4 DAYS OUT

Re-watching Episode 9 of Breaking Bad, Season 2, I found myself experiencing a touch of PTSD—reminded of what happens when two men reach their breaking point together under extreme stress.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my old co-writer looked a lot like protagonist, Walter White—he even wore the iconic Heisenberg black hat on certain occasions. And of course, there’s the expert way Vince Gilligan and his writers captured the theme of desperation in the search for inspiration so accurately in this episode, titled "4 Days Out."

It’s one of those episodes where you sense both Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse (Aaron Paul) trade a piece of their soul with each other in a desperate bid to survive a near-death experience in the New Mexico desert. Stranded with their RV full of crystal meth and no functioning car battery, they’re forced to confront the consequences of their choices—both tested to their mental and physical limits.

Though there are moments when it seems Walter is undergoing a spiritual reckoning—or some form of penance—for his deceit toward his loved ones back home, the show, rooted in science, doesn’t rely on repentance or miracles to save him. It’s Walter’s knowledge—his scientific ingenuity—prompted by Jesse’s desperate pleading, that ultimately gets them out of danger.

"4 Days Out" is also a perfect representation of the clash between relentless ambition (Walter the teacher) and the resistance to being pushed too hard (Jesse the student)—like the positive and negative terminals of a battery.

When I was younger and working closely with my older co-writer, we often wouldn’t sleep until the work was done—even if that meant pulling all-nighters for deadlines that may or may not have been invented by our producer—while the coffee flowed endlessly and his pile of extinguished Marlboro cigarette butts grew into a makeshift clock, marking each hour we toiled around the laptop as he placed each dead one strategically around the saucer of his coffee cup.

So many times, we found ourselves chasing mirages—illusions of final scenes or perfect solutions—only to realise we were nowhere at all. And yet, as we’d stretch and stare in silence, the distant sound of owls hooting outside in the woods beyond reminding us it was late, eventually some moment of mad genius would emerge from the void, like divine intervention from the gods. And we would return, renewed, determined to finish the task at hand.

There’s a kind of exhilaration in working with someone in that two-man mind machine, where you both pilot through the uncharted territories of your shared imagination.

Though, thinking about it now, we didn’t get the rewards for the best of our work back then.

Maybe we should have cooked some crystal instead.