The Philosophy Of Mind And Breaking Bad

In a throwaway scene from an episode of the final season of Breaking Bad, Badger and Skinny Peter (Jesse's two drug-dealing pals) are talking about the transporter on Star Trek; you know what the transporter is even if you've never seen Star Trek, the "beam me up Mr Scott" machine: a teleportation device for transporting people instantly from one place to another. It supposedly works like this: the ship's computer breaks down the person being transported into a digital scan of their atoms and sends this digital information to the surface of another planet or another ship where the computer then reforms the person, intact, atom by atom. Ah, what about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle I hear you ask? When they reassemble the atoms won't the humans all be messed up at the other end? There are 10^30 atoms in the human body and every single atom is subject to quantum uncertainty...Well, apparently everything will be fine; according to Wikipedia:  

Heisenberg compensators remove uncertainty from the subatomic measurements, making transporter travel feasible. Further technology involved in transportation include a computer pattern buffer to enable a degree of leeway in the process. When asked "How does the Heisenberg compensator work?" by Time magazine, Star Trek technical adviser Michael Okuda responded: "It works very well, thank you."^[3]

Anyway lets for the sake of argument assume that the transporter does work. What Skinny Pete was saying to Badger in Breaking Bad was not an argument about the physics but an argument from the philosophy of mind. Pete's contention was that every time Kirk gets transported somewhere it's not the original Captain Kirk but a recreation, a copy, a copy who has the same mind state and the same memories as the about-to-be transported individual but it's not the same man. The original Captain Kirk, Pete argues, is destroyed in the transporter room and a copy reassembled at the transport site. Consciousness, Pete is implying, cannot be transported because consciousness is a property that cannot be subject to measurement. The copy of Captain Kirk now on the alien planet only thinks he's the same man because he shares Kirk's memories and mindstate at the moment of transportation but unfortunately the real Captain Kirk was killed by the transporter. The copy goes on to live Kirk's life, Pete says, until he too must enter the transporter and he too dies. Throughout the course of the show, Pete argues, there are hundreds of Kirk copies that get created, while the real Kirk dies the very first time he gets transported. Pete just throws this idea out there and then Badger pitches his Star Trek pie eating contest script idea but its worth thinking about. If you want to know more about the concept there's a Star Trek wiki discussion on what happens when you transport, here. And there's a really nice philosophical analysis of the transporter concept by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett, in their 1982 book The Mind’s I where they call the transporter a "murdering twinmaker." Hofstadter further explores consciousness in his fascinating book I Am A Strange Loop and Daniel Dennett examines in some depth the idea of materialism in his - rather misleadingly - titled book Consciousness Explained. Whether you believe in strict materialism or a Cartesian dualism I'm not sure I can see how the transporter could work without killing you and replacing you with a copy. 
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But what exactly is consciousness and how does it evolve from matter? It's a huge problem in philosophy, psychology and neurology. Antonio Damasio attempts to explain some of the elements of the problem here: 

Some Breaking Bad Cheers And Boos

Needless to say, MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

my favourite were the existential episodes

1. Cheer. The season finale. Glad they brought back all the old characters, tied up the loose ends and gave us the pleasure of seeing the really bad guys brought down and the not quite so bad guy (Walt) go out in a manner of his own choosing. And Jesse lived. And got away. Not quite as good as the fantastic Face Off season finale but fairly satisfying never the less. And certainly not the disaster that was Battlestar Galactica, Lost, The Sopranos, Seinfeld etc. etc.
2. Cheer. The deaths of Todd and Lydia. Among the most cathartic and fan pleasing moments in any show. Ever.
3. Boo. The money. I never bought the whole premise for that plot development about them "finding his money". As if brainy Walt wouldn't have checked whether the van he was driving out into the desert had GPS or not. You or I might have forgot. Walt, no.
4. Boo. Skyler White. Hmmm. Never bought Anna Gunn's performance and the dialogue and scenes between her and Marie were always dreary. When the Big Bang Theory decided to have 3 female leads they brought in female writers. Breaking Bad never did and it showed.
5. Boo. Merchandising. The merchandising around this show has been ridiculous. This isn't Star Wars. Its a dark, adult crime drama. You don't need to merchandise it to death. No one needs the money. Not cool. And as for Talking Bad don't get me started on that tacky infomercial of a show that really is an utter embarrassment.
6. Cheer. Albuquerque. When I lived in Denver I used to drive down to New Mexico a lot. I'm glad many more people are going to visit the blue collar (and pre BB largely untouristed) city of ABQ.
7. Cheer. From Mr Chips To Scarface. Even though they took this cheesy idea literally for the season finale it still kinda worked.
8. Cheer. The existential episodes. My favourite episodes were the ones where not much happened and we went off into a Samuel Beckett play (like the one were Walt looks for a fly in his meth lab). That was a breath of fresh air in a television industry that seems obsessed by the need for every scene to turn the wheel of the plot (an idea pushed by the likes of David Mamet). The only drama show that seems to do that now is Louie and Louis CK only gets away with it because people think they're watching a comedy.
9. Boo. New Hampshire. New Hampshire didn't look a bit like New Hampshire. The sky was the wrong colour.
10. Cheer and Boo. BB is everywhere. I'm glad but also a little sad that this has become a pop culture phenom. When I started plugging Breaking Bad on this blog five years ago no one had heard of the show. Now look at the monster. Two(!) front page stories in The New York Times, mentions on the TV news, entire features in serious magazines. I'm a little wistful of the days when me and six other chemistry geeks were watching this programme in our basements.

Breaking Bad S5

I learned this week that Breaking Bad, the best programme on American TV doesn't get shown in the UK. Apparently it was bumped around the schedules of Channel 5, never really found an audience, and no one has picked up the rights for the current season. If you want to see Breaking Bad in the British Isles the only place to catch it, so I'm told, is on the Irish language channel TG4. (Presumably with subtitles in Irish, or maybe even dubbed in Irish?) This is madness. Breaking Bad is the best crime drama on American TV, hell, I think its the best drama on American telly, period. Bryan Cranston has owned the Emmy since beginning his run as put upon chemistry teacher Walter White who - spoiler alert - becomes a meth kingpin. The scripts of BB are sharp, realistic, well directed and the supporting cast (with one or two exceptions) is excellent. When violence occurs the repercussions of the violence are always shown and two of the most important emotional vectors in the series are guilt and regret. Breaking Bad has far more energy and verve than Mad Men and what I love about White is his ability to outthink his opponents. He may lack courage, he may lack cool, he may be dying of cancer, but he's always the smartest guy in the room. S5's premiere episode was a fine example of this. After S4's brilliant final episode "Face Off" incriminating evidence had to be gotten rid of in the evidence room of a highly protected police station. This was a classic locked room problem and White solved it (with a little help from Jesse) in an innovative and clever way. s5e1 also gave us a flash forward to the future when Walt looks to be in serious trouble on his 52nd birthday....ah, whom the screenwriting gods wish to destroy, they first crown with laurels and then they bestow hubris...
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More from me about Breaking Bad here, and here. The Slate Culture Blog has some theories about why Breaking Bad hasn't, er, broken bad, in the UK, here. 
Breaking Bad Episode series 1 episode 1 (the pilot) below:

Face Off - Breaking Bad s4

The secret role model of every chemistry teacher in America. 

This is a spoiler free look at the season 4 finale of Breaking Bad. 
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A man who would pick a pun would pick a pocket says Stephen Maturin in one of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels. Well that's certainly one opinion. I, however, am a sucker for a good pun. Face Off is the title of this episode. Nice, Mr. Gilligan, very nice indeed. 
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I liked the season finale a lot. Was it good enough to redeem a somewhat slow and patchy season? Did it make up for the creaking plot and the logic problems of the last two or three episodes? Actually, yes I think maybe it did. This episode was up there with the very best of season 1. We forget sometimes how clever Mr. White is. Neurotic, impulsive, emotional but very smart. And we also shouldn't forget that although Walter White got a degree in chemistry from the University of New Mexico a cancer diagnosis has given him a Ph.D. in advanced badassery. 
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The writing in Face Off was crisp, the directing taut, the acting spot on, the element of surprise, well, surprising and it ended with a nice Norah Jones/Danger Mouse song that I wasn't expecting either.   
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I'd really love them to end Breaking Bad at this point. I know that they won't but I wish they would. We don't really need to know how every little thing goes down and ending the entire series here would send the cast and the audience out on a high (no pun intended). 

The Wrong Kind of Slow - Breaking Bad Series 4

At Delphi, Apollo, the Lord of Light and patron of the Muses, urged pilgrims to "know themselves" and to "follow the path of moderation in all things." Slow is often a good thing, a useful antidote to an overheated world. Slow food, slow exercise, slow travel. You know the drill. You take the time to savour things, to enjoy the experience, the journey is its own reward...all that good stuff. 
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In film sometimes the slow burn works. Barry Lyndon has often been called slow but I find it engrossing. Same thing with 2001: A Space Odyssey. It can work in TV too, especially in this age of quick cuts and jumped up phony storylines that get solved in 40 minutes. But then there's the wrong kind of slow where the director or the show runner thinks that he's such a fascinating fellow that he can do anything he likes and we'll watch engrossed...This is what happened to Sophia Coppolla in her film Somewhere and it's whats been happening to Breaking Bad. Seven Episodes in we've covered the territory that they might have covered in perhaps two and a half episodes in another year. Brian Cranston has said on the Breaking Bad podcast that this policy is deliberate and that they are trying to "teach the American viewer an entirely new vocabulary and method for watching television." 
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Quite. Has social engineering been tried on American TV before? I can't imagine that this is a good idea. Breaking Bad's deliberate slowing down of the pacing has exposed a lot of the show's problems that I never noticed before. Here are some of them: 1) The plots can be shaky. Last Sunday's "we're selling drugs to get your attention" storyline was maybe the dumbest thing I've seen in four seasons. 2) Aaron Paul is a little too pretty and a tad too white collar for his role of Jessie. 3) Bryan Cranston is brilliant, as is the guy who plays Hank, but the rest of the cast (I'll name no names) are not the greatest actors working in the medium. 4) Mike's skills are increasingly supermanish and improbable. 5) All this has taken place in less than a year? It's getting like a Lee Child novel. How come everyone's not in the psych ward? (actually scratch that, that's probably going to be the slow boiling arc for next season) 6) The whole damn thing is just a little too played, no? 
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For me Breaking Bad, once one of the best shows on TV, has gone the route of dare I say it, Lost, or worse Battlestar Galactica Season 4. No, I take that back, nothing could be as bad as BSG S4, but they want to watch themselves and in the words of Robyn, they want to, you know, pick it up!

Sunday Night Viewing: Breaking Bad Season 4, Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 8

It's all about the writing. As the movies get bigger and dumber, television seems to get sharper. But even the best television writing can get tired as we all saw with Mad Men. Maybe the Brits have the right idea: two seasons of Fawlty Towers and The Office and then out...Maybe.
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If you don't want to read spoilers, stop reading now. 
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Breaking Bad S4 episode 1 wasn't as great as it could have been. Walt and Jessie were trapped in their lab awaiting their fate. The episode was titled Box Cutter and the camera lingered on the box cutter in the opening sequence with Gil. It was heavy handed. We knew the box cutter was going to be used to kill someone and we knew that neither of the principals was going to die, so there wasn't a whole lot of drama there. We also got a cursory look at Hank and Marie's story but I'm pretty bored when those two are on screen nowadays. Hank needs to recover and get back on Walt's trail, soon. Sal needs to become a major player. I'd like to see more scenes with Walt's son. Episode 2 had more circling of the wagons. The party scene went on for a long time. Jessie's arc you could see coming a mile off and I didn't buy Walt going to the chicken man's house or his proposal in the bar...I don't know, I think it might have been smarter to have these two episodes compressed into one. A slow start to the year, but I like the foundations that are being laid for an explosive season.
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Curb Your Enthusiasm has always been hit and miss. S8E1 was very much a miss. None of the stories worked for me and I was pretty unimpressed by the whole thing. Four of the Seinfeld writers worked on this episode and it didn't show anywhere. S8E2, however, was more inspired. Larry David is at his funniest when he's getting underneath the skin of those closest to him and when he's uncovering the fracture lines in politics and religion. Bob Einstein is a great foil for Larry and Marty Funkhauser's new found love of Judaism and the opening of a fantastic Palestinian Restaurant next to his beloved deli made a wonderful collision course. I laughed out loud more than a couple of times in this episode and the Sandy Koufax neologism was a nice touch: "You're Koufaxing me?" "Yeah, I'm Koufaxing you." 
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Breaking Bad S4 has yet to find its feet but I'm pretty sure it will. S8E1 of Curb was dull, obvious and kind of stupid, S8E2 was acute, witty and well observed. All in all I'm guardedly optimistic about the writing in these two returning shows. 

Mondo Telly

Because we're in Australia we get TV seasons a little bit later than other places which means that I've been doing some catching up in the last few weeks. I have some questions:

1. Has Modern Family always been this funny? Sure I knew Ed O'Neill was funny but I'd heard that MF was a rip off of Arrested Development and wasn't any good. That was a lie. It is good. Maybe a little schmaltzy in the last two minutes but generally funny throughout. The dog butler episode had me rolling in the aisles (especially the seemingly improvised doggy dialogue at the end) and the one with the clown...Seinfeldian. 

2. How in the name of all that's holy did Mondo lose Project Runway Season 8? Yes Gretchen Jones is a talented designer, but talent hits the target that others miss while genius hits the target others can't even see. Gretchen's designs came from Portland while Mondo's from some kind of alternative gay-Mexican-gothic universe. Michael Kors complained that Mondo's clothes were too young while all season long he was telling the designers not to be frumpy and matronly. What gives?

3. They cancelled Caprica already? I didn't even get to see one episode. Was it that bad?

4. And speaking of BSG alumni, Grace Park is really in Hawaii Five O? I watched nearly ten minutes of one of those and didn't see her at all but she is on the giant posters Channel 10 have hung up all over town. I would have watched more of H5O but I think I may have slipped into a boredom induced coma or something.

5. Top Gear went to Iraq? When? How? Did Clarkson say something offensive about camel jockeys?

6. Ok so I watched episode 1 of Boardwalk Empire. The one that was directed by Martin Scorsese. My question is this: is this the same Martin Scorsese that directed the Copacabana sequence and the helicopter/guns/pasta sauce climax in Goodfellas? If so what the hell happened to that guy?

7. Has the new season of Breaking Bad started? If not why not? What do chemistry teachers watch when Breaking Bad isn't on? You can't watch Mythbusters all the time can you? 

8. Has anyone seen that Jason Schwartzman detective show on HBO? Am I wrong or are they aiming squarely at the wanker/hipster/asshole market with that one?

9. Glenn Beck? A) Crazy B) Crazy like a fox C) Crazy like someone who listened to the Mormon missionaries at his front door and thought, yeah, sure, that sounds reasonable, the Archangel Gabriel appeared in upstate New York with some golden tablets written in hyroglyphics and warned Joseph Smith about the dangers of drinking tea and having only one wife and then after he told a bunch of people the tablets went missing, yeah, I buy that.

10. No, really, Mondo lost? But he was from Denver, probably from Federal BVD by the looks of his house. Jessica Simpson liked his stuff better. Heidi liked his stuff better (and she wore HIS dress to the Black Swan premiere). At one point Nina suggested they make it a tie. Thats 3 to 1 in favour of the kid. Giving it to Gretchen is madder than having a World Cup Final in Qatar! So what happened?!!

The Sandwiches Are Wicked And They Know You At The Mac Store

I've finally caught up to the current series and the most recent episodes of Breaking Bad. I was worried about whether they could sustain the quality throughout seasons 2 and 3, but so far they have. The opening five minutes of Sunday's episode was as dark and ironically counterpointed as anything I've seen on TV. The whole of season 3 has been on fire: nuanced, funny, well acted, compelling. Yes the violence has gotten a bit cartoony but Walter White is becoming the kind of vulnerable, amoral, superhero that DC Comics could only dream about creating. Additionally Bryan Cranston no longer needs to carry the show on the back of his brilliant acting, because everyone around him has raised their game too. New Mexico is as beautiful as ever and the scripts are tight, tense and humorous.
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BB is still a minority taste so if you dont believe me, check out what some of the critics are saying. For my money the best weekly reviews/analyses of BB are by Tim Goodman in the San Francisco Chronicle. Here's one (with big spoilers) where he talks about the colour palate in New Mexico which is what I was trying to get at when I first posted about BB, aqui.
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And now onto the sandwiches...When I was being published by Simon and Schuster I used to go down to the Star Trek books division not just to hang out with my own kind but also to try and wriggle my way in to ghosting a Star Trek novel for William Shatner. My ambition was to go to a diner with The Shat while he spit balled ideas for the book and I wrote them all down and sassy waitresses kept bringing us pie and coffee. It would have been the coolest thing evuh. Alas it never quite worked out. I still have that ambition but now I have a new celebrity craving - I want Bryan Cranston to make me one of his Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches of Death from Breaking Bad. His loving and persnickety preparation of those PB&J's does my heart good and I fully believe that if we all prepared our sandwiches that carefully not only would the world would be a better place but our meth would be of superior quality too. The chemistry must be respected, but so my friends must the sarnies. I don't know who's in charge over there at AMC, but if you're ever looking for a Breaking Bad novelisation, I'm available for a small and tasty price.

The Best Show On TV

Remember a couple of years ago when I started watching this little TV show called Mad Men and I kept telling everyone that it was the best thing on the box? No? Well, that was in my pre blog days, but if you knew me back then or hung around the staff rooms that I was hanging around in, you probably heard me going on about the great underplayed writing and the sense of style and Christina Hendricks's formidable talents. Nobody believed me back then and Mad Men languished in the ratings on AMC, not really taking off until its DVD release.

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I'm pretty late to the Breaking Bad party, a show which is also on AMC. I watched the pilot on iTunes yesterday and then episodes 2-7 last night. Its the story of a high school chemistry teacher in New Mexico who discovers that he has terminal lung cancer. His wife is pregnant, his son has cerebral palsy, he has no insurance or savings. So, in the state where Billy the Kid got his start, and in the finest traditions of the American dream, he decides to use his knowledge of chemistry to become a meth amphetamine manufacturer. He cooks some real fine blue belly, the other drug dealers get upset, and then, of course, the fun really begins.

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One of the things I love above Breaking Bad is the fact that it's shot entirely on location. I lived in Colorado for 8 years so I got to know northern New Mexico really well. It's hard to explain but the quality of the light is different there from anywhere else I've ever been. In a movie or TV show I can immediately tell when southern California is pretending to be New Mexico: in NM the sky is a deeper blue, the desert a richer amarillo, and there's an intensity to the scenery even at a humble truck stop or gas station in the middle of nowhere. I also enjoy the fact that they set Breaking Bad in blue collar, unglamorous Albuquerque rather than trendy Sante Fe or Taos. I used to love to go to Albuquerque and eat van cooked tamales and sketch the enormous railroad yards or the craziness out at UNM where the mighty I-40 meets the I-25.

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If you remember Bryan Cranston as the dentist on Seinfeld or the harassed dad on Malcolm in the Middle you'll already know that he's a fine actor; that he may be the best actor on TV came as a surprise to me as did almost everything else on this fantastic show. Cranston inhabits his character in such a manner as to convince you that acting is not a craft but a high art. Is Breaking Bad the best programme on TV? Well... Some of the performances are a little broad and the humor at times is forced, so it might not be quite up there with Mad Men but Cranston's lead, the snappy scripts, the geeky science stuff and the gorgeous New Mexico locations definitely put it head and shoulders above almost everything else Tubewise. I hope seasons 2 and 3 are as good.