Breaking Bad: A Postmortem2 min read

When it comes to reviewing a TV show, there are always certain analogies I like to use to dissect them.
In the case of Breaking Bad, that analogy is that of a cocktail…

A cocktail so perfectly mixed, perfectly stirred and perfectly shaken that a successful unity between all of these methods seems damn near impossible.
But in the case of Breaking Bad, it really isn’t.

Breaking Bad is grand, it’s exciting and it’s absolutely buzzing with suspense.
Truly, it’s a cocktail brewed so purely by way of some miracle.
No joke.

The first episode immediately grabbed my attention. It established the characters and setting so well while also sustaining a constant forward momentum that never once faltered as the episode progressed.
It was an impressive feat if i’m to say the very least.

What ranks the show so highly in my books is the way it set up high stakes drama right from the out-set.

Not only do we have the story of a man with cancer trying to provide for his family by cooking crystal meth, we also have the story of a man who’s trying to survive the criminal underworld and avoid being caught by his DEA brother in-law at the same time!
Talk about priorities!

These plot lines helped provide the show with a constant source of tension that only continued to escalate throughout the shows five seasons.

Each of them would gradually twist and untangle their way to fruition until the very end of ‘Felina’ – the episode to end all episodes – where these plot lines would then run head on before finally meeting at the grand singularity.

And just to point out, there’s really not many shows that can make it five seasons without massively screwing up at least once at some point along the way.
Fact!

Another thing to point out about the final episode: If you rearranged all the letters of ‘Felina’, you can actually spell the word ‘finale’.
And there’s more…

‘Felina’ can actually be written as ‘FeLiNa’. In the periodic table, these represent the three chemical elements, Iron (Fe), Lithium (Li) and Sodium (Na).
Fun fact!

Oh, but you see there’s more…

It turns out that these three elements can actually be rephrased as ‘Blood, Meth and Tears’.
I’ll admit that one’s a bit of a stretch but I really wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some truth to it.

And in the case of Breaking Bad, double meanings are really the least I’ve come to expect.
After all, the shows canvas for storytelling is vast.

And if I were to go back to that cocktail analogy again, the foundation upon which the ingredients are brewed are fortified like the vaults of Fort Knox.

No one would dare tamper with them without getting their head shot off by the hard-core fan base.

So yeah, if I were you, I’d go watch it. Right now!

What more do you want? The best show on TV??

 

Photo by Jason D.