REVIEW: BOOK(?) No. 8 BREAKING BAD (SEASON 1) AND 9.BERTRAND RUSSELL

TOM WELLS

Always happy to let others slice themselves on the leading edge of culture, I finally got around to watching Breaking Bad as this month’s JFDI selection. Yep, that’s us—a book club that watches TV.  We now expect an avalanche of applications to join. Well, we would if we didn’t confess that we also had to read a minimum of three essays from the collected works Bertrand Russell as a BB companion piece.  The best of the many good things I can say about Breaking Bad is that it manages to make it cool to be a smart, sick, bitter old man. Bertrand Russell is the opposite.    

The book club assignment called for us to watch the first BB season, which contained just seven episodes.  You could watch additional episodes and even whole seasons for whatever is the scientific name for the neutralised state of extra credit.  I stuck to the basic assignment.  By the time I'd finished watching the final episode of Season 1, I did not want to go on to Season 2, but only because I thought there is no way it could be as good.  I’m assured that it is.  Many say, even better.  I can’t imagine.

I got the feeling from the story arc that the writers thought BB would be one season and out.  As a result, Episode 6 represents the true climax, with Episode 7 poised as the segue to either a new season or a blaze of glory.  And as the climactic episode of a supremely well-written series, Episode 6 may be the best single instalment of television I’ve ever seen.  It is certainly the best I can remember. 

I don’t need to rehash the premise or the many interconnected plots.  Let’s just say that high-school chemistry teacher Walter White is MacGyver’s seriously desperate twin, desperate in ways that echo loudly in a world of growing polarization between haves and have-nots, between those who play by the rules and those for whom the rules are there to be gamed.

Bertrand Russell was one of the haves—he was born Lord Russell—who happened to also play by the rules: the rules of logic-- cold, precise logic.  He appears never to have been conflicted.  He appears always to have been insufferable.  Just ask his four wives.