Breaking Bad (for me) is literally, the best TV-show of all time. Many TV shows by the likes of "The Sopranos", "Game of Thrones" and "The Wire" have tried to take the crown but only to witness the glory of the show - Breaking Bad. The question is what makes Breaking Bad so unabashedly good? The answer is crisp and perfect writing. Vince Gilligan is a genius writer but when he wrote Walter and Jesse, even he must have failed to realize how perfect they were. Both of these characters are so down to earth, needy, brutish, and are extensively flawed in human nature. These qualities are usually ignored by many directors and showrunners but the sheer impulsiveness of these characters has successfully made them HUMAN. It is this "human" quality within them that makes these characters so relatable. They are the perfect examples of an anti-hero. They are not superficial. although powerful, they are not above and beyond God himself. In this piece, we shall talk about one of the "less-talked" protagonists of the show - Jesse Pinkman.
The life of Jesse Pinkman looks supremely cool from the outside. But that's the actual point. Jesse lives inside a shell of his own reality. The whole series was just a reality check for Jesse about how life actually is and how he imagined it to be. It seems that Jesse did not have a normal childhood. He had a normal family and even a normal younger brother but something was wrong with him at a deeper mental & psychological level. Instead of tackling these issues, his parents simply termed him as the "bad apple" of the family. They did offer him help but not the right type of help. Yes, Jesse always made the wrong choices but life was too harsh for him. *season 2 episode 8 (Peekaboo)* of the series portrays Jesse to be happy for the first time. The child with whom he spends time is indeed a reflection of his own childhood. Jesse realizes that he has lost his childhood and he cannot go back because of the bad choices he made.
In the end, the path of redemption is the toughest to lay foot upon and we cannot blame Jesse to amend his choices and go back to his parents. He was still very young to understand the cost of redemption. Towards the end of the series, Jesse is vulnerable, exposed, mentally tortured, and bound by the chains of his past (literally). Jesse understands that he has to get out and NOT end up like Walter White. He is ready to walk the path of redemption and "El Camino" which garnered mixed reviews was his imperfect yet satisfactory road to redemption.
Available on Netflix(IN).
#jessepinkman #walterwhite #aaronpaul #bryancranston #amc #breakingbad #vincegilligan #netflixindia #netflix