Yes, I said it. I'm annoyed by six-time Emmy-winning Bryan Cranston. After watching Your Honor, he's managed to leave me with a semi-permanent side-eye expression that I hope disappears sooner rather than later. Why do I have such feelings for him you ask?
It's nothing personal with Cranston. In fact, if his charitable endeavors are any indication, by all accounts, he's a great human being. However, my annoyance with him comes from his phenomenal portrayals of his most iconic characters onscreen.
Let's start with him taking on the role of Walter White in Breaking Bad. At first, I had a great amount of compassion for White, as he was just a high school chemist battling cancer, looking for a way to prevent his family from going into financial ruin. I couldn't help but sympathize with the character and admittedly understood when he originally started cooking meth as he was doing so to support his family (although, to be clear, I don't condone his illegal course of action).
However, as his cancer went into remission and he banked plenty of money, his underworld journey became more about greed and power, which made him unlikeable. I found myself shaking my head nearly every episode after his sinister turn in disappointment and frustration. I routinely yelled at my screen saying things like "Walter no," "Don't do it" or "Will you stop screwing over Jesse." As great as Breaking Bad was (currently sitting as No. 3 on our list of top 100 TV shows), Walter White stressed me out during its run. By the show’s end, I was sad the ride was over, yet relieved my blood pressure didn't have to endure the weekly fluctuation.
Fast forward to Your Honor, and Cranston's Michael Desiato has managed to stir up similar levels of "entertaining anxiety." I admittedly am a late fan of the show as I didn't watch it while it aired on Showtime, but now that it's on Netflix I binged right through it. The drama is such a great watch, but Cranston's Michael will stress you out almost immediately from the beginning. He quickly goes from the enlightened and forward-thinking judge to the panicked father who makes mistake after mistake trying to cover his son's accident.
By the end of the two-season series (we can only hope and petition Showtime or Netflix to revive the show for a season 3), I literally had to take a moment and think how all the twists and dark turns of the series could have been avoided if Michael would have just made the right decision that night in the police station. His bad judgment call in that one moment led to a series of poor choices that left me this time screaming at my screen things like "Are you kidding me," "Why are you doing that" and "Michael, do you want to be caught?" Although, there's an argument to be made that his poor decision-making led to his wife's murder being solved and his family addition.
To Michael’s credit though, he at least attempted to do the right thing midway through Your Honor season 2, so he wound up taking less of a toll on me. The same can't be said for other characters — if you're thinking of Gina Baxter (Hope Davis) or Carlo Baxter (Jimi Stanton), then you get it.
So to recap, Bryan Cranston is a phenomenal actor for eliciting such a response from me as a TV watcher. However, the dramatic characters he plays may have you grey faster than you'd like.
Both Breaking Bad and Your Honor are streaming on Netflix.
