BGL’s Breaking Bad
A homage idea had a growth spurt into a stained glass cartoon celebrating the brilliance of Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s Breaking Bad.
From the broken pieces of glass, with a meth blue background, emerged our tribute to Breaking Bad, the incomparable AMC thriller.
BGL’s Breaking Bad window in early stages, with only Walter’s glasses and fedora pieces cut.
As the focus, protagonist Walter White is transformed into a blood-letting, bespectacled Heisenberg. The phenomenal Bryan Cranston beats the underpants off of rival bad guys.
To capitalize on Walter’s fall from grace, the stained glass, less than cryptically, highlights, above Walter’s head, the fly from the excellent eponymous bottle episode directed by Rian Johnson. In that episode, Walter’s Ahab is easily bested by the tiniest of whales.
(image via IMDb)
Gus Fring, the chicken man from los pollos hermanos, gets a leg up on the unnamed fly at the right corner of the glass with an extra crispy chicken part and at the left center with a lethally used box cutter leaking poor, loyal Victor’s blood.
Walter’s underwear harkens back to a more innocent time of tumbling khakis and a stranded RV lab. It was a time when Jesse’s attention was rapt, learning the differences among beakers and cooks. Mr White was still his didactic teacher; and Jesse, unfortunately, had become a better student.
The stained glass at center bottom has a red berry from the plant that Walter used to poison a child, Brock. The poison’s source, a lily of the valley, appears as part of the final shot of season four.
Below the berry is part of the wreckage of the ill-fated flight, the eye of the teddy bear that Walter finds in his swimming pool filter. It is evocative of Jane’s death, the ABQ episode, the second season and the consequences of both Walter’s sins of commission and omission.
Season 4, Episode 13; “Face Off”
The untitled green book (Leaves of Grass) with WW painted in the corner represents a symbolic turning point for Jesse who murders Gale, the too fervent admirer of Walter, likely even in extremis. The WW itself stands for either Walt(er) Whit(e)man or Walter White. The book was Gale’s gift to Walter, a gift that kept on giving and was a pivotal laxative in Hank’s obstructed investigation.
The U-lock episode marks the beginning of Walter’s breaking bad, very bad. Crazy-8 (Ocho Loco), drug dealer and informant, is tortured and killed after waxing nostalgic about bassinets, his dad and a local furniture store.
The chemistry symbols within the bike lock are iconic to the opening credits, a show all about the chemistry of evil.