“Breaking Bad” is back with season four. The LAT did a nice feature on show creator, TV and screenwriter Vince Gilligan. Some excerpts:

Still, there is a glaring disconnect between the outward persona of Gilligan and his bleak creation: How does a former film student at New York University and the Tisch School of the Arts who grew up in the small town of Farmville, Va., and likes to play with magnets and jigsaw puzzles as he works out storylines create a fictional world filled with mayhem, flawed humanity and horrific upheaval — where a man can indirectly cause a plane collision that kills hundreds of people; where the severed head of a bad guy winds up on top of a tortoise that explodes; where a ordinary box cutter become a lethal weapon?

“There’s really more to Vince than meets the eye,” says Chris Carter, creator and executive producer of “The X-Files” who hired Gilligan as a writer and producer after the show’s first season in 1994. “There’s some darkness in him, and it comes out in ‘Breaking Bad.’ Vince has got a very acerbic sense of humor. You meet him and there’s the nice guy and the Southern accent, but when you read what he writes, it’s clear there’s much more there.”

Gilligan does admit to having a more complex personality than is immediately apparent. Evidence came during a recent day on location when he was detached from the controlled chaos of filming and gazed at the ground, lost in solitary contemplation.

“You know, I probably sound as upbeat as I do because people really seem to like the work and the show,” he says. “But I don’t think I’m a generally happy person. I’m generally sort of moody. I think of myself as somewhat pessimistic, somewhat dour. I think I put on a good face — it’s like Walt. I don’t have a dark alter ego, but I believe we all present one face to the world and live more comfortably with another.”

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“It’s a bit hard for me to believe,” says Gilligan, 44, while sitting in an office of the no-frills “Breaking Bad” writing headquarters in Burbank. “I never thought I’d be here, that we’d get this far. When I analyze it, I like to think that the audience is responding to our lead character and wondering what he will do next. He’s an intriguing guy who has been less sympathetic the deeper we get into the show.”

The series was inspired by concerns Gilligan and writer friend Tom Schnauz had after “The X-Files” ended about the scarcity of screenwriting jobs. A casual conversation about what to do next prompted a joke about putting a meth lab in the back of a recreational vehicle and driving around the Southwest. That humorous and innocuous remark stuck with Gilligan and eventually grew into the premise for “Breaking Bad” (or, as it suggests, “raising hell”). Schnauz is now one of the writers of the show.

Like the mixture of its chemicals, the series adroitly combines its disparate elements with neck-tightening tension: dysfunctional family dilemmas, a reluctant love story, black humor and explosively violent crime drama. The relationships, as Carter puts it, are wickedly funny at their core: For instance, White’s wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn), who used to be in the dark about her husband’s illegal activities, is devising ways to launder the drug money. “Breaking Bad” also puts a unique spin on the struggles of suburbanites driven to abandon their middle-class values to keep their heads above treacherous economic waters.

Anchoring the series is the examination of the continually blurred nature of morality: What line will decent people cross to protect their loved ones? Can anyone dip their toe into being an outlaw without being totally consumed and jeopardizing not only those close to them but also innocents?

I’ve followed Gilligan since his days with “The X-Files.” Good to see his success with “BB.”

Here’s a trailer for season four:

For more of the article, go here.