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Breaking Badcreates a perfect balance in every way within its five seasons. The way Walter White’s impulsivity is in perfect juxtaposition to Gus Fring’s calculated personality is just one example of how the series balances everything, similar to the chemistry theme it puts on. However, there is no better example of opposing characters than there is that of Walter and Jesse Pinkman.
However, this wasn’t always the case. In fact, Jesse was originally supposed to have a much smaller role in the series. So much so that Aaron Paul originally had very different thoughts about his own character. Thankfully, the series managed to make him exactly everything that Bryan Cranston’s character wasn’t.
First Impressions and Changing Interpretations
There is a very evident difference between Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. At first glance, one is a high school teacher who has been dealt a bad hand, and the other is a drug addict who seems to be wasting his life. However, as the seasons go on and both characters are laid bare, audiences realize who is the good man and who is rotten to his core.
With this, one cannot even imagine a time whenAaron Paul’scharacter didn’t possess the amount of depth he was given by the end of the series. However, there was such a time. During an interview withDigitalSpy, the actor talked about his first impression of his character and how everything changed for Pinkman.
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Paul seemed to have had the same first impression of Jesse that the rest of the audience did, looking at him as a low-life junkie who was not looking for much. He thought the character to be simple and two-dimensional. This is no surprise, as originally, he was supposed to stay this way.
When I first readBreaking BadI thought it was brilliant, but there weren’t too many layers to Jesse at the beginning. I initially viewed him, as did everybody else I think, as just a burnout druggie.
However, there is no denying that as the episodes rolled by and Jesse was found to have many layers, these opinions were changed.
Even Aaron Paul Was Left Surprised ByBreaking Bad
Further in the interview, Aaron Paul confessed that he did not even have to wait till the second season ofBreaking Badto realize just how wrong his first impression of Jesse Pinkman was. He started to notice just how much of his self, morals, beliefs, and dreams were buried under the surface.
Although, at first, Pinkman does seem to be a stupid thug, he proves himself to be so much more. He questions Walter more than a handful of times throughout the series, disliking the path that he was going down and standing by what he believed to be good.
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Despite technically being the catalyst to Walter’s descent into becoming Heisenberg, he acted as the angel on his shoulder every step of the way; Walter simply closed his ears. Paul talked about exactly this during his interview and stated that at the end of the day, Jesse was a good person.
Then even as season one went on, and especially when season two started, he had so much more going on beneath the surface. You really saw that he was a good kid, he had a good heart, but he was definitely lost and struggling to find his way.
He added that he was simply lost and confused about what he should be doing, which caused him to go down bad paths.
Breaking Badis available for streaming on Netflix.
Ananya Godboley
Senior Writer
Articles Published :2219
Ananya Godboley is a Senior Entertainment Writer at FandomWire, majorly focusing on TV shows, with over 2,000 articles published. She has been an entertainment journalist for the past two years. Currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in psychology from K.R. Mangalam University, Ananya also likes to fangirl as a full-time job. She covers news and analyses on anything from Rick and Morty to Hannibal and even Arcane. In between these lines, she also enjoys superheroes and Taylor Swift.A philosophy enthusiast, Ananya enjoys digging deeper into the media she consumes, trying to understand the root of her favorite characters' behavior.
