by Neil Landau
NL: As you started to get into cooking meth, he’s kind of a neophyte in that world. How did Jesse enter onto the canvas for you?
VG: I got so very lucky that we cast Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul in these two lead parts, and of course, all of our other wonderful actors as well. These actors have truly inhabited these roles and more than that, they’ve shown us just how deep and rich and complex these characters could truly be. It’s a large part of what makes them iconic. They have shown both me and my writers the way to make them iconic. A good example is Aaron Paul as Jesse Pinkman who, I hate to admit, in the early going was just a plot mechanism. There was a lot about that pilot that was somewhat mechanistic. Hank Schrader’s [Dean Norris] character was a logistical element who existed to prod Walt in a certain direction. Hank was this bold, brassy, “hail fellow, well met” frat boy of a character who was everything Walter White was not. You could tell that Walter was secretly jealous of this guy and had this contained animus toward him. Jesse Pinkman existed to show Walt the way into this criminal underworld at which point in the beginning, and then I was just going to kill off his character.
So, I’d love to tell you that I had the whole thing figured out from day one, but that would be a lie. I, for instance, was ready to kick Jesse to the curb as soon as he had downloaded his somewhat limited knowledge of criminality to Walt. And, then I was going to create someone more interesting for season 2. Or, beyond that, I’m not even sure that I saw the necessity of Walt having a partner to begin with. I thought he would have various underlings. This is where luck takes a hand because we cast this outstanding actor, Aaron Paul, who in the early going added so much value to the show that there was no way I could kill off this character. Conversely, if we had cast somebody who was a bit of a dud, I wouldn’t even have questioned it. I would have just edited around him and then killed him off in some spectacular fashion. It’s a good lesson to writers that if you really want the writing itself to be the be all and end all, you should be writing novels—which someday I would like to try myself—but when you’re working in TV and movies, it is very much a collaborative effort. Your writing will live or die—no matter how good it is—based on the quality, talent, and enthusiasm of the actors who inhabit the role and on the quality of the director directing them. It works both ways. The actors and directors can fill in some gaps in your writing and make it better. Or they take some of your good stuff and make it worse, unfortunately. There’s a certain amount of luck or fate that takes a hand when the casting happens or the director is hired. You always keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best. You never know how it’s going to turn out. That’s what makes it terrifying and exciting.
NL: It’s also ironic that Walter starts out as a teacher, but then he’s such a great student. He learns from everybody and takes a little bit from each of them.
VG: That’s a good way to put it. I never really thought about it that way. Walt is an excellent student. He drinks in this criminal world around him very quickly. Yet, he is arrogant enough that he has trouble thinking of himself as a student. He prefers to think of himself as the master. That is what chafed so much in the season where Walt was under Gus Fring’s (Giancarlo Esposito) thumb. I think what chafed him the most was not that Gus wanted him dead, but that Gus was the master and Walt was the indentured servant.
NL: When you’re breaking stories in your writers’ room, are you doing traditional A, B, and C stories? Are you structuring a half a season at a time according to any specific theme? Or is it episode by episode?
VG: It is very much episode by episode. I had never done a series before this that had involved A, B, and C stories. I had certainly seen my share of TV which contained them. I should preface this by saying there’s no right way to do television. All that matters is that you find a way that works for you. The way we do it on Breaking Bad is that we make it an all hands on deck affair. I have six writers and I want them all in the room with me every minute of the day. I hate it when they get up and go to the bathroom, for instance, because I want everyone there to listen and to contribute. I want everyone there helping to move the ball down the field. This show is so serialized that you really need that.
On The X-Files, you did spend a lot of time by yourself. You’d go off and ponder or go to your office or walk around the FOX lot trying to come up with a stand-alone episode. But with Breaking Bad you have to be in that room. You almost have to have a mantra where you ask over and over again, “Where is Walt’s head at? What does he want right now? What is he afraid of? What is his goal right now? What does Skyler want? What does Jesse want?” That is what we do. We build these episodes brick by brick. We don’t think in terms of A, B, and C stories. We think of Breaking Bad as Walter White’s story. A character study of one man. This is a world where Walter White’s choices and actions lead to difficulties and problems for all the other characters within that universe of the show. He is the A story. He is the main taproot from which branches out all other limbs and leaves of the story. He’s the acorn that’s set it all in motion.
Even though it’s a show ostensibly about a man dying of cancer, metaphorically speaking, Walter himself is cancer. Walt is the malignancy at the center of the show that affects others to their detriment—his family first and foremost.
NL: When you’re doing a serialized show, one of the challenges is that you don’t want to burn through story too fast. If you’re doing them episode by episode, what are your instincts for revealing story?
VG: My instinct is that there’s a very interesting dynamic that occurs when you’re creating a serialized TV show, although this could occur in more episodic shows as well. You want to swing for the fences. You want to give the audience a reason to stay tuned in. It’s hard keeping folks’ attention. In other words, sometimes the faster you tell the story, it becomes problematic in and of itself and you risk losing viewers by the very fact that you are working too hard and the sweat is showing. The best philosophy I have on that subject, and one that, admittedly, I have at times not heeded myself is to give the audience the bare minimum. Give him just enough that the show is interesting. Don’t give them any more than they need to keep watching. Try to keep the show moving as slowly as possible, so that it is still interesting and moving in a forward direction. This is a terrible phrase, but it fits. You’ve got to be careful not to shoot your wad. It’s a real crude way of putting it, but I can’t think of a more apt expression. You’ve got to keep people right on the edge. Keep telling your audience new things about your character. You’ve got to keep them invested and learning. On the other hand, if you’re moving like a rocket, eventually you’re going to tire them out. It’s a very tricky thing— pacing. I’ll be honest with you—I’ve fallen prey to this myself—during the first season of Breaking Bad, I was ready to throw the kitchen sink at the audience. I was ready to give them everything I had and then some. By the end of that first season, because I was desperate for the show to be loved and to stay on the air, I was all set to do crippling damage inadvertently. But the luckiest thing that had ever happened to me on Breaking Bad was that it coincided with the Writer’s Guild strike and we were unable to do our last two episodes of that season. If we had done them, we would have absolutely swung for the fences, we would have killed off a couple of major characters that I realized, in hindsight, that we could not do without. And we would have crippled the show. So I understand that feeling of wanting to keep the audience satisfied. Sometime though the best way to do that is not to be frantic in your storytelling, but in fact to slow it down a bit. It was a hard lesson to learn and really one I learned from sheer luck.
It helps to know how many episodes you’ll have. However, the TV business is not geared that way, you don’t know for sure unless you’re doing a miniseries. I think that’s an underrated form. I wish that the miniseries would make a comeback. It seems to me that it could be poised to. We have so many things vying for our attention and a miniseries allows us to say to ourselves, “I’m goi
ng to watch six hours of this and then it will be done.” I would be first in line to work on something like that because it’s an investment that people can more readily make nowadays.
NL: When I interviewed Damon Lindelof, he said that they knew how Lost was going to end. Do you know how Breaking Bad will end?
VG: I’d be lying if I said I knew from the get-go how it would all end. There’s so much about the character that I didn’t know going into it or things that I thought I knew, but better things came along. For me, I find that what works best is not to be too rigid in your thinking. Very often, I have what I thought was an excellent idea and then someone else comes along and says, “Why don’t we do it this way?” and I think, “Damn, I wish I had thought of that.” So it seems to me that TV at its best is a living, breathing thing. It’s organic. And if you’re organic in your storytelling which means letting your characters tell you where they need to go, instead of trying to force them into directions that they don’t want to take; if you can maintain that organic form of plot evolution, then that will always hold you in good stead. If you’re honest with your characters, if you let them behave as human beings would, then you’ll never stray too far from the right path.
One last thought, your original question was, “Who do you root for?” It’s very hard to root for Walter White the deeper you get into the series and that was a big concern for me early on. I thought I’ve got to hire a very likeable actor. I’ve got to stack the deck in his favor. He’s got a wife with a surprise pregnancy. He’s got a son with cerebral palsy. He’s treated miserably in his second job and is laughed at by his rich students. I was very worried. But I’m happy to say that as the series progressed I’ve relaxed in my thinking. I don’t worry as much about Walt being likeable. It surprises me actually that people still root for him at all. I kind of stopped rooting for him as his creator quite a while back. He’s a guy I wouldn’t want to know if he was a real person. There are people in the audience who have said, “You know, I can’t take this guy anymore. I have to stop watching.” Hopefully, the show remains interesting even though I don’t sympathize with Walt anymore. But then there are good, smart, law-abiding people who still root for the guy, and I find that a very interesting sociological study, because the process for my writers and me is almost to shake off the viewers’ sympathy to this main character, to help them see that he really is on a journey from being a good guy to a bad guy. At some step along that journey, you say to yourself, “He really is the bad guy.” The show from the beginning was a bit of experimental television, I wanted to tell a story in which the main character was undergoing constant change. But as far as rooting for the character, there are many who do not, but hopefully there are other things that make them tune in.
NL: I think it’s a vicarious thrill. You kind of root for him because it’s one guy railing against the system. And he’s always vulnerable. No matter how strong he seems to get. Plus you always have somebody worse than Walt.
VG: Interesting. That’s well put. I like that take on it.
6
Value Family Dynamics
Every television series is about a family—whether they’re related by blood or not.
Some series are literally about a family: Modern Family, Parenthood, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Dallas, Downton Abbey, The Good Wife, Friday Night Lights, Homeland, The Americans, Weeds, The Killing (seasons 1 and 2), American Horror Story (season 1), and Brothers & Sisters.
The Americans is an example of an arranged marriage between two Soviet KGB agents, Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings (Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys), who are posing as an American couple in the Washington, D.C., area. In order for them to blend into their suburban bedroom community and not arouse suspicion, their deep cover assignment necessitated having children. The clever twist on this family drama meets espionage thriller is that their kids have no clue that mom and dad are Cold War spies. This is a marriage of convenience with a family unit based on secrets, lies, and the ongoing deception of everyone Elizabeth and Phillip encounter.
The Americans puts the family unit to the test in unique and extreme ways—with the highest stakes possible should their cover be blown. We’re talking life and death espionage missions set against a backdrop of domestic harmony.
While sitcom families tend to argue over small stuff that feels big to the characters (I call them “tremendous trifles”), there is never any doubt of the unconditional love that belies every quip and wisecrack.
On the other hand, families in one-hour drama series usually deal with more substantive problems and hardships. The tone can range from relationship/communication issues (such as in Parenthood and The Good Wife) to light, humor-tinged jeopardy (Castle, Elementary) to much darker, edgier problems (such as in Breaking Bad and Homeland). The goal for every new TV series is for it to feel fresh in its own right—which means that all TV families need to be imperfect and, on some level, discontent. Or as a famous Russian author once stated, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Today’s audiences may not be able to relate to what it’s like being a KGB spy in the 1980s, a meth cooker in present-day Albuquerque, a mafia kingpin, or a football coach—but we can all relate to what it feels like to be in a family. This supports the main point of this chapter: family stories are universal.
Expanding Family Types
In some of the preceding examples, there is both a related-by-blood family and an extended workplace family. In The Good Wife, Alicia Florrick’s troubled husband and their two kids are the “home” family, and Alicia’s colleagues at the law firm comprise her “other” family (see examples of how later).
Some series are about extended families: Once Upon a Time, Two and a Half Men, Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Spartacus, The West Wing, and Sons of Anarchy.
Other series focus on colleagues in the workplace that interact as a family unit might, encompassing the dynamics of authority figures (mom and dad), siblings (sibling rivalries and bonding), spouses, wise elders (grandparents), prodigal sons and daughters, black sheep outcasts, and some characters act like children: from tantrum-prone toddlers to rebellious teenagers.
Family dynamics outside of “normal” (related by birth) family units are often based on the same psychological and logistical power dynamics as a “typical” American family. In some cases, friendships forged at work, school, and at play can be even more intense than a traditional family bond because as the old adage goes, you choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.
Blended and nontraditional families are much more pervasive now. Divorce is extremely common these days. Marriage tends to occur later in life for many—if at all. Life moves faster now and most people spend more time with their coworkers than they do at home with their own families.
With such an emphasis outside the home, people naturally gravitate toward coworkers and friends who fulfill their psychological and emotional needs. Consequently, seeking approval from your boss might supplant seeking the approval of your parent(s)—and the former comes with a paycheck for added validation.
Confiding in your colleagues and/or best friends may be preferable to confiding in your sibling, cousin, or aunt and uncle. Our friends and coworkers seem to “get” us better than our immediate relatives anyway—and probably with far less judgment because we share less backstory (aka “baggage”) with our newer friends and acquaintances. We’re more likely to edit out some of the familial details to present a more ideal version of ourselves. Our actual family members, on the other hand, know us all too well—often choosing to dwell on our old patterns instead of seeing us as we are now.
However, all “family” members, including friends and colleagues, can be adept at “pushing each other’s [psychological] buttons.” The better someone knows you, the more familiar they are with your weaknesses and vulnerabilities. In other words, the people who love you most, also know how to hurt you the most. Trust in close relationships is built out of res
pect for these boundaries. When breached, all relationships need to go through the negotiation process of forgiveness, making amends, and wiping the slate clean (unlikely) or holding a grudge (more human).
Intensifying Family Dynamics
All familial relationships are rife with conflicting allegiances and agendas. Household finances are one of the biggest stresses in families. For many men, the ability to bring home a paycheck is still hardwired into their psyche, while at the same time, women are increasingly “leaning in” and not only supporting their families, but also out-earning their husbands—which can create new friction at home. These power dynamics influence the choices characters make in order to feel worthy of love, respect, and validation from season to season.
Many of these choices are pragmatic concerns of basic survival. For example, this is how Walter White got into the meth trade at the outset of Breaking Bad: he had a terminal cancer diagnosis, mounting debt, and a pregnant wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn). Walt’s initial choices were to provide for his family in his absence. However, as Breaking Bad nears its series finale, Walt has more money than he and Skyler know what to do with—they’re filthy rich. But it’s dirty money and Walt is on a collision course with the police, the DEA, and a growing list of enemies. Breaking Bad began with Walt’s (misguided) good intentions as he faced his own mortality. There is no question in my mind that this series will end in tragedy for Walt. His megalomania has alienated everyone who once loved and cared about him. Showrunner Vince Gilligan set out to create a series about a Mr. Chips character who turns into Scarface by the end. And like Tony Montana (played by Al Pacino), chances are that Walter White will die alone.