Breaking Bad and Strong Fictional Characters

     I'm not one to tend to get involved in watching many television shows. The commitment involved always seems to be too excessive, and I feel that I quickly become lost when I don't have time to keep up with regularly watching them. That being said, after hearing wonderful things about it, I've recently begun watching the AMC drama, Breaking Bad - and it's just as good of a show s it was built up to be. After watching the first season, I wondered exactly what it was that made it so enrapturing, finally coming to the conclusion that the most important reason was the strength of the characters and the writing behind them.

     A brief rundown of the premise: Walter White is a fifty-year-old chemistry teacher who, despite having no history of smoking or any other endangering conditions, develops a likely mortal case of lung cancer. In an effort to provide for his family after he dies, Walt begins working with a former student of his, Jesse Pinkman, to cook and sell crystal meth. Fairly quickly, things go predictably badly, and a story involving issues of crime, morality, and family begins to emerge.

    Now, the story of Breaking Bad isn't the only strong factor: the cinematography and production is just of impressive. But as for the characters, I think the reason they're so sympathetic is tht they are very realistic in all aspects. So often in fiction, characters fall into archetypes that never really fit how people would react to given situations. To me, at least, this always feels somewhat disconcerting and makes the work as a whole feel a lot less realistic. In Breaking Bad, however, the characters are decidedly imperfect: these imperfections  however, are what makes the viewers really care about what happens to them, which is vital to any good work of fiction.