Too Many Cooks, OR, Qui[Ar]a Watches [Br]eaking [Ba]d

"Pilot"

It's basically impossible to watch Breaking Bad in 2019 unspoiled; however, I think I am one of the few people who can really say they're watching this show from the same perspective as a hapless AMC viewer in 2008. Because while most contemporary watchers of this show look at Walter White and see one of the all-time great TV anti-heroes, all I can see is one of the all-time great sitcom dads. A lot of people have noted the superficial similarities between Bryan Cranston's character on Breaking Bad and his character on Malcolm in the Middle - neurotic suburban dads introduced to the viewers in the nude, most obviously - but I think the connection between the two shows goes deeper than this.

Malcolm in the Middle is 1) a show about a boy with a prodigal intellect, and 2) a show about a family that's always one bad break away from poverty. The core tension of the show is that Malcolm's hyper-intelligence can't propel him and his family out of the lower-middle class - and as he grows older, this fact embitters him. Walter White is very much a character in this same mold, a man who once was in contention for the Nobel Prize who's been reduced to lecturing bored high school students about ionic bonds. If Malcolm in the Middle was a drama rather than a comedy, or if Frankie Muñiz was forty years older, or if the show had ended after the Great Recession instead of right before it, the show very well could have ended with Malcolm becoming such a character. It was always floated as a potential life path that he could end up being like jackass Mister Herkabe.

So having Bryan Cranston play Walt is a brilliant bit of stunt-casting on top of being good casting in the traditional sense, because Cranston really does play the role with both humor and pathos. We do feel for the guy - working two shit jobs for his wife and disabled son is bad enough, learning he's got five years to live tops is crushing. It's almost believeable that he'd turn to meth.

Unfortunately, the pilot's a little clumsy in its contrivances. Walt just happens to have a brother-in-law in the DEA, who just happens to invite him on a ride-along, where he just happens to find out one of his former students is a meth cook? Okay, I guess. More troublesome is that Walt is able to throw two different tantrums in his "respectable" life with no meaningful consequences - are we supposed to believe Skyler and Walt Jr. really just forget that he wailed on a teenager in a department store (even with understandable motives)? Walt himself obviously wants to keep a divide between his family life and his new job in the drug trade, but the show itself doesn't have to have this dichotomy too. It really weakens Skylar and Jr. as characters. And it makes Hank's macho vanity and casual racism seem like Cool Antihero traits rather than deliberate character flaws meant to make Walt look even more pathetic.

Still, a really great start. I've barely even mentioned some of the other great stuff about the episode - most obviously, the cinematography. There are some fantastic shots - Walt literally laundering money is the one Scott mentioned in his fantastic write-ups; the pants flying overhead in the New Mexico sky are also a fantastic opening image. I personally really loved the shot of Walt teaching to a bored room, where we zoom in on his face, with a Bunsen burner flaming in the foreground. This man is too hot to handle. Watch out.

I figured it was an early dig at the show's being a sausage fest

I didn't like Hank much at the beginning either, but he grew on me as the show went on. Perhaps even moreso than Walt, he's a good example of how being pressured into masculine roles against one's natural inclinations can damage a person.

The comedy pretty much disappears at a certain point in the show, which made sense for the story and worked.....but I kind of liked the show as a pitch-black comedy as well as a harrowing drama. Ah well. 

"Grey Matter" was the episode that sold me on the show. The first four eps are primarily focused on forward momentum - one of the show's great strengths throughout its run - and they set up the story and characters impressively. But "Grey Matter" (the first episode not written by Gilligan) proves that the series can produce slower, more character-driven storylines just as well as high-stakes action.

I don't think I've seen that Malcolm episode; I missed a lot from that show's last two seasons.

I prefer the early Malcolm seasons (particularly S2-S4) mainly because the show feels more genuine and down-to-earth, putting an oddball family in ordinary situations and letting the humor play out. Whereas the later seasons (a la the later seasons of The Simpsons) feature increasingly ludicrous plotlines that often outshine the ludicrousness of the characters.

That said, it is surprising how rarely the show gets brought up when discussing the best sitcoms of the 2000s. Especially considering the show's influence in bringing single-cam to network TV. (Sports Night narrowly beat them to the punch, though I hesitate to call that show a sitcom.)