Breaking Bad' creator Vince Gilligan and star Bryan Cranston reflect on end of gritty AMC series, 'Without humor, the show would be unwatchable,' says Gilligan about the story of a chemistry teacher turned crystal meth producer. The series' final eight episodes begin Sunday night.
Series stars Aaron Paul (l.) and Bryan Cranston at Sony Pictures Studios. Cranston says his "Breaking Bad" character, Walter White, "made his Faustian bargain" right at the start of the show.
Vince Gilligan, creator and writer of AMC’s acclaimed “Breaking Bad,” finds Walter White chilling precisely because he does not see Walt as some sort of moral mutant with singularly bad wiring.
No, Gilligan thinks that we all harbor some of the instincts that turned the series’ main character — a mild-mannered high-school chemistry teacher — into an increasingly merciless and amoral drug dealer.
“Those impulses already live in all of us,” says Gilligan. “It just depends on whether something brings them out.
“I don’t think that success, for example, changes people. It just reveals who they really are. All you have to do is look around Hollywood at all the stars who turn into a—holes.”
“F— you!” snaps Bryan Cranston, who plays Walter White and has been sitting next to Gilligan. “We do not!”
Gilligan and Cranston crack up. It’s a moment that might seem odd against the backdrop of “Breaking Bad,” but in fact, they say, humor is one of the stealth weapons through which a modestly budgeted cable drama grew up to become this summer’s most anticipated and referenced television finale.
“Breaking Bad,” whose last eight episodes launch Sunday night at 10 p.m., has inspired books, including “ ‘Breaking Bad’ and Philosophy” (Open Court) and “ ‘Breaking Bad: Alchemy” (available via iTunes). A “Breaking Bad” exhibition opened recently at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria.
While laughter isn’t exactly a signature response to a show in which one of Walt’s associates killed a 12-year-old and they all dumped his body, Gilligan says this kind of bleakness makes lighter interludes indispensable.
“Without humor,” he says, “the show would be unwatchable.”
Certainly its dark side is hard to miss.
John Landgraf, CEO of FX Networks and a major fan of “Breaking Bad,” was asked last week if cable dramas can keep developing increasingly ominous lead characters, along the lines of “The Sopranos” or “Sons of Anarchy.”
“I can’t imagine a protagonist darker than Walter White,” said Landgraf. “I think that’s the end of the road for out-darking each other.”
Before I took this show, I didn’t know how bad ‘bad’ really was,” he says. “You don’t know until it happens.”
He also echoes Gilligan’s shadowy suspicion about what lurks in everyone.
“All of us,” he says, “we’re capable of doing what Walt did.”
The question hovering low over the final episodes, of course, is what will happen to Walt; his former drug-dealing partner Jesse (Aaron Paul); his wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn); his brother-in-law Hank, a DEA agent (Dean Norris); his children, and all the others caught in his lethal web.
Gilligan and Cranston, along with everyone else involved with the show, are keeping this their little secret until the finale on Sept. 29.
“I am very proud of the ending,” Gilligan says. “I can’t wait for everyone to see it. I hope I’m not wildly wrong in my estimation that I think most people are going to dig it.”
To fully dig it, however, he adds, viewers also shouldn’t mistakenly think a bunch of good people just woke up one morning bad.
“You can’t forget where it started,” he says. “You have to appreciate that these characters got where they are by degrees.”
Walt’s original dilemma was tragic and didn’t set him apart from millions of real-life people.
He was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and his salary as a high-school chemistry teacher hadn’t allowed him to provide for Skyler and the kids once he was gone.
A chance brush with Jesse, one of his indifferent former students and now a small-time drug dealer, got him thinking he could use his chemistry skills to produce a salable product: crystal meth.
Different fans, while discussing Gilligan’s “by degrees” point, make different arguments about where Walt passed the moral point of no return.
“You talk about a tipping point for Walt,” says Cranston. “Tipping point? How about right at the beginning? He’s got this problem and he decides to resolve it by becoming a criminal, by cooking and selling an illegal poison.
“There’s your tipping point. That’s where he’s made his Faustian bargain.”
Anna Gunn says other characters, including Skyler, held out longer. “But every time she thought she could fix things, she only made it worse,” says Gunn, and eventually Skyler, too, “lost her moral compass.”
As this season begins, says Gunn, Skyler’s only surviving hope is that she can somehow save their children.
Cranston says Walt, realistically or not, has at least bursts of a little more optimism.
“Sure, he has hope,” says Cranston. “He’s stashed away more money than any of them could spend in their lifetime. He’s agreed to Skyler’s wishes and gotten out of the [drug] business.”
Yes, he still has a lot on his conscience. “But from the beginning,” says Cranston, “his family has been the most important thing to him. He has a sense of duty and pride.
“You look at the scenes of the family picnics, and you see that’s what he wants. In those moments, he feels like he’s alive.”
Family scenes also provide openings for lighter moments, as do scenes with Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), the shady and often frazzled lawyer who has helped Walt with some tricky personnel and financial details.
Saul became such a memorable character there has been talk of a spinoff, which is the most solid clue to date that anyone could survive.
Cranston, who agrees with Gilligan about humor being essential, allows that there was a little more in the early seasons, before the skies got quite as dark as they have become.
But throughout, he says, the humor has worked “because the jokes were never jokey. Saul didn’t say things to be funny. The humor came from the situation and the characters.”
“Fortunately,” says Gilligan, “we have a cast that can do that. I knew from ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ that Bryan could be funny that way.”
Cranston says Paul can’t be overlooked here, either. Jesse is small where Walt is large, young while Walt is old, content with dime-bag dealing while Walt wants to rule the world.
“With Jesse and Walt,” says Cranston, “you immediately have a dynamic that’s right for humor.”
Gilligan nods, then adds, not entirely in a joking tone, “It’s a classic combination. In a way, Walt and Jesse are a 21st-century version of Laurel and Hardy.”
That might surprise Stan and Ollie. But Gilligan says it’s really just another way of realizing that the “Breaking Bad” story isn’t just “Mr. Chips becomes Scarface.”
It’s not only the darkness.
“To get any story,” Gilligan says, “you want to see it from all sides.”
Series stars Aaron Paul (l.) and Bryan Cranston at Sony Pictures Studios. Cranston says his "Breaking Bad" character, Walter White, "made his Faustian bargain" right at the start of the show.
Vince Gilligan, creator and writer of AMC’s acclaimed “Breaking Bad,” finds Walter White chilling precisely because he does not see Walt as some sort of moral mutant with singularly bad wiring.
No, Gilligan thinks that we all harbor some of the instincts that turned the series’ main character — a mild-mannered high-school chemistry teacher — into an increasingly merciless and amoral drug dealer.
“Those impulses already live in all of us,” says Gilligan. “It just depends on whether something brings them out.
“I don’t think that success, for example, changes people. It just reveals who they really are. All you have to do is look around Hollywood at all the stars who turn into a—holes.”
“F— you!” snaps Bryan Cranston, who plays Walter White and has been sitting next to Gilligan. “We do not!”
Gilligan and Cranston crack up. It’s a moment that might seem odd against the backdrop of “Breaking Bad,” but in fact, they say, humor is one of the stealth weapons through which a modestly budgeted cable drama grew up to become this summer’s most anticipated and referenced television finale.
“Breaking Bad,” whose last eight episodes launch Sunday night at 10 p.m., has inspired books, including “ ‘Breaking Bad’ and Philosophy” (Open Court) and “ ‘Breaking Bad: Alchemy” (available via iTunes). A “Breaking Bad” exhibition opened recently at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria.
While laughter isn’t exactly a signature response to a show in which one of Walt’s associates killed a 12-year-old and they all dumped his body, Gilligan says this kind of bleakness makes lighter interludes indispensable.
“Without humor,” he says, “the show would be unwatchable.”
Certainly its dark side is hard to miss.
John Landgraf, CEO of FX Networks and a major fan of “Breaking Bad,” was asked last week if cable dramas can keep developing increasingly ominous lead characters, along the lines of “The Sopranos” or “Sons of Anarchy.”
“I can’t imagine a protagonist darker than Walter White,” said Landgraf. “I think that’s the end of the road for out-darking each other.”
Before I took this show, I didn’t know how bad ‘bad’ really was,” he says. “You don’t know until it happens.”
He also echoes Gilligan’s shadowy suspicion about what lurks in everyone.
“All of us,” he says, “we’re capable of doing what Walt did.”
The question hovering low over the final episodes, of course, is what will happen to Walt; his former drug-dealing partner Jesse (Aaron Paul); his wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn); his brother-in-law Hank, a DEA agent (Dean Norris); his children, and all the others caught in his lethal web.
Gilligan and Cranston, along with everyone else involved with the show, are keeping this their little secret until the finale on Sept. 29.
“I am very proud of the ending,” Gilligan says. “I can’t wait for everyone to see it. I hope I’m not wildly wrong in my estimation that I think most people are going to dig it.”
To fully dig it, however, he adds, viewers also shouldn’t mistakenly think a bunch of good people just woke up one morning bad.
“You can’t forget where it started,” he says. “You have to appreciate that these characters got where they are by degrees.”
Walt’s original dilemma was tragic and didn’t set him apart from millions of real-life people.
He was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and his salary as a high-school chemistry teacher hadn’t allowed him to provide for Skyler and the kids once he was gone.
A chance brush with Jesse, one of his indifferent former students and now a small-time drug dealer, got him thinking he could use his chemistry skills to produce a salable product: crystal meth.
Different fans, while discussing Gilligan’s “by degrees” point, make different arguments about where Walt passed the moral point of no return.
“You talk about a tipping point for Walt,” says Cranston. “Tipping point? How about right at the beginning? He’s got this problem and he decides to resolve it by becoming a criminal, by cooking and selling an illegal poison.
“There’s your tipping point. That’s where he’s made his Faustian bargain.”
Anna Gunn says other characters, including Skyler, held out longer. “But every time she thought she could fix things, she only made it worse,” says Gunn, and eventually Skyler, too, “lost her moral compass.”
As this season begins, says Gunn, Skyler’s only surviving hope is that she can somehow save their children.
Cranston says Walt, realistically or not, has at least bursts of a little more optimism.
“Sure, he has hope,” says Cranston. “He’s stashed away more money than any of them could spend in their lifetime. He’s agreed to Skyler’s wishes and gotten out of the [drug] business.”
Yes, he still has a lot on his conscience. “But from the beginning,” says Cranston, “his family has been the most important thing to him. He has a sense of duty and pride.
“You look at the scenes of the family picnics, and you see that’s what he wants. In those moments, he feels like he’s alive.”
Family scenes also provide openings for lighter moments, as do scenes with Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), the shady and often frazzled lawyer who has helped Walt with some tricky personnel and financial details.
Saul became such a memorable character there has been talk of a spinoff, which is the most solid clue to date that anyone could survive.
Cranston, who agrees with Gilligan about humor being essential, allows that there was a little more in the early seasons, before the skies got quite as dark as they have become.
But throughout, he says, the humor has worked “because the jokes were never jokey. Saul didn’t say things to be funny. The humor came from the situation and the characters.”
“Fortunately,” says Gilligan, “we have a cast that can do that. I knew from ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ that Bryan could be funny that way.”
Cranston says Paul can’t be overlooked here, either. Jesse is small where Walt is large, young while Walt is old, content with dime-bag dealing while Walt wants to rule the world.
“With Jesse and Walt,” says Cranston, “you immediately have a dynamic that’s right for humor.”
Gilligan nods, then adds, not entirely in a joking tone, “It’s a classic combination. In a way, Walt and Jesse are a 21st-century version of Laurel and Hardy.”
That might surprise Stan and Ollie. But Gilligan says it’s really just another way of realizing that the “Breaking Bad” story isn’t just “Mr. Chips becomes Scarface.”
It’s not only the darkness.
“To get any story,” Gilligan says, “you want to see it from all sides.”
