Watching a good man reach his breaking point

If "Breaking Bad" sounds like "Weeds," in which a suburban single mother sells pot, it's not. Not at all. "Weeds" is a kooky dramedy with high stakes; "Breaking Bad" is a full-on drama with brutal satirical turns every so often. The series, which premieres tomorrow night at 10, doesn't want to inspire laughter so much as wincing sympathy for a good, struggling man who just keeps making bad decisions. Played by Bry an Cranston, the dad in "Malcolm in the Middle," Walter White is a fool, but he's a fool with a giant heart and a high IQ.

I can't say "Breaking Bad" works for me in the way "Dexter" does, or almost any of the litany of top-notch cable morality mazes - from "The Wire" to "Californication" - for which I am a total sucker. For one thing, the show tries too hard to be socially relevant, with Walt representing a desperate middle class attempt to gain footing. So tame and worn thin by his financial lot in life and his grim diagnosis, Walt's not gonna take it anymore. You can feel creator Vince Gilligan (of "The X-Files") straining to build an emblematic American fable and forgetting to fill in his story with particularities and believable motivations. It's another portrait of a blandly archetypal man at the boiling point, like the 1993 Michael Douglas movie "Falling Down."

And we know all along that Walter White is a hero, which flattens the potential for character complexity. His last name implies only good things, no gray areas. He is a devoted teacher who moonlights for extra cash at a car wash; a loyal husband to pregnant wife Skyler (Anna Gunn); a caring dad to teenage son Walter Jr. (RJ Mitte), who has cerebral palsy. "Breaking Bad" even makes it clear that Walter didn't smoke, just in case we were wanting to blame him for his cancer. The show isn't a moral teaser or a look at the two sides of human nature; it's just a fast, slick ride to hell.