About 5 minutes right into a passionate 30-minute pilot pitch for “Breaking Dangerous,” Gilligan was interrupted by a community president telling him, “This sounds rather a lot like ‘Weeds.'” Gilligan recalled the second in an article written for Newsweek. He wrote:
“Listening to this, I may really feel the blood drain from my face. I turned to [Sony executives] Zack [Van Amburg] and Jamie [Erlicht]. ‘Do you know about ‘Weeds?’ ‘Oh, yeah,’ they mentioned. ‘Nice present. However your factor is totally totally different. She offers pot and your man offers crystal meth. Apples and oranges.'”
Gilligan, who had no information of Showtime’s “Weeds” till that assembly, described the variations between the 2 present’s subject material as “psychopharmaceutical equivalents of Greek comedy and tragedy masks.” And although each exhibits do contain on a regular basis protagonists promoting medication as a way to an finish, they’re very, very totally different from one another.
In “Weeds,” Nancy Botwin (Mary Louise Parker) is widowed, left to boost two sons on her personal. To maintain her house and proceed their upper-middle-class suburban way of life, she offers marijuana. The stakes are low, with Botwin taking an unlawful shortcut for monetary positive aspects relatively than turning to a authorized type of revenue.
“Breaking Dangerous’s” Walter White (Bryan Cranston) faces a extra dire scenario, as he has terminal lung most cancers and a son with cerebral palsy. He turns to meth manufacturing as a approach to supply for his household after his impending demise. Although its legality wasn’t as prevalent when “Weeds” was produced, leisure marijuana is now authorized in almost half the nation. Fifteen extra states permit the medicinal use of the drug. Meth as a avenue drug stays an unlawful and harmful drug and continues to be an epidemic in rural communities within the U.S.