Dear Breaking Bad Season One: I’m Falling In Love With a Great Show
Dear Season One,
I’m writing this wearing a beanie and a puffy red vest that’s way too big for me, my pants are sagging, also, I’m eyeing a puny electric razor on my bathroom counter that looks like it might die if I tried to shave my short hair off, but I’m going to come to the breakfast table with a Mr. clean dome—my wife’ll stifle shock, my son will smile.
I just finished the first season of Breaking Bad. There are only seven episodes, andI watched them all in a day. If you don’t remember, or haven’t seen the show, the opening four eps are a formidable mini-arc, with mini-breaks, before a big (bad) decision in a standalone fifth, ending in a frightening couplet. I don’t have an identity disassociation disorder (re: my first paragraph.) I’m not Jesse. I’m not Walt. I’m just really pumped. Season One, my affection for you is fresh and true.
Readers, longtime Breaking Bad lovers, might be thinking, “Oh, you poor naïve girl, you know nothing.” But one of things about watching this series after the rest of the world is that I do know, some. The pain to come isn’t here, yet. And falling in love with a great show, even a dark one, in its first season is: bliss.
Learning what it means to “break bad,” hearing it come fearfully and accusingly out of Aaron Paul’s mouth in a beautifully acted scene, at the end of which, after handing over his life savings to buy that (now infamous) Winnebago, Cranston’s Walt delivers a raw: “I’m alive.” Is, for the love of fiction, exciting.
I’ve got so many questions, and doubts, and suspicions about the show and its characters: how did Walt go from suave/sexy lab-lecture guy (some time ago, judging by the curly-hair mullet in the flashbacks) to the defanged, defeated, uptight man we’re introduced to? What made Skyler the love of his life? Is there hope for Jesse? Can he break good? What does Walt want? If his cancer magicked away, what would he do—now that he’s awake? How horrible am I going to feel for rooting for Heisenberg? He cooks meth. Meth is terrible, and so is the death, addiction, alienation, constant threat of danger to body and psyche (e.g. being stabbed in the calf with a ceramic plate while strangling a guy you just bonded with violently with a bike lock) that comes with it. But because this was fictional, I must say—you made it look good.
Goodness did I enjoy watching the boiling flask v.s. volumetric beaker lectures and the time lapse mobile home meth cooking sequences. Season One, your triumphs, hijinks, and moments of tenderness are charming. In hindsight, I’m sure I’ll see Walt’s early murders, stepping on teenagers legs and blowing up a stranger’s car in a different light, but I’m not focused on the portents.
I have four seasons of TV show-mance ahead.
Breaking Bad, the complete series, is now available on DVD.
What would you say in your love letter to Breaking Bad?