*NO SPOILERS*
Recently I finished watching the highly acclaimed series ‘Breaking Bad’. Most of us know about it. The show is so popular that it is somewhat of a cultural phenomenon and has a very widespread fan base. So I do not need to introduce it to you.
Neither am I going to delve into details about the story’s plot and how it turns out. No direct spoilers here.
What I am going to talk about, is the idea behind the show as I perceived it. I was always curious about the name from the day I started watching this show. Trust me, nothing is clearer the day you finish it. You might have your own version of the reason behind the name, but you will have one. For me, it was a deconstruction, not much different from the deconstruction process we employ on elements of human body to discern an infection. The entire process, behind how a man goes from an absolutely normal person to something he would himself despise at one point of time, is what this show is about. It is one of the million observations one might make from life, or from the lives around them.
I had a detailed discussion regarding the reasons a potential viewer might have to watch this show. As I said earlier, it is an observation upon life. And anyone who is interested to know and to comprehend the process behind a perfectly good man turning out the opposite, will find this show one of the best representations of the same. ‘Best’ here means the most realistic. It lays out in front of the viewer, in very simple and believable terms, the effects of this process. It shows how these effects are like ripples in a pond, affecting and sometimes infecting the ones around and involved in such a process.
That being said, it is not just a depiction of the destruction such a process can cause. It is mostly that for me, but not all. One of the other primary characters in the show eventually follows the opposite process. Although he does not escape the repercussions of his past entirely, but there might just be a ‘Breaking Good’ in this breaking bad.
There is something about this show that makes it highly believable. Maybe it is the impeccable acting. Maybe it is the unique and apparently plain cinematography. Maybe it is the weaknesses in almost all the characters. I have not seen all the shows in this genre or any genre, so I am nobody to declare if its the “greatest show of all time” or not. That title, for me, belongs to none as the criteria for the same vary as much from person to person as ear shapes and eye color. But I can say, that it is one of the shows that I am glad to have seen. And to anyone who can digest the real possibilities that life has to offer to someone to go bad and their harsh consequences, I highly recommend going through the five seasons of “Breaking Bad” for a visually enriching experience of the same.
And I have a message for the people who have seen the show.
If you thought that he is the good guy, you did not understand the show.
Arnab Mukherjee 