There is a species of dread that comes upon the spirit not through wild ghosts or midnight tombs, but through the deliberate ruin of an ordinary man; and it is this very dread that “Breaking Bad” summons with a skill I confess myself scarcely equal to describing. The tale begins in a humble dwelling and ends in a waste of blood and fire, and the journey between the two is one of the most singular I have witnessed in any dramatic work of our age.
The Descent of a Common Man
The chief personage, a teacher stricken with a fatal illness, resolves upon a desperate scheme for pecuniary gain, and thus commences a change as gradual and as terrible as any recorded in the records of horror. What begins as a device for the support of his family becomes, by dreadful degrees, a hunger for dominion that no fortune can satisfy. The alteration is wrought not by any single dreadful act, but by a thousand small surrenders of conscience.
Each surrender is rendered with such patience that the beholder scarcely perceives the precise moment when the man is lost. We behold him disappear by inches, and still we cannot look away.
The Companion in Ruin
Beside him walks a former student, a creature of weakness and of unexpected tenderness, whose own descent is rendered with an anguish that wounds the heart more deeply, perhaps, than that of the principal figure. Their partnership is a union of mutual destruction, each dragging the other further into the abyss even as each, in his own broken fashion, endeavours to preserve some fragment of the other’s soul. It is in this doomed and twined affection that the narrative discovers its most sad depths.
The Terror of the Place
The tale unfolds across a country of dust and desolation, rendered with a keen eye for ruin that recalls the great melancholy scenes of our darkest imaginings. Every chamber, every vehicle, every dark and glaring road seems to conspire in the ruin of its inhabitants. The pacing is deliberate yet steady, building dread upon dread until the spectator finds himself seized by a suspense nearly intolerable.
The Adversary Within
What renders “Breaking Bad” extraordinary among works of its kind is its refusal to grant its principal figure the comfort of wickedness alone; he remains, even in his blackest hours, still a man we may know, and it is this humanity that forms the true terror of the piece. We are not permitted the luxury of simple contempt, for we behold in his descent the terrible softness of our own natures, the ease with which reason may be made servant to pride.
The supporting figures, too, are wrought with such care of soul that none may be dismissed as mere trifles to the central horror. Each carries his own private ruin, and each is made to matter.
A Verdict Pronounced
I have encountered few narratives so firm in their logic, so fine in their building of dread, or so crushing in their final judgment. The concluding hours possess a terrible certainty, as though fate itself had long ago written their end in some ledger beyond human amendment. If there be any fault, it lies only in a certain excess of misery toward the middle passages, a small blemish upon an otherwise almost perfect and dreadful edifice.
Let it be said plainly, then, that “Breaking Bad” stands among the most extraordinary chronicles of ruin ever set before an audience, a work whose darkness reveals rather than merely oppresses. It is a singular achievement, worthy of the highest praise.