A big part of the job of being a showrunner is, in my way of thinking, being a good communicator because there's really no other way to have hope for getting what you want, at the end of the day.
Vince GilliganRead
For many decades - and this was reinforced by the broadcast networks' standards-and-practices department - bad guys on TV had to get their comeuppance, and good guys had to be brave and true and unconflicted. Those were the laws of the business.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the traditional narrative rules in television storytelling, highlighting the expectation for moral clarity in characters.
Vince Gilligan comments on the established norms in television storytelling where villains are punished and heroes are portrayed as morally upright. This suggests a systemic limitation within the industry that shapes how stories are told, influencing audience expectations and the complexity of character development.
Themes
TelevisionStorytellingMoralityCharactersNarrative
In practice
Example use cases
During a panel discussion on television writing, one could share this quote to illustrate evolving character archetypes.
More from Vince Gilligan
All quotes →You don't make a movie by yourself; you certainly don't make a TV show by yourself. You invest people in their work. You make people feel comfortable in their jobs; you keep people talking.
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I never thought anyone would come up to me and say, 'I like 'Better Call Saul' better than 'Breaking Bad.'' If you had asked me before we started, 'Would that bother you if someone said that?' First of all, I would have said, 'That's never gonna happen. And yeah, it probably would bother me.' It doesn't bother me a bit. It tickles me. I love it.
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A typical TV show is always about protecting the franchise - it's all about stretching it out as long as you can take it. And it's about taking the characters in any given hour as far as you can take them, but then resetting them more or less back to zero so at the beginning of the next week, so they're still the character you know and love.
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The sad truth is, there's more Walter White in me than I'd care to admit, because if I truly was as kind as people think I am, I wouldn't be able to write Walter White.
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I'm very glad people love 'Breaking Bad,' but the harder character to write is the good character that's as interesting and as engaging as the bad guy.
Vince GilliganRead
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