Breaking Bad Over Dinner

As I was reading about Paul, the narrator of Herman Koch's The Dinner, I kept thinking of Walter White from Breaking Bad. While the anti-hero has been embraced and perfected on television, it's a harder trick to pull off in the span of one novel. The writers of Breaking Bad have had 60-some hours, so far, to force the viewers into allegiance with Walter, a down-on-his-luck but relatable in all of his impotent rage chemistry teacher, and then slowly, slyly, force the viewer to rethink their opinion on the man, and start rooting against him, as Walt becomes ferociously potent, and reveals his sociopathic side. Harder to do something like that, then, in a short and quickly paced novel that takes place over the course of one long dinner.