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Oct. 13th, 2013 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
planet_x_oneI finished the series finale of Breaking Bad and the season three finale of The Walking Dead on the same day. Aside from roots in Southern Gothic, and lots of well-executed Badass tropes, the shows both share an interesting motif -- one that really becomes the entire moral of Breaking Bad: we live a dull, repetitive and generally meaningless existence. To step outside it -- to abandon it to the most extreme, ruthless and violent survivalism -- is the only way to truly be 'alive'.
The shows give a clever wink to this; Breaking Bad is centered around a man dying of cancer, and The Walking Dead is, well, a whole lot of dead people.
Both stories do give the joys of regular life their due, but the characters only reach their super-human level of 'aliveness' when they are put into the violence and struggle played out across the stark and strange beauty of their respective American landscapes. At the brilliant last shot of Breaking Bad, I found myself asking, "How can I get there?"
The shows give a clever wink to this; Breaking Bad is centered around a man dying of cancer, and The Walking Dead is, well, a whole lot of dead people.
Both stories do give the joys of regular life their due, but the characters only reach their super-human level of 'aliveness' when they are put into the violence and struggle played out across the stark and strange beauty of their respective American landscapes. At the brilliant last shot of Breaking Bad, I found myself asking, "How can I get there?"
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Date: 2013-10-14 03:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-14 03:18 am (UTC)Does this need a spoiler alert? I the first sentence was warning enough.
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Date: 2013-10-14 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-14 03:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-14 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-15 01:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-14 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-14 11:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-15 01:35 am (UTC)