I just finished my second watch of Breaking Bad, and it still absolutely amazes me. This time, I paid more attention to the characters and the ways they changed through the course of the seasons.
Everyone talks about Walters character development throughout BB, but imo Jesse’s is much more prodigious and remarkably unbelievable.
At the beginning he’s a carefree and thrill-seeking young adult. He partied around, got drunk for fun, made jokes, and generally had a spirited and energetic personality. I absolutely loved his character. Jesse must have been 22-24 at the start of the show, but he looked younger. He could maybe have been mistaken for a teenager/high schooler. I’d say this description applied to Jesse in seasons 1-2.
However, from season 3-4, he starts to change, and by season 5 Jesse is drastically different from his former self. He has almost no resemblance to the Jesse we saw in the earlier seasons, as he is constantly serious and pensive and seems haunted by all the trauma, stress, and guilt he has gone through. Before, in seasons 1 and 2, Jesse demoralized violence and opposed murder. However, now he is threatening to kill left and right. He almost shot Walt, heavily injured Saul, and seems to have no problem with violence and brutality anymore. Its especially in the last few episodes that Jesse truly becomes a different person.
Aside from personality, Jesse’s appearance looks completely different too in the later seasons. Before he looked like a kid, but in the two year span of all the transpired events, he seems to age a decade. Now this is definitely partly due to his hairstyle, as he goes from having a standard haircut to a shaved head, which is definitely a more mature, “tough” style. But also, Jesse’s experiences are definitely shown in his looks. He seems to never smile anymore and is always angry, or hurt, or overall depressed.
And of course I have to take into consideration that Breaking Bad was filmed over 5 years, and Aaron Paul’s face will naturally age. But still, somehow Jesse’s expressions just look so different from the way they did in season 1.
Definitely, the changes in him, both personality and appearance, were altered by his experiences, which were extremely traumatic. He went through being evicted from his house, thinking that he was the reason behind Jane dying, getting beat up by Tuco, getting beat up again by Hank, being forced to kill Gale, the poisoning of Brock, and of course, Andrea’s murder. That had to have made a detrimental and significant impact on his life, and obviously they were responsible for Jesse’s dramatically changed character in the last seasons.
The last thing I want to talk about is his role in the final episode, Felina. In the last few minutes, he is dangerously close to shooting Walt. I really believed he would. But he can’t bring himself to, and instead leaves Walt in the house while he starts to leave. A moment later they are both outside, and Jesse looks back at Walt before getting in his car and driving away, and nods once slightly. This had a really heavy effect on me. It’s probably just a final goodbye glance, like, “Hey, the last two years have been great, we’ve been through a lot together.” But I find his look seems to be sympathetic, apologetic and shows gratitude all at once. Well, to me, anyways. And this really shocked me, as just moments ago he was about to shoot Walt. This came off to me as maybe he decided Walt wasn’t entirely evil, or maybe he was just thankful that Walter had saved him from the gunshots. Or maybe I’m just overthinking and it’s just a simple goodbye expression.
I just have so much to say, but can’t fit it all on one reddit post. So I just want to know, what are your thoughts?
Submitted June 02, 2019 at 09:57PM by tiffany_1g http://bit.ly/2wzwOGK
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