AMC's 'Breaking Bad' taking characters to even darker places
The (literally) explosive season two finale of "Breaking Bad" should have been a wake-up call for Walter White (Emmy winner Bryan Cranston), who watched in shock as two airliners collided in the Albuquerque skies above him.
That ghastly accident, after all, was just the latest in a series of falling dominoes tipped into motion by Walt and his young drug-dealing partner, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), whose own drug use led to an ultimately fatal relapse by Jane (Krysten Ritter), his girlfriend. Jane's death so devastated and distracted her father (guest star John de Lancie), an air traffic controller, that he allowed the two jets to stray into each other's airspace.
Walt's marriage and family life, meanwhile, is imploding, as wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) reaches the end of her tether over Walt's lies and deceptions. Surely Walt must realize it's time to abandon his life of crime.
Or maybe not, Cranston hints, as the Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning series returns for a third season on Sunday, March 21.
"I'm starting to completely accept the metamorphosis of my character," he says. "I'm breaking out of my cocoon and ready to become a different person, and that transition over time is one of the things that was the most compelling for me about wanting to do this show. Vince (Gilligan, the series creator) said he wanted to do something that he's never seen before, and that's, as he famously puts it, turn Mr. Chips into Scarface."
If the formerly mild-mannered chemistry teacher is in danger of losing himself to his alter ego, the elusive drug kingpin "Heisenberg," however, his young sidekick starts season three in rehab, heartbroken and reeling from the realization that he is responsible for killing the love of his life. Watch for these new episodes to give Paul, who scored an Emmy nomination for season two, even more of a chance to shine.
"I think Jesse is changing very much this season,'' Gilligan says. "In fact, it's kind of Jesse's turn to transform and to morph. You will see that throughout the season, particularly in the season ender. I don't want to say too much about it, but it's a big Jesse episode.
"Aaron is like Bryan in that he can play pretty much anything. He just has range and chops.."
Paul says the intensity of season two really took a toll on him, but he found season three even more challenging.
"This season probably was the scariest to play, because it's like Jesse is a completely different person," Paul says. "I didn't really know how to approach it, because it was like trying to approach a whole other person, and yet the same person. It was hard to kind of intertwine that. In the first couple of episodes, he isn't giving away much as where he is emotionally, but he has grown to accept who he is, and he is going to live with that, with knowing that he killed the love of his life. He has to face his own battles, and it's a tough hill to climb.
"It's really a season of change for everyone involved. Everyone is breaking bad in their own way. The stakes are much higher."
The season opener ends with a pivotal scene for Gunn and Cranston, as Skyler finally drags the truth out of Walt.
"Skyler really is a very formidable person," Gunn says. "There is a steel core, a real strength, to who she is. She isn't going to sit back and say, 'I don't know what my husband is doing, but oh, well... .'"
As Cranston, Paul and Gunn rise to the new challenges this season, Gilligan admits that he's still a little stunned to be starting a third season on a show that is so uncompromisingly adult and morally complex.
"I still can't get over the fact that this show is even on the air," he says, laughing. "It amazes me that AMC had the courage to put our show on television. When they committed to us, it was before 'Mad Men' was on the air. We had shopped our show around town to various places, and everybody perhaps wisely turned us down. And I understood why.
"We're a very different, unique kind of show. We're a show with a protagonist who is dying of cancer and who is cooking crystal meth, which is pretty reprehensible and hard to justify. AMC really went out on a limb, and they let us take the story where we want to take it. When things get dark, they don't scare easily. And that's nice."