Time. One of the two things that can afford you luxury is time. Bryan Cranston’s character of Michael Desiato was not so lucky in this matter, however.
The race against time has been depicted in many projects but none did as beautifully as Cranston in Your Honor. According to the actor himself, he can’t help it because he is attracted to damaged characters.
Bryan Cranston Is Just Attracted To Damaged Characters
In his defense, who wouldn’t be attracted to damaged characters if they were as awesome and as complicated as Walter White or Michael Desiato? However, let’s hop on down the memory lane a bit.
Bryan Cranston found fame for portraying the role of Walter White in the iconic AMC series Breaking Bad. Starring alongside Aaron Paul, the show ran for 5 seasons and the world fell in love with it.
In 2020, Cranston starred in the Showtime series Your Honor wherein he portrayed the role of Michael Desiato. Being a judge whose son gets involved in a hit-and-run case, Desiato is quite a complicated character.
In an interview with The Wrap, Bryan Cranston revealed that he was just attracted to portraying characters that were complex and broken from the inside.
I guess I’m just attracted to damaged characters. When you have a damaged character who is trying to do the right thing — or appears to be, at least at first — that’s when you get empathy from an audience and when you get empathy from an audience, it offers them the opportunity to invest in the character and invest in that story.
He also stated,
Even Walter White made his decision for the betterment of his family after he’s gone. And then he got caught up in the ego of what it was.
Well, the actor is absolutely right since he shined while portraying these roles and the world loved him in it. Although Desiato and White have similar traits, there is one big difference between the two.
If we were to compare these characters, there seems to be an abundance of time on Walter White’s side. The same cannot be said about Michael Desiato and hence, we feel that Desiato is a better character overall.
Who Won: Walter White or Michael Desiato?
It’s not a competition per se, but here’s what we observed between the characters of Desiato and White. Both characters were presented with an emergency situation and both had to adopt an illegal way to get out of it.
Walter White and Michael Desiato did all the bad stuff for their family. The only difference between the two was time. White had the chance to have his cancer get cured with the money that he made. Choosing to avoid that, Walter White went on a rampage to become the only meth creator.
On the other hand, Michael Desiato becomes vengence and ends up going to jail while being on the path of revenge for everything that went wrong. However, Desiato did not have the luxury or the time to stop his revenge.
Contradictory to Desiato, Walter White was a ticking time bomb in the form of cancer but overall, he still had a little bit of time before things went terribly wrong with him. It could be said that White chose this life instead of getting his cancer cured and continued with the killing and meth spree that ended with the Season 5 finale “Felina”.
Breaking Bad received a rating of 9.5/10 on IMDB and a whopping 96% on Rotten Tomatoes while Your Honor received a high of 7.6/10 on IMDB upon its release.
Both series are available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.
