Following his trip through the floors of Comic-Con disguised in a Walter White mask, Bryan Cranston and the Breaking Bad team took the stage at this summer's TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour.
Creator/Executive producer Vince Gilligan was joined by Cranston, Aaron Paul (Jesse), Anna Gunn (Skyler), Betsy Brandt (Marie), RJ Mitte (Walt Jr.) and Bob Odenkirk (Saul) to talk about saying good-bye to this beloved, critically acclaimed and - in some ways - historic series. Dead Norris (Hank) is currently shooting Under the Dome and scheduling conflicts likely made it impossible for him to attend the event.
The panel opened with a trailer that recapped the events of the series over the past five seasons, reminding us of the tremendous journey that Walter White, his family, and what has become his partner in crime and "son," Jesse have taken.
Jesse was famously meant to die at the conclusion of Season 1, but when asked if there was another character who has changed or evolved in a different way than he had initially envisioned, Gilligan said that of course all of the actors have added depth and breadth and complexity to their characters, but called out Dean Norris as a example of a change he had not foreseen.
"Logistically Hank served a limited function initially...He was everything Walter White was not, he even seemed to be loved by Walt's own son Walt Jr. more than Walt himself in that first episode. He was a bit of a mechanical construct, but you get to know Dean and he is man who is complex, who is much more than a "hail fellow well met." You can talk to him about literature, poetry - he went to Harvard. He is an interesting and deep fellow and by knowing him, it enriched my ability to write him."
"TV is a rich, organic, living, thing," said Gilligan, and essentially, if you let the people in front and behind the cameras shine, wonderful things will happen.
Gilligan was asked if he'd had a different end in mind initially, and if so what it was. "'I'm not being factitious," he responded, "I can't remember what the original intention was for Walt. I knew that we were going to take Mr.Chips and turn him into Scarface, but that leaves a lot of wiggle room. I couldn't see that far ahead, I couldn't see the forest for the tress."
"It was in broad strokes the idea of taking serialized TV and changing the character, and that hadn't been done," Cranston added. "I was aghast by that. I wanted the role, I really, really wanted the role. Coming in it was easier, when we read good scripts it lights-up the imagination. But we never discussed where it was going to end up and as it went on I never asked. The twists and turns of my character were so sharp that it wouldn't help me to know. I took the ride with the audience. And that remained till the end, about five or six days before we shot Aaron and I read the last script together, and that will be a part of a documentary on the show."
Said documentary was done by Stu Richardson, who Paul calls "British Stu," who was hired by Sony to shoot BTS supplemental material for the shows Blu-rays. For the "big ultimate end it all box set he has really outdone himself a two-hour documentary about the show, which is going to be available on Blu-ray and DVD," Gilligan said. The doc will apparently feature material beginning with the show's inception and leading all the way through to the bittersweet end.
One journalist contended that White was never really Mr. Chips and was actually, in part, always a Scarface in the making.
"It's probably not the most accurate way to describe him," Gilligan said. "Mr. Chips was much more beloved. I think he was a good teacher. He, when we saw him initially, seemed to be using visual aids, was enthusiastic and trying to impart enthusiasm, but unfortunately he was not connecting with his students. Part of that early on may have been me ladling on reasons to sympathize with him. If I was doing it now I might hit that a little less hard - that the students weren't paying attention to him. I was talking earlier and there is a good argument in the question of whether or not Walt's road to hell changed him or revealed things that were already in him. I now subscribe to latter part of that argument. It's like does stardom turn people into a creep or reveal who they really are?"
Cranston, for his part, felt that Walter White was a great teacher. "I embraced moments he could show his teaching acumen. That was his true passion besides his family. The only thing he excelled at, but there comes a time in a teacher's life that the overwhelming impact of apathy that faces them beats them down. That's where we met him. He could have been Mr. Chips twenty-years ago but now not. His emotions were calloused over by the depression, and the news of his illness allowed a volcano of emotions to erupt. When he did he wasn't prepared - and the emotions just spewed everywhere - and it got messy."
One big question that came up at this panel, as it did at Comic-Con, is why the audience seems to have so much sympathy for Jesse and so little for Skyler - when really they are both complacent in Walter's crimes.
"I find it odd," Paul said. "Jesse is a drug dealer, and murderer, but for some reason you care for him and want to protect him. With Skyler, when I watch I feel for her so much, she just wants to protect family. But I guess you're rooting for bad guy, so she becomes bad guy."
"We talked about it early on because were confused about it," Gunn added. "My feeling was that people got so behind Walt and they really sided with him, so the person who stood in the way became the bad guy. Most consistently that was Skyler - Gus came in and out and other characters came in and out - but she was the one who consistently said, 'You cant just do these things and not have consequences.' She became a villain to those who were rooting for him. And also, by design, you couldn't know as much about her as you knew about Walt. If you were to sympathize with her instead of Walt it would have thrown off the balance in the show."
One of the questions the show asks is how much good or bad is in these people, "With Jesse, how the season ended he's just emptied out," Paul said. "He just wants out of the business, he wants to stay away from Walt. Walt's true colors were revealed and he's terrified of this man and wants nothing to do with him. So, he just wants to try and stay out."
"Walt has a large resevoir of good," Cranston joked. "And he speads his joy liberally in the final 8 episodes. I think the fans will be satisfied with the ending where we hug it out." In all serisousness, he said, "In looking into this character I belive everyone is capable of good or bad. All humans are given a spectrum of emotions - the best of you can come out or the worst - given the right set of circumstances any one of us can become dangerous."
Gilligan does not Google Breaking Bad, and he makes this choice out of a sense of self-protection. "I found that the best way forward, and what held us in good stead, was to keep writers room as a sequestered jury room. We would sit around telling a story to ourselves. I was nervous coming to an end to this thing - how do you satisfy everyone? But I found that the more you listen to people, the more fractured your thinking becomes. We had to satisfy ourselves and I'm proud of the ending and I can't wait for everyone to see it. I hope I am not wrong to think most folks will dig the ending."
On the oft-discussed Saul Goodman spin-off, Gilligan said, "It is my fervent wish that there will be a Saul Goodman spin-off. I'm not speaking for any company when I say I really hope it happens. It's for powers bigger than me to see if it can come to fruition."
"I love everything that Vince just said," Odenkirk said. "I'd love to do it do it in a second because if Vince wrote it it's going to be awesome. But also, the spin-off is having been on this show and everything good that has come from me being a part of it."
The panel was asked to provide a piece of backstory for their characters that had not been revealed in the show. Here are a couple of the highlights:
-- Odenkirkk said, "I think Saul's from Chicago. People from Chicago love to go to Southwest to escape the weather and they also perceive the people west of Chicago as being easy to manipulate.
-- Mitte used some of his own experience growing-up with cerebral palsy.
-- Brandt said that she thought about how Marie and Hank really wanted to have kids and they couldn't. "I would think about it every time I had a scene with Walt and Skyler's kids," the actress recalls. She would also talk to Gunn about what they assumed was a fractured childhood.
-- Gunn added that she also didn't believe that Marie and Skyler had a happy childhood. "They are like war buddies. I think Skyler had to be the mother figure, so my feeling about that was that Skyler learned to take care of things and deal with problems and put head down and get through things. She learned at young age at home."
-- Paul said that for Jesse, the character was revealed more and more as the show went on. But he was on a constant search for guidance even though he didn't want to admit it, like a father figure, and he found that in Walt. Because his parents gave up on his years ago. That also inspired his desire to want to protect kids. He wants to protect them because he didn't get that from his parents.
-- Cranston joked that it all turned for Walt on July, 4 1978 when he entered a Nathans hot-dog eating competition, where he ate 38 hot-dogs and considered becoming a professional eater versus a chemist.
The second half of Season 5 of Breaking Bad premieres on Sunday, August 11 at 9PM.
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