Mentioned a month ago that, for some invisible memetic reason (the remembered aroma of cinnamon-by-association?) I’d binge-re-watched “Breaking Bad“ in its entirety.
Given the cinnamon connection (*), I predicted I’d probably also find myself re-watching the BB prequel “Better Caul Saul” next. Sure enough I just finished re-watching the whole of that late last night.
So many sub-plots and twists within twists that it is really complex to follow the whole – not helped by the out-of-sequence tasters in the intro section of each episode. Not helped either that the so-called prequel contains much that is actually sequel to BB too. B&W / sepia / grainy flash-backs and flash-forwards all over the place, not just in the introductory openers, but eventually the whole narrative arc is there. A creative masterpiece.
The whole is one long morality play of course.
So many of the “evil” characters start-out or end-up as victims one way or another, so casting judgement on some seriously criminal violence and venal fraud, opportunistic as well as deeply conspired, is fraught with many layers. As I said before, Hank remains the only hero. Even some of the most evil had good – or maybe just arguably justifiable – intentions at various points. Michael the fixer always went for the least violent enforcement options when he could, and took only what he was due for his services, for example. Kim possibly the most complex and she, by her own choice, doesn’t make it to BB, the main event. Nacho too, another complex villain / victim, had to be killed-off, in TV-series terms, by his own suicide simply because he wasn’t in the BB original.
[(*) The cinnamon connection? In the extensive sequel sections of the BCS prequel (at the end of BB) Jimmy / Saul is living his new life as Gene, the manager of a Cinnabon (cinnamon bun) franchise in Omaha, Nebraska.]
The key scenes for me are in that final episode of BCS – the end of both stories. The “Time Machine” questions of what were some of the key characters’ regrets, that they would go back and fix if they could. Michael and Walter could both identify such “first mistakes”. In the scene where both Walter/Heisenberg and Saul / Jimmy / Gene are secretly awaiting their changes of identities and homes to escape their pasts of crime, Walter points out to Saul that his example merely shows that he’s “always been like that” – looking for a dubious fast buck. In the equivalent flashback to the scene where Michael and Saul are returning on foot across the desert with $7m of cartel money in cash, and stop by the water pump, Michael remarks of Saul’s regrets and wishful thinking, looking back at his entire life: “What, just the money?” The erstwhile lovable rogue always had a seriously warped arithmetic sense of values. Bartering to the end for the benefits package to go with his 86 year prison sentence.
Right, now we have closure. There is nothing I want to watch on TV.
Onwards and upward. Back to the writing.
=====
Post Note: And there isn’t. Put the TV on when I came in Sunday evening, channel-hopped for 10/15 minutes and nah! went to bed 🙂
Post Note: And as also arose in conversation last night, so many of these “gangster dramas” are morality plays. In the same way we can’t read all books, we can’t watch all dramas, so your experience and mine will vary. So, for me, Tarantino became the master, I’ve never watched The Sopranos, but The Godfather was already the archetype. I’m one of those weirdos who thinks Godfather-III is the best. G-I is obviously the bloody corrupt masterpiece and G-II the necessary back-story-filler, but why put yourself though all that depressing depraved violence and inhuman criminality without resolving the moral lessons of it all? The depraved Don is ultimately a victim of sorts – the “Pulling me back in” meme? You can learn his lesson without actually feeling sorry for him.
=====