As a writer, you wrote the scripts to the episodes that introduced Tuco and Gus. What went into introducing both those monumental characters?
Tuco was kind of short lived because we thought that he’d be around the entire second season, but he had another gig. Raymond Cruz was the first one and he was obviously designed to be this kind of crazy, crazy meth head who was volatile and unpredictable and sort of epitomized everything that was crazy about this drug, methamphetamine which can cause people to be completely unpredictable and violent and fly off the handle.
To me, it was like what is different about this drug, this world and how do I bring that into this character? So this crazy, unhinged meth dealer who represents all that’s unpredictable about this world to someone like Walter White came into my mind. The little details and stuff, his grill which had a life of its own, something about “Breaking Bad” is you introduce these little details about a character and it pays off later. The grill had this life of its own and ultimately it’s the lucite and given to Hank as a gift later after he kills Tuco in the “Grilled” episode, the shootout in the desert.
That platinum grill was something, before I became a writer I had various other jobs and one of them that I was the counselor at a juvenile correctional facility. That was back in the ‘90s during the crack epidemic and I remember the big thing that young crack dealers would wear would be these platinum grills. So I wrote that into it and it was interesting because they brought out these designer grill manufacturers and it was fun to see that on set. I wrote that kind of half thinking it would probably be written out, but the details of “Breaking Bad,” we actually had people that made these things come down and fit Raymond Cruz for it. It’s fun, those little details.
And Gus?
Gus was a completely different character because he was supposed to be sort of the immigrant. I actually named him Gus after my grandfather whose name is Gus and he was a restaurant owner, but my grandfather was obviously not a criminal. He was supposed to represent immigrants that came and adopted America in all its ideals and everything. Of course the secret here was that this was all faked for his subterfuge and his criminality. He was the guy that hid in plain sight that you would never suspect so in a lot of ways, Tuco was in your face about his criminality and we created the completely opposite character in Gus.
Which episodes were the most hotly contested in the writers room?
The one that comes to mind, which I think people have talked about a lot is when Walt lets Jane die. It wasn’t contested that we would have that moment, but earlier renditions of it where instead of just watching and having moral guilt by omission, I think the first pitch was that he actually saw her choking and actually touched her head a little bit and pushed her head so that gravity would take a role.
That was hotly contested, but that actual point was one of the few points I think Vince was talking to the network and stuff. They didn’t say, “This is not something we would do” but they were saying, “Are we ready for this yet?” That was a hotly contested point and it ended up where it was which was I think highly, highly effective and was probably the best rendition of that.
I think that the poisoning of Brock was hotly contested and I think the shooting of this kid in “Dead Freight” was pretty contested. Do we do this at this point? Because that was a moment when it had to break up the partnership and were we ready to do that at that point in the season, because there was no way that Jesse was going to stick around after that moment. Those are the moments that come to mind, but probably if I think about it more there’s probably been a lot of stuff that’s been highly contested.
Big moral moments where the characters slip further down the abyss I think are the ones, because how far do you push the envelope and how far is the audience going to be following. At this point I think people aren’t really rooting for Walt. Maybe I’m wrong, and I think maybe the shooting of a kid in “Dead Freight” might have been… people have different tolerances, and now we’re just waiting to see what happens in this story. Jesse sort of becomes the moral rudder, so things have reversed a little bit. It’s the challenge of the show. You want to constantly ask the audience, what are you rooting for here? What’s going on?
