Vince Gilligan, the creator of the hit series Breaking Bad, has discussed what he saw as one of the stupidest things he did while making the show.
Breaking Bad was distinct as one of the most perfect series in history. When the drama finished in September 2013, the finale episode, ‘Felina’, brought a satisfactory and realistic conclusion to a somewhat crazy ride. Anyone who’s seen Lost will attest to the fact that bringing such dramas to a satisfying conclusion can be a difficult feat.
Although everything worked out well for Gilligan’s series in the end, he revealed in a recent interview with Variety that having Walter White buy the machine gun was the “dumbest thing” he did while making the show.
“The biggest single fear we had was what to do with that damn machine gun. At the beginning of the final run of 16 episodes, we had Walt buy a machine gun in the trunk of a Cadillac,” Gilligan recalled.
“That was the thing I remember freaking us out the most because we did that, I committed to that,” he continued. “One of the dumbest things I’ve ever done in my career was committing to the idea of Walter White buying a machine gun when we did not know what he was going to do with it. We had no clue.”
Revealing the extent of the pressure on him and his writing team, Gilligan revealed that there were “literally months on end when I was completely freaked out. We’d be in the writers room’ for a full day, and I’d be slowly banging my head against the wall — not enough to hurt myself but just enough to jar the ideas loose. And everybody was kind of worried about me.”
Watch the machine gun scene from Breaking Bad below.
