Life After Galactica – Part 3 – Breaking Bad

Cancer is the end of the world writ small.

You could say that any death is, but cancer is one that many people get to see coming. It’s epitomized on screen by a trip to a doctor’s office and a handful of sentences that translate into one idea: your days in this world are numbered, that number is far less than you thought, and the last ones are going to suck. Everything you hold dear will be lost, you will cease to exist, and you are helpless to stop any of it.

This is a dramatic enough moment in and of itself, but the real meat comes AFTER. Upon receiving this news, what would you do? How would you spend your time, what would you make your priorities?

This made Laura Roslin one of the stronger characters on Galactica. She went through pretty much all of it, everything you might expect someone to: denial, evasiveness, epiphany, religious mania, remission, relapse, depression, acceptance, and finally, death – and through it all, a grim sense of purpose. That’s what made her character so interesting to me – her determination to make her last days count. She may have been 23rd in line of succession, but the Presidency was hers, and damned if she wouldn’t use it to do the utmost for the small population who needed her leadership. I was saddened to see her go in the final episode, but the happiness she got with Adama in her last days, even in her last moments, made the inevitability of her death more bearable. I’m glad she made it to the end, and I miss her now that she’s gone.

But I still have Walter White.

I discovered Breaking Bad only a couple of months ago, but god damn if it isn’t good enough to fill some of the Galactica void in my heart. On the surface, the two shows may not have very much in common, but I think it has some of the elements that made Galactica so strong. Walter is played by Bryan Cranston, and if all you remember him from is Malcolm in the Middle, you’re in for a shock. Between the bad moustache, the chemo related hair loss, and the gratuitous nudity, you’re not going to recognize him. Like in Malcom, this is a man worn down to a nub. But this time, instead of a shrill termagent of a wife, life did it to him. Cancer just showed up to finish the job.

Even before his diagnosis, Walter’s life wasn’t easy. He teaches chemistry to a bunch of disinterested high schoolers, a career track that seems to have been him settling for middle of the road when he’s clearly much much smarter and overqualified for his job. His finances suck, as evidenced by his supplementing his teacher’s salary by working in a car wash. In the pilot he suffers the ultimate indiginity of having to do a wipe down on the sports car of one of his current (and lesser) students. The humiliation is topped off by a cameraphone picture as he’s scrubbing the hubcaps which will no doubt be shared with the entire school by the end of that day. His family is a bright spot, but things still aren’t easy there. His son Walter Jr. has CP and his wife Skylar is seven months into an unplanned pregnancy. He has problems getting it up. But even living in Albuquerque things could still be worse. And then Walt collapses while wiping down a car at the car wash, and after a quick trip to the hospital learns he has terminal lung cancer. He’s never smoked a day in his life, but in less than a year’s time the big C will put him in the ground. Which means it’s time for something drastic.

The inspiration comes from his brother-in-law, a bald, obnoxious, fireplug named Hank who’s a DEA Agent. At Walt’s birthday party Hank calls for quiet so he can show off his appearance on local news at a meth lab seizure. What gets Walt’s attention is the stacks of cash that were part of the haul. So when he finds out he has cancer, Walt doesn’t tell his wife, and he doesn’t go for a second opinion; instead he calls Hank and asks to go on a ride-along during a bust so he can check out how a meth lab is actually set up.

The lab seizure goes off, but Walt has to stay in the car in a girlishly white bullet-proof vest (it looks kind of bra-like; seriously, it does!). But that proves to be fortuitous, a catalyst for pretty much everything else that follows. As Hank and his colleagues bust in one house, a tattooed guy in his underwear crawls out the window of the one next door. As he’s trying to pull up his pants, a naked woman tosses the remainder of his clothes down on the lawn. The guy slips and falls to the ground, and as he gets up he and Walt lock eyes. And they RECOGNIZE each other. This is Jesse Pinkman, one of Walt’s former students (who he flunked, incidentally), and Walt’s point of entry into the business world he wishes to enter. Jesse escapes, but Walt quickly tracks him down and proposes a partnership. Walt will cook, Jesse will market, and they will split everything fifty-fifty. Walt steals all the gear they need to start from his high school, and they invest in an RV which they will drive out into the desert to do their work. Sounds simple and effective.

Of course, this being a crime drama, it doesn’t take long for things to go wrong. Really wrong. Jesse’s first buyers try to rip them off and leave them both dead in the desert. They only hold off because Walt promises to teach them how he cooks such good meth. But Walt turns the tables rather effectively by poisoning them with mustard gas. One dies, the other Walt and Jesse manage to lock up in the basement of Jesse’s house. But that leaves them with two more problems: one dead body to dispose of, and one live body that they have to make into a dead one. They end up flipping a coin to decide who does which.

Like Galactica, all of these problems take time to iron out. An issue that gets raised isn’t always resolved by the time the hour is up and the credits roll. And often their solutions lead to still more problems, not least of which is what’s happening to them personally. The life changes them, and Walt and Jesse change each other; Walt becomes more and more detached from the people he loves in trying to provide for them. He has progressively less of a problem hurting people or breaking the law to get what he wants. Jesse has problems of his own, and Walt’s example is rubbing off on him; making him more contemplative and professional, more serious about life in general, and more ambitious about really making it as a drug dealer. Through it all, Walt is very aware of the time. Of how little he has left. And as he makes and then loses a lot of money, the clock steadily ticks down to zero. Galactica was about the end of the world on an epic scale. Breaking Bad shows how it ends for just one man.