Breaking Down Breaking Bad
There are moments in Breaking Bad when you know exactly what’s going to happen. Gifted, or maybe cursed, with the power of omniscience, you’ve seen exactly what moves each character plans to make and you’re left with nothing to do but sit there and desperately yell pleas at your television screen and beg the characters not to do exactly what you know they will do. It’s like seeing a broken track far too late and not being able to do anything but sit open-mouthed and watch as the train derails.
It would be easy to categorize Breaking Bad as a horror because it has murder and, at times, gore. But there is so much more than that to this television masterpiece, just as there is much more to any good work of horror.
Breaking Bad is a horror show because it screws with your mind. It distorts everything you think you’ve known to be true and forces you to come face to face with moral questions and truths you never wanted to consider. It’s so grounded in reality, playing out much as you expect it would if it were nonfiction, that you have to believe it. That realism makes you sick to your stomach, but you’re so entranced you have to keep watching.
And then, when you’ve been lulled into a false sense of security, resigned to your fate as the miserable omniscient spectator, a half-decayed corpse falls through the ceiling. Something totally jarring and unexpected and truly horrifying happens to make you question why you ever let your guard down.
There are also the psychological games the show plays with you when there isn’t much physical action. Every time Walt has to decide whether or not someone is going to die, we have our own internal conflicts about it. We are so closely tied to his character that we can’t help but put ourselves in his shoes. We feel so bad for him that we can’t help but root for him, even as he is committing murder and thoroughly ruining everyone’s life. We are forced to think about what we would do if we were in his situation — which is unsettling, to say the least.
What also works so well about Breaking Bad as a work of horror is that it keeps you hooked by scattering these traumatic bits throughout the seasons rather than dumping them in one action-packed ending. We’re so trained to expect a show’s peak to come at the very end that every time it appears somewhere else in the seasons’ progressions, it comes as even more of a surprise. It’s like a roller coaster — we’re always either on our way up the big hill, building up anticipation or riding down the other side — almost in free fall.
On Sunday, we will take that final plunge and learn the fate of the great, tragic Walter White. While we’ll all be sad to see the masterpiece come to an end, I think we’ll breathe a collective imperceptible sigh of relief to finally be able to distance ourselves from the emotional stress the show can create. No matter what happens, Breaking Bad will live on as a testament to what is possible in the world of television.
