can i just say skylers actress is incredible. she absolutely NAILS subtleties. for example every single time walter says anything near her in late season 3 you can see her in the background sort of paying attention, sort of getting her guard up, trying to see what Walts going to do bc she's learned to expect anything from him, and also paying attention to his words because she is so starved of ,, him. not like in a romantic or sexual way, I mean she has been shut off from him emotionally for like. Months. and to hear him saying things that might actually be honest you just know deep down she is desperate for a shred of the connection they might once have had. like..wow..
theres a third layer too. she's looking to see if he's saying anything suspicious or incriminating or hurtful because she doesn't want other people affected which is the whole reason she's not telling people about Walter's secret
she is watching out for him, not to protect him but to protect herself and her family. she's watching out for him in the way you watch out for danger. understandably. because he constantly puts them in danger by getting involved with dangerous people and she damn well knows it even if she never admits it to herself.
and when she's with junior and Walt and maybe other members of their family in the same room she is so tense. and her pleasantries are the obviously thin veil for the torrent of emotions within her — her feelings of betrayal at being gaslit for example. and she just has to bottle all that up because she is a good person. or shes trying her best at least with the hand she's been dealt. anyway the fact that you can read all this JUST from her face and body language and tone of voice (and story context ofc) is insane to me
and you can SEE everyone else in the room with sky and walt dying of curiosity and secondhand anxiety but they don't ask. because no one trusts each other not to flip out anymore. because maybe it's so bad that no one ought to know, so maybe they shouldn't ask at all. is she okay? she'll never tell you
crashing out about jesse's arc in brba season 3. like. he goes to rehab and adopts this twisted version of self acceptance which allows him to bury his guilt with the idea that he's a fundamentally Bad person and should accept himself as such. he feels responsible for Jane's death, and consequently, the deaths of 167 people in the wayfarer crash. he manipulates the girl at the gas station into accepting meth in exchange for his gas, and tries as hard as he can to get revenge on Hank, and steals from the lab and sells to the vulnerable people in rehab, because if he's a Bad Person then he doesn't need to feel guilty for everyone who died, and doesn't need to hate himself, like he says to the group leader, because he can tell himself that it's self acceptance. and even when he goes to the shoot out with gus's men, it's clear that he believes he could and would kill them, the same way that he knows Walter has killed people. but then The Gale Scene happens, and part of why that scene is such a gut punch is that we are watching jesse realize that he's not a killer, and doesn't want to hurt people, at the one moment where it's not an option for him to back out. it's a moral and emotional threshold that he doesn't want to cross, but out of loyalty to Walter, he does it. and then all of season 4 is the consequences of him realizing that (unlike walter) hurting people will never be painless for him. and he cannot absolve his guilt by believing he's the bad guy.
is Jesse Pinkman from the critically acclaimed american drama series Breaking Bad... actually transgender? a video I've been working on for the last ten million years
one thing i’ve noticed in the entirety of the breaking bad/ better call saul universe is that the narrative is extremely unforgiving, to everyone that is apart of it. there is not a single character that gets off scot free.
of course there’s the obvious characters like jesse pinkman, nacho varga, saul goodman and walter white, but everyone and their mothers have talked about how the main cast has been doomed by the narrative. i want to talk about three characters specifically that we see for maybe a handful of episodes overall, yet nobody talks about how the narrative failed them.
starting off in order that we see them in the show, i want to talk about combo. overall, i think he was in maybe like 4 episodes? but he meant so much to the show, even in the later seasons. combo died due to walters push for more territory, walters greed killed combo, which is a theme that’s going to keep coming up. there isn’t much i can say about combo, due to how he wasn’t in the show much, but his death alone is the reason why walter and gus have that fall out in season 4.
another character who was doomed by the narrative is donald margolis, jane’s father. now, jane too was doomed by the narrative, but her father is the one who suffered the most from jane’s death, leading to the plane crash and his own (attempted?? i don’t think they confirmed if he lived or died) suicide. again, because of walters own greed and need to eliminate those who he deems a threat, jane died, causing donald to end up killing two entire planes full worth of people, and quite possibly himself.
finally, i want to talk about brock. brocks uncle, tomas was in the cartel at 12, being shot and killed around the same age too. from what we see it was just him and andrea for years, until jesse came into the picture. and due to jesse coming into the picture, andrea was shot dead, because jesse tried to escape from his captors. i don’t think we know where brock is, i assume living with his grandmother now. but brock is probably the most doomed by the story in the entire show, in my opinion
Skyler White, the wife of Walter White from breaking bad. Skyler is one of the most, if not the most hated character in all of Breaking Bad, for what? Sure, she's not perfect but we have a cast of non-perfect and other characters that deserve venom way more than Skyler does.
I've seen people argue that she is simply annoying, she wasn't able to keep her mouth shut about her husband's meth business that put her whole family in danger, or that she didn't love Walter. I've got no idea how people defend Walter so easily, but can't defend Skyler. Walter is by far, much worse than Skyler. Say all you want, he is. She is unfairly judged and not judged by the same standards her husband is. Walter cooks meth, has killed people, helps in killing people, and just so much more. And what about Skyler? Oh, she wasn't initially supportive of her husband being a criminal, boo-hoo-hoo.
Skyler is expected by Walter and the audience to just go with what her husband wants or deems "necessary" by her husband. Good ol' ball and chain. At the episode Skyler found out about her husband's drug involvement was season 3, episode 1, No Más. At this point in the series Skyler and Walter had a newborn daughter, Holly. Skyler had argued with Walter where Skyler had to go through her whole process of finding out what Walter had done and he expected her to simply accept "But I did all for my family."
Walter had put Skyler through a lot of emotional turmoil up until the point she confronted him about being in the drug business. She was stressed as hell and it was unfair. Walter would disappear, lie, and lie again even when Skyler knew he was lying. She was pregnant with their second child for crying out loud. She had every damn right to not want to be with Walter anymore. She had a realistic reaction to the situation, people were just mad she didn't let Walter walk all over her.
Skyler is a woman of strong morals. Good ones. She is family-orientated and doesn't like when people go against the rules, like any good citizen. This is shown when in season 1 when her sister, Marie, was shoplifting. Skyler confronts her about it and tries to get her to return the stuff Marie stole. Back to Skyler being really stressed around this time, she handled the situation terribly. On another hand, it was realistic and Skyler didn't know or understand the underlying issue with Marie's stealing. Neither sister was right in this situation.
Skyler does have flaws, as any good character does. She DOES tend to confront people in bad ways. She'll rage at people with not a lot of proper evidence.
Ok. Ted needs to be brought up eventually. Was this a good thing she did? No. She wanted a divorce with Walter because, y'know, he was making meth. Walter was refusing. So, in a desperate attempt to get the man she didn't trust anymore and no longer felt like she knew, out of her house with their newborn baby; she cheated on him. She knew Ted was into her, she wasn't into him but she wanted Walter to accept the divorce. She only slept with Ted to show that she was no longer in love with Walter and didn't wanna be his wife. It wasn't even technically cheating considering they were in the middle of a divorce.
In conclusion, she's not the worst, annoying, tyrant that people make her out to be. She's just a flawed human in a cast full of others way worse than her.
okay. I have mixed feelings on the plane crash in breaking bad.
On the one hand, it’s symbolically beautiful. An indirect consequence of Walter’s actions causes wreckage and carcasses to literally rain down from the heavens onto his house. It’s like a karmic symbol from a God to shove his wrongs in his face. The eye of the teddy bear, representing the weight of his crimes, keeps watching him. It connects heavily with the themes of how responsible you are for the consequences of your crimes.
On the other hand, I feel like having 167 (or whatever) people die in a random plane crash just to emphasize how evil Walter is was just... unnecessary. Even if the number is literally higher, they feel like a side note in Walter’s crimes. The things we watch him do on screen hit way harder than some random plane crash in the sky. The hardest hitting moments in Breaking Bad are often times Walter choosing to do something awful to someone who cares about him. Jane’s death itself as a result of Walter’s actions and reinforcing his extremely abusive relationship with Jesse speaks for itself. We don’t really need to see a whole overdramatic plane crash in the sky to know Walter is a terrible person who does awful stuff; that’s what the whole show is about.
I like a lot of the things that the plane crash tried to accomplish, but I feel like it kind of fell flat. First, the suspense of seeing more and more things happening in Walter’s yard was awesome. However, the ultimate reveal that it was just a random plane crash that is, according to the outside world at least, completely unrelated to Walter. The suspense was not broken in a good way: I was so excited to see how Walter would get out of having literal bodies in his yard, only to learn he allegedly had nothing to do with it. Second, I like the plot thread of Jane’s father fucking up in a job and getting people killed, and that somehow affecting Walter. The scene of him turning off the radio in the car when he hears Jane’s father died was good. However, it was too grandiose. Again, Breaking Bad thrives from showing us intimate and emotional moments between characters and direct consequences of actions. Something so indirect much less emotional impact.
Breaking Late: My Adventure into Breaking Bad in 2022
It should go without saying but the following blogpost contains spoilers for Breaking Bad.
It's taken fourteen years for me to finally watch this TV show and this is my third attempt at writing a blogpost about it.
(23/11/2022) Addendum: This post has taken me around 2 weeks to put together and I've rewritten and reworked it 4 times now. I currently have three, full and completely different drafts of this article. Even now, looking at this one (my best one), I still don't feel that it's good enough. The problem is Breaking Bad is one of these shows that offers so much to think about that it continues to unravel itself the more you think about it. I have to stop now because it's getting silly. This is as much as I'll ever do on the subject. As I write this, I have already seen El Camino and the first two seasons of Better Call Saul and if I don't publish this now, I never will. The long and the short of this post-script is that I'm sorry if I couldn't go into enough detail; There is literally no more room for it anywhere.
I always knew that this was a huge deal but lately, with Better Call Saul coming to a close, the hype around the universe that's been built as a result has been inescapable. There was no way I was avoiding it. I've been putting off watching Breaking Bad for an exceptionally long time but I've done it. Over the period of around a month, watching between two and four episodes a night, I have documented my experiences, thoughts and feelings over the course of the series.
I thought it would be interested to to hold up my late arrival to what is frequently labelled "The Greatest TV Show of All Time" as a document of interest for the avid Breaking Bad fan.
This has taken a very long time to convert my notes into something presentable and after chopping and changing various approaches, this task has been completed. I hope you enjoy and settle in, this is going to be a long one.
Walter White: The "Protagonist to Antagonist" Experiment
The raison d'etre. The whole point of Breaking Bad. The goal. Let's start there.
So I knew the basics of the story structure going into this. Walter White is a chemistry teacher, he gets cancer, enters the meth production business with his knowledge to pay for it and then becomes a drug kingpin. I don't know doesn't know that about this. This is where it becomes difficult for me to judge because I am waiting for it. The changes aren't unexpected but I still appreciated the incredibly carefully structured character arc.
Everything about was growth was totally believable and logical. Especially in the first season because it perfectly demonstrates his thrill of taking a walk on the wild side. This comes full circle in the final episode where he admits that he did it for himself because he enjoyed it. You really get behind the sense of reckless abandon that comes with mortality, the addiction to money and the deflation that Walter feels when he finds out he'll survive the chemotherapy.
All this being said, I found him to be a prick from the very beginning. His interactions with Jesse lead him to come off less bookish and more bitter. Bitter about the situation that he consciously put himself in to use a former student that he has a dislike for to pay for his treatment. I have to say that from the beginning, Mr. White is pretty unlikeable already. He had his moments of sympathy alongside his moments of evil but he reached peak bastard when he killed Mike Ehrmantraut. Everyone surely must love Mike and that moment has to be the pinnacle of his alienation to the audience (More on that later).
Personally, I found that the actual character development of who he was becoming wasn't actually the most compelling thing about his character. It was the consequences of his actions and his efforts to escape, rectify or outright ignore the falling dominoes. His hand being forced to do bad things before slowly seeking them out and relishing it. There's nothing more I can say that hasn't been said before on the subject.
They succeeded in their mission to draw his character arc in the end. I don't think anyone can deny that. I wouldn't blame you if you just scrolled right past this bit.
A Fresh and Clear Attitude to Television
I prefer the filmic approach that they take to make Breaking Bad the programme that it is. My favourite part of watching this was something that I came to realize around the middle of the second season. It hit me that this show hasn't, at any point, treated me like an idiot. What you see is exactly what you get with Breaking Bad and it's one of the few times where you can view that phrase as a positive.
All the tension, the comedy, the drama, the tragedy; it is created organically. There is no manipulation of the audience with obnoxious editing and garish music. Sure, there are musical cues but the purpose is to punctuate moments not to carry the weight of them. Even then, score is used very sparingly in favour of a perfect, hand-picked soundtrack. The outcome of these creative decisions is the feeling that you're actually watching a movie, not a TV show.
The shots and the settings they use are tremendous for building the universe. Especially, the shots in the Navajo canyons and deserts. Junk food for the eyes.
It doesn't over-explain anything either. You don't have to be told every little detail about a story and it doesn't have to show absolutely everything if it isn't essential to the viewing experience. That sums up why I love the directorial style so much. It's utterly economical in it's delivery which adds to the rawness of the telling.
The Neverending Tragedy of Jesse Pinkman
They are so brilliant at forging this fantastic, pitiful loser because it isn't enough to have him simply exist. He is unwittingly way out of his depth so often that you feel sorry for him. A lot of what happens to him is not his fault which compounds his self-destructive behaviour. The changes that character goes through is the most intriguing in the series for my money because Walter White's perception to begin with is essentially our perception because we have little else to go off of. We see him as a meth-dealing lowlife who takes the shortcut through everything but as the show moves forward, it becomes apparent that all he needed was a push in the right direction.
The way they execute Walter White's manipulation of Jesse makes for a delicious kind of dramatic irony that I certainly haven't seen before. Dramatic irony is usually used for creating an air of igorance around the main character to then be instrumental in their downfall. Traditionally Shakespearean, it is used theatrically to create alienation. What sets this show aside from the traditional tropes is that they treat violence and murder with weight and attention. It's not entertainment. It's damaging the main characters, especially one Jesse Pinkman. I loved the gravity that comes with Jesse finally realizing that he's being manipulated and to do the right thing for once in his life. If we're talking theatrical theory, that's his carthasis: survival.
I found that I became frustrated with Walter from the get-go because he was already using him and wouldn't give him the time of day. The moments in "Fly" and "Bug" when Jesse gets his own back on him are incredibly satisfying and he literally has the last laugh in the final episode after years of pain and suffering.
My favourite scenes are the introspective recovery meetings because it's the only time that Jesse questions himself and his place on Earth. The rest of the time, he is being used by Walter White and made to do incredibly immoral and illegal things in the face of his evident moral compass. That's the perfect brew for making a tragic character because the end result is the audience not really knowing what to make of him saving his own skin when it means he is unsuccessful with nowhere to turn. The universe and the cosmos views him as expendable and his fighting of a losing battle makes for fantastic tragedy.
I Hated the Season 2 Finale: The Wayfairer 515 Disaster
This was where things started getting rocky for me and I think the problem is how they built up to it. There all these mysterious teasers in the episodes "Seven Thirty Seven", "Down", "Over", "ABQ" so there is a certain degree of expectation piled on what the meaning of said teasers are. They're all super moody in their atmosphere by playing on your senses. The image of a fire-damaged pink teddy in a swimming pool, the presence of hazmats and contamination connotations create the unsettling, uncomfortable feeling. The mystery is further explored upon when we see Walter's car windshield smashed open and the two bodybags.
When the monochrome filter disappears and reveals the colour and the widespread damage of whatever this mystery has caused, you're fastening your seatbelts because you know it's going to be revealed. You're waiting for it all episode, all season. Then what happens?
Two planes crash into each other in the air, the bear drops in Walter's swimming pool and the episode ends.
Irrespective of the likelihood of the actual moment (which, upon reading, is exceptionally unlikely), it just fell flat and I know what they are trying to illustrate with this. Walter letting this man's daughter die and he returns back to work, ill-prepared and his lapse of concentration causes this crash. My problem with that angle is that it isn't really Walter's fault necessarily. Someone in that important of a job shouldn't be returning to work so soon and if they want to get the impact of the deaths caused across to the audience, then do that.
They didn't. It just happens and it's done. Aside from a few instances where it's referenced in the following series, the actual impact of this supposed huge tragedy isn't touched upon nor does it have any bearing. My point is this: They didn't execute the actual event with enough punch. I don't feel sorry for Donald Margolis because I barely know him. I feel sorry for him that his daughter died and that whole scene is done expertly but him crashing the plane? I've only just this minute found out that he's a traffic controller.
I might get flak for this but whilst credit where credit is due, criticism is where criticism is due. This moment in the series sticks out like a sore thumb. I just wish it wasn't here. I can tell that they want to try and do something a bit different and bit unexpected because the obvious thing to do would be to show Donald angry, a loose cannon, trying to kill Jesse etc. Instead, his reaction is more true to life at the end of the day. The only plane crash-related moments I liked is how Saul Goodman is constantly trying to capitalize on the disaster in the background, long after it's actually happened.
I'll talk more about Saul Goodman when I've finished Better Call Saul.
Gustavo Fring: An All-Time Great Villain
I love, love, love this character. I cannot get enough of Gustavo Fring. The writing of him, the acting by Giancarlo Esposito, the painting of his backstory. All of it is pure genius. Easily the greatest part of Breaking Bad. The best villains are the ones with very good reasons for their actions, ones that create conflict in the minds of the audience. Fring is vindictive, calculated, intelligent and he is one of those characters where you feel that something important could happen at any time whenever he is on screen.
I could gush about how much I loved this character and talk about how they made him a wonderful example of Machiavellian evil but I'll be here all day. So instead, in no particular order, my favourite scenes and moments featuring Gus.
I thoroughly enjoyed Gus' behaviour when he is shown to be working at Los Pollos Hermanos and hiding in plain sight. The best example of this is when Walter is told by Hank to put a tracking device on Gus' car when Mike is clearly watching and Walter is struggling for a reason not to do it. The scene itself manages to be both tense and comedic at the same time somehow but what makes it is when Walt goes inside to see Gus to inform him about what's happening. Fring calmly tells him to "Do it" with a smile and a cursory nod. Like in every scene, all the actors do a wonderful job at portraying human reaction to ridiculous situations but Esposito's malicious smugness is just gorgeous.
Fring's revenge on the cartel is beautifully done but his interactions with the empire undoubtedly reaches a peak when he steps out of the laundromat to face the music with his arms in the air. You cannot help but think that he's cool when he walks through those sniper shots and looks directly down the scope. That's something else about his state as an antagonist, he is frustratingly likeable because of how brilliant he is.
Gus is so good that I feel silly even writing this much about him because it's so obvious that he's a brilliant character. You get the picture. I can't get enough of Gustavo Fring and he is sorely missed in the fifth season.
Hank Schrader: A Study of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
I was pleasantly surprised with the direction that they took Hank Schrader's character. Not only does it differ massively from the regular outlandish cop going against the grain of the police force trope but it subverts your expectations of who Hank is to begin with. I feel like the show really, properly analyses the comparitive realities for the kind of person Hank is presented as in the office, particularly in the first episode. As a result of things that he's seen and done, he changes and evolves beyond just being a policeman with a glock who busts drug dens and batters minorities. The "Not the man I thought I was" monologue with Marie in the bedroom perfects the character they're aiming for and the stark differences between who he's around dictates his behaviour and actions. The outcome of discovering who he is really hiding behind his boardy exterior is beautiful.
I love that he goes well beyond the bog-standard comic relief character and that he is actually a brilliant deducer when it comes down to it. My favourite part of his character arc is the realistic nature in which he questions the clues and the hints presented to the DEA to throw him off the scent. I feel as though the progression is natural. The game of cat and mouse doesn't go in to the staggered, drawn-out territory nor does it venture into ridiculous. Hank isn't a clever individual but a committed and experienced one.
The actual catching of said mouse, I'll go into more detail in my next point. How the fifth season plays out and my reaction to it factors in ASAC Schrader amongst other things.
My Strange Feelings about The Final Season
I'm just going to come right out and say it. This was a fucking weird season in the grand scheme of things. IN MY OPINION.
The first part struck me as especially odd, pacing-wise. The first few episodes struck me as a dwindling. Random characters and elements of the scenario are being stuck on to the end of the previous season which I feel has a pretty satisfying conclusion. Now I get it; Hank needs to catch Walter, Walter needs to become like Gus, Jesse needs to conquer Walter's manipulation and get his comeuppance. Walter ends the series by saying outright that he "won" and I was comfortable with that.
However, there's all this rigmarole with the extremely irritating Lydia, the exceptionally bland Todd and his army of Nazi biker dickheads, something about Mike needing money to pay off imprisoned people in the know. It just felt glued on to the fourth season as a way of continuation, for the sake of Hank finding Walter. I get the point that Walter seeking out this kingpin, empire lifestyle that Gus had isn't all that it's cracked up to be. It isn't that easy to be Gus and I liked that they tried to get across that Walter wasn't realizing that he was trying to become like him. Gus worked for this empire and influence his whole life and Walter is never satisfied with money he's earning.
I also find that everyone in this season is acting incredibly weirdly and out-of-character and I have reasoned with myself that Walter's actions have changed those around him as well as himself. But it still strikes me as odd that everyone in the story is so keen to dismiss this man that they've known their entire lives because he has meddled in the drug industry. I feel as though the only one with real solid reasons for complaints are Skyler because of the danger he's put his family in. But Marie is supposedly angry because she has blamed Walter for Hank's troubles when there isn't really concrete evidence that he had anything to do with Hank being shot. I get that she is supposed to be an irrational person. I get that Hank has been after Heisenberg the whole time and is driving himself stir-crazy with it.
But I find that Hank becomes pretty unlikeable in this season because he seems to only be angry on deadset on catching Walter because it will be good for him. He isn't really bothered about all the damage he's done and all the people he's killed despite him listing all of it off in a confrontation with him. It comes across like he's miffed that Walt lied to him. At no point does anyone in the story go "Can we just hear Walter out? Maybe he has some kind of explanation?" but they don't and it's incredibly infuriating to sit through.
I have to reason that this is the point, however. Conquering. Comeuppance. Consequences. Conclusion etc, etc, etc. Total alienation is reached. As an audience member, not only do you not know who Walter is anymore but you don't really know anybody. The unconscious evil has to be met with unconscious good to be conquered. You're just watching a car crash happen at this point. Post Mike's death, it's almost feverish chaos. The only one you have left to root for is Jesse and that's famously snuffed out in "Ozymandias" - the prime example of narrative alienation. All that being said, it still makes for an unpleasant watching experience.
Walter White's Ending
"Granite State" and "Felina" almost feel seperate from the final season. It's a redemption arc or an epilogue. A full stop to a journey and I loved both of the episodes. Controversially, I preferred the former episode to the much lauded "Ozymandias" - the only episode that I knew the title of before watching because of how famous it is. It's not that I didn't like it or even love it;- Maybe expectations were too high, I don't know.
Anyway, I thought that despite my grievances about the last season, Walter White's conclusion was done expertly. There aren't many finalés you can say that about. TV shows rarely end with unanimous agreement. The cartharsis of him finally admitting that after all this time, he did all this for himself. He just wanted to live a little and any excuse will do to make money. It wasn't that it became clear throughout the show that he was finding reasons to keep going further and further to the point where money had nothing to do with it. It's not enough to just want money and to do anything to get more of it, it's to have an insatiable greed that makes evil.
The cerebral nature of Walter's actions remains present throughout the shooting of the nazis and the threatening of the Schwartzes and that works so much better than White giving up and turning himself in or going out in a blaze of glory. The reason being is that he knows that he has done so many wrongs that righting them is herculean task. The least he can do his enact poetic justice on those who have it coming to them and finally allow Jesse to run free of his own authority and agency.
It was perfect.
Conclusion
To say I was pleasantly surprised by Breaking Bad would be an understatement. Without hyperbole, it has restored my faith in television. Truth be told, I find myself to very skeptical and outright cynical about the medium. My general view of TV is of endless, disappointing monotony of an exploited, decaying premise. All shows die on their feet before they're firmly in the coffin and six feet under. I've started many, many shows but never, ever come close to finishing them. You can only borrow so much of my time. Part of why I tend to write about animé and video games is because there is an ending. Even if you don't complete a game to it's entirety, you still feel like you've experienced enough to put the controller down and still feel positive about it. What I enjoy about animé is that often, there are only one or two seasons of them. Short and sweet. If it's too much, then I won't bother.
Breaking Bad opposes every complaint I just had. It is NEVER boring, it is NEVER disappointing, it is NEVER monotonous. It ENDS. The seasons aren't chocked full of episodes that are a thousand hours long, written by a million people. It starts and it ends. That's it. There is something to be said for concluding.
Background ; Jesse Pinkman is one of the main characters in the world of breaking bad. He is characterized as a “pathetic junkie”. This sort of “older brother whos fucked up and not at all an example but still gives heaps of advice” archetype.
At the beginning of the show, he barely escapes the law and loses his partner in the process. Walter while blackmails him into cooking Meth with him.
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Vince (the director of Brba) did an amazing job with symbolism using colours and imagery. He also did a great job at making those symbolism blurry enough to be interpreted by the fans. I, myself, am aware that I’m not the only person who will have that opinion about Jesse but I feel like it’s still worth sharing in my words. I hope you guys will appreciate my take on Jesse’s characterization.
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Part ; personification of trauma
You don’t need to watch the show to know what’s going on at anytime. Just look at jesses emotional state at any given episode, just look at the physical scars and bruises on his body. Every time Walter fucks up, it affects him. Every time there’s violence, it ends up taking a toll on Jesse’s psyche and on his body. I’ve always felt like Jesse isn’t much of a person but more of the human embodiment of all horrible things going on throughout the show, he’s a constant reminder that the show is fucked up, when stuff like blackmailing and murder starts becoming normalized, you have Jesse in the corner having a mental breakdown to basically say “yo, idc if this feels fun and normal, this is shit”. I’m not necessarily saying that Pinkman isn’t a real character, he’s definitely there and obviously a person in the show but I feel like wether Vince intended or not, Jesse is the personification of the trauma of the show. His kidnapping as well can be interpreted as Jesse feeling trapped by all the stuff he’s witnessed. He can’t talk about it, he can’t tell the police or else he’ll be jailed. He feels trapped in a box where no one will listen to him. Of course, Jesse was truly enslaved but it weirdly feels like a pretty spot on embodiment of what Jesse feels and is subjected to during the show. As much as he wants to tell people, as much as he wants to escape, Walter pulls him back, he can’t say anything; he can’t escape. The second Jesse starts pulling back, Walter does something unimaginable, Jesse looses someone. Just like when Todd shot Andrea. He can’t leave, he has no one now.
