This AMC show is one of the few on TV that has an actual actor with a disability as a main character, RJ Mitte, who has CP, (pictured) and who plays the son of the main character.The second season of “Breaking Bad” begins at 9 p.m. Sunday on AMC, and in the first episode we learn an important lesson: Drugs can make you extremely paranoid even when you’re not taking them.
Just a few short months ago Walt White was teaching high school chemistry. Then, after getting a terminal cancer diagnosis, he decided to set up his family financially by cooking crystal meth and selling it secretly with the help of an unpromising co-conspirator named Jesse, whom he once flunked out of class. (And that’s why they call it dope.)
So that was the plan: Make a truckload of the stuff, pay off the house, load up the college fund and check out before anyone finds out (especially your brother-in-law Hank, who’s in the DEA). And, by the way, with your know-how and using only the choicest ingredients, give the meth-heads of Albuquerque some all-nighters to remember. Win-win, am I right?
Unfortunately, Walt didn’t consider the side effects. Like, he might have to kill a couple of guys. And that, in turn, would make him very, very nervous. Because let’s face it, 20 years sitting in a lab or a teacher’s lounge wasn’t exactly practice for dealing with cranked-up, gun-toting drug dealers.
Then again, with Walt’s penchant for thinking things through, maybe it should’ve dawned on him — maybe he should’ve given his emaciated, middle-aged carcass a good, long up-and-down in the mirror and then asked himself: Is this what a kingpin looks like?
“Breaking Bad” has been off the air an entire year, a result of a writers’ strike-shortened season and a schedule shift by AMC. In the interim it has been honored as almost no other basic-cable program has, with a best-actor Emmy for Bryan Cranston as Walt White. (Granted, another AMC show overshadowed it at the Emmys just a little, and before you ask me again, “Mad Men” isn’t coming back until July.)
If “Mad Men” feels like a big, colorful float coming down Main Street looking like dozens of people spent months on it, “Breaking Bad” feels like two drifters staggering down the parade route behind a bunch of Shriners, who are keeping their distance.
It’s a spare, stark show that makes no attempt to mask its desperation behind fancy cocktails or smart talk. Besides Cranston’s resilient performance, there’s Aaron Paul as Jesse, the hapless sidekick whose pathetic attempt at acquiring a gun leads to a remedial math lesson that is one of the few laugh-out-loud moments in this week’s episode.
Walt’s family consists of Skyler (Anna Gunn), his younger wife who’s pregnant with a surprise baby; and their teenage son, Walt Jr., who, in a commendable casting decision, has cerebral palsy and is played by R.J. Mitte, who was born with cerebral palsy. Their job is to be left completely in the dark as to Walt’s new enterprise and channel his paranoia. This they both do about as well as secondary characters can. Hank (Dean Norris), who’s married to Skyler’s kleptomaniac sister, Marie (Betsy Brandt), adds some comic relief.
But this is the Cranston show, and for those of us who still see reruns of “Malcolm in the Middle” and the red-faced, eye-bulging slapstick that Cranston was put through on that show, he is quite a revelation on “Breaking Bad.”
“Breaking Bad” is not an easy show to watch. Besides the occasional gore and generally unrelenting tone, there’s the creeping realization that the lead character is turning into a midlife lowlife. That with every passing hour, the drug trade is pulling him into the primordial slime, and he’s helpless to resist, because the Faustian bargain, once struck, is nonrefundable.But, you know, it’s this or something on the networks where the cops or the doctors always win. What fun is that?