Watching Breaking Bad for the Third Time

I've started to feel grateful that I watched Breaking Bad eight or nine years ago.

I'd just started high school. In middle school I'd read Jiang Nan's Dragon Raja, and Dragon Raja III in particular had a big effect on me. On my own, I'd learned a lot about Japanese history and culture, and that opened up my curiosity about cultures around the world.

That was also when I started watching American TV, and the first American show I ever truly finished was Breaking Bad.

Lately I've been watching Breaking Bad for the third time. The first time was eight or nine years ago, the second maybe two or three years ago. Every few years, I pull it out and watch it again.

I used to think there were already far more books, shows, and movies in the world than anyone could get through in a lifetime, so anything was worth reading or watching once, and that was it.

Now I've realized that classics are classics for a reason. Some books survive for a hundred years, and some shows and movies still have people talking decades later. There's a reason behind it.

Good work is worth watching again and again.

And as I get older, I've found that with books and shows alike, every time I go back, I feel something completely different.

Take Breaking Bad. When I first watched it in high school, I thought Jesse was clumsy and dumb, just dead weight for Walter to drag around. And I thought Walter was amazing, practically a god.

That's how simple my thinking was back then. But this time, on my third watch, I'd only finished season two when something started to feel off. Walter is smart and careful, that's true. But I just can't like him anymore. There's a deeply unstable wildness in him. He looks like a mild, honest man with no other choice, but he's actually incredibly destructive.

He's a bit arrogant, and his skills make him think he's untouchable. He doesn't understand how things really are, but he always wants them to go the way he imagines.

In today's office jargon, Walter is the boss type.

As for Jesse, my view of him has completely flipped. Unlike Walter, who shows up already fully formed, Jesse's conflicts, struggles, changes, and growth are laid out pretty clearly across the whole show. The part that stuck with me most is in season two, when someone robs one of his guys of product and he grabs a gun to go teach them a lesson, and then everything that happens in their house.

The key part is how he cares for and protects the two addicts' little kid. It's like he's protecting the version of himself that hadn't gone bad yet.

The show's English title is Breaking Bad, meaning going bad for good. But as for Jesse, even when he shoots Gale dead, I don't think there's much evil in his heart.

Walter is different. In the end even he tells his wife, "I did it for me."

I have to thank myself from years ago for pressing play on Breaking Bad and having the patience to finish it.

Because if it were today, years later, I might never be able to settle down and get through a show like Breaking Bad.

Later I watched Better Call Saul because I'd finished Breaking Bad. After that I watched plenty of shows and movies, and read plenty of books, that took patience to finish.

I think it's important, when you're young, to train yourself to have the patience for something slow.

It's a bit like the logic of compound interest.

The first season of Breaking Bad might seem pretty unremarkable, and the plot moves slowly. But as the story builds episode by episode, it keeps getting better and better, layer on layer.

Turn every bit of your time and energy into a lever that keeps multiplying itself. That's compound interest.

You have to learn to sit through a whole season of Breaking Bad, and you have to learn to keep doing the right thing, slowly, for the long haul.