"Of Monsters & Meth"

In my 6 years of consuming X-Files episodes like Leonard Betts eats cancer, I never imagined I would be able to see a new movie on the big screen, purchase brand new comics based on the series, nor witness one of its best writers become a household name. The X-Files' cast and crew have had varying degrees of success since the show ended in 2002 but none have struck gold quite like Vince Gilligan. Gilligan's Breaking Bad quietly debuted on AMC on January 20, 2008, though it built up steam and eventually captured an Emmy for Bryan Cranston's portrayal of Walter White, while also earning nominations in several other categories. The praise for Vince Gilligan came as no surprise to me because I've always enjoyed his darkly comedic style.

Though he never crafted his own episode of The X-Files' series mythology, which included government agents, aliens, and clones, he made his mark with standalone cases of the week that rank among the best of the entire series. In fact, he was cranking out more than any writer over a three-year period between the start of 1997 and the end of 1999. Despite never being called upon for one of the mythology episodes, he always found ways to work in references to those episodes and even past one-off monsters such as the Flukeman.

Luke Wilson in "Bad Blood"

One of his fan favorites is a tale about vampires called "Bad Blood" that featured guest starring appearances from Luke Wilson and the "Great Hambino" of The Sandlot, Patrick Renna. What made this episode special was not due to its guest stars nor because it featured vampires, its because of the way Vince holds up a microscope to Mulder and Scully. The episode is told in a series of flashbacks, with one being from Mulder's perspective and the other from Scully's. As viewers, we always watched the series from a third-person perspective outside of the characters, and rarely did the series use narrations from its two lead characters. The multiple perspectives in "Bad Blood" allowed us to see how Mulder views Scully and also how she views her partner.

X-Files villain John Lee Roche in "Paper Hearts"

Not only was Vince skilled at comedic episodes, he also wrote thrilling episodes like "Pusher" and "Paper Hearts." "Pusher" centered around the chase for a man who pushed his will onto his victims just by saying simple phrases to them. One of the long-running mysteries of the series was about Fox Mulder's sister Samantha, who was abducted as a child, and he believed aliens were responsible. "Paper Hearts" was the closest Vince came to The X-Files mythology and it offered another possible explanation, that she was abducted by a child killer. When you look closer at Vince's episodes, a recurring theme appears to be human monsters; either those who are misunderstood and only villains out of necessity or humans that obtain pleasure from their villainous acts. 

Bryan Cranston in "Drive"

 A strong villain is always entertaining, and many writers and performers will tell you that the best villains are those who believe what they are doing is right. For example the main villain of The X-Files, the Cigarette Smoking Man, saw himself as a hero because he believed he was doing the right thing by protecting the government conspiracy. This should come as no surprise why Walter White is such an excellent character. He is very much a family man and only turned to his life of crime as a way to support them after he was diagnosed with cancer. His evil acts have been out of that necessity to protect his secret life and continue building a nest egg for his family. What makes this unique is Bryan Cranston was also a guest star in one of Gilligan's X-Files episodes called "Drive", playing an unlikely villain character named Patrick Crump. Crump was another unconventional villain, who only acted this way because low frequency waves could cause his head to explode if he didn't drive his car fast enough. It sounds a bit ridiculous on paper, but trust me, it's a great episode. A quote from Vince Gilligan on the casting of Cranston for The X-Files also mirrors why he selected Cranston for the role of Walter White: "We had this villain, and we needed the audience to feel bad for him when he died. Bryan alone was the only actor who could do that, who could pull off that trick. And it is a trick. I have no idea how he does it."

However, over the course of five seasons on Breaking Bad, Walter has transformed into Vince Gilligan's other archetype: the villain with a perverse pleasure for his villainy. At first Walter used his "Heisenberg" alias just for his dealings in the drug world, but he fully became Heisenberg once he was able to get the power he never had in his mundane life as a high school chemistry teacher. I guess the cost was that the further he got into the criminal underworld, the further away he was from being the “family man” that he believed he was. Once he realized that, it was too late; his family was gone.

 

Bryan Cranston as Walter White

It’s a risky premise for a television series, to take their main character and actually make him such an unlikeable character. However that’s what makes Vince Gilligan’s writing so special, whether it’s for Breaking Bad, The X-Files, or its own spin-off, The Lone Gunmen. He takes tv conventions and flips them on their head. And Vince, I love you for it. From babies with tails to a man in a wheelchair with a bell as his only means of communication, I love it all.