Vince Gilligan
Breaking Bad

- Let's break it down

- Hydrogen.

- How much do we have? 

- Per mole?

- We have observed 63%

- 63%, wow, quite a big gulp.

- The next step is oxygen. 

- Oxygen: 26%.

- 26% and there we have water.

If you ever find yourself needing to kill a man and decide to melt him in acid to erase the traces, remember to do it in a plastic container and not in your bathtub as hydrofluoric acid corrodes ceramic but not polyethylene.

If you ever find yourself stranded in the desert, in a camper with a dead battery, a dead cellphone, and no water, you might surrender to your fate or...

- Carbon: 9%.

- Carbon: 9%.

- For a total of... 98%

- Exactly.

- Nitrogen: 1.25%.

- That brings us to 99 and a quarter.

- Which leaves us only with trace elements. Where the magic happens.

Walter White is a mild, silent, and dissatisfied man.

He has:

- just turned 50;

- a nagging wife pregnant again;

- a handicapped son;

- a job as a chemistry teacher in a school far less prestigious than his curriculum;

- an intrusive brother-in-law working for the DEA;

- a 20-year mortgage;

- no health insurance;

- above all, lung cancer, inoperable.

It is precisely the discovery of carcinoma that triggers a breaking point in him (the "breaking bad" that gives the TV series its title).

His mildness, perhaps just shriveled anger, perhaps fear of anger and its consequences.

Without a cap, he explodes.

To pay for his medical expenses and ensure a decent economic future for his family even after his probable, imminent departure, Walter White decides to use his chemistry knowledge to cook methamphetamines which will then be sold by his unlikely partner, the series co-star Jesse Pinkman, a repeatedly failed former student of his, a little delinquent all yo, bitch, and oversized shirts, also a producer but also a consumer of crystals.

In his new life as a criminal, chemistry will often help him, a degree is useful, even if one decides to become a criminal.

- Oh wait a minute. And calcium?

- Calcium is not a trace element. An entire skeleton needs to be accounted for.

- You think so, don't you?

- True.

- Calcium, calcium is only 0.25%.

- What? So little? Really?... Wow, I wouldn't have guessed. Okay, so where does iron fit in?

- Iron. Okay. 0.00004%.

- What? Without iron, there can't be hemoglobin.

- Apparently, it doesn't take much.

- Strange. But think about it... Sodium.

The plot springs from the character differences between Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, the brother-in-law who works for the narcotics, a varied host of addicts, criminals, and strange types that Walter will encounter due to his new job, but above all, from the relationship with his family, amidst omissions, silences, lies that spiral multiply themselves, truths hard to digest. Relationships between elements, the heart of chemistry.

Breaking Bad is an American TV series produced by Sony Pictures Television that debuted in January 2008 on AMC and is currently at the climax of the third season. Created by Vince Gilligan (X-files) and set in New Mexico, it features Bryan Cranston as Walter White and Aaron Paul as Jesse Pinkman, along with many other more or less known names, including Bob Odenkirk's cameos (in the fantastic role of an unconventional lawyer) and Krysten Ritter (in the skimpy role of a gothic doll).

The critics loudly applaud it and the first season wins 2 Emmy Awards and 2 Writer's Guild Awards.

Disorienting, raw, paradoxical, grotesque, adventurous, inadvertently ironic.

Narrating of a changing personality avoids the typical stasis of serial products, surprises with ever-new situations and faces. 

The characters, even the minor ones, are well-built, three-dimensional. 

If the bad guys are seriously bad, even the good guys have their moments ("What's the matter Schrader? It's like you've never seen a severed human head on a tortoise") rendering classifications useless.

Slow rhythm, very realistic photography, use of narrative devices (dreamlike flashforwards at the start of many episodes, reversals, etc.), a good soundtrack (Tv On The Radio, Molotov, Mick Harvey, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Gnarls Barkley, Nancy Sinatra, John Coltrane, Calexico, The Marshall Tucker Band, etc.).

This is, if you please.

- Sodium: 0.04%. Phosphorus: 0.19%

- 0.19%. There we have it. So altogether we come to... 98.888042%. We are at 0.111958% short.

- Apparently, that's all there is.

- Yes?

- Uh huh.

- I don't know. I...I... It seems like something's missing, don't you think? A human being must have more than this. I don't know it's that... Don't you think something's missing?

- What about the soul?

- The soul... There's nothing but chemistry here.