5. Direction - Having Faith In The Future Of The Show
How Breaking Bad Has Got It Right - Vince Gilligan set out on the Breaking Bad Road, with a plan. This plan involved a dramatic character arc that would be told in five, distinct seasons. Each season delves deeper into Walt White's madness and raises the stakes even further than the season before it. As a result, the audience can look back over the course of the show and recognize where things went wrong for their child-poisoning, drug dealing protagonist. Because the story has been layered, the wild and reckless choices made by almost all of the main characters can, in a sense, be justified by the slightly less wild and reckless choices they've already made. For example - Walt has the confidence to kill Fring because he's already killed before. He ran over the two drug dealers in the car park. He made the choice to run them over so Jesse didn't have to kill them - running the risk of getting killed himself. Why? He felt guilty - he'd asked Jesse to kill Gale, knowing that his young protege would likely be grief stricken by his actions. This came from a basic survival instinct that had become threatened because he'd made the choice to go into the employment of Fring, and so on and so on. You could trace it all the way back to the first episode when he first makes the infamous choice to cook Meth. Layers. This is one of the show's strongest factors. That the audience have confidence in the writing, that Gilligan and co know where the story is headed, how will it end and how the characters will be effected as a result.
Why The Walking Dead Is Not As Good - What more can they do with the world that they have created? Bar finding the cure and setting about healing the human race, there's little more that the writing team behind The Walking Dead can show, that we haven't already seen. Sure, they can change the location, kill off some more characters and introduce a new psychotic bad guy that demonstrates that 'its the humans that are the real threat' - but before long it's going to become a little stale. It seems to me, that the writers are discovering this world at the same time as their characters, and as a result, the story seems to meander through story line after story line without knowing quite where it will end up, and even, who's going to die along the way. Its surprising as it has the foundation of The Walking Dead Comics with which to structure itself on, but right from the go, it seems that the WD Writers have chosen to use it's literary counterpart as mere inspiration with which to construct their own unique timeline. Where it will end up? Who knows. How long will it go on for? Impossible to tell? Do I have faith that it will maintain my interest? Unfortunately, I do not.