If you liked Toy Story 3, you’ll love Breaking Bad
The following is a bunch of rambling thoughts that I typed down just after seeing the Breaking Bad season four finale. No specific spoilers ahead, just generally talking about the broad strokes of the plotting.
If there’s one thing that Breaking Bad is very good at, it’s ratcheting up intensity. It’s a slow burn. It sets up the card castle and then it blows it up good. Its main characters get themselves into huge messes. The show compounds those problems with more problems, then it locks everything in a room and eats the key. And the intensity builds to the point where you say, OK, that’s it. They’re completely and utterly screwed. It is impossible for the characters to extricate themselves from the train wreck. And then (spoilers) they do.
Just like Toy Story 3. The joy of Breaking Bad and Toy Story 3 is being brought to the point of black hopelessness before being immediately bathed in sunlight (although, not so much with the sunlight part on Breaking Bad). Have you seen Toy Story 3? If not, go see it. That scene in the incinerator is beyond words. And it’s the same way I feel when I’m watching Breaking Bad. And it is GREAT.
Sometimes people talk about emotional manipulation like it’s a bad thing, but all fiction is emotional manipulation, we just hate seeing bad emotional manipulation. We hate when we can see someone pulling the strings. That swell in the string section, they’re trying to make me cry and it’s so transparent. But emotional manipulation done well is so, so great. It’s a really good magic trick. There’s nothing better. Emotional rollercoasters are fun. More fun than real rollercoasters, I’d say.
Toy Story 3 was the most intense movie I saw in 2010. It really took you for a ride. And Breaking Bad is definitely the most intense thing I saw in 2011.
The past few days after watching the season four finale of Breaking Bad, I’ve been wracking my brains and examining my current writing projects for how I can punch them up and make them A LOT better. I want to do what Breaking Bad did. I mean, I was already 90% sure of what ended up being revealed, but the manner in which the information was revealed just knocked the wind right out of me. So the past few days, I’ve watched the last thirty seconds of the finale again and again.
In comparison to payoffs, cliffhangers are really easy. I don’t mean to badmouth cliffhangers, because they’re awesome (see: S04E11 of Breaking Bad, S05E16/17 of LOST) I would categorize the end of season three of Breaking Bad as a cliffhanger. And that, too, blew my mind. It shook me, and stayed with me. But in comparison, that was easy. What’s hard is making a payoff have that kind of stickiness. I’m just so impressed that it confirmed what I already suspected, and still stuck with me and shook me and blew my mind. I’m not used to being so satisfied with an ending. (I know it’s not REALLY an ending, but it COULD have been. It could easily have been a series finale.)
And it was so simple. One tiny piece of information changes everything. It’s beautiful in its simplicity. The cliche of that last puzzle piece clicking into place. The writers of Breaking Bad are my heroes.
The point: Breaking Bad and Toy Story 3 are both excellent examples of good emotional manipulation and if you liked the ratcheting up of intensity in Toy Story 3, you’ll love Breaking Bad. The End.
