I am the danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot, and you think that of me? No! I am the one who knocks!
–Walter White
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This was the response from Walter White, the geeky high school chemistry teacher turned drug lord, to his wife Skyler’s fears that he would someday answer the door and be shot down by the thugs with which he was now associated. It was a hallmark moment in the AMC series Breaking Bad, which returns tonight to begin an eight episode wrap-up to Walter’s saga.
And what a staggering saga it has been.
Creator Vince Gilligan and actor Bryan Cranston have treated us over the last several years with one of the most fascinating heroes in television or film. I use the term hero very loosely here. Cranston’s Walter White at once gives you every reason to root for yet despise him. He is highly intelligent which gives him the ability to find rationale for the most deplorable moral decisions, each of which seems to send him into a deeper descent into the bowels of some evil hell.
He has went from the cowering weakling to the one who knocks, gun in hand.
Yet, we still somehow root for him to pull out of it, to find that moral root of rightness that appeared to be with him at the beginning of this journey. I think that’s the brilliance of this show, taking a person who we easily relate to and putting him into situations that are so far from what we would normally face that it leaves us wondering if we are any different, any better than Walter. In Walter, we see the same fears and weaknesses that most of us possess, things that could easily lead us into bad situations given the right (or wrong) circumstances. Do we have that same capacity for rationalizing our own poor moral decisions rather than seeing the obvious wrongness in them and doing what we know is right? This show brings it into doubt.
It’s been a ride that leaves me cringing and gasping with every twist that Vince Gilligan throws into it. I have come to expect the completely unexpected with this show. I am sad see it wrapping up for the pure wonder of its storytelling but relieved to see it end for the questions it raises about us all.
On a lighter note, for those who haven’t partaken of this particular treat, here’s a video that gives a very abridged rundown on what has happened thus far in the form of a Middle School Musical.
