You ruin everything, Walt
This Sunday brings with it one of the most anticipated television events in recent memory, perhaps even in the history of the medium itself. Fans across the nation will be glued to their television screens, eagerly waiting to see how AMC’s brilliant Low Winter Sun will resolve the blistering cliff-hanger that concluded last week’s episode.
Also, it’s the Breaking Bad finale.
But I wouldn’t blame you if you couldn’t tell the difference. The core elements are the same: A strong male anti-hero is forced to violate his moral code because of extenuating circumstances. He is faced with a series of moral dilemmas and he, of course, chooses the lower path, until hitting “rock bottom” (presumably this will happen in Low Winter Sun at some point). Then the question is posed: Can our anti-hero redeem himself?
Sound familiar? It’s not exclusive to these two shows. Don Draper from Mad Men, Tommy Gavin from Rescue Me, Dexter Morgan from Dexter, Vic Mackey from The Shield, Jimmy McNulty from The Wire, and the granddaddy of anti-heroes, Tony Soprano from The Sopranos, all fit the bill. This list still barely cracks the surface.
All these men have violent, sinister tendencies yet still contain a shred of morality, so the audience connects with them and hopes they will do the right thing in the end.
Breaking Bad, though not the first or most original, arguably crafted one of the finest anti-hero stories the public has ever seen. Every aspect of the show is brilliant, from the subtle writing, the masterful acting, the inventive cinematography, to Dave Porter’s absolutely fantastic score. The result: one of the most critically acclaimed and popular shows, certainly of our generation, and maybe even of all time.
Since the success of The Sopranos, gritty anti-hero shows have been breeding like rabbits. And because Breaking Bad has been one of the biggest hits television has ever seen, you can expect television producers to start force-feeding these rabbits rodent-brand erotic stimulants. The resulting Viagrabbits will produce more little babies than you can shake a stick at.
It’s already happened with Low Winter Sun riding on Breaking Bad’s coattails. On the same network and running right after the latter, Low Winter Sun is desperately trying to capitalize on Breaking Bad’s success by creating a similar, albeit inferior, product — a junkie knockoff of Heisenberg’s legendary 99.1 percent pure blue crystal meth.
And as in Breaking Bad, the knockoff products will never be as satisfying as Heisenberg’s pure creation. But we will continue buying and using, hoping to achieve that elusive first high, because as consumers, we are addicted to entertainment and will swallow anything the media places in our esophagus. So the Lydias and Todds of the world will continue to cash in and dramatic television will be sucked into a Charybdis of unoriginal, uninspired material.
The anti-hero genre has already been done to death, and Breaking Bad just dissolved the dead horse’s body with hydrofluoric acid. There is nothing left to explore here.
“Stay out of my territory,” the immortal Heisenberg growls to a couple of low-level meth peddlers in one of the most famous scenes in the series. I eagerly await the day when television companies finally obey those haunting words.
Until then, we can enjoy watching “groundbreaking shows” in which complicated and dark characters are forced to make tough decisions for morally admirable reasons as their character is slowly corrupted and they eventually find the path to redemption and/or death. But they will be tepid, off-brand colas to Breaking Bad’s classic Coke.
And as Heisenberg asked, “Do you really want to live in a world without Coca-Cola?”
