Thinking and Writing Essay

Aralie Hoskins

Fall 2013

Thinking and Writing Essay

The Art of Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad is one of the most violent TV shows on right now. It shows everything right down to the guts. It is a gruesome story of drug dealers and the blood bath that this career makes. This is one of the few examples in media where the show actually makes violence look how gross and ugly it really is. The writers do this to show that going bad is easier than it seems, but it is not as glorified as other shows make it. It shows this by the reality of drugs, the realness of the violence, and also what it does to a family. All these attributes are portrayed in one episode called “Peekaboo.”

In this episode Jesse goes to a drug addicts house to get back the meth that the addicts stole. It was gross inside the house. The two addicts looked like they were 60 years old, but they were supposed to be around 30. The filmmakers made it that way because they want this show to be as real as possible. This is a real effect that is seldom used in media because they want to glorify the life of partying. They used it in here to show what drug addicts really look like and not those hot boys and girls they show. The writers want people to be afraid of going off the deep end or as they refer to it: breaking bad.

The violence in the episode “Peekaboo” would make anybody cringe. The addict wants the meth from her husband so bad, that she drops a full metal ATM on his head. People then proceed to see his face smashed under it and the blood gushing out. It is almost too real to process for some. For me I had to look away and try not to gag. Jesse then gets up and holds her at gunpoint. Except he is not confident in his abilities, it is more the opposite where his hand is shaking and he is whimpering. He cannot handle the violence he has seen or what he might do to her. Again, the writers want to show that even if someone has gone bad, it is hard for them to deal with such things. Shooting a person is not easy, and they don’t want to make it look easy.

While all this was happening in the addict’s home, there was also a little boy in there about the age of five. Jesse still feels things like a normal human being. He sees the little boy and knows that he has been neglected. He knows that this boy is not fit to live here anymore.  It is apparent that writers wanted to show the horrors for kids and families when they are either drug dealers or drug addicts. NACOA reports, “Three of four child welfare professionals (75.7%) say that children of addicted parents are more likely to enter foster care.” Breaking Bad does a good job of representing what a little kid of drug addict parents would act like. He was reclusive and didn’t talk at all. They showed that this was not the kind of home a child would want to grow up in.

            Now, people often say that if you watch major violence or drug abuse that it desensitizes them, but I beg-to-differ. I think that people get a thrill out of watching things like that, but with Breaking Bad it shows how real it is to be desensitized to it. People like watching it because it is an unexpected story of how someone, who no one would have thought, turns bad. Most people like an unexpected story and that is what Breaking Bad gives to people.

            Breaking Bad is a wonderful show, not only because of the great cinematic skills, but also the underlying theme of the show. In “Peekaboo” the theme is almost identical to the whole show itself: “breaking bad is easier than it seems.” They also instill in people that breaking bad is more gross and ugly than anyone would have ever thought. Not like in other movies where they commend it and people end up experimenting because they think it looks fun. Breaking Bad does everything but that. It makes you rethink your morals. It asks people what should they do in life and how to prevent getting into trouble because it is so easy to go off the deep end.