxious kid who Walt calls out in the classroom. This boy is supposed to be a proxy for Jesse, and Walt's reaction to him is a mix of superiority and disdain. This is how Walt feels about Jesse throughout the series. There's some foreshadowing in this episode about how the relationship switches, though. Later, when that same kid sees him at the car wash, Walt's the one who is on the ground. This is a preview of the relationship Walt and Jesse have near the end of season 4, when Jesse becomes an essential part of the Fring organization and Walt is on the outs, showing that in all ways that mattered, the student surpassed the master.

The other relationship that changes throughout the series is the relationship between Walt and Skylar. We see that Walt's decision first helps their marriage, a preview that Walt's life of crime is going to introduce more passion into his marriage, as shown by the comparison of the passionate sex scene at the end of the episode compared to the lame birthday handjob scene earlier on. But ultimately, Walt's decision to cook meth will destroy the family. The marriage of Walt and Skylar isn't passionate and isn't inspiring at this stage, but it does appear to be stable and functioning. It's a good environment for their kids to grow up. This quickly switches to passionate and instable very early on, which is not a good tradeoff with kids involved. This will lead to the "divorce" in Season 3, and though Walt moves back in after that, the relationship never recovers.

There are constant directing tricks used to emphasize what the show is trying to do. Breaking Bad routinely has some of the most creative camera angles used in TV. This episode, for instance, has a camera inside a washing machine as Walt tries to dry out money. It has a camera inside and MRI machine looking down at Walt directly followed by a camera looking at the reflection of Walt in a desk. Later in the series, we get a camera imitating the viewpoint of a shovel in one scene, and a Roomba in another. And more subtly, there are constant camera angles looking at Walt (and other characters) from slightly above, or slightly below. The message is clear: we're going to examine Walt from every angle in this series. We're going to look at him as the family man with cancer, as well as the criminal meth cook.

The show also takes pains to be one of the most beautiful shows on TV. The cinematography of the scenery is almost second to none. The show's first scenes are looking at aspects of that quiet and peaceful scenery before we see the RV tearing through. Once again it's Walt that brings the disturbance.

As that disturbance occurs, the lighting and the scenery reflect that. Breaking Bad Season 1 looks nothing like Breaking Bad season 5. The surface lightness of the first two seasons contrast the heaviness of the final season. In terms of aesthetic, I prefer the early seasons. My long-lasting image of Breaking Bad is seeing that RV in the New Mexican desert. But the darkness the direction, lighting and acting switch to completely matches the change in story being told. The externals around Walt do a complete 180, but inside he is exactly the same.

The show presents Walt in the most positive way possible, then asks the viewer to come to terms with who he really is. It is a show of changes, and takes one man and puts him in a sympathetic light, than completely changes his circumstances so the light shining on him becomes unsympathetic. Breaking Bad wants to know how long and how many horrible things it takes to lose sympathy for someone you once had a close connection with. For me, it was a long, long time.

Notes

• Didn't get to talk much about Jesse in the main review, but he has some funny scenes. My favourite: Coming into Crazy8's house wearing the same colours as the dummy the dog is chewing up.
• Walter Jr. is introduced to the show by sitting down for breakfast. There may be a theme establishing.
• Bogdan. Just all things Bogdan.
• Walt's reaction both at the hospital and at the car wash feel like how someone really would react to being diagnosed with cancer
• The Hank/Gomez bet that Gomez actually won, unbeknownst to the two of them
• Walt literally laundering money
• What part of the school year are we in? On the board, there's atomic orbitals (pretty advanced stuff), the speech he gives to the class is like their first day of chemistry, and then Walt gets them to turn to chapter 6 of the textbook.
• Walt's attempted suicide. It didn't really add anything substantial to Walt's character, and it was super contrived that the bullet jammed.