From left: Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), Mike (Jonathan Banks), Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Gustavo Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) appear in a scence from “Breaking Bad” Season 4, episode 1. / Ursula Coyot,e AMC
“Can we slow that down?” Vince Gilligan says from the editing bay of his offices for AMC's “Breaking Bad,” where the show's creator is putting the finishing touches on an episode from “Bad's” fourth season, which premieres tonight at 10 p.m.
Gilligan, 44, a devotee of Westerns, leans forward at the center of three flat screens displaying the shot.
The scene seems unnerving enough. Set against a sandstorm in Albuquerque, where the series is shot, Pinkman (Aaron Paul) looks like a dead man — again. He's talking big, sweating hard and doing little to rattle grizzled henchman Mike (Jonathan Banks), who ferries Pinkman to a deserted windmill. Desperate, Pinkman scans the car for something sharp.
“Can we Sergio Leone-y that a bit?” Gilligan says, a reference to the director of ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.'
Gilligan has been devising gun- and drug-slinging elements since he approached AMC five years ago with the idea of a high school chemistry teacher (Bryan Cranston) who discovers he has lung cancer. To secure a nest egg for his family, he cooks crystal methamphetamine with the help of a student he once flunked (Paul).
Since premiering in 2008, “Breaking Bad” has become a critical darling and found some unexpected fans. Cranston, who is a co-owner of Cinemas Palme d'Or in Palm Desert, became the first actor to win three straight best dramatic acting Emmys. Time magazine named it “TV's best thriller.”
Last year, the show averaged 2 million viewers a week. AMC's smash “Mad Men” averaged 2.5 million in its third year.
So what's Gilligan's plan for this season, which picks up where Season 3 ended: with a pistol an inch from an unarmed man's face?
Gilligan wants to get darker.
Good luck with that. In addition to collecting statuettes, “Bad” is pushing how much violence basic cable can get away with. Consider some of the show-enders last year: a man getting his brains blown out and two dealers being flattened by Walt White's putrid Pontiac Aztek.
How do you trump that?
“It's all about the heroes,” says Gilligan, a Richmond, Va., native who heard the term “breaking bad” from parents clucking that a kid was raising hell.
In “Bad,” “we want to make Walt White a truly bad guy. He's going from being a protagonist to an antagonist. We want to make people question who they're pulling for, and why.”
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