Jesse Pinkman. THE best TV character I have ever seen. I love the ultimate alphamale Don Draper, honest hardworking go-getter Peggy Olson, doc with a stick up his ass House MD, lovable & ultracool Vincent Chase and a million others. But Jesse is a league apart. Maybe its because of the reality and vulnerability. Maybe its because of Aaron Paul. Maybe its coz of Vince Gilligan. Maybe it's all of the above and some more. But what a dude.
Many many people around the world can see at least some kind of similarity between him and themselves. I am no different. Smart as a kid. Got lost around late teens, dabbled in drugs. An extremely innocent, really good person at heart. A man whose word is his bond. Parents who are lovable in every other way except that they have reached their limits, their unconditional love is no more so and their patience has worn really really thin. I could go on forever.
From the very first scene he was introduced in, I loved him. And I hate the character of Walter White. He's the person with great knowledge but also with the world's biggest stick up his ass. Always a loser. Left a girlfriend, research and million dollar company coz of some shitty reason. Underachiever all his life. Big time liar. A bad father, shitty husband and overall scum of the earth character. I especially hate him because of his extreme selfishness and harebrained ideas. The murder of a drug dealer/snitch and the messy disposal of two bodies in his home was too much for Jesse to take, he tried to shut it out with meth but to no avail. He went to where he felt he was safest in the world, back to his parents. My eyes welled up watching the scenes that followed. The way his parents & brother treated him, his beautiful drawings, his overall innocence. And of course the over-expecting, overly-ambitious parents had no more love or patience left to hold him by his hand and get him onto the right path. They were more worried about their genius younger son. Of course everybody has their own fucked up justifications for their actions. And more often than not they will pin those reasons onto something that seems like the greater good. After making his way through all that shit and finally piecing together something that resembled a happy life, the-man-with-the-biggest-stick-up-his-ass had to fuck it up by letting his girlfriend die, and of course he too had his greater good justifications.
Well looks another one of my posts has turned into a tirade of complaints. Projecting my problems onto something else to give me some peace of mind perhaps. The other day I was reading a TIME article on the US army suicide rates spiralling upwards and it felt a like a punch in the face when I read that 2 of the soldiers mentioned had blogs that had content that was clearly indicative of the authors' depression issues. I once heard that "Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is like expecting a lion not to attack because you are a vegetarian." Bitchin n moanin is just a humungous waste of energy. There are ways out of everything, sometimes the options might be tough, but we gotta choose whatever seems right and run with it. No point crying over things over which we have no control. Sometimes our families might not see us the way we think we really are. Can we hate them for that? We are pretty much here only because of them. The solution can be as simple as just moving away, making something of ourselves. Eventually they will come around, and if they don't then there isn't much that we can do is there. Even Peggy Olson had a mother who couldn't understand. Look at me, quoting TV stars and finding solace in their problems. I need to get a job!
