Breaking Bad Was Supposed To Have A Fast Pace & A Longer Season 1
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There are so many reasons why people call Breaking Bad best TV show of all time. And the biggest of all reasons is the way Walter White played by Bryan Cranston transforms into Heisenberg over the course of 5 seasons.
The crime drama is a slow burner and one of the best examples of great writing. But do you know there was a time when the creator Vince Gilligan didn’t have enough faith on Breaking Bad and wanted to show the viewers a rather fast transformation of Walter White.
Those who have watched Breaking Bad know that the first season of the show is relatively shorter compared to the rest. This happened because the Writers Strike at that time ended up shortening the 1st season of the show by 2 episodes. But continue to read how this unwanted development changed the fate of the show for good.
As per Vince Gilligan, Breaking Bad episodes that they were forced to cut would’ve shown Walter White’s transformation much more quickly and violently. However, with time, Vince felt that it was good that the show didn’t go that way. During an interaction with Creative Screenwriting earlier, he shared, “We had plotted out all our episodes before the show ever went on the air, and we didn’t know how well the show would be received,”
“Not knowing how the public would take to it, you tend to want to be a little more sensational. You want to really keep the show exciting and interesting and keep ’em watching. All of that to say that those last two episodes, because of that, would have been really big episodes, and would have taken the characters into a hugely different realm than that they were already in, and it would have been a hard thing to come back from, coming into season two.” he added.
Further explaining, he said, “We’re not just doing those two episodes coming into season two,” and added. “We threw those out completely and we’re starting somewhere else. We’re building more slowly than we otherwise would have built. I think that’s really good, because I know we’ve all had our favorite shows that were really interesting up to a certain point, but maybe they just go too far, and then there’s no going back from it. To me, the trick is to do as little as possible with the characters, and yet keep them as interesting as possible. It’s a real balancing act.”
Now that’s what we call a blessing in disguise! Isn’t it? What do you think? Let us know in the comments section.
Breaking Bad starred Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, Anna Gunn, Dean Norris, RJ Mitte, Betsy Brandt, Bob Odenkirk among others. After the end of the show in 2013, it got a spin-off show named Better Call Saul and then a film titled El Camino about its character Jesse was also made in 2019.
