#anyway peter gould liked my tweet where i demanded a gus/max centric prequel series so i've gotten my hopes up that this could be a reality

[bassiter2]

the more i think about it the more i think i’ll actually be extremely disappointed if there isn’t ever a gus (and max)-centric prequel series

firstly we all know that good things come in threes and even if they didn’t, gus fits into a pre-existing trifecta of men within the breaking bad universe who control it all: walt’s actions fuel the main series, which chronicles his descent into evil. saul enables much of walt’s success, and so he’s gotten his own series that chronicles his loss of a moral center as well as shows how all of his resources came together to allow walt to do what he does later.

meanwhile gus is the one who triggers all of that into motion, and he’s done it almost entirely on purpose - if you don’t count the event that all of it is responding to, of course. gus is responsible for the meth trade in albuquerque. he’s connected to saul and mike and madrigal and the cartel. he’s literally at the core of the overarching plot of breaking bad.

we of course already know the exact event that drove gus to craft the circumstances in which saul’s and later walt’s stories took place, but what i’m suggesting is not yet another series about the aftermath of max’s murder that’s simply very direct about that fact this time --

no, what i’m suggesting and more importantly what i would LOVE... is a series that would show everything before max’s murder. 

and yes, this would essentially make it so the protagonist doesn’t technically break bad until the very end - OR, possibly even, that this time the protagonist’s arc is not about him getting worse at all but in fact better. which would then make it a sort of doubly ironic tragedy bc not only do we know exactly where gus ends up, but we wouldn’t even be having to confront that fact or those themes for the majority of the series, unlike with bcs and saul’s tragedy. it wouldn’t necessarily be a very happy story that simply ends with a bang, but the decay that leads up to that bang (i’m thinking, the decay of gus’s ability or want to act without extreme forethought, or to be inconsiderate?) would just be much more subtle bc it’s not of the moral variety.

frankly it’s these contrasts with brba and bcs that i think would make a potential gus-centric prequel series really fucking good and feel even more complete. like, watching bcs is really like watching a lot of the same problems that brba put out there but then they get solved completely differently, allowing us to see all angles. imagine the angles we’d see with gus, who is already a clear foil for walt!

it would be a perfect sort of mirror-image parallel, with bcs sitting in the middle between it and breaking bad both chronologically and symbolically. consider:

walt has an established marriage that’s doomed to fail and does so rapidly. saul has a sort-of gf who quickly develops more and then their relationship slowly falls apart. and gus's onscreen romance with max would actually begin before day 1, developing throughout the series.

family. walt clings to the idea that everything he does is for them in order to justify his actions, but isn’t actually very involved with them. saul is VERY involved with his family and it’s actually that involvement that drives him to start doing more bad things out of spite. and gus would likely feel justified in doing any of the bad things he does because he has NO family.

the dichotomy of walt’s domestic life vs. his criminal life. skyler vs. jesse. for saul, kim embodies that dichotomy all herself and switches between the skyler role and jesse role at will (though at great cost to her own self). and for gus? it remains to be seen, but i imagine he could be the one successfully embodying skyler and jesse once it gets to that point. max is the one who knows how to make meth, after all.

walt dives headfirst into the criminal underground upon feeling like he’s been given the first ever opportunity to do big things, full of turmoil the whole time until he dies and takes almost everyone else down with him. saul relatively passively allows the criminal world to take him, being sapped gradually over time of a moral compass until he’s a wholly opportunistic shell of a man. gus, during bcs and brba, successfully rides the line between the legitimate world and the criminal one. something tells me he started in the realm of crime and worked his way up.

anyway even aside from all that it’s honestly just? WILD how little of gus’s past we actually know when he’s so significant to the plot??? there’s such small hints that you REALLY have to pay attention to, and even then we don’t get a clear picture. 

we know he had a reputation prior to meeting the salamancas - a reputation that saved his life. and we know it’s something military-related and likely to do with the pinochet regime. and we know that he started off in deep poverty but by the 80s was wealthy enough to pay for max’s education. but that’s it! and that’s PERFECT potential for a premise of a series! it’s only fair that we could see those blanks get filled in, and especially to do the same thing we did with walt and saul - to watch, in real time, how gus became the man we’ve known him to be since at least 1989. 

finally the fact that this potential show would surely also just be a beautiful period piece that would put gay latino representation on the mainstream’s radar.......... like PLEASE holy shit