Breaking Down Breaking Bad: You Can't Destroy to Live

(Note: If you intend on watching Breaking Bad and don't want to be spoiled, stop reading. This post is heavy on spoilers as there's no way to write about the show without them.)

I finally did it. After some good old fashioned peer pressure and one very good argument, I watched a man recently diagnosed with cancer slowly die over 62 episodes of a television series. This wasn't a tragic tale of a disease debilitating an honorable man either. This was a descent into evil and madness--a cleverly plotted, deeply dark, and difficult to watch modern Western that serves as a depressing and scathing indictment of the American ideal.

Over the five season run of Breaking Bad, protagonist Walter White transformed from mild-mannered science teacher Walt to America's-Most-Wanted Meth kingpin Heisenberg. The show is the story of that transformation. What happens to a man when he becomes pure evil? Every character other than Walt is nothing more than a tool to demonstrate how he has changed.

 Skyler, Walt's wife, and Jesse Pinkman, Walt's protege, are two sides to the same coin--prisoners who suffer the depth's of Walt's emotional and intellectual manipulation. Hank, Walt's brother-in-law and foil, is the constant reminder that Walt isn't meant to be viewed as a hero. Gus, Walt's distributor-cum-boss and another type of foil, is a reason for Walt to resort to even more ruthless and reckless methods. Everyone else is just a bit player, including Walt's children--necessities of plot development or the fleshing out of the situations that brings about the rise of evil.

I mean, what exactly does Walt Jr. aka Flynn do with his friend Lewis in all that time they spend together? Hell, why did he specifically choose to be called "Flynn?" The answers to these questions don't matter, just as it doesn't matter what happens to any of these characters when Walt isn't around anymore. Not since 8 Mile where Eminem's Jimmy Smith was in every scene have I seen a motion picture, let alone a television series, focus so intensely on one character.

Perhaps for that fact alone Breaking Bad should be applauded. Television series are known for being ensemble pieces, long drawn out sagas where each character and actor gets a turn in the spotlight and under the microscope. At times this approach can become tedious and trivial as we learn Claire once dressed like a goth (LOST) or mostly anything that happens with Jason Street beyond the pilot (Friday Night Lights). There are no such deviations from Walt's world however, and that's just how he wants it.

Despite any pretense to the contrary about family (not-so-subtlety planted by corrupt lawyer Saul Goodman), it's all about Walt (and Bryan Cranston's sublime portrayal of him). Sorry Jesse fans (and I may mainly be speaking for myself here), if you hoped for more than 10 minutes of screen time for him in the final episode (or any other character for that matter), you were severely disappointed. Perhaps you should count your blessings though. Jesse may have limped away at series end as a physical and psychological mess, but that's much more than most people who crossed paths with Heisenberg can say.

The other reason to laud Breaking Bad with praise is its well paced and compelling plotting. As with any descent into drug culture, it's a narrative of escalation. As Walt goes from unknown cook to kingpin of a Meth empire, he deals with more and more powerful drug movers and dispatches them with more and more complex and violent schemes. He becomes intertwined with an international company based in Germany. He hires neo-Nazis to off six people in different prisons in a two minute span. Early on, I thought this plot pattern would become redundant. Thankfully, in the middle of Season 3, the introduction of Gus signaled a shift in quality and scope. Suddenly the developments are compelling and logical as Walt is a pawn in the schemes of a drug lord embroiled in a feud with the Cartel. Of course, if there's one thing Walt hates, it's being a pawn.

Throughout the series, Walt hides behind the veneer of self-interest and rationality while working toward the antithesis of rationality--destruction. He harps on the fact that people owe him because he devised the formula for the purest meth ever and repeats that he earned all his money from cooking it. Yet somehow he thinks that whenever anyone else tries to assert that they deserve a piece of the pie, they're illegitimately controlling him and thus killing them is justified.

Walt can give lip service to the idea of creation and earning as much as he wants. In reality, all he does is take. He sees everything as a power struggle. Either you're in control of other people or they're in control of you--and whoever's in control takes from those people he controls. Logically, such relationships can only progress to one point--force, either through manipulation or violence. That is exactly how Walt treated every character in the series until his empire crumbled. When someone stopped allowing Walt to take from him, either emotionally or financially, their death arrived sooner rather than later.

If you followed my live-tweeting of my viewing of the series, you know that I frequently compared Walt to the eponymous main character of Dexter. Both protagonists are anti-heroes who live a double-life that involves manipulation, violence, and a search for self-actualization. Notice how that description also applies to many contemporary television characters--Francis Underwood from House of Cards, Dr. House from House, Don Draper from Mad Men, Nucky Thompson from Boardwalk Empire. The list goes on. Also note how each of these characters work and/or exist in fields, locations, and time periods that are revered parts of the American identity: education, justice, medicine, politics, advertising, Washington DC, Manhattan, the 50s, Prohibition.

Shows like Dexter have fallen short at taking a stance on their anti-hero and his self-indulgent ways. At the end of its final season, Dexter had its psychopath protagonist suddenly develop empathy and lose his desire to kill. Breaking Bad makes no such misstep. Walt is unequivocally one of the worst villains in television history (perhaps in American lore). By series end he is compared to the Unabomber. His laser-like focus on asserting his control on the world has destroyed the lives of everyone he touched, including his own. That irony is what Walt never realizes. True evil never does. (In contrast, Dexter's new-found humanity helps him realizes the destruction he brings so he exiles himself by disappearing to a logging job and one-room cabin in the Northwest.) You can't build anything, an empire or a life, through destruction. It's a chilling commentary on how Americanism viewed solely as empire building changes a man.

Still, despite the quality plotting, production, and protagonist, I'm still left with the same question I had when I started the series, the one that kept me from watching it for a good while. Why do I want to spend my time watching a show completely focused on pure evil? Is the point to understand it? Can't that goal be achieved through other types narratives? Bryan Fuller's Hannibal gives a closeup look at evil through the gaze of Will Graham, a man trying to stop and not succumb to it. Sometimes his struggle feels harrowing, others hopeful. In contrast, there were few moments that moved me in Breaking Bad, and when I was moved it was most often to a deep hatred for Walt. What value does that add to my life?

As an aspiring writer, Breaking Bad enriched my life by teaching me plenty about plotting and some about characterization. As a viewer seeking to be entertained, the show shined through with a few glowing moments before leaving me like Jesse Pinkman--limping away, glad its over, finally free of its control.

Keep Calm and Focus on the Themes: The Survivor Community, Tyson, and the Brothers Baskauskas

This season of Survivor is being edited tremendously. There is a compelling narrative with a couple players that a strong winner's story case can be made for. Then there's the conversation around the season.

If you've followed this blog and/or my engagement with Survivor, you know two things about me:
1. Analyzing and discussing the story captivates and excites me.
2. Hearing the online fan conversation about the show annoys and frustrates me.

I'm sure you can see that those two points are at odds. How do you have a discussion if engaging in conversation isn't an enjoyable experience? The short answer: you don't. My answer: I try really really hard to ignore the negativity--the illogical, the insulting, the immature, etc. Thus I don't read many columns, don't participate in many forums, and don't follow many people on Twitter. I am very selective of what I let through the noise.

Earlier today, a Stephen Fishbach (expert strategic player and growing-in-quality columnist) tweet made its way into my stream by way of a retweet. Thanks to whoever retweeted that by the way, I don't remember who you are. For my money (which is none), this column is the best Fishbach has ever written. It's succinct, clear, and true. He states his analysis and acknowledges the possible objections. Except there was one problem.

The tweet Fishbach shared the column in claimed that this edition of his thoughts was the one that people have told him is the most off-base. Reading the comment section corroborates this claim. In short, everyone is telling him that Tyson deserved Fishbach's praise in this episode, not Aras--a counterpoint that Fishbach acknowledged and disregarded for good reason.

Ignoring the fact that Fishbach gives his weekly "Fishy" based on moves made and people want it awarded to Tyson based on his not making a move, there are two major points that are impossible to refute that make Aras deserving of the award:

1. Aras switched the vote on his tribe from a less dangerous member of the minority to a more dangerous member of the majority and his alliance of 5/6 still voted together.
2. Nothing in the editing portrayed the move as negative for Aras besides he himself saying he needed to be cautious to not be too manipulative. There were no echoes of Brad Culpepper's too-aggressive-villain edit. There were no confessionals from other players saying negative things about Aras.

Why then, with these two facts as readily available information based on mere observation, is there such an outpouring of comments against Fishbach's analysis that favor Tyson?

I don't have a good answer to that question. It reminds me of the conversation around Redemption Island Andrea. What bothers me the most is the surety of the belief that seems to be shared. Like Andrea, Tyson is likable, perhaps more-so. Like Andrea's edit in Redemption Island, Tyson's has had some strong moments early on. None of these facts necessarily lead to an emotional investment in celebrating and asserting Tyson's dominance though. It makes me wonder if there's a spoiler out there I don't know about that.

In Caramoan Cochran's story was deeply intertwined with the theme. He ingratiated himself with the tribe to overcome his past mistake. In the Phillipines, Denise's story was deeply intertwined with the theme--she balanced head and heart by seeing everyone's story. Even Fabio just went with the flow and let himself be seen as a goofball instead of overplaying like everyone else in Nicaragua. Remember, I'm talking about the edit here and episode one moments that encapsulated it.

In episode one of this season, Tyson said he was in a good spot and would be willing to cut all the loved ones. Those comments are not a theme. They are exposition. If anything, they are against the theme. If the key to this season is staying calm and drama-free, then cutting all the loved ones is not the way to do it. Has Tyson said and done things since that fit the theme? Yes, but thematic strength in subsequent episodes don't erase a week first episode. Rather, they reveal a major character in someone else's story--just like Andrea in Redemption Island.

My purpose here isn't to make the case against Tyson (whoops already did that) and for Aras and Vytas though. Truthfully, I'm still not 100% sure what the theme of the season is. That is my point. Is this season about being drama-free, concretized in yoga, or redemption? It would seem to be the former and that favors Aras. However, Vytas' edit is arguably stronger, most notably containing two very powerful visual moments, one in the premiere--one in the most recent episode. Then again, in the Sumo at Sea, Vytas was the one who resorted to a dramatic cheap shot and still lost...and then the brothers' rivalry was evened up in this past episode's immunity challenge. That moment was very clearly edited as important. Now I'm back to square one.

See what I'm getting at? This edit is tremendous. We don't know who wins and have good reason to want Aras or Vytas (and even Tyson) to win. They're both (all) strong and sympathetic protagonists. Why then should the conversation be focused so predominantly on one player (who arguably has the third strongest edit)? It shouldn't. Yet it is.

I briefly contemplated attempting to make the Survivor Story Analysis Commission more of a "thing" in the online community this season. I tweeted a little bit from that account and considered some strategic options. I'm officially removing that possibility from the table. Some may say I'm taking my ball and going home. Maybe I am. I don't really care. It's much more enjoyable for me to discuss the episode with the friends I watch with, the friends I talk to in Facebook messages, and the Facebook group I created and am the admin for. Doing so is how I turn the noise turn down to a minimum and focus on the themes. It's how I enjoy the show in this new era.

I want engage with the story, not the community.

Getting on My High Horse: The Wasteland of Internet Conversation

Perhaps this one has been a long time coming. If you were to track my internet usage history, this blog post might be the inevitable conclusion, like the obvious resolution of a story arc that spanned several seasons of a show. By the time you reach the final stages of the character’s journey, you know what comes next. It doesn’t mean you can’t and don’t enjoy it, just that you called the shot like Babe Ruth in the World Series. I mean, everyone knew Neo was going to die in the third Matrix, right?

In Middle School I was a huge Star Trek fan. Mostly I watched Deep Space, a show I transitioned into from a sustained interest in The Next Generation. Unlike TNG, the rick darkness of DS9’s pilot captivated me. There weren’t long scenes wasted on the bridge or in the ready room. The episodes all connected and flowed together into a larger narrative. Like Doctor Julian Bashir said, it was the frontier, both in the sense that the space station was on the edge of Federation’s territory and of Star Trek and television storytelling. I watched every episode, read the novels based on the series, bought the action figures, and carried around the Star Trek Encyclopedia. DS9 was perhaps my first great passion.

Around the same time DS9 premiered another three letter acronym was making itself known across the United States—AOL. America Online asserted itself as one of the leading internet service providers during the internet boom of the 90s. Its popularity was in part due to it being more than an ISP. It was also a community of messaged boards and chat rooms. In fact, before you could access the internet you first had to make a conscious decision to ignore and circumvent that community. Here I was introduced to talking to people I don’t know about a mutual interest through cyberspace.

Before my parents brought AOL into our home, my Dad had it on his computer at his office. During one of my visits there, probably on summer break, he showed me the Star Trek club (basically just a rudimentary message board that you could only access with an AOL screen name). He told me that lots of people from lots of places with lots of different jobs talked about the show there rather than with the people they knew didn’t like it. Obviously I’m paraphrasing to an extreme amount. I’m sure my Dad’s actual words didn’t lack sympathy and understanding. Regardless, there I sat at the gateway to the digital abyss.

When we did finally get an AOL account for the entire family a couple of years later, I already knew what my screen name would be (Odvok, a combination of the names of two of my favorite Star Trek characters Odo and Tuvok). I spent hours reading the Star Trek message boards, perusing other users’ profiles, and tweaking my own profile. It wasn’t long before I was hanging out in chat rooms, both about Star Trek and not. Eventually my main hang out was “NEW Young Adult.” AOL called it that as a rebrand from teen. Strangely they never removed the new from the name. It wasn’t the last “new” hangout I found on the web.

Over the years that spanned then and now, I bounced around chat rooms, message boards, Facebook groups, and blog/site comment sections. Each time I found myself going down the rabbit hole not to wonderland, but a wasteland. Like the real world I was perhaps escaping, I always found myself on the outside of a social schema with rules and roles that were beyond my understanding. Perhaps what perplexed me the most was the ferocity with which users asserted themselves. No matter the application, program, or URL, one constant remained—anonymity bred consent.

The more users operated in the shadows (going to great lengths to hide their true selves, creating multiple usernames, complaining to moderators via private message, etc), the more the communication centered on their topics and opinions. To this type of person the internet isn’t a place to be whoever you want; it’s a place to be no one at all, an e-persona disconnected from their real life. Thus their anonymity becomes their #1 value and reality the enemy. The subject they’re supposedly there to discuss (be it Star Trek, philosophy, Survivor, or New England Patriots football) becomes secondary to the fact that “they can post whatever they want.”

It’s important that I tread carefully here. I don’t want to come off spurned, as if I’m complaining because I’ve never been recognized and my self-esteem is impugned.  The internet generally isn’t the place to go for some psychological visibility. Rather what I feel is a deep disappointment and frustration. While I subscribe to the Penn Jillette theory that throughout history the world keeps getting better and people keeps saying it’s getting worse, I can’t help but think we could do it better. We have the greatest communication tool in the history of humanity at our fingertips and we use it to feel important instead of exchanging ideas.

Let me put it another way. Every Sunday I go to a local Boston bar to watch Patriots games (because I don’t have cable and like the pro-Patriots atmosphere). As I sit there and watch, I do three things. The first is monitoring the progress of my fantasy football teams. The second is reading my Twitter feed and the ESPNBoston blog for breaking news and analysis. The third is avoiding as much conversation at the bar as possible. There’s only so much Brady-blaming and Belichick-bashing I can take when the team is losing. The team goes down a couple of scores in the first quarter and suddenly everyone knows more than a head coach with 3 Super Bowl rings and 5 Super Bowl appearances. Fine, alright, get angry, show emotion, vent. I can understand that. But it goes to another level when you actually start to put forward arguments as to why you know more than the professionals you’re watching. It’s why I ignore—and sometimes see if there’s better conversation elsewhere.

The most bothersome thing about the comments on the ESPNBoston blog during games is not that they’re as negative as the ones I hear in the bar, it’s that they’re worse. If the bar patrons say the game is over, the blog commenters say the season is over. If the bar patrons say Brady is having a bad game, the blog commenters say his career is over. Hell, I think if the bar patrons said the world was in danger, the blog commenters would say the universe was ending. Yes, the conversation on the internet (which can involve anyone from anywhere in the world) is worse than the conversation in a local bar (even if it is in a major city). And this isn’t just a manifestation of Bostonian culture. Football is just an example. Pick a topic and think about what the worst conversation you could have about it is. Something worse is being said about it on the internet. Want to discuss your favorite show with other fans? According to them it’s the worst show ever and will never be as good as it was. Want to discuss a major court case with people who are watching as closely as you are? You don’t know what you’re talking about because you don’t have the proper perspective and education to understand how it’s the end of society.

(Note: A friend of mine struggled over the online responses to the recent season of Mad Men. As commenters said the show had become stale and repetitive and the main character completely unlikeable, she asked me to catch up so we could discuss it. When I finally watched I found that these commenters had missed he proverbial forest for the trees. Most notably, episode three featured a brilliant parallel (and obvious) narrative that none of them even mentioned. Sometimes I wonder if these people are so negative because they’re so smart and clever that they don’t bother with the trivialities I do. Nothing can ever satisfy them because they’re so evolved. Then I remember that they seem to hate everything they spend their time on.)

That’s why I’m tired, disappointed, and frustrated. Recently I tweeted, “I am never more wrong about things than when I post in an internet comment thread. Instantly I'm told how I'm dumb, delusional, and a liar.” I can even hear the responses to this post as I write it. “Hypocrite much? Ur being just as negative sayin the internet isnt bein used right.” Um, missing the point much? (Which, by the way, is what I almost always want to say people who respond to me so harshly. They claim to recount my argument, but never do.) I’m not telling anyone how to use the internet, I’m asking why we use it as we do and expressing how it makes me feel—sullen and sunken.

On July 2nd ESPN.com announced that their comment sections would be switching to Facebook comments from their current proprietary and barely moderated system with an extremely low barrier for registration. As you would expect, the current system breeds immense amounts of trolling and off topic discussions. It has always amazed me how a post about a rookie linebacker’s skill set and personality is responded to with 100s of comments dedicated to an international soccer match, if New Girl is better than Friends, or what people did over the weekend. The Facebook system promises high quality moderation and transparency on the part of the user. It’s a seemingly obvious victory for high quality, on topic conversation. The responses to the change from the current users gave me perhaps the last bit of information I needed to abandon the medium.

ESPN.com was dead, they stated. The only people who would comment from now on would be “pink hats” (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pink%20hat). All of the humor and intelligence would disappear. They would make fake Facebook profiles to continue posting or move to another site that let them have anonymity. They came to the site for the culture and camaraderie. Very few of them mentioned the actual content that ESPN.com provided.  (The ESPNBoston blog features some of the most intelligent and straight forward reporting I’ve seen on any topic.) Mind you, this wasn’t just a few users. I was the only person saying how the change was a good thing (to which I was told, among other things, to stop being pretentious and get off my high horse). I write the following with full seriousness, the level of hysteria at their anonymity being threatened scared me.

I don’t know what it says about me, our culture, or the internet that I’m unable to comprehend why people would want to spend their days with only small bits of their true selves squeaking out from behind the screens with which they obscure themselves. I’m transfixed by Catfish the TV Series even though it’s highly edited and formulaic. Each situation is a new twist on the same theme—someone has such disdain for him or herself that he has to hide behind technology to interact with other people who s/he harms as a result of that interaction. I’m enthralled at how shortsighted it is.

We’re living in the most prosperous time in human history. Despite whatever problems the world and you may have (and believe me, we all have our stuff to work through), you have access to cutting edge technology and quality food, shelter, and clothing. What is so bad about your life that you need to use all of those advantages to escape it on a daily basis and drag others down with you? Most importantly, is that really what you want your life to be? Is this really how we want it to be?

It’s not what I want. That’s why I wrote this blog post. It’s why I write this blog. Every day I go to bed with the hope that tomorrow will be just a little bit different, just a little bit better. For a long time I’ve thought the conversation enabled by the internet was part of that process of improvement. Now I’m afraid the potential wonderland will never be more than a wasteland.

And I’m not so sure if there’s a way back up the rabbit hole.