It’s a tradeoff that Gilligan clearly struggled with… until the Breaking Bad team figured out a way to bring the actor back.

While it marked a major turning point in the series for many of its key characters, it came at a cost: losing Costabile. “Full Measure,” Breaking Bad’ s season 3 finale in which Gale meets his tragic end, was both written and directed by Gilligan. I feel like they were looking for anybody but me, and then their hand was forced, and they had to choose me. So I auditioned for it, and then didn’t get it for a while. That came somewhat later, after we saw the first dailies of David and thought, “Wow, this guy’s great.”Ĭostabile: I knew exactly who Gale was. But when we came up with this character, we weren’t thinking ahead to how his notebook would get Walt busted. And that’s due to David Costabile being such a wonderful, unforgettable actor. Gilligan: Gale was not in many episodes, but he left a big imprint on the show. Similarly, what does it look like when he’s learning a song? He’s really into tunes, and he sings that weird, Neapolitan-dialect song from the ‘40s, and you’re just like: What the fuck is that? Even when Gale is introduced, the idea about the coffee: How do you get from the coffee to having memorized Whitman poems? What was it like when he decided to memorize that poem, because he chose to remember it… I would rather go from what you know for certain, and then see what the step prior to that was to get there. You’re trying to discover each part of who this person is and how they’re going through the world. So rather than imposing an idea that you have on it, you’re actually finding it organically.

He is everything that Jesse is not.ĭavid Costabile ( actor, Gale Boetticher ): When you work with great writers like those on Breaking Bad, it’s a danger that you try to embroider on their already fascinating and interesting tapestry. He’s a guy who sings showtunes as he makes his special tea and drinks crème de menthe. Jesse is a street-smart kid who failed chemistry class, and Gale is a very smart, educated guy who loves science. Vince Gilligan ( creator, executive producer, writer, director): Gale Boetticher is designed and constructed to be the opposite of Jesse Pinkman in every way. But Walt’s hubris wouldn’t allow another person to take credit for the superior substance he created.

And had Walter been content to let his brother-in-law Hank (Dean Norris) believe that Boetticher was the meth mastermind the DEA had been searching for, Walt could’ve walked away from “the empire business” relatively scot-free (and a whole lot richer). Though Gale Boetticher could be considered a minor character in Breaking Bad, consider this: If it weren’t for Gale, Walter might never have realized he was disposable to Gus Fring or been able to convince Jesse to commit his first murder, which left him with crippling guilt.

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