Right now its time for part two of my look at the critically acclaimed drama series Breaking Bad, so this will be hopefully the final part, which will cover alot of the other characters in the show. And yes warning: PLOT SPOILERS ARE AHEAD!!
Sooooo as for the other characters Bob Odenkirk is great as Saul Goodman,
Walt and Jesse's sleazy criminal lawyer, who has some cheesy commercials
on TV promoting his business and as the series progresss he get's
involved in their drug business and takes a small cut of their
earnings. Saul's catchphrase is "Better call Saul!" and he often
wisecracks throughout the series and there is numerous examples such as
when not long after he first meets Walt and Jesse he tells them "Look
here is some tough love for you. You guys suck at pedalling meth!".
Saul of course not only works with Walt and Jesse but also Skyler as
well, whom he always teases (as he does with everyone in the show!).
And when Saul first meets Skyler he says to her "Walt never told me how
lucky he was. Clearly his taste in woman is the same as his taste in
lawyers! Only the very best with just the right amount of dirty!".
Saul
quite often though is given more trouble than he bargained for with
Walt and Jesse as their drug business expands he continually has to try
and get them out of hot water, such as in the episode where Hank traces
Walt and Jesse's RV in an effort to arrest Jesse and Saul contacts an
associate to have the RV destroyed. And later on as things get ever
more heated Walt even bullies and intimidates Saul and at one stage Walt
goes into Heisenberg mode and says to him "We're done when I say we're
done!". Saul also has the knack of arranging to have people "disappear"
and start fresh with new identities which comes into use later in the
show as well.
There are also of course other characters
such as Marie Schrader, played nicely by Betsy Brandt. Marie is
Skyler's self-absorbed sister who never shuts up and always tries to
offer advice to other people. However Skyler is also an obssessive
shoplifter, which is seen in a few episodes, one in which she shoplifts a
pair of shoes she tries on as she simply swaps them on places her old
shoes back on display and leaves with the new ones. Marie however still
does care for her family and is very supportive of her husband, Hank
and she has a love for the colour purple, which she wears throughout the
show!
RJ Mitte as Walter Jr provides a moving
performance as Walt's good natured son, who has cerebral palsy and is
very much kept in the dark of the reality behind Walt's double life. And there is no doubt that Walter Jr or "Flynn" as he later prefers to be called, is the most sympathetic character, who in the end suffers just as bad emotionally at the hands of Walt's action as anyone.
Then there is
Gustavo "Gus" Fring, who is a major drug kinpin, who Walt and Jesse work
for initially, who is played superbly by Giancarlo Esposito. Gus has
an outwardly friendly and benign nature and he also runs a chain of
Mexican food restaurants as well and he often greets his customers
warmly and says "enjoy your meal!" to them. However Gus also happens to
be a very cold and calculating sociopath, who has a stranglehold on the
Mexican drug cartels and as the series progresses, Walt and Jesse both
start to get under his skin and its not long before he is forced to take
drastic actions against them. Gus's single most memorable scene is of
course the scene in the episode "Box Cutter" where (PLOT SPOILER!!!!!!!!!!!) he cuts the throat of one of his men, Vincent, right in front of a horrified Walt and Jesse and afterwards, Gus calmly cleans himself and goes to leave and coldly says to Walt "Well... get back to work!".
Other characters that are memorable include Tuco Salamanco played by Raymond Cruz, the volatile and unstable local drug kingpin who deals with Walt and Jesse, who later kidnaps them. Tuco makes a memorable impression early on in his first episode where he brutally beats Jesse for asking to be paid for the meth upfront and he yells at him after "NOBODY MOVES CRYSTAL IN THE SOUTH VALLEY BUT ME, BITCH!!!". And in the last episode of the first series "A no rough stuff type of deal" one of Tuco's men simply reminds Walt and Jesse "Just remember who you are working for" and Tuco suddenly turns on him and says "Why are you saying that? Do you think they're stupid??? Or are you saying am I stupid???!" and he goes on to brutally beat the man to death. Tuco also introduces another interesting character in the show, his uncle, Hector Salamanco (Mark Margolis) a former Mexican drug kingpin, who is now elderly and in a wheelchair, having had a stroke, he is unable to speak or walk and communicates by using a bell attached to his wheelchair. As the series moves on Hector swears for revenge against Walt for Tuco's death and has Tuco's cousins try and track down Walt to execute him but of course things take a different turn along the way.
Then there is Todd Alquist who for me is one of the creepiest and most loathsome characters in the show who appears in the final season. Todd works for an extermination company, which Walt, Jesse and Mike use as a front to their business. However Todd is a true sociopath who has no morals or ethics and despite being polite and quiet in nature, he really is quite a nasty piece of work. And Todd's worst crime is arguably the shooting the young boy, who witnesses Walt and Jesse finishing their methalymine heist at a railway track and they later dispose of the boy and his dirtbike. Its where the series really delves into the unthinkable and before his end you want to see the creepy Todd get his comeuppance and its actually credit to Jesse Plemmens performance that he makes the character so chilling and dangerous. Interestingly enough Todd in the show also has a thing for a drug distributor, Lydia (Laura Fraser) who worked with Mike, however she ends up betraying Mike's trust and later Walt, but in the end she will pay a hefty price.
And lastly there is Mike
Ermantraut, played by Jonathan Banks, a former Philadelphia police
officer, who turned to crime and takes on different jobs such as private
investigator for Saul and Gus's head of security, cleaner and a
hitman. Mike's background suggests that he left the force due to an
incident where he arrested a criminal who brutally beat a victim, whom
he let go after intimidating him, but later on discovered the perp
killed the victim in question. Despite Mike's activities he is also a
loving grandfather as in certain episodes he is seen with his
grandaughter, although he later is forced to disappear from the park
where he is with her, without saying goodbye. Mike works closely with
Gus through series three and four, and later he forms a reluctant
partnership with Jesse and Walt. Mike also has a strong dislike for
Walt and in his final confrontation with Walt he says to him "We had a
good thing, you stupid son of a bitch! We had a lab and we had
everything we needed! You could've shut your mouth and cooked and made
as much money as you needed! But no you just had to blow it up. You
and your pride and your ego!".
Mike however under Gus's
orders did try and shake Jesse out of his drug fuelled funk after
feeling guilty for killing Gale, their former chemist, who co-worked
with Walt. And this is apparent in the episode where Mike makes Jesse
travel with him and later Jesse stops two gunmen from attacking him and
he drives off and later picks up Mike, who earlier refused to let Jesse
smoke in his car, but as Jesse decides to put away a cigraette on
remembering what Mike said, Mike looks at him and says "Go ahead, kid.
Light up". And Mike is almost like another father figure for Jesse,
albeit his approach is far more tough love than Walt's is (which is
tough enough!). And in their first meeting when Saul sends Mike to deal
with the aftermath of Jesse's dead girlfriend, Jane, he tells Jesse
"When the police arrive, you say "I woke up I found her, that's all I
know!" and he get's Jesse to repeatedly say it while slapping him in the
face. Mike in the end is again something on an anti-hero, he does bad
things but he too has family to provide for and in that respect he isn't
too different from Walt and remains one of the shows most interesting
characters. And Jonathan Banks excellent performance is of course what
makes the character work so well, with Banks being an actor who featured
in small roles in films during the 1980s such as 48 hours, Beverly
Hills Cop and Stir Crazy, he landed on a goldmine with this role, which
really shows what actors who weren't given a big break before can really
do.
FINALLY moving onto the show's creator, Vince Gilligan truly has created a great television show here and himself was previously a writer on the X-Files, but personally this show in my opinions surpasses it. And it was Gilligan's idea to cast Bryan Cranston in the role, who appeared for years in the comedy show, Malcolm in the middle, and Cranston himself also appeared in an episode of the X-Files, which gave Gilligan the idea of casting him in the lead role as Walt. Gilligan has said that he wanted to make the show where the good guy essentially becomes the bad guy, although with Breaking Bad, he's actually managed to make the lead more than just a bad guy and Gillian described it as "turning Mr Chips into Scarface".
Music wise Breaking Bad is also great as Dave Porter wrote the series catchy and foreboding theme and at the end of each episode he composed variations of the theme of which most of them are pretty dark (naturally!) and his music couldn't be more suited to the tone of the series. The show also has a varied soundtrack froma variety of different music artists such as Rodrigo y Gabriela, Mick Harvey, 10,000 Maniacs, J.J. Cale, Blue Mink, Robert Palmer, Molotov, The Fixx (yep even they showed up!), The Pretenders and Badfinger.
Sooooooo that's it for my exhaustive look at Breaking Bad, which is one of the finest American drama series in recent years and if you haven't watched either buy the box set or get on Netflix (that would be cheaper!) and give it a go. You won't regret it.
And after that I will take a break! (and not a bad one hopefully) :-)
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