Breaking Bad And Pop Culture

Okay, the Phantom has his biases, like anyone else. 
The Phantom refused to watch "Breaking Bad" because he did not like the whole premise:  A man with terminal cancer, determined to provide for his family, cooks up drugs to make a quick fortune.

A timid suburban school teacher entering the world of drugs and cartoon bad guys, the worm has to turn, and must prevail by sheer cunning and resourcefulness. Let's see, there was the local housewife who sold drugs; it seems a whole genre of fearful, bourgeois, who find themselves in financial distress, who turn to a fearsome, deadly world for which they are not prepared and you root for them to survive and prevail because you feel so sorry for them.

After three or four episodes, the Phantom was still groaning, but his wife and a friend who loved "The Wire" (therefore had street cred for good taste) prevailed. Keep watching; it grows on you.

And it has grown on the Phantom.  The premise is still a groaner, but there are scenes which are so well done, and the plotting of the story lines so meticulous, the show, it must be admitted, has enough merit to almost balance its Hollywood pitch room premise. 

What it does so well relates to the science, the chemistry, the medical scenes. The episode in which we have been led to believe Walter White is not responding to his chemotherapy and then, in a surprise you could not see coming, it turns out he has had a substantial response, was set up so carefully, one had to be amazed. And the depiction of the experience of being a cancer patient, the experience of the family, the rising hope, the dread with each CAT scan--is the cancer smaller or still growing? And the joy at the small victory--oh, the tumor is smaller this time. Let's go party. Drink champagne. Families do that. They enjoy the small, the current good news because the news can only be good briefly, but they allow themselves to believe, because what else do they have?

The chemistry has also been wonderful, as Walter teaches a principle in class, and he relishes the beauty and power of chemistry, and then you see how he uses it to blow up a lock and steal the makings of his product, or how he rescues himself and his feckless sidekick, Pinkman, by fabricating a battery to start their RV and get them out of the desert.  

The bad guys are very very bad and amusing. Cartoons. The Irish lawyer who chooses a Jewish sounding nom de guerre because street hoods think Jewish lawyers are smarter, is a hoot. 

So it is around the edges the series succeeds:  wonderful plotting, not losing track of threads, making sure mis steps and character weaknesses result in trouble down the road, scenes in which real science is shown to have real power, and the insistence that every single scene is taut with dramatic tension keeps you watching. It's great fun.

But nowhere is any real social commentary, any effort to get you to see the world differently.

There are characters who do things which ring true: Walter's wife reacts exactly as one would expect someone like her to react, and for the Phantom she is the most real and instructive character in the series thus far. The Phantom has heard she is reviled out there in TV land. Fans love to hate her. 

The Phantom finds this bewildering. She hates being lied to, and she has good antennae for lying. She bullies her husband into accepting chemotherapy despite his very reasonable objections. She uses her attractiveness to get a job, although it is pretty clear she may be setting herself up with her boss for an affair, which she may try to leverage into financial security down the road. But she clearly cares for her husband, and is overjoyed at the news he's responded to chemotherapy. 

Maybe she breaks bad later, but so far, Mrs. Walter White is just fine with the Phantom.

What is depressing is that good writers have to take the easy road to developing a story: Hey, let's do a mild mannered high school science teacher who uses his science to make drugs and launch a career among the bad guys, who he keeps at bay with his magic scientific tricks.  See, and he gets braver and braver, and he realizes that what was really making his life a misery was his own fearfulness and all he has to do is brave up and make things explode to find happiness.

Give that show a slew of Emmy's.