The Emmys: Bryan Cranston (??!!)
Bryan Cranston?
Are you telling me Hal - Hal!! - just won best actor in a drama, for "Breaking Bad," which is a series on AMC that I'm pretty certain is watched by fewer people than "Mad Men?"
Hal: Nice nerdy repressed Hal, of "Malcolm in the Middle," who went on to the manufacture or crystal meth and engaged in various murderous activities, in another show entirely?
Yes, strange the ways of primetime TV. I've watched "Breaking Bad" a few times, but wouldn't come close to describing myself as conversant on "BB" - far from it. I'm still thinking Bryan Cranston is in "Mac in the Middle," which was cancelled (like) five years ago, so you can see how far I have to go to catch up.
Personally, I'm happy for Hal. (The years of abuse on "Mac.") But enough of that: Cranston's a terrific journeyman actor, who finally got his due last night, and you don't see that happen often on the Emmys. Usually it's someone the critics have designated (or whom the Emmy voters then promptly ignore.) Cranston's so far out in left field, he's up in the stands (the upper levels.) He's been an actor on this medium for more than a quarter century, with his very first credited role - a bit part - on "CHiPS" (someone named "Billy Joe") and almost a hundred parts large and small since then. Cranston's one of those actors that everyone in the business knows and respects - but few viewers (other than "Mac" fans) can place.
Last night changed all that.
AMC - which had a pretty good night too - has a series of clips on "Breaking Bad," narrated by creator Vince Gilligan; a good place to catch up on the show and its star. I've posted a couple that are worth watching, below.
Plus go to the jump to read the review of this show by my colleague Diane Werts. She was the first to come out and say just how good this guy is, and was the first and perhaps only one to (in effect) make the right call last night.
REVIEW;
On new series, dark days for a Mr. White;
Bryan Cranston terrific in AMC's Breaking Bad
BYLINE: DIANE WERTS, Newsday
SECTION: STAR; Pg. 10
LENGTH: 751 words
Nobody can ever say AMC didn't go for it when it comes to original series.
Mad Men has been a relative smash for the otherwise movie-laden cabler, and even though I'm not a fan, the 1960-set ad biz socio-drama (a recent Golden Globe winner) is undeniably a psychologically ambitious and gorgeous-looking (if emotionally numb) study of a seriously uptight era.
Now Breaking Bad explores an anxious slice of contemporary life, at just the moment its restrained protagonist cuts loose into unchained mania. And this new Sunday night hour sure doesn't suffer from lack of sensation. That's in both senses of the word - there's blatant sex, bloody violence, ghastly tragedy and lunatic comedy, all of which is mashed up into a wild brew designed to startle. Yet creator Vince Gilligan (The X-Files) never loses touch with the mundane reality that so brilliantly magnifies its absurd horrors.
Bryan Cranston grounds it all with the every-guy exhaustion he aced as the hapless dad of Malcolm in the Middle. But here Cranston adds canny intelligence and scary ruthlessness. He's another working schlub, an Albuquerque, N.M., chemistry teacher, schlepping through his desert life with a car-wash second job to support his pregnant wife (Anna Gunn, Deadwood) and disabled teen son (RJ Mitte, who actually has cerebral palsy). The epitome of powerlessness, Walter White endures yet another ordinary day as he turns 50 to the taunts of well-meaning friends and his more rivalrous DEA agent brother-in-law (Dean Norris).
But there's also that nagging cough, and then a diagnosis that suddenly puts a finite number to the days of Walter's drudgery. That's the catalyst for him to "break bad" - to seize control of life in a perverse way that degenerates through the series' first three episodes from merely feeding the habits of drug users to fueling the fires of hell. Tony Soprano has nothing on Mr. White, who now tackles equally blood-soaked tasks with not the drive of intrinsic wickedness but rather the no-nonsense practicality of performing another necessary if certainly less nondescript chore.
Cranston's Walter White is never larger than life, or even brawny about his misdeeds the way Tony Soprano could be. Walter's undying inner Mister Meek is reflected in the tightie-whities he wears as he cooks up crystal meth for the moola, unwilling to let its chemical stench permeate his good pants. Without complaint, he'll eat the veggie bacon his wife cooks up, though he yearns for the real thing. Beautifully evoked in dreary interiors and yawning desert landscapes, his is a world of eBay and credit unions and broken dinner plates.
This monotone milieu now crashes, however, into the illicit underworld of a former student turned two-bit hood (Aaron Paul, Big Love), with whom Mr. White, as his flunked pupil still calls him, seizes the opportunity to "partner up" in pursuit of that suddenly crucial cash. The odd couple amusingly bickers and blunders, as Walter's existential crisis turns shockingly material during cruel yet comedic confrontations with more violent lowlifes. Nothing goes smooth for this schlub, and even once he's decided how fatally far he can go, he finds himself forced to return there again and again, ever so gradually, toxic step by toxic step.
"Trust me. This line of work doesn't suit you," advises one of the hard-core hoods (Max Arciniega), in an earnest scene of human connection for which Breaking Bad retreats from its manic activity. After radiating some Coen brothers descent into surreality, all Blood Simple or Raising Arizona, with odd camera angles and quirky-songs underscore, Breaking Bad breaks toward stillness in its second and third episodes.
Writer-director Gilligan, having roped us in with showy escapades, now gives us a more soulful sense of Walter's ennui, his evolving sense of fair play and, frighteningly, the unplumbed depths into which he's willing to plunge.
"Let's not even go there" seems to be the rule cable TV is now dedicated to breaking, by eyes-open exploring the most disconcerting moral balancing acts. Breaking Bad echoes Showtime's Dexter and FX's The Shield in its unsettling conjunction of heroism/villainy, horror/humor and that ever-dicey ends/means dilemma.
Good guys are bad guys are fascinating guys, unleashing evil in ironic ways that make us laugh as we cringe. Most of all, they make us unwittingly think, searching our own souls over the mixed feelings these new anti-heroes arouse.
...
BREAKING BAD
Series premieres Sunday night at 9 on AMC
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