Breaking Bad and Pulp Fiction’s visual parallels are hard to miss

By Michael Duncan | October 19, 2015 | 8:29pm

Aux Features TV

Drugs, murder, and mayhem—they’re no strangers to high-stakes cinema. So what happens when these aspects are translated to television? The Sopranos and The Wire proved that millions of viewers (from the safety of their own homes) don’t mind watching drug lords conduct business. Then, when Breaking Bad came along, many fans cheered on a teacher-turned-meth-dealer as he became the head of a drug empire. If cursing was allowed on AMC, we probably would’ve seen something resembling a Quentin Tarantino film a bit more. And, as it turns out, the Vince Gilligan-created series did share a few visual parallels with Tarantino’s cinematic masterpiece Pulp Fiction.

To show these parallels, Jorge Luengo Ruiz put together a video with side-by-side scenes from Breaking Bad and Pulp Fiction. Opening with Dick Dale’s surf rock cover of “Misirlou,” just as Pulp Fiction did, the video illustrates similarities ranging from worm’s-eye views to basic physical character appearances, such as the ways in which Mia Wallace and Jane Margolis pose and dress. It’s intriguing to see, but the clips are still somewhat gross. With all this blood and carnage, “your best course would be to tread lightly.”