Breaking Bad had already been on for a couple of seasons before I finally gave it a chance. My reluctance to sit down and start watching it was kind of odd considering that I had enjoyed actor Bryan Cranston’s work on Malcom in the Middle, and also from a memorable role he played on an episode of the X-Files. The stark contrast between those two performances was so incredible and impressive that I recognized, even back then, that he was an amazing actor.
After the show began earning almost universal praise from critics and developed a cult following, I still resisted. The reason was because I was under the false impression that it glorified and even celebrated drug dealing. I wasn’t interested in such a thing.
I’ve never been a big fan of stories where the bad guys are supposed to be the ones that viewers or readers root for. Flawed characters who are having trouble finding their way, or even antiheroes? Sure. But criminals with little or no moral conscience? Not so much.
It’s the reason I don’t like movies like Natural Born Killers and some of Quentin Tarantino’s work. A lot of people interpret such stories as being edgy, and maybe in some cases they’re right, but those types of offerings typically aren’t for me.
One night, I was up late watching television and came upon an interview with actor Dean Norris. Norris was a familiar face to me. I recognized him from small parts in a number of action movies from the 80’s and 90’s, but I honestly had no idea he was part of Breaking Bad’s cast until that very moment.
Norris discussed the rising popularity of Breaking Bad, and only then did I learn that the drug element of the plot-line was, in fact, not romanticized. Instead, the story largely revolved around the consequences of being involved in the drug business, even if the motivations for initially getting into it came from an act of desperation and moral introspection. It was a show about reaping what you sow, and I found the premise intriguing because it was the same theme I was employing in the novel I was writing at the time, From a Dead Sleep.
I began watching the first season of Breaking Bad on DVD and was immediately hooked. I found the show’s writers to be brilliant, the story to be compelling, and the acting to be superb. And as I was pulled into the plot and became more familiar with the show’s characters, I unexpectedly found myself identifying some uncanny similarities between the show and what I had already completed of my novel.
The meat of both stories took place along a rugged, sparsely-populated terrain. For Breaking Bad, it was the New Mexico desert. For From a Dead Sleep, it was the backwoods of the Colorado mountains.
Two of the main characters were brother-in-laws. One was an intellectual and the other was more of a brute.
The Breaking Bad character I found particularly interesting was the one portrayed by Dean Norris: DEA agent Hank Schrader. To me, Schrader was, in many ways, a composite of the two main characters of my book.
Like Police Chief Gary Lumbergh, he was a career-oriented law enforcement professional with a Type A personality, who took great pride in his work. He saw moral goodness in his commitment to protecting the public. He wasn’t a large man in size (his wife was taller then him), but he was confident, steadfast, and when placed in a chaotic situation, became a reluctant warrior.
Like Sean Coleman, he was a gritty, physical character who took no guff from others – especially those who treated him as an inferior. He had an affection for beer. He was determined and relentless in his pursuit of unanswered questions, and he wasn’t opposed to cracking a few heads to find them.
I also noticed several similarities between Breaking Bad’s Walter White and From a Dead Sleep’s Kyle Kimble. Both were morally compromised men living a double-life who, through reckless decisions and actions, put themselves into multiple levels of danger in which they found themselves at the mercy of treacherous people. They could only escape the clenches of these people by taking extraordinary, morally repugnant measures.
And truth be told, one of my original ideas for Kyle Kimble was for him to be suffering from terminal cancer. Sound familiar? I later elected to go in a different direction.
The feel of Breaking Bad was also comparable to what I was going for with From a Dead Sleep. In many ways, they’re both like modern day Westerns, action-packed with characters who aren’t black and white, but rather multiple shades of gray. It’s an element that I think brings some realness to both stories.
With all of that being said, no one will mistake the two. From a Dead Sleep is a unique work that follows a deeply flawed man through his quest for the truth and personal redemption, in the wake of a mysterious, sobering event. It’s filled with colorful characters with vastly different perspectives and motivations, navigating their way through a tangled web of secrets and complexities.
Still, I interpret the similarities between my novel and the show to be a good omen, because I consider Breaking Bad to be one of the greatest shows ever – a true classic. And something like that is great company to be in.
