<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"   This week, an all-Breaking Bad special issue! &amp;quot;The real city, one might say, produces only criminals; the imaginary city produces the gangster,&amp;quot; critic Robert Warshaw once wrote. &amp;quot;He is what we want to be and what we are afraid we may become.&amp;quot; The transformation from common criminal to pop icon has rarely been more dramatic than in Breaking Bad, which mythologizes America&amp;#039;s filthiest, least-glamorous drug trade. Booze, coke, and even crack \u2014 which at least had its own soundtrack \u2014 were all cooler than crystal meth, a cheap drug made from Duane Reade cold meds; a trailer-park business without a style or geographical place; a pestilent addiction that turns pretty party people into sore-riddled, hollowed-out fuck-ups who steal, say, ATM machines. Instead of soft-peddling meth, the show doubled down on its ugliness with a shot of pathetic revulsion: a pudgy, middle-aged man in his tightie-whities, sputtering impotently beside his shitty RV. Now fans are dressing up in Heisenberg Halloween costumes. How did we get hooked? I&amp;#039;d argue that the show&amp;#039;s ascendance has less to do with Walter White, drug kingpin, than Jesse Pinkman, pusher.  In Breaking Bad,Walt was the drug; Jesse has always been the dealer. We look to Walter White for that mad rush, for that sick kick, for that dangerous thrill. But Jesse is the one who helps us feel it.  More than any of this TV golden age&amp;#039;s many great antihero dramas, Breaking Bad has been lean and mean. Other, expansive shows with HBO budgets, urban settings, and huge casts have flaunted their sprawl and delivered stripped-down bottle episodes on rare occasions. Breaking Bad has been the opposite: Such a skeletal show, it&amp;#039;s often seemed that no more than two characters are ever on-screen together \u2014 Walt and Skyler, Walt and Hank, but mostly, Walt and Jesse. Regardless of the many Skyler defenders and Hank ennoblers, this show has been a stool built on two legs only, Walt and Jesse, specifically designed to fall over.  Close your eyes and imagine Walt and Jesse together and you&amp;#039;ll see them alone: in an R.V., in a hermetically sealed lab, in a car, in an empty room, or isolated against the alien horizon of the New Mexico desert. Remember how disorienting it was to see Jesse sitting at the family table with Skyler, bitching about frozen lasagna? (&amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s like, hell yeah I&amp;#039;m stoked for this lasagna! And then you nuke it, and the cheese gets all scabby!&amp;quot;) From the very first episode, the show pulled the viewer out of the suburban, populated world of Albuquerque \u2014 a world of neighbors and colleagues \u2014 and tightened the frame around an odd couple that suddenly didn&amp;#039;t seem so odd, out there on their own.   By isolating these two men, and contrasting them foremost against one another, and little else, there&amp;#039;s always been a certain forced perspective at work, creating the illusion that Walt is so very big and Jesse is not so very bad. It&amp;#039;s a large part of how Jesse Pinkman \u2014 killer, dealer, addict, and all-around fuck-up \u2014 has become such a semi-heroic, catchphrase-happy fan favorite. Compared to a monster like Walter White, how could he not seem lovable, an unloved son, an abused dog? As opposed to, say, a self-pitying multimillionaire drug dealer and murderer. We have been invited to see Walter White through Jesse Pinkman&amp;#039;s eyes ever since that pilot, when the wise-ass wanksta in the ugly clothes videotaped Mr. White in his undies, mocking him, saying &amp;quot;Werk it, baby! Werk it!&amp;quot; And, oh, baby, over five seasons, did Mr. White werk it, flip it, and reverse it \u2014 with Jesse as his most appreciative audience: mocking him and judging him along the way, but obsessively following him, much like the show&amp;#039;s fans. More than any other character, Jesse gives us the conspiratorial sense of being almost in on it.  When Jesse gaped in amazement, we gaped. When Jesse cowered, we cowered. When Jesse marveled at Mr. White&amp;#039;s meth-making &amp;quot;art,&amp;quot; we did, too \u2014 even though we knew, as Jesse said in their stupendous bottle episode &amp;quot;The Fly,&amp;quot; it really didn&amp;#039;t fucking matter: &amp;quot;We have the least picky customers ever; we make poison for people who don&amp;#039;t care.&amp;quot; Yet, at each turn, when Jesse sorta-kinda bought into Walt&amp;#039;s self-serving, ultimately egomaniacal rationalizations, a surprising number of fans sorta-kinda did too. The show didn&amp;#039;t just dramatize the slow slide into moral degradation; Jesse invited viewers along for the ride and narrated the tour. Only when Jesse finally declared Walter White &amp;quot;the devil&amp;quot; \u2014 after all the death and destruction and rationalization \u2014 did a significant number of holdout fans finally relent and agree that, yeah, maybe Walter White wasn&amp;#039;t going to redeem himself in the end.  We have all been Jesse, at some point, laughing like imbeciles at the show&amp;#039;s sick gags, reeling at Walt&amp;#039;s evil, convincing ourselves that we&amp;#039;re clued in when we&amp;#039;ve often just been frogs in the boiling water, prone to the same awesome admiration and slow-building revulsion, a little titillated by the pleasure of being outsmarted and out maneuvered by the malevolent plotting of Mr. White, and, by extension, show runner Vince Gilligan. The ultimate, diehard fan, Jesse admires Walt even as he recognizes his evil: &amp;quot;Mr. White, he&amp;#039;s the devil. You know, he is \u2014 he is smarter than you, he is luckier than you.&amp;quot;  So why couldn&amp;#039;t Jesse leave, when he must have known, on some level, that the only way to protect Andrea and Brock was to disappear forever?  For Jesse, it must have been about more than the ricin, about more than the revenge, which he knew would put Andrea at risk. Maybe the show&amp;#039;s street-smart dealer got high on his own supply, yet again: Like us, he couldn&amp;#039;t get enough of Walt. He just had to ride that high to the end, both for his own curiosity and ours, and no matter how ugly he knew that end was going to be.  Looking for a series-finale spoiler? It&amp;#039;s worth noting that, so far, Jesse Pinkman has predicted the future as perceptively as your favorite recappers: &amp;quot;Whatever you think is supposed to happen, I&amp;#039;m telling you,&amp;quot; said Jesse. &amp;quot;The exact reverse opposite of that is gonna happen. Okay?&amp;quot; Okay. PLUS: Much More Breaking Bad Coverage &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a23600/breaking-bad-walt-and-jesse/>