Spoilers --- Spoilers --- Spoilers ---Spoilers --- Spoilers
I spent the last few days binge-watching Breaking Bad and I feel a bit punch drunk from the effect. During my first viewing, some years ago, I absorbed the show slowly, and in that mode did not discern clearly the overarching scheme of the show. This time around I was startled by how prominent the theme was. This was especially true in the character of Walter White, the protagonist.
A Brief Recap for Those Who Haven't Seen the Show (Reminder--- Spoilers)
When the show opens, Walter White seems to be an ordinary man living an ordinary life. He is married, has one child. He works as a chemistry teacher and presents with a bland, almost colorless personality. All that changes in the first episode. Walt learns he has terminal lung cancer. This is the catalyst that propels him down a tragic, destructive path.
He realizes he is facing financial catastrophe. He has no money, and another child is on the way. He strives to gain control of his life and his future. He sets himself in opposition to the fate he has suffered. He not only sets himself in opposition to fate, but also in defiance of the moral constraints that have ruled his life. He decides to cook meth (methamphetamine), and eventually becomes a major player in the meth criminal underworld.
Actual Gas Mask Used by Walter White When He Cooked Meth
Credit:APK. Used under CC 4.0 Attribution Share Alike International license.
Walter's rupture from his past is rapid and absolute. By the end of the first episode not only is he cooking meth, but he also has schemed to kill two men who were threatening to kill him.
Here is a YouTube video of the scene in episode 1 where Walter uses his chemistry skills to poison the men who are threatening his life:
Walt's brush with death, and his role in planning the death of others, do not dissuade him from his chosen path. The way forward is clear. The road will be paved with danger and there will be no moral boundaries to guide his actions.
Walter White as as Tragic Character
In classic Greek tragedy, the protagonist's downfall is brought about by a fatal character flaw--inevitably this flaw is hubris, overweening pride. Throughout the Breaking Bad series, Walter White repeats what he purports to be the justification for his increasingly amoral behavior: He's doing it all for his family. Not until the very end of the series, in the last episode, does he admit to his wife that what he does, he does for himself. "I did it for me," he explains. "I liked it. And I was good at it."
Here is a YouTube video of the scene.
However, we don't have to wait for this last scene to know that Walter White is driven by pride. Overweening pride rears its head throughout the show. It is the trait that Gus Fring exploits when he tempts Walter into cooking for him. Fring is the major meth producer and distributor in Southwest USA.
When Fring comes into his life, Walter and his acolyte, Jesse Pinkman, have been cooking meth in an RV. Walt wants out. He doesn't want to cook meth anymore. Jesse continues without him...but he does so using Walt's formula. He sells his product through Fring's network. When Walt finds out that his acolyte has been making meth with his formula, he is furious.
Fring exploits this pride, Walter's sense of offense. Fring's henchmen take half of Jesse's profits and turn them over to Walt--an acknowledgement that the formula is Walt's.
Walt insists that Jesse stop selling the product. He is contemptuous of Jesse's meth. In this YouTube video Walt dismisses Jesse's abilities. This tension between the two, occasioned largely by Walt's pride, is an important dynamic in the series.
When Walt confronts Fring for selling the 'inferior' meth, he recognizes that Fring is trying to goad him into cooking. Fring wants Walt to head up a major meth producing laboratory. Walt resists. He tells Fring (Season 3, Episode 5), "You think I have some proprietary selfishness about my formula. Some sort of overweening pride, that you think overwhelms me, clouds my judgement..."
There it is, the central theme of the show, overweening pride, the fatal flaw in Walt's character.
Walter continues to resist, but when Fring takes him to an elaborate, meth-cooking laboratory, constructed for Walt's use...resistance falters. Here is a YouTube video of the scene. You can see Walt's eyes widen, as temptation to rule this chemistry universe gets the best of him.
Walter succumbs to the temptation, and proceeds inexorably to his ultimate destruction.
Walter White is the driving force behind the show, but he is not the only character who is destroyed by pride. His arch enemy, Hank, the Javert of the series, pursues the mysterious Heisenberg (Walt's meth-world pseudonym) beyond a point his colleagues consider reasonable. Hank is Walt's DEA agent brother-in-law who is nearly paralyzed by an attack on his life. This injury does not deflect Hank from his search for Heisenberg.
Finally, when Hank discovers his target is his brother-in-law, who has been operating right under his nose, he is consumed by rage. His only desire is to 'get' Walt, to see him destroyed and behind bars. Even when he learns Walt is dying because his cancer has returned, Hank is determined to win, to beat Walt and the cancer clock. He tries to trap Walt's wife, Skylar, into giving a statement about Walt. Here is a YouTube video of the scene.
In the end, Hank's determination to see Walt destroyed leads to his own destruction.
Another character who is destroyed by pride is Skylar, Walt's wife. She presents herself as morally upright, outraged by his meth-selling activities. But she herself demonstrates a corrosive moral flexibility.
Sklyar is willing to break up her marriage because of pride. We get a foretaste of this pride as the conflict with her sister, Marie, unfolds. Marie is a kleptomaniac, a serial shoplifter.
The YouTube video posted here shows Marie's compulsive shoplifting--notice in this scene the ironic juxtaposition typical of the show: Marie is reporting Walter Jr. for smoking marijuana while she herself is in the process of shoplifting a pair of shoes.
Marie gives Skylar a baby-sized diamond tiara at Skylar's baby shower. The tiara has been stolen. Skylar needs money more than she needs a tiara so she tries to return the glittering item to the store. She is nearly arrested for theft.
Skylar seethes. She insists Marie apologize. Marie cannot, because she is compulsive and will not admit what she has done. Finally, there is a showdown in the kitchen and Marie tearfully offers the apology. Skylar has won.
Skylar is equally demanding of Walt. When she realizes what he has been doing, she is furious because he has lied to her. This stance of moral outrage might be persuasive, if we didn't have other insights into Skylar's character. She is as flawed as Walt, but lacks his courage and imagination.
For example, she takes a job with a former admirer, and not only helps him cook the books for his business, but also carries on an affair with him. This boss ends up disabled in the hospital because Skylar has sent men to strong arm him when his actions endanger her well-being. She may pretend to herself that she didn't know what might happen, but we see in the YouTube posted here that she is prepared for Ted to be dead.
Shown in this video is the hospital scene where we can see Ted gravely wounded. Skylar is not happy to see him injured, but in the end she is satisfied because Ted will not talk, and she is safe.
In one of the last episodes of the series, Skylar discovers Pinkman has doused her house with gasoline and apparently intended to burn it down.
Here's the scene where Pinkman is dousing Walt's house with gasoline.
Skylar suggests to Walt that Pinkman must be killed. She is essentially making the same moral choice Walt made in the first episode of the series, when he killed someone to protect his own life.
Sklyar is inflexible with Marie and Walt not because she is morally superior. She is inflexible with her husband and sister because they have wronged her. Her pride demands restitution.
While destructive pride is a consistent theme in Breaking Bad (it is evident in other characters, such as Hector Salamanca, cartel leader consumed by pride-driven revenge), it is after all Walter White who is the center of the show and who drives the plot forward. Pride is the motivation that impels his actions.
As the show accelerates to its catastrophic conclusion, the bodies pile up. Walter kills Gus Fring. Then he kills Mike Ehrmantraut, who was Fring's enforcer. Mike has the names of nine people who are in jail, people who can 'flip' and give Walter up to the DEA. But Mike will not give the names to Walter, and he will not allow Walter to kill the people. In Walt's view, Mike must die, so the killing can proceed. The YouTube video shown here has Mike describing the defining essence of Walt's character, the trait that destroys everything.
Walt's overweening pride leads to his downfall because, in the tradition of a classic Greek tragedy, it places him in opposition to fate and to the will of the gods. Although he has received a death sentence in the form of a cancer diagnosis, he defies that destiny.
In the YouTube video posted below, he openly disdains the will of God. "Man plans, God laughs", a fellow patient declares. Walt's response, "...bullshit. Never give up control."
Breaking Bad is one of the most brilliant series I have ever seen. It is not perfect. Toward the end, some of the episodes seemed a bit out of focus, but over all it is a laser-sharp autopsy of a tragic, destructive character. Walter White could have leapt out of the imagination of Sophocles or Euripides. He is memorable, believable, and (unfortunately) relatable.
Walt is an extreme example, but is there not a little of him in all of us? As we watch his decline we may wonder ourselves at what point we would say, "Stop, I give up."
Series Stats (From IMDB)
Breaking Bad: 2008-2013
I binge-watched the series on Netflix. It is available for a fee on a number of other services, including Amazon Prime.
The following is from Wikipedia
Thank you for reading my blog. Peace and health to all. Hive on!
