Life In An Electric Box

Breaking the Boardwalk: Why Boardwalk Empire Fails Where Breaking Bad Succeeds

Breaking Bad just might be the best show on TV.  Boardwalk Empire just might be the best looking.  I like Boardwalk Empire.  I obsess over Breaking Bad.  It’s not that Boardwalk Empire is a bad show.  It is an excellent one, and in a pre-Sopranos era, it might have been the best show on television.  But the standards are much higher now and, as we slip further and further into a disappointing third season, I continually find myself wondering how a show made by so many talented people has managed to squander so much of its incredible potential.  Meanwhile, Breaking Bad, a much lower profile crime drama made on a much smaller budget, manages to run away with a great deal more awards and acclaim.  Boardwalk Empire could skate by through its run as being somehow less than the sum of its parts, and I would still watch it, but Breaking Bad understands how to create great drama in a way that Boardwalk Empire doesn’t, and the comparison between the two illuminates the reasons why true greatness eludes Boardwalk Empire’s grasp.

SPOILERS FOR BREAKING BAD THROUGH EPISODE 5.8 AND SPOILERS FOR BOARDWALK EMPIRE THROUGH EPISODE 3.4 BELOW THE CUT

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Breaking Bad and the Dangerous Myth of Male Invincibility

This post is a follow up to Jesse Pinkman and Male-Self Hatred.

The very first image in the first episode of Breaking Bad is a pair of pants flying into the air, floating gently onto a desert road, where it is unceremoniously run over by an RV.  Those pants belong to one Walter White, the show’s protagonist.  Walter was once a genius chemist worshipped by fellows at Cal Tech as one of the most brilliant chemists the school had ever seen, but that is backstory.  The writers chose to depict the abandoning of Walter’s Pants as the series’ opening shot for a very specific reason. Pants are symbolically linked with manhood.  The question of “who wears the pants?” is used in popular discourse when one is questioning the notion of a man’s authority in a relationship with a woman.  If a woman, who is supposed to wear a dress or a skirt, or some garment that allows one easy access to her nether regions, then her wearing of “the pants,” implies that she is now in the man’s place, better protected and able to wield authority over the relationship.  A man without pants is a man out of place with his supposed social role, one of pride and influence.  A man without pants, exposed and vulnerable to the dangers of the world around him, cannot truly be a man, can he?   Most of the male characters in Breaking Bad suffer and cause suffering to those around them by trying to project an image of invincibility: proud, in control, fearless, invulnerable.  In their efforts to project that image, they cause severe and profound damage to those around them.  By the fifth season, Walter White is by far the worst of them, but he is far from alone. 

SPOILERS THROUGH SEASON 5 EPISODE 7 BENEATH THE CUT

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For the Breaking Bad Fans Amongst My Followers…

I’m working on a follow up post to my Jesse article.  It should be done either tomorrow or Friday.

Meanwhile, here are my fears for what might happen in the mid-season finale…

SPOILERS UP THROUGH SEASON 5 EPISODE 7 BELOW

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No more half measures…

Re: Breaking Bad: Dead Freight

There are no words…

We Are All Skyler White Now

We have underestimated Walter White.  We have been angry at him. We have tried to walk away from him. We have tried to rationalize for him. We have tried to believe he was a good man trapped in a bad situation, even we he told us otherwise.  We have allowed him to wallow in his pride and self-pity.  And now that we have discovered who he has truly become, we are too terrified to leave.

Jesse Pinkman and Male Self-Hatred

Jesse Pinkman is a sensitive man.  That is why he must be punished. 

Yes, the first time we see him on Breaking Bad, he is running away from a crime scene.  Yes, over the course of four seasons he has sold drugs, committed numerous thefts and shot people. But that is not why he suffers so profoundly. Jesse’s cardinal sin is sensitivity.  He and the people around him have decided that it is an undesirable and unmasculine trait that will doom him to a life of pain and misery.

SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUT

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