Breaking Bad: Remember My Name

It was an emotional farewell this week to Vince Gilligan’s masterful Breaking Bad, but how might Heisenberg’s legacy live on in our viewing culture? Jonathan Blyth gives his verdict.

Over the last six years, through countless plot twists, genre shifts and film homages, (and one long bottle episode about a fly), Vince Gilligan and co. have charted the progression of one man’s ascent into criminal godliness, and descent into evil.

Image credit: The Atlantic

The current era of television, often called the Golden Age of Drama, has been obsessed with tortured protagonists since Tony Soprano. Breaking Bad stands as the most critically acclaimed of this era of anti-villains, with three Emmy wins for Bryan Cranston in his role as Walter White. So now that Walt is leaving our screens, are we going to see an end to this style of character?

Tension drives conflict. Conflict drives drama. Drama makes for, who’d have guessed it, good drama. And whilst tension and conflict can come from external sources, the last few years of television have clearly shown that the best drama comes from internal struggles.

Some of Breaking Bad’s most compelling scenes have come from observing Jesse and Walt wrestle with their own innate villainy, or watching characters make tough choices between their priorities. For those of you who are already well acquainted with the series, compare these scenes to the finale of season two. This mostly superficial, externally-driven event is widely considered Breaking Bad at its weakest.

Homeland has a similar problem. Most of the large-scale CIA thriller scenes feel like an add-on to the real show, a 24 knock-off left in to drive up viewers. Homeland’s strongest sections are those concerning Damian Lewis and his personal struggles, similarly to Breaking Bad being most emotionally compelling when it deals with the internal.

Ultimately, shows such as Homeland, Mad Men and Boardwalk Empire will continue to provide drama based around villainous protagonists, and thus we are unlikely to see an end to this style of character. However, Breaking Bad has been one of the most watched and talked about shows of the last six years; what will fill its place? What will the next era of television be?

NBC’s Hannibal, starring Mads Mikkelsen. Image credit: Salon

The significant surge in horror and surrealist based shows over the last two years, including American Horror Story, The Following, Bates Motel and more recently the critically acclaimed Hannibal suggests that viewers are keen on seeing a darker, stranger tone in televised drama for the next few years.

Or will Agents of Shield, created by the critically adored, fanatically loved, and consistently cancelled Joss Whedon begin a push towards more relaxed shows dominating our screens?  Despite already being a cultural and critical darling, Game of Thrones seems the most likely to replace Breaking Bad as the show of choice for television connoisseurs and the average viewer alike.

We cannot be sure of where television will go after Walter White and company (or whoever is left alive) leave our TV’s and Netflix queues. Perhaps in five to ten years we will see a show claimed to homage the Breaking Bad era, as Breaking Bad itself does to 70s exploitation cinema.

All we can be certain of is, one of the greatest shows ever created has finished, and its impact will be felt for years to come.

Jonathan Blyth

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To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

Emma Crossey takes a look at Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. Can she shed new light on an old text by revisiting this classic of the literary canon and of school curriculums?

It is well known that studying a book in school (that is, being forced to tear parts of a text apart and overanalyse it to the point of saturation) can ruin even the best books. But if you’re very lucky and have a wonderfully encouraging English teacher like I did, studying a book you already love can heighten your enjoyment of the text. Thankfully, To Kill a Mockingbird falls into this the latter category. Prior to, and since studying TKAM in year 11, I have read and reread this book and my copy now sits in my bookshelf, battered and well-loved and the fountain pen scrawl of “Emma Crossey, Class: 11N” is almost entirely rubbed off the inside cover. The book has even made it in to the small elite of non-course related books I elected to bring with me to University.

For those of you who have never had the delight of being acquainted with TKAM, it was written in 1960 and remains the only completed book by American writer Harper Lee. TKAM earned Lee both a Pulitzer Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature. It is a Bildungsroman (a ‘coming-of-age’ tale), told by the character Scout (who is a girl by the way; this is not immediately obvious). She looks back on the events of a certain summer, when her brother Jem “got his arm badly broken at the elbow”, a nasty and rather shocking event which is finally explained at the end of the book. Scout and Jem live with their father, the lawyer Atticus Finch (played by Gregory Peck in the Oscar award winning film). The book follows two main story threads, the first being the children’s fascination with the reclusive Boo Radley, a mysterious neighbour who is the subject of exceptionally creepy neighbourhood legend and the other being the appointment of Atticus Finch to defend a black man, Tom Robinson, who is accused of raping a young white woman.

Taking place in the deep American South, in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, the book lulls the reader with Scout’s naïve faith in justice, breaking your heart with stories of loneliness and two unexpected tragedies, exploring racial injustice, class and gender division and the destruction of childhood innocence. TKAM frequents top ten books lists (in 2006, it pushed the Bible itself down to second place when it came to books “every adult should read before they die”*) and indeed, claiming that TKAM is your favourite book has become quite cliché. However, in my humble opinion, the accolades it has received and the reputation it has earned are well founded. Lee’s fundamental belief in the compassion of mankind shines through on almost every page, making this one of the most quotable texts of all time and a book that first breaks and then redeems your faith in humanity and social justice through its rather wonderful twist at the very end. It is touching and heart breaking and tops these lists for a reason.

By Emma Crossey

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*http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/mar/02/news.michellepauli