About 5 minutes right into a passionate 30-minute pilot pitch for “Breaking Unhealthy,” Gilligan was interrupted by a community president telling him, “This sounds lots 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 stated. ‘Nice present. However your factor is totally completely different. She offers pot and your man offers crystal meth. Apples and oranges.'”
Gilligan, who had no data of Showtime’s “Weeds” till that assembly, described the variations between the 2 present’s material as “psychopharmaceutical equivalents of Greek comedy and tragedy masks.” And although each exhibits do contain on a regular basis protagonists promoting medicine as a method to an finish, they’re very, very completely 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 beneficial properties fairly than turning to a authorized type of earnings.
“Breaking Unhealthy’s” Walter White (Bryan Cranston) faces a extra dire state of affairs, as he has terminal lung most cancers and a son with cerebral palsy. He turns to meth manufacturing as a method to supply for his household after his impending loss of life. Although its legality wasn’t as prevalent when “Weeds” was produced, leisure marijuana is now authorized in almost half the nation. Fifteen further 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.
