The Center of Breaking Bad

“Sin lives at the center of this show.” Maureen Ryan on Breaking Bad. 

(Spoiler Alert! If you haven’t seen the show and plan on watching you should stop reading.) 

I am not sure I can win with this post. Some will wonder why I spent my time watching such a dark, depressing show that ends with a broken marriage and almost all characters of consequence dead. Others will wonder why I “moralized” the show. Couldn’t I just watch for enjoyment? Some will chide me that the show was not very good to begin with.  Others will find different complaints. Yet I plunge on. Why? Breaking Bad is one of the best depictions of sin’s nature and effects ever put on screen.

Summary: the show is about a high school chemistry teacher who finds out he has cancer and begins cooking meth so that he can leave an inheritance for his family. Throughout the series he becomes a drug kingpin, destroys his family, and ultimately dies. The show covers two years of his life from his 50th to his 52nd birthday.

Content: There is some sexual content throughout the series though it is not frequent. There is quite a bit of profanity. The violence is frequent and when it occurs it is graphic and disturbing. The second episode contains one of the more graphic scenes of violence. And of course, drugs, drug dealers, and druggies play varying roles throughout the series. The drugs are not viewed positively. The tone of the show is dark, tense, with a general foreboding hanging over the series.   Whenever something good happens, you know it is only temporary.

What can we learn about sin from this series?

The unintended consequences of our sins cannot be contained.  Walter White thinks his hands are on the reigns. He believes he is in control. But time again things happen he never wanted to, but do as a  result of the choices he made. Season 2 ends with two passenger jets crashing because he chose to watch a girl die instead of save her. Dealing drugs leads to a vendetta against him and his family. His wife and teenage son end up hating him because of his lies. But the most brutal unintended consequence is the death of his brother-in-law in the last season of the show. Walter never intended for this to happen. He begs for it not to happen. But all his choices from the first episode to this have led inevitably to that point.  For us, it is often the same. We make sinful choices and assume those choices are self-contained. We assume we can manage the consequences. But sin has a life of its own. If we let the snake out of the box why we are surprised when the people we love are bit?

We justify our sins with pious excuses. Throughout the series Walter keeps telling himself that he is doing this for his family so they can have money when he dies and his children will be taken care of.  He repeats this narrative throughout the entire series. Even in the final season he still believes he can save his family. Along the way, he makes meth, lies to his wife and son, steals, poisons a child, bombs a nursing a home, has inmates murdered at prison, kidnaps his own daughter, get his brother-in-law killed, and kills one of his partners. The series ends with him estranged from his wife and children. He does get his son money, but he can’t do it in his own name because his son wouldn’t take it.  The show ends with him dying alone in a meth lab.  How often do we cloak our sins in righteous language? I have to spend 70 hours at work so my children can be taken care of? I wasn’t flirting. I was just being nice. I wasn’t lying. I was protecting my family.  Pious excuses do not turn our sin into righteousness.

Side Note: Breaking the 6th Commandment

Murders are a dime a dozen in modern TV shows. In most of these shows people kill other people and the impact of the killings are minimal. In Breaking Bad the killing that Walter and Jesse do has long term impact. Walter agonizes over his first planned killing carefully making a list of pros and cons as he prepares to kill a drug dealer. By the end of the show, he will kill a man without hesitation for very little reason. After Jesse murders Gale he spends the rest of the series haunted by the murder of a “problem dog” who never did anything wrong. Even when their actions indirectly cause the death of someone, such as the shooting of the boy by Todd, the characters are changed by those deaths. So many modern shows take death lightly. There are places where Breaking Bad does that. But the main characters are forever changed when they take the life of another. Men murder and find part of their soul dead.

Pride is the great destroyer of men. In the fifth episode of the series, Walter is visiting an old business partner who has become rich while Walter is making pennies as a high school chemistry teacher. Walter’s wife tells this partner about his cancer. The partner offers Walter a way out.  He tells him he will pay his medical bills, give him a good job, and take care of his family. Walter refuses. This was one of Vince Gilligan’s, the creator of the show, key moments in the series. The viewers saw Walter as a “creature of such pride and such damaged ego that he would rather be his own man and endanger his family’s life than take a handout like that.” And so Walter White’s descent into pride begins. Time and again his pride keeps him from escaping, from doing what is right. He believes he is immune to all the things that destroy mortal men. He can escape anything. And for a while he does. No scene demonstrates this like the famous “I am the one who knocks” scene. But of course even as Walter says this he is on the verge of falling. We watch him on the screen and ask, “Can’t he see what his pride is doing to him and his family?” But do we? Do we realize how our soul rots as we nurse our ego along? Do we realize how badly we want to be powerful, feared, and well known? Do we realize how self drives our lives?  Pride comes before the fall. (Proverbs 11:2, 16:18, 29:23) For the proud the closing scene is always the same.

When we are enslaved to sin we use people. One of the saddest parts of the show is the relationship between Jesse and Walter. Jesse is a young, small time drug dealer who Walter recruits to help him make meth. Jesse is looking for a father. Throughout the show we keep hoping that Walter will fill that role. Occasionally he does. But normally Jesse is just another tool to be used by Walter. He uses Jesse, lies to Jesse, and ultimately betrays him to Neo-Nazis for torture. He does rescue him in the very end, but that gesture is hollow by that point.  Walter ends up using his wife, son, baby daughter, brother-in-law, friends, everyone. Sin eats away our love for people. When we are bound by sin people become disposable. When their minutes run out we just throw them away. We see in Walter a piece of ourselves. As sin grows in our lives people get smaller.

Sin blinds us to ourselves. The viewers can see where Walter’s path is taking him. We know where the story ends. But he cannot see it. Throughout most of the show he thinks of himself as a middle aged suburban man who loves his wife and children. He wears nice shirts and khaki pants. He packs a sack lunch to go make meth. He drives a very normal car. Jesse is the scumbag, lowlife drug dealer. It is not until very late in the series that Walter even invites Jesse into his home. But Walter’s view of himself is twisted, like a carnival mirror.  Right before Hank is killed he tells Walt, “You are the smartest guy I ever met and you’re too stupid to see.” He is talking about the fact that a Neo-Nazi is about to kill him (Hank). But he could be talking about Walt’s entire rise to power as a drug lord.  He can see so much. Yet he cannot see himself. All of us live like this to one degree or another. From the outside others can see our sins. They often point them out to us. But we can’t or won’t see them. For those who refuse to look in the mirror of God’s Word the end is the same s; we find out too late that the picture of ourselves in our heads is lie.

Side Note: The Ending

It is very difficult to end a show like Breaking Bad. The expectations were high.  There were so many ways it could have gone, so many loose ends to tie up. I was happy with the ending. Walter paid for his sins with the loss of his family, friends and his “empire.” Jesse went free. Walter takes revenge on the Nazis. Walter dies in a meth lab. Vince Gilligan described it as Gollum being reunited with the ring, his “precious.” I can see that. However, I think an ending where Walter lives, but all he loves is gone or dead would have been more appropriate. I think of the end of The Godfather III, which was not a great movie, where Al Pacino, as an old man, living in exile, and totally alone just slumps over in his chair and dies. Sometimes living with your sins is worse than dying because of them. It was a very good ending, but still Gilligan gave Walter White a better ending than he deserved.<>mobi onlineпродвижение интернет ов оптимизация