Breaking Bad and the hilarious growing pains of a criminal organization

When Breaking Bad enters its fifth and final season this Sunday, the transformation from Walter White the chemistry teacher to Walter White the drug kingpin will nearly be complete. Fans already know that his moral devolution anchors the show. As creator Vince Gilligan told The New York Times:

Television is really good at protecting the franchise. It’s good at keeping the Korean War going for 11 seasons, like M*A*S*H. It’s good at keeping Marshal Dillon policing his little town for 20 years. By their very nature TV shows are open-ended. So I thought, “Wouldn’t it be interesting to have a show that takes the protagonist and transforms him into the antagonist?”

Of course, when said protagonist is a mild-mannered cancer-stricken high-school teacher from Albuquerque, turning him into a Scarface isn’t going to happen easily. While the transformation has obviously wrecked moral havoc on Mr. White and company, part of the fun of Breaking Bad is watching these nice and not-so-nice characters step out of their comfort zones. While AMC’s other critically-lauded-yet-surprisingly-funny series might score laughs with classic sitcom tropes, Breaking Bad mines comedy the old fashioned way – by having its characters fail. A lot.

As Liz Meriwether taught us, funny people are flawed people, and the characters of Breaking Bad are most certainly flawed. Though Walter White clawed his way to the top of a minor meth empire, he was never cut out for the drug trade. The man can barely roll a joint. But as the pilot implied, Walter was never quite cut out for much of anything. He was a pretty mediocre teacher, and while his time producing meth bolstered his self-esteem, it certainly didn’t help him with his straight job. His speech at a grief rally in Season Three is as laughably –and painfully – awkward as anything from David Brent.

Not that Walter is any better at his new occupation. He may be a genius with chemistry (he does make the best meth in town), but when it comes to the “criminal” part of his criminal enterprise, he remains an utter putz. Walter White is like a classic Coen Brothers character: underneath his massive ego and blustery speechifying lies a sniveling bastard always greedy for more. He has Barton Fink’s self-righteousness mixed with the low-rent criminal capabilities of the kinda funny lookin’ Carl Showalter. (The writers of Breaking Bad have acknowledged their debt to the Coens; the Season One episode “A No-Rough-Stuff-Type Deal” takes its title from a Fargo quote.)

While Breaking Bad’s fundamental drive toward change originally applied to only Walter, he isn’t the only character having trouble adjusting to a new lifestyle. His partner Jesse Pinkman might have been the original connection to the drug trade, but Jesse is as clueless about the big leagues of the meth business as his former teacher. Walter might love their shift to a state-of-the-art meth laboratory, but Jesse jokes around like he’s still cooking crystal in a RV.

Everyone in the show has trouble moving up the criminal ladder. Watch as Badger, one of Walt and Jesse’s dealers, attempts to maintain his cool in the face of increased attention from law enforcement:

Alone, that scene makes for a delightful comic vignette. Considering that it features two fairly inconsequential characters, the whole thing could have happened off-screen, especially since its purpose was to force Walt and Jesse to lawyer up (which they did so using the incomparable Bob Odenkirk). Though it could be seen as a lark in an otherwise straightforward show, humorous asides like the above are fundamental to the show. The comedy is as integral to Breaking Bad as its intention of turning a good guy bad.

On a recent episode of the Nerdist Writers Panel podcast, Gilligan revealed that he and the writers always try to make the show as funny as possible. He explained:

I learned from watching Chris Carter and the other guys do the TV show Millennium, which I thought was an excellent show. But it was so – except for a couple of Darin Morgan comedic episodes – it was so relentlessly bleak. Which it had to be, it had to be true to what it was… a show about a guy catching serial killers and letting them into his head just enough that he could catch them and the psychic damage that wrought upon him. If you’re telling that story it’s gotta be pretty dark. But I remember thinking, some of these episodes I wanna slit my wrists after I watch them. They were great, but it’s like, my god. When I started off with Breaking Bad, I remember thinking specifically of Millennium.

Breaking Bad is a show about a middle-aged guy dying of cancer, cooking crystal meth. It could make you want to slit your wrists too unless I leaven it with as much humor as I possibly can. Although the humor always has to derive from the context of situations, and if people are trying to be funny… You don’t want it to turn into the Hogan’s Heroes of the meth world.

Gilligan can rest easy: the show’s comedy flows naturally, and nobody is going to mistake any of the show’s villains for the next Colonel Klink. Without this dedication to levity, Breaking Bad would be a pretty bleak show. Thankfully, Gilligan and company always go the extra mile to keep us laughing.

Ridiculous on its own, the silly music video takes a more somber turn within the show; Walter ordered Jesse to murder its crooning star. This goofy number humanizes his victim. But if Walt hadn’t killed the goofball, their mutual boss likely would have “taken care of” Walt and Jesse instead. Probably. Maybe. Hell, how should Walter know? He’s still figuring out how to be the bad guy.

—-

Justin Geldzahler thought about smoking meth as part of his research but decided against it. This is because he lacks what his editors call “journalistic integrity.”