Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan shares his take on whether the moral clarity of his show elevates it above other serial heavy-weights such as The Wire, The Sopranos and Mad Men. He also discusses the transition of Walter White from the central protagonist to villain of the piece, and teases his plans for ending the show. If you’re addicted to Breaking Bad, you’ll want to check this out.
Responding to Chuck Klosterman’s assertion that Breaking Bad is ‘better’ than The Wire, The Sopranos and Mad Men, in large part because of its moral clarity, Gilligan says:
I read that essay, and it pushed the circumference of my head about five or six sizes. Chuck is a wonderful writer – I was very honored by that. Deep down inside, I truly believe in right and wrong, and in karma. I have to believe there’s a right way to live your life and a wrong way. My girlfriend always says to me: “I’m not sure if there’s a heaven, but I have to believe there’s a hell. I have to believe people like Hitler wind up paying for their sins.” We try hard as human beings to create justice or a sense of justice in our civilizations and lives, but it’s fallible and often fails. So we desire to believe that there’s some universal justice out there, beyond our fallible human system of justice.
On Walter White functioning as a hero-turned-villain:
Walter White is the ‘hero’ of Breaking Bad, but I use that term very loosely, because he’s no hero of mine. He’s a bad guy. He started off as a good man who had justifiable reasons for the bad decisions he was making, but as the show has progressed, the ends are less and less clear. Walter is less concerned with his family and more concerned with his own self-aggrandizement. Our hero has become, episode by episode, a villain. I feel like what he’s doing is wrong, and having said that, he’s probably in for some payback.
On whether he senses the viewers are starting to turn on Walter:
That’s a great question. The challenge for me is to not wimp out. There’s a desire on the part of writers to write likeable characters – it’s an innate drive to want to please your readers or viewers. But Breaking Bad has been an experiment in television, as you said. Walter White has come very far down the road of badness, and he’s pretty much an indefensible guy at this point. Viewers have noticed that, but it was interesting to me that they hung in there liking Walt as long as they did. It points out interesting things about the storytelling process. When we choose to invest in a story we’re reading or watching, we invest a certain amount of psychic energy into the main character, and therefore it can be hard to come to the grips with the idea that this character may not be worth sympathizing with. My hope is that even if viewers lose sympathy for Walter White, they will remain interested in him. He’s a fascinating guy.
On ending the show:
I can’t comment yay or nay on whether we’re actually going to do that, because I don’t want to spoil anything for viewers. But [..] Walt now has this dual identity. He’s kind of like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. As readers and viewers, and for me as a writer, we find these kinds of characters with double lives endlessly fascinating. [There's an] inherent dramatic tension available to those of us writing the show that stems from Walt’s public versus his private life, which is astute. Again, I can’t say if that’s exactly the way we’ll go, but it does sound like a damn good way to go. (laughs)
Gilligan reiterates that he’s feeling the pressure of ending the series but he’s developed a method for venting that pressure:
As a way of venting pressure, I have to tell myself that no matter what we do, there will be some people who appreciate the ending and others who will have wanted us to end it another way. You have to temper your own expectations – I don’t say that to temper anyone else’s. But you also have to commit. I think the least satisfying series endings have been ones where the creators didn’t fully commit and tried to leave things vague or open-ended. I believe fortune favors the bold when it comes to television, so those are my marching orders to my writers. That’s how we are proceeding.
Source: My North
The moral clarity topic is a fascinating one. Breaking Bad certainly makes no bones about who the bad guys are — we’ve witnessed the gradual evolution (or devolution?) of Walter over four riveting seasons and it’s clear that he’s a bad guy. His circumstances put the squeeze on him, but his ego has also taken hold and directed many of his violent actions. He chose his path. When all is said and done, it will be interesting to see whether Walt sees himself as an antagonist (most don’t) or whether he feels justified in his actions.
Worth noting that the moral clarity is also highlighted in role of drugs on the show.
Whether this makes Breaking Bad better than The Wire, Sopranos and Mad Men is subjective and depends what one is looking for in a narrative. But I also think the moral ambiguity that exists within those shows offers a very important contribution to storytelling and a reflection of the murky nature of human nature.
Production on Breaking Bad’s fifth season gets underway in March. The final two seasons will be filmed in two batches of eight episodes, with a break of several months between for writers to work on scripts.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks Roco for posting this very promising interview.
I agree with your take on this,
and I can see a somehow-great similarity between Tony Soprano and Heisenberg.
Throughout the course of 6+1 seasons of Sopranos, Tony made some terrible decisions, derived from his possessive strategies, power-seeking and his unbreakable pride. And those decisions end up putting him in an inevitable mob war, which I assume, he lost in the end.
Same conclusion could be drawn for Nate Fisher (Six feet under);
A guy who basically, intentionally and unintentionally, ended up responsible for hurting a lot of people along the way when he was trying to forge an “ideal” social image of himself.
And those decisions, including the “karma” factor, left him confused, lost, and finally dead.
It’s interesting that while Walter White is enjoying becoming a (evil) drug lord, Tony Sopranos was trying to maintain balance in his leadership and Nate Fisher was desperately trying to become a socially acceptable and “decent” fellow citizen.
The latter two failed…I wonder what’ll happen to Walt.
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Aria, you hit a very important question here, which I think boils down to whether or not Walt will ‘win’.
What will ultimately be the difference between ‘winning’ and ‘losing,’ for Walt, when all is said and done? How much will his enjoyment, however twisted, factor in when he reflects on his journey? It’s going to be interesting, I think that much is for certain.
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