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'Breaking Bad' goes from bad to worse

(Photo courtesy of AMC)
(Photo courtesy of AMC)

(Photo courtesy of AMC)

“Breaking Bad’s” half-season finished airing its last episode for the year on Sunday and everyone is wondering what will happen next. A more important question is: Has “Breaking Bad” gone bad? The show may go down in history as one of the greatest television shows to grace the silver screen. The acting is superb, the cinematography is jaw-dropping and the tension is so dense that it could be cut with a knife.

However, lately, the show feels hollow, and some of its magic is gone. After contemplating the scope of what happened throughout the entirety of the four and a half seasons, it became obvious what is wrong. The main problems with the show derives from its drawn out pacing, its lack of genuine heart-stopping tension and the complete absence of sympathetic characters.

Last season ended with Walt finally defeating Gus as he tells his terrified wife “I won;” then Walt drives into the sunset. If “Breaking Bad” were a movie, it would have ended there. That is one of the main problems with season five. This season feels more like a dragged out epilogue than an actual season. Half the season is focused mainly on recovering from Gus’ death, covering loose ends and figuring out what to do next. The audience has to wait until the third episode — almost halfway through the season — for our “heroes” to recommence with their cooking meth trade and even that isn’t satisfying anymore.

The show’s focus is in all the wrong places. The plot line with Mike dealing with loose-ends takes up seven out of the eight episodes. Hank, whom fans have been eagerly waiting for him to finally realize his brother-in-law is Heisenberg, is still just lingering in the background and really didn’t have much to do in this half-season.

Unlike the past, this season is lacking in successful sensation of drama and tension. Previously, Gus acted as Walt’s shadow. He was always present — in the darkness — watching Walt. Gus could have killed Walt at any moment last season. As it became apparent that Walt was a dead man walking, the suspense and tension built up immensely. Gus’s absence has watered downed the intensity of the show dramatically.

In addition to the tension from Gus, Walt had other problems he had to face in the previous seasons: his cancer, Skyler, Tuco, Tuco’s relatives, Jesse, Mike, the cartels, Hank and the Drug Enforcement Administration. All these threats are now absent this season and nothing effectively took their place. His cancer has gone into remission, Tuco and his family died, Skyler is sedated to the point of being placid, the Cartels just disappeared, Hank and the DEA is off his trail.

One of “Breaking Bad’s” greatest problems is that none of the characters are presented in a sympathetic nature as they have in the past. Every good story needs characters with whom the audience feels connected. If viewers don’t care what happens to the characters, then they aren’t caring for the story. It was not just Walt that fans were drawn to sympathetically. Fans were given reason to care for every major character in the show — even Gus. That made the show powerful and addictive to its audience.

Walt has become unsympathetic now that he has become pure evil and has transitioned from his old self to his alter ego, Heisenberg. He is at the point where he doesn’t care about murder or even his own family — which was the reason why he began making meth in the first place.

So, has “Breaking Bad” gone bad? Every episode since season four has felt like a set up for the second half of season five, which is not airing until 2013. It would be more than fair to point out that season four felt the same way in the first half.  But, the audience didn’t have to wait a year to see season four’s other half.  Viewers also had the omnipresent Gus lurking in the shadows to keep viewers glued to the television screen each week.

So many fans have put so much time into “Breaking Bad” that they will still watch it all the way through despite its perceived recent flaws. Audiences can only hope that everything they introduced in this mediocre half-season, will be for its greater good. Hopefully, the second half will bring the show back to the award-winning, addictive and spellbinding “Breaking Bad” that audiences have experienced in the past.

 

Reach the reporter at tverti@asu.edu


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