Breaking Bad, the dramatic cauldron

and why no other country could’ve made this show…

Currently viewing, as I am, the second series of the superb tv drama Breaking Bad, I was prompted to consider the ingredients that go into the cooking of a compelling dramatic gumbo.

Feature film dramatic structure relies heavily on the inciting incident – the event that changes the status quo and pushes the protagonist into action to solve a problem. The inciting incident is the rocket fuels that gives the drama lift-off. The more compelling the shift in status quo by the inciting incident, the more driven will be the dramatic action.

What strikes me about the more unique properties of long-form episodic drama is that rather than inciting-incidents and breaks in status quo, what drives a long-form drama is the cauldron – the combination of spices that make it bubble.

To push and, more importantly sustain, long-form drama the cauldron needs to be setup and set to boil with a specific cocktail of characters and circumstances that react with each other.

Some long-form dramas fuel their cauldron by locale – the venerable Precinct Drama. Hospitals and police stations form natural cauldrons of ingredients. But for a dramatic series that doesn’t have a definable and naturally dramatic precinct the most important thing the writer must do is deliberately and carefully select the ingredient components and orchestrate their boiling with each other.

This is where Breaking Bad stands as a preeminent screenwriting school in a box.

Let us break down the ingredients of the Breaking Bad cauldron from the outset of season 1.

Take one Brilliant scientist reduced to working as over-qualified high school teacher and holding down 2 jobs to make ends meet.

Add a Son who has cerebral palsy.

Stir in a Wife who is pregnant with unexpected unplanned child.

Then baste Brilliant scientist high school teacher with a diagnosis of  cancer.

Ensure that Medical insurance won’t cover the bills.

Boil the over qualified high school teacher scientist to the point where he is forced to do the unthinkable – use his knowledge of chemistry to make crystal-meth and become a drug dealer to pay the medical bills and secure the family financially after his eminent death

And just to ensure the broth is extra spicy give the high school teacher scientist a brother in law who works for the Drug Squad.

Vola! The perfect bubbling cauldron of dramatic gumbo. What this superbly crafted set of dramatic sparks does is generate for Breaking Bad the same long-term pressure cooker that a precinct drama has by virtue of its location.

Long-form dramas that don’t succeed in being as compelling as they might or should be often do so because there aren’t enough combustable elements in the cauldron.

But as I ponder this astoundingly simple yet clever construction in Breaking Bad and consider how Australian screenwriters might set about generating more compelling dramatic structures in long-form drama, I am confronted by a stark irony.

No other country in the western world could have made Breaking Bad.

And it’s not because America the characters or events are particular American or couldn’t be transposed. Its not that America has any particular talent or because the Hollywood machine is so advanced. No other western country on earth could have made Breaking Bad because all other western countries on Earth have universal health care…!

Without the fundamental premise of private, user-pays, health coverage (or lack there of for millions of US citizens) Breaking Bad cannot exist – the cauldron doesn’t bubble.

So there you have it. At last I understand why the US is so adamant about not joining the rest of the civilised world in having universal health care for it’s citizens… It’s so they can make really bloody good TV shows!

Comments

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A very sharp analysis, man! Nova artificia docuit fames.