Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston have each won Emmys for their work. (
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Breaking Bad” kicked off its fourth season last July with series star Bryan Cranston describing on-screen alter ego Walter White’s upcoming journey as “Going from Mr. Chips to Scarface.”
Mission accomplished.
Walt cemented his gangster cred in last season’s finale by blowing archenemy Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) to pieces with a homemade bomb — then calling his wife to tell her, simply, “I won.”
And, as “Breaking Bad” kicks off the first half of its final season tonight — with eight episodes now, followed by eight next summer — Cranston says there’s a certain logic to Walt’s progression from milquetoast high school chemistry teacher to New Mexico drug lord.
“I see Walt from a different perspective — without judgment but with a sense of pride and determination and goals to set,” says Cranston. “He knows, and knew a while ago, that there’s no turning back.
“He just finished off a person [Fring] who couldn’t be finished off — Walt was the underdog . . . and still outwitted the master.
“It’s Bobby Fischer beating Boris Spassky.”
The allusion to chess champions parallels the “Breaking Bad” universe in which Walt now finds himself, plotting his next strategic move in tonight’s season premiere.
Sidekick Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), who came this close to murdering Walt last season, is back in the fold. It’s a little more complicated for Walt’s wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn), who’s now an accessory to Walt’s crimes and — with Fring’s murder — fears Walt’s dark side.
“It’s naive to think that human beings are capable of only one emotion. That’s like soap-opera writing: ‘He’s good. He’s bad,’ ” Cranston says of Skyler’s reaction to Walt. “Humans are so much more than that and Walter is one of those guys — he has justifiable reasons for his actions, according to him, and he’s fully capable of killing someone — and still lovingly and gently and compassionately holding his daughter or his wife.
“He could have gone one of two ways [after killing Gus],” Cranston says. “It was either, ‘That was close, let me get the hell outta here before something else happens’ or, ‘That’s right. That’s what I did, how do you like me now?’
“And that’s where he goes,” he says. “He wants to fulfill his destiny, whatever that brings.
“For the first time in his adult life, Walt is intimidating and accomplished and powerful, and those are aphrodisiacs for men — the power, control and intimidation,” he says. “That effect on his ego has a tremendous effect on Walt. He feeds off of it, with his chest puffed out.”
Both Cranston and “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan say that this season will revisit Walt’s battle with terminal lung cancer, which took a back seat last season (and is the raison d’être for Walt’s life of crime — to make enough money to leave for his family).
“We definitely have not forgotten the original impetus for Walt’s decision [to cook crystal meth],” says Gilligan. “The cancer has not completely gone out of our thinking vis-à-vis Walt.
“The only thing I can tell you is that Walt will go back to his oncologist,” says Cranston. “The cancer won’t be forgotten this season. It won’t play a major role, but it won’t be forgotten.”
And even this late in the “Breaking Bad” game, Cranston says that he’s created a backstory for Walt to help him, as an actor, understand his character’s motivation.
“My whole back story for Walt is that he developed a fear of success, panicked and just deep-sixed everything . . . and became a teacher, which is an occupation that no one can criticize,” says Cranston. “So Walter chose this safe haven, but I think his ulterior motive was as a refuge from the pressure. All his life he was told that, ‘The sky’s the limit for you. You can do anything.’
“But safe also meant dull, and looking into a sea of apathetic faces [of high school students] year after year finally just wore him down,” he says. “It just put a cap on his emotions. He put everything on hold and was walking through life like a zombie, when all of the sudden his life exploded because of his cancer diagnosis.
“He’s no longer living a dull life and isn’t bored or depressed. He doesn’t have time for that,” Cranston says. “He definitely has fear and anxiety, but all those things he suffered from before are long gone.
“In a way, I think he’s attracted to it,” Cranston says. “It’s who he is now — and who he is fully going to be.”
“Breaking Bad” won’t end until its final eight episodes air next summer, with the cast and crew taking a hiatus before production begins this fall on the final installments. “The writers and I will get back together in a month or month-and-a-half . . . we’ll plug away, then start shooting again,” says Gilligan.
“We’ve got some big ideas,” he says. “There’s a lot of connective tissue, storywise, in stringing one event to another. We still have a lot of surprises left with which to surprise ourselves.”
Cranston says he has no idea what’s in store for Walt’s final hurrah — but he does have some theories.
“Walter White is not done — he’s got a few more tricks up his sleeve,” he says. “He’s not gonna lie down and take it at the end. The only thing I do know, and I’m only guessing, is that he’s come this far and there’s no reason for him to put his hands up in the air and say, ‘You got me.’
“It’s not gonna end that way for Walt,” he says. “There’s no easy way out.”
BREAKING BAD
Today, 10 p.m., AMC