Red dog

Seven years ago, January 20, 2008, the series “All Great” began with a joke, which is understandable only to the Russians. Male pants, having thoughtfully chatting in the multi-colored sky of New Mexico, collapsed directly under the wheels of a van rushing to nowhere. At the wheel was a naked crazy in a gas mask - a quiet chemistry teacher, who decided before the inevitable death from cancer to earn millions on drug trafficking. In the cabin, in addition to him, there were a young partner and a half gangy corpses, sliding back and forth. It is unlikely that the author of the series Vince Gilligan held Mayakovsky in the mind, but the opening scene immediately explained what we will follow the next five years. Behind how impeccably a delicate cloud in pants turns into a man frantic from meat.

What happened during this time, more or less know everything. Walter White, a fifty-year-old coward with incurable cancer, a deep debt pit in the backyard of a sagging house, a disabled son and a pregnant wife, broke himself through his knee and turned into a heisenberg-a ​​drug lord of a fateful face with a scar. Stew King, who loves commenting on the series on his Twitter, declared this reincarnation “American classics”, and the work of screenwriters - the best in the history of TV. Fifty-year-old actor Brian Cranston, who played about a hundred roles to the series, finally became a superstar, raised a premium harvest, and after the show was closed, he received a touching letter from Anthony Hopkins. In it, the greatest antihero of Hollywood performed in the genre of the “winner-student”-and in a good way next to Hannibal Lecter there were to be signed by Tony Montana and Travis Bikel. In the meantime, he himself got into the Guinness Book of Records thanks to the 99 percent rating on Metacritic : yet no series journalists praised so unanimously.

Five seasons in a contracted to cook methamphetamine on the screen decided only AMC.

The speed with which television develops creates the illusion that cable channels have always been the territory of the rushing anti -heroes and the good old ultranasia. In fact, this is not so. In the middle of the zero from the synopsis “in the grave”, HBO , Showtime , TNT and FX were sequentially dismissed. Even for the channels that have already passed or continued to go, the Soprano and Dexter clan, the narcowner turned out to be a forbidden hero. Good bandits and good maniacs could entertain the audience anywhere, but only AMC decided to cook methamphetamine on the screen for five seasons. The channel did not pay for its audacity, it seems only a miracle. Already at the peak of the glory of the series, news began to appear about real Hayzenbergs. The 74-year-old professor of mathematics from Boston came across in a home meta laboratory. In North Carolin, the teacher for some reason bought a thousand boxes of matches. His colleague from Boston, having learned that he had cancer of the third stage, began to cook methamphetamine. And the chemistry teacher from Texas tried to sell met his own students. Fortunately for AMC , such cases occurred before the premiere of the series. In 2008, when the first season only came out, the Alabama police managed to seize one of the most wanted criminals of the state. He was in fifty, he cooked met and was hiding from the law for more than ten years. It so coincided that his name was Walter White.

The authors have repeatedly dismissed: drugs are only a background for a family saga, the history of the hero’s struggle with the disease, the tragicomedy about the American dream and everything in this spirit. Typical serial affairs, but no one has yet found such a spectacular and effective approach to them. Any television person wants to brew porridge; “All Great” in the very first series brews the most lethal methamphetamine in the world. For the hero, the drug business becomes not just a way to leave the inheritance to the family, but a real chemotherapy: having transgressed the law, he feels truly alive for the first time in fifty years. He immediately increases the secretion of male hormones, which is not without humor beats in clumsy bed scenes. When, due to the treatment, White’s hair falls on the head, a red beard will come to the fore-and how can not be recalling the volume of Wolf, who believed that a bloodthirsty red dog was sitting on a chain in every man. Chemistry turns a nondescript hero into an invincible superman - and after five years this great satirical technique will even reach Michael Bay in the film “Anaboliki: then Blood”. White's school lectures are constantly mounted with criminal matters, forcing the viewer to think about what other generations teach others. Even the jokes of heroes are based on chemical reactions: in his youth, White, together with his colleague Schwartz, founded a scientific company Gray Matter . It turns out that the gray matter is just what interferes with the triumph of black and white morality. So in what color will Mr. White get repainted?

Chemistry lessons are in how the authors of the series connect a funny and terrible, frivolous and heavy, television modern with classic movies. By the fifth season, “all heavy”, perhaps, became a heavy drama, but the series began almost like a parody of Tarantino. All the first episodes are the version of the “criminal reading”, whose heroes could not get through to Mr. Wulf. The corpse of one drug dealer has to be split in a bath with acid - with predictable consequences for the entire apartment. In the blood laundering scene, Jesse Pinkman for some reason puts a home dressing gown over the chemical cake-almost the same as the hero of Tarantino. Color surnames of the characters - from him, from the "frantic dogs." Another drug dealership decides to take a walk along the street, where the main character almost crashes into him: a direct quote from the “criminal reading”. The scene with the captive in the basement again refers to the "frantic dogs", and clumsy attempts to establish the drug business - to Jackie Brown. Musical sets from the series could well have been in Tarantino's early film. At the same time, “all grave” understands about his idol something that most of his apologists do not know about. Each death in his universe is a real tragedy, because Tarantino even caricatured heroes live in full life. Therefore, while the heroes of Dexter and the “Soprano clan” cut each other without unnecessary thoughts, Walter White is preparing for the first murder of almost half a season.

The scriptwriter-shuranner Gilligan, meanwhile, chemists not only with the new classic, but also with the cinema of the long time past days. His heroes hug, like in the “Cross Father”, are fooling around like the Marx brothers, play chess, as in the “seventh press”, and bathe in money, like Scrooph MacDak. The gloomy Albuquerque into “All Great” turns into the same filmmaker as fictional cities and states from the GTA game. While other TV shows are producing and then fixing their corporate identity, this one develops a new shooting manner of almost every episode. In some episodes-installation, as in the militants of Tony Scott, in others, cooks of drugs resemble a reality show. There are ready-made sitcoms in the “Grief” archives (not without reason, a half-hour format was considered for the spin-offs “Better call the salt”), black and white nuars and psychological thrillers. And there is an episode with a small annoying fly in the title role. This variety of forms and content expands the universe of the series to the scale of life. Thanks to him, a screen chemistry arises between the heroes of Brian Kranston and Aaron Paul, which cannot be found either in a monotonous “real detective” or in a sweeping “Game of Thrones”.

“Better call the salt”, apparently, will be engaged in the study of loser.

By the way, about life: in the pilot of the series, the Walter’s hand, which was deliberately closing the camera, was also in the pilot of the series. Hiding from the viewer, the hero actually presented his entire line of life. And behind chemical formulas and criminal fantasies, human destinies were found that could touch anyone. “All Great” is a collection of amazing private stories, if not overcoming, then at least resistance. Walter is consistently in all worldly traps for the poor and proud. Walter Jr., like the actor Er Jay Mitty, who played him, fights with cerebral palsy. Walter's wife refuses to give Slabin the right to give herself, but she is even worse than her men. Her sister Marie is Kleptomank, who stole her own life. Hank is trying to take care of loved ones without undermining the authority of Walter - and this is almost impossible. The bad addict Jesse turns into a tragic figure, it is worth the viewer to look into his family. In what proportions the series divides the screen time between these heroes is shown in the famous scene of Intervention. Five infinitely unfortunate people gather in the room, everyone talks a little about himself, but in the end, Walter White is plugged.

Therefore, the appearance of the spin-off about the chain of the criminal lawyer Sol Goodman is a great luck not only for AMC (6.9 million spectators-an absolute record for the premiere among cable channels), but also for spectators who are used to taking the series seriously. The scriptwriters Vince Gilligan and Peter Gold repeat their signature focus again: turn the TV into a transformer booth. Inside, under great tension, the heroes experience desperate metamorphoses. Outside there is a sign “Do not climb, kill”: cancer, drugs and crime - not the best reasons to start a new life. In the initial series, Sol played the role of Doppelganger Walter - a double portending death; A person in a similar situation, whose struggle with himself does not turn into a feat, but into a clowning.

His personal tragic finale, as it becomes clear already from the pilot of the new series, will be even worse than death. It is all the more interesting to monitor his life, in which there were all the same misfortunes as that of Walter, but there was no main thing - launching the return countdown of cancer. Events “Better Call Sol” start eight years before Mr. White's history. The authors promise many flashbacks and flashwords, but so far there is no goodman yet. And there is Jimmy McGill, a public lawyer forced to protect coprofils, pretend to be his own secretary and conduct business from the basement of Thai massage. A brother, a lawyer, a lawyer without a grip, demands that Jimmy not disgrace his family and take a pseudonym. In pursuit of the next client, the hero comes to visit the cannibal - drug lord Tuko from the original series - and under the muzzle of the pistol finally begins a new life.

That is, he repeats the path of Walter White - but so far as a laughing stock, not an epic hero. “All Great” was a radical study of the popular life philosophy of self -liberation - contrary to the family, obligations, age, health, and morality. “Better call the salt”, apparently, will deal with the study of loserism - self -liberation, which always follows a new captivity. And this pessimistic installation against the backdrop of wild humor (it is more in the new show than in the old one) forces to compare the series not with Tarantino, but with the films of the Cohen brothers. Almost the hero’s biblical trials resemble a “serious person”, and the same actor is involved in the main role as in the television “Fargo”.

The future jester-Consilleri in the service of the mafia is played by a wonderful, but poor comedian Bob Odenkerk. Like Brian Cranston, he received this fateful role in 52. While Cranston writes memoirs about how “all heavy” has changed his life, Odenkerka finally releases his own red-haired dog. “Better call the salt”, thus, not only the series, but also the reality show. Can a hero win over himself without a cancer timer and chemotherapy? Will Bob write to the dressing room his own Anthony Hopkins? I want it terribly to write.