Like Watching a Dog Chase its Tale

is what I get out of watching dramas about damned men. Breaking Bad has got me officially open. Like a meth head I have been spending (weekend) hours sitting in shuttered rooms hitting the Netflix pipe for hit after hit after hit. (My lips are burned, don't ask any questions). True drama depends on the clash of extreme circumstances. Whether it be

1) A good man/woman weathering bad times (ex. Japanese manga classic Lone Wolf and Cub )

2) Children navigating the world of adults (ex. E. T. the Extraterrestrial )

3) Evil People doing bad things for righteous reasons (ex. Kill Bill Vols. 1 and 2 )
and my favorite

4) the slow self corrupting of a noble soul (paradigmatic ex. The Godfather ).

And so I am enmeshed in the story of Walter White/Heisenberg (nom de drugs) high school chemistry teacher cum meth genius (or as series creator Vince Gilligan states "Turn Mr. Chips into Scarface) and his struggles to survive and command the circumstances of his two lives.I am not sure if what I enjoy is the tragedy of such a tale or the adventures in transformation nature of it.
  The tragedy of course is the witnessing of the good, the pure and the noble being dragged down in to the reality of living. Of course we may enjoy the ride because, let's be honest the "good, the pure and the noble" irritate the shit out of us because those are rare qualities among bustling humanity (Fuck em' why should they be superior!).  But of course what we really are doing is grieving for the loss of the possibility of these qualities among humanity. The world is a hard place and one that we want to be better through the presence of better people. When Walter White is affected by the horrors he witnesses and then later on logically, necessarily commits them, we watch him slowly fall prey to warped but noble intentions. There is something frightening about good intentions  going to shit because they blind you because we all have good intentions and are subject to getting sucked into that tunnel vision. It is more than  believing that the means justify the ends but the danger of being consumed by the details of the ends and losing the larger picture. It's not the Devil in the details, it is Hell itself.
  The other side is the adventure of the character's transformation. Character arcs, dynamic personas are engaging because it ads dynamism to the story, the characters changes affect the plot, tone and possibilities of the story. Walter White's transformation into cold hearted, cooly logical, bloody handed Heisenberg is all the more exciting because as actor Bryan Cranston tells us

Walter White is imminently identifiable to most viewers. His lack of power to change his life, his vulnerability to the chaos of existence and as Cranston describes the character's emotional core to Marc Maron on the WTF Podcast, his fear is so immediately recognizable to most viewers that White stands in for us as we take charge of our lives. The "damning" of his soul is also an adventure in the transformation of a kitten into a tyger. White's descent into the worlds of drug dealing is a  step by step discovery of reserves of energy and will, the character did not know he had. Eschewing the timid, insecure, quietly desperate high school chemistry teacher, White asserts himself in a Nitszchean will that alters his consciousness and by sheer force the world around him. We can certainly debate the merits of how, why and into what Walt transforms but lets not be hypocritical, our culture's identification with bad asses encompasses a host of anti-social types (homocidal cops, sociopaths and soldiers). Good, bad or indifferent the point is power, and at the end of the day everybody wants it. Walter White taps into that lizrd side of himself and like some dark chrysalis evolves into a new being, eating his fear of failure, chance and authority's control over him in order to nourish a figure never before seen on US commercial television. There is immeasurable pleasure and satisfaction in witnessing self creation even if its means plunging into the bowels of a borderland hell. Walter White is not a role model but he is an example of a humanity willing and able to sharpen its instincts and make full use of its powers to procure what humans have desperately scrambled over this blue marble for, for tens of thousands of years . . . control.