{"id":16475,"date":"2014-04-10T17:53:16","date_gmt":"2014-04-10T21:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=16475"},"modified":"2015-09-25T17:57:59","modified_gmt":"2015-09-25T21:57:59","slug":"breaking-well-why-walter-white-is-better-than-dexter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/10\/breaking-well-why-walter-white-is-better-than-dexter\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking Well: Why Walter White is Better Than Dexter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"dexter_breaking_bad\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Breaking Bad is the best television show of the 21st century (so far). It managed to offer week after week of not only compelling stories, but enough symbolism and alternate character interpretations to keep even the most snobby English-Lit major interested, while distracting less intellectually focused viewers with instances of \u201cbad ass\u201d behavior.<\/p>\n

Vince Gilligan used to write for The X-Files (in fact, Bryan Cranston appeared in the episode directly before the first episode Gilligan wrote) a show I haven\u2019t watched regularly since the nineties, but proves to me that he has a lot of talent. He knows how to tell a good story, obviously. His real genius with Breaking Bad is in how he draws characters, especially television characters. On TV, people don\u2019t really change. There is an illusion of change, but very little actually occurs.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Take a show like Dexter, which is thematically relevant since both programs ask us to root for a criminal. Through the first four seasons (I stopped watching after that) Dexter appears to go through a lot, but what about him really changes? He is still a blood spatter analyst, he still murders people for fun, still talks to his dad, etc. He is dating Rita, then living with Rita, then married to Rita. But how does this affect his nighttime activities? Minimally. Because Dexter is not a person. He doesn\u2019t feel real. If a serial killer joined a family, I\u2019m almost positive he wouldn\u2019t be able to keep doing his thing. Dexter might say in voiceover \u201cwow, it sure is hard juggling all this crap; I\u2019m tired,\u201d but he still manages to kill all the people he wants. If John Lithgow hadn\u2019t killed Rita, I doubt the writers would have had her discover his secret because it would break the show.<\/p>\n

Breaking Bad (excuse the wordage) breaks the show constantly. The first two seasons settle into a relatively comfortable formula: Walt and Jesse bumble their way through the meth business and we enjoy the drama of watching a corny white man and a less-corny white boy act in ways they aren\u2019t prepared for. We enjoy watching Walt come up with elaborate lies to tell Skyler. But the difference between Skyler and Rita is that Skyler suspects something is up and begins changing her treatment of Walt in very tangible ways. When he mistakenly utters that he still has his second cell phone before going in for surgery, Skyler leaves him. She doesn\u2019t browbeat him; she doesn\u2019t start making him call to check in every two hours, (wouldn\u2019t it be even wackier if Walt had to call Skyler in the middle of a shootout? yuk yuk yuk) she breaks their relationship and it never gets repaired.<\/p>\n

These are real people, not characters. Every single person on Breaking Bad ends the show very different from when it started. Vince Gilligan could have very easily allowed things to settle into a formulaic parade; he could\u2019ve had each of Walt\u2019s chemistry lectures figure into his drug dealing plot; instead, he slowly eliminated that aspect of Walt\u2019s life. He could\u2019ve forced the battle of wits between Walt and Gus to continue for much longer than it did; instead, he essentially has Walt become Gus. This is why Breaking Bad is so great; the characters are not only allowed to change but are in a constant state of change. The events of Breaking Bad take place primarily over one year.<\/p>\n

At one point, Marie comments on how long the year has felt (this is in the fifth season). This is important because here, the characters go through five seasons worth of development within one year, in-universe. In most shows, characters go through one year of development over five years. Life is change. Any sense of \u201cnow\u201d is illusory. \u201cI can\u2019t believe it\u2019s only been a year since ____\u201d is a sentiment you feel in your own life. It feels real.<\/p>\n

This is why we should never find out the exact circumstances of why Walt left Gray Matter. Or why exactly his relationship with his mother is so bad.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s return to Dexter. Why does he kill people? In the first season, it\u2019s revealed that, as a toddler, Dexter\u2019s mother was brutally murdered in front of him, and he spent a couple of days locked in a storage container with her corpse and an unsettling amount of blood. That is his \u201corigin story\u201d and it explains everything: why he kills, why he became a blood spatter analyst. (Dexter even says something like \u201cno wonder I learned to look for answers in blood\u201d just in case you needed spoon feeding.) In theory, this should make Dexter seem more human, more real, but it does the exact opposite.<\/p>\n

When we talk about realism, we\u2019re really talking about verisimilitude, which pretty much means \u201cit doesn\u2019t feel like I\u2019m watching a TV show right now.\u201d People say Batman is more realistic than Superman, but both characters are incredibly unrealistic. What they really mean is, Batman\u2019s motivations are more relatable. You don\u2019t want realism in your Batman stories because realistically, Bruce Wayne would\u2019ve gotten therapy as a child and moved on. We look at Batman\u2019s origin story, see a child witness his parents\u2019 murder, and we say \u201coh, that makes sense.\u201d We have a plausible character motivation, but we sure don\u2019t have realism.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve learned to digest fiction in a certain way. We see a character behave in a certain way and we know that his past has something to do with it. When we find out what it is, our brain kind of relaxes a bit, and the character \u201cmakes sense.\u201d Boy watches his parents get killed and wants to fight crime? That makes sense. But it doesn\u2019t feel real because reality doesn\u2019t make sense.<\/p>\n

The closest thing Walt has to an origin story is his cancer diagnosis, but that\u2019s actually not an origin – it\u2019s what kicks off the story. Walt\u2019s real origin is implied; it\u2019s given to us in small chunks and we never get all the pieces of the puzzle. We know that Walt was with Gretchen and business partners with Elliot – then something happened – and he ended up an ineffectual school teacher with a chip on his shoulder. We can guess that the \u201csomething\u201d had to do with Walt\u2019s pride, since it\u2019s clear as the show progresses that this is a problem of his. We come to see that Walt feels he needs to make it on his own steam, that he can\u2019t accept charity, and it\u2019s possible this was emphasized by his mother, perhaps with harsh lessons and scolding. But we can\u2019t be sure, which is why it\u2019s so much fun. Which is why it feels real. Because in reality, you don\u2019t get to push pause and take a trip back to someone\u2019s past to see exactly why they are the way they are. You get some pieces of a puzzle and make guesses.<\/p>\n

In our lives, we experience change, we don\u2019t see every angle, we make guesses. TV usually gives us the exact opposite of that. Breaking Bad gives us the same feelings that life gives us, which is why we can accept the narrative leaps the show makes. (How exactly did you get access to Brock, Walt? And why did you even think that was a reasonable plan? SO MANY THINGS had to go in your favor!) And it\u2019s why it feels like a reenactment of events that actually transpired.<\/p>\n

When you look at Walter White, you see a man who\u2019s gone from crappy-mustached loser to a grizzled kingpin. When you look at Dexter you just see Dexter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Breaking Bad is the best television show of the 21st century (so far). It managed to offer week after week of not only compelling stories, but enough symbolism and alternate character interpretations to keep even the most snobby English-Lit major interested, while distracting less intellectually focused viewers with instances of \u201cbad ass\u201d behavior. Vince Gilligan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,17],"tags":[156,240,302,1087],"class_list":["post-16475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pcthugs","category-tv-tomb","tag-breaking-bad","tag-crime","tag-drama","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16475"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16478,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16475\/revisions\/16478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}