"Breaking Bad" creator still insists on ending after Season 5

[Mr. Television]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/ar...nues.html?_r=1

Shattering All Vestiges of Innocence

By JOE RHODES
Published: July 15, 2011

WALTER WHITE was a sympathetic innocent when AMC’s descent-into-darkness television series, “Breaking Bad,” began in 2008, a cancer-stricken chemistry teacher who — ostensibly to support his family — began to manufacture crystal meth. But he didn’t stay innocent for long. He has become a murderer, a liar, the kind of man who lets a girl overdose as he watches, because she’s gotten in his way.

The premise of the series, which returns on Sunday, following Walter White’s transformation from a decent man in desperate circumstances into a ruthless drug lord, always seemed made for a short run. How could Vince Gilligan, the soft-spoken Virginian who created “Breaking Bad,” possibly sustain the dark tone and high stakes for another season?

Actually, what Mr. Gilligan wants before the series ends, is even more bleak: to remove all vestiges of likability from Walter White, to complete a transformation unlike anything a television series has ever tried.

“There will be a point for everyone when they finally stop sympathizing with Walter White,” Mr. Gilligan said. “It’ll occur at different times for different people. In the early going it was quite easy to see him as a good man who was trying hard to do the right thing.

“But if you watch enough of these episodes, you realize eventually that Walt was a good man, but this thing he’s chosen to do is changing him. He becomes harder and harder to root for.”

Mr. Gilligan was speaking after taking a rare turn as director, shooting a scene that seemed easy, on paper at least. His star, Bryan Cranston, head shaved, nose bandaged, face artificially bruised, had just spent the better part of three hours on a downtown rooftop here. He was kneeling on tar and gravel in the high-altitude sun, breathing in the noxious smoke-filled air that had drifted into the city from a massive wildfire in Arizona, 200 miles away.

Mr. Cranston, who has won three consecutive best actor Emmys for his portrayal of Walter White, had no dialogue other than an anguished “Noooo” when he figures out that the rival he’s been watching in a parking garage may not be falling for an explosive trap he’s set. Over and over he crawled into place, crouched down, sneaked a look through binoculars and, realizing what’s happened, slumped back down, defeated, out of sight.

It should have been simple: a look, a reaction and then “Cut.” But nothing on “Breaking Bad,” not even the briefest of expository scenes, is ever as simple as it seems.

“It looks too perfect,” Mr. Gilligan declared. “It shouldn’t be so perfect. The angle should be a little off.”

The same could be said for the series itself, and even Mr. Gilligan was surprised when AMC agreed to make it.

Asked if he’s been tempted to lighten the tone in an effort to broaden the show’s audience and capitalize on its critical success, Mr. Gilligan said: “I think the worst thing I could do would be to cop out and soften Walter White so we could potentially get more viewers. That would be it’s own kind of hell for me. I’d rather see this experiment through to the end, wherever that might take us.”

It’s already taken Mr. Cranston’s character to some pretty grim places, using his chemistry expertise not only to manufacture methamphetamine, but also to determine the proper acid for dissolving a corpse. “When Vince first told me what he wanted to do with this character,” Mr. Cranston said, “my jaw dropped.”

“For the rest of my life, I owe this man,” he added. “I’m on my knees in the hot sun — I’m a 55-year-old man — and I’ll do it as for as long as he wants. Whatever he wants.”

That is the “experiment” Mr. Gilligan, who spent seven seasons writing for “The X Files,” sold to Mr. Cranston and to AMC. “I actively wanted to create a TV show in which the main character transformed from who he used to be into what he eventually will become. That’s not how TV series are usually designed. The idea is to have your character remain pretty much who they are, sometimes for decades on end. I wasn’t interested in doing that.”


So, by necessity, “Breaking Bad” has had to get darker, more violent and more dangerous with every season. Aaron Paul, whose character, Jesse, started out as a burned-out street dealer, has gone from playing a selfish punk to an overwhelmed sidekick, filled with remorse, scarred by the things he’s done.
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“All the characters bear the weight of their choices,” he said. “This is not being dark just for the sake of being dark. These are people whose worlds are crashing in on top of them. It’s heavy, heavy stuff.”

Which means, Mr. Gilligan admitted, the show cannot go on much longer. Although he’s changed his mind in the past, he now thinks the show should end after five seasons, if for no other reason than to honor the integrity of the experiment. “This was never intended to be an open-ended show,” he said. “As creators of the show, we have to see it through to the end, to finish what we started.”

At some point — though not in Season 4 — Walter White will surely pay for his sins. “We’re able to manipulate time, so that even though we’re four years into the show, we’re only a year into the story,” Mr. Cranston explained. “The conceit was that Walter White was given a diagnosis of two years to live. We’re going to hold to that and, by the end of the series, I can’t imagine him not dying. Although it may not be from lung cancer.”

Mr. Gilligan said: “I will be sad the day ‘Breaking Bad’ ends, but the worst thing that could happen, and I learned this from experience on ‘The X Files,’ is to reach a peak and then be on the long slow decline. It’s better to leave a party too soon than to stay too late.”

And, when that party ends, Mr. Gilligan will feel something like relief. “Living inside Walt’s head can be kind of depressing,” he said, visibly weary after directing the season finale. “It kind of wears you down after a while.

“Sometimes I wish I had a button to turn my brain off,” he said, with an exhausted laugh. “The closest I’ve come is bourbon.”