In Praise Of Aaron Paul’s Doe-Eyed Acting Greatness

I think we’re all in agreement — Aaron Paul is pretty great. Even if the only role you know the actor from is Breaking Bad (Side note: Shame on you), Paul did such an amazing job bringing the foul-mouthed and innocent, street-wise and hopeless Jesse Pinkman to life that it’s hard not to appreciate the actor. However, I think there’s one big reason why Paul’s performances connect with audiences. Aaron Paul slays when it comes to portraying vulnerability.

Playing characters who are at their core vulnerable takes a delicate hand. Play up these characters struggles too much and you run the risk of being perceived as whiney and weak rather than authentic. Underplay this same trait and the nuance of the character is completely lost. However, Aaron Paul has always managed to infuse a heart-breaking balance of strength and weakness to his characters, and I think that’s a big reason why Paul’s work is worth appreciating and why he deserves our attention. Even though he’s been more adventurous than his Breaking Bad peers when it comes to his follow up projects, Paul brings the same amount of authenticity to every project. Heck, he even brought it to his original audition for Breaking Bad:

Easily Paul’s biggest role was as Jesse Pinkman on Breaking Bad, a role that introduced the word “bitch” into our day-to-day vocabularies and turned the actor into a household name. However, the conclusion of this ground-breaking series left many to wonder if Paul’s career had already peaked or was threatening to peak with this one iconic role. Trivializing questions aside, Paul is too good of an actor for that to be that case, and you can see that through his recent projects.

This year, the actor starred in Hulu’s The Path as Eddie Lane, a member of a cult who slowly comes to realize that his entire religion is a lie and is forced to choose between pursuing the truth or embracing lies and staying with his family. It’s a complicated role that allows Paul to really embrace nuance. Season Three of Paul’s best known voice acting project, Netflix’s BoJack Horseman, was also released this year. In this animated dramedy, Paul plays Todd, a clueless slacker with a heart of gold. Those these character lie on different genre poles — The Path is a strict drama and BoJack is (mostly) a comedy — but both of these characters play to Paul’s strengths. Eddie and Todd are both confused and lost, but instead of hiding behind illusions of strength, they find strength in their weakened states. For Eddie, that means coming to terms with his past mistakes and what he doesn’t know, and for Todd, that means realizing the type of person his best friend is as well as who he wants to be. However, neither of these characters would be as memorable or compelling without Paul.

The actor excels at making weakness compelling, something that is difficult to do and often even more difficult to watch. However, Paul is so naturally likable, it’s difficult not to root for his characters, even when they’re at their worst. Paul has a couple other projects coming up, including a second season of The Path, a fourth season of BoJack, Come and Find Me, and The 9th Life of Louis Drax. I hope he’ll bring the same brand of heart-breaking vulnerability to all of these projects. Paul as a performer isn’t afraid to dwell in weakness, and seeing this heart-breaking climb time and time again is part of the reason why we love him so much. Happy birthday, Aaron Paul. Please keep slaying.