George Mastras

The train heist in Dead Freight (2012) makes the practical business of a crime worth following. Mastras, making his directing debut, grounds the suspense in the details of the job. It is a strong example of his contribution to Breaking Bad (2008), which we recommend despite its occasional over-cleverness. We value his care with how things work, and his interest in what doing them costs the characters. There is enough here to admire without pretending that one episode establishes a whole directing style.

His substantial work on the series was as a writer and producer, from joining as story editor in 2008 through involvement in all five seasons. Alongside showrunner Vince Gilligan, he contributed to the long development of its characters, with writing credits including Crazy Handful of Nothin’ and Dead Freight. We found Breaking Bad frightening because Bryan Cranston makes Walter White’s excuses sound like things he needs to believe. Mastras’s concern with the consequences of crime fits that close scrutiny of Walter. It would be foolish to give one writer credit for the whole achievement, but his priorities are plainly useful to it.

Detailed research is central to his method, and Dead Freight shows why: understanding a difficult task gives us something precise to worry about. The risk is that ingenuity becomes an attraction in itself, a fault we sometimes find in Breaking Bad. Mastras’s emphasis on scenes driven by character helps keep the procedure from taking over, though it does not make the series immune to showing off. The practical question of how a crime might succeed needs the less comfortable question of what it does to the people involved.

Writing and producing work on Vinyl (2016) and The Boys (2019) extends the record beyond that series, but does not provide further evidence of his directing. Those credits matter less to our view than his sustained contribution to a programme we rate highly. His screen career gives us firmer grounds to recommend the writer than to describe the director’s habits. Start with Breaking Bad; the train heist will be more rewarding once the people planning it matter.