Tucker Gorman Section 9 Final essay

Tucker Gorman

PHIL 1030

Prof. Oliver

25 April 2012

Breaking Bad and Philosophy

            The hit television series Breaking Bad has been nominated and has won many awards over its four seasons. This hit television drama takes a boring high school chemistry teacher named Walter White and basically turns him into a mobster for lack of a better word. Throughout the series you see him change and it becomes hard to tell who Walter White really is. He has been consumed by this method of what he thinks is saving his family and cannot find a way out.

            In the pilot episode the viewer learns many key details in Walter White’s life. The episode starts in medias res and then cuts to the intro music. This opening clip leaves the viewer somewhat dumbfounded as we see Walter White walking around a crashed RV in the middle of the desert with no pants. He runs into the RV after holding his breath and grabs his personally belongings, stepping over two dead men and shoving another young, incapacitated man out of the way of the glove box. The next thing we know he steps out into the middle of a dirt road after hearing sirens and aims a gun down the middle of the camera and the screen cuts to commercial. After that we see that Walter is a chemistry teacher at the local high school; when he is done teaching he goes to work at a car wash where he is over worked every day. We also meet his family at his birthday party. He is married to Skylar, has a son named Walter Jr., and one of the most controversial characters is his brother in law Hank Shrader who is a DEA agent. The story progresses and Walter finds out that he has lung cancer that is already in a developed state. Hank shows Walter a video of a drug bust during his birthday party and Walter sees how much money is confiscated from the bust and asks if he could do a ride along with Hank. They arrange the ride to a small drug bust. Walter waits in the car while the squad bursts in the drug house and arrests a meth cooker. During this bust Walter sees one of his high school students jumping out the window of one of the neighbors houses and eventually follows him back to his house to ask him a few questions. That is essentially how Walter became a meth cooker. He felt as if he had to take care of his family financially and knew he could not do it on a high school teacher’s salary. That opening scene is more or less his first drug deal gone wrong.

            Now that you have a basic understanding for the premise of the show I would like to talk more on the philosophical aspect of the show. Walter White starts off as a suburban husband who teaches for a living. Originally he begins cooking meth to support his family after learning that he will probably die from lung cancer in the near future. He is hoping for one big gig to get a large lump of cash that he can leave behind. However, Walter White’s ability to cook is unmatched by anyone in the area and he is dragged into this philosophical maze. He gets into business with a dealer named Tuco who tries to double cross him. Using his in depth knowledge of chemistry he cooks up some explosive to blow up Tuco’s place and gets his money back. This is the first “bad boy” side we see from Walter and it will eventually consume him. His cancer goes into remission and he is now held captive in the business of cooking meth. Over the series he keeps moving up in the food chain of the drug world and eventually has to kill people to keep living, but is dying not what he had planned on doing? Looking back on the series he could have let himself be killed many times, but decided to overcome and survive. His wife has left him and is raising their newborn child without him and is not allowed to contact his family. He is a basically a meth warlord. He becomes so wrapped up in the sheer chemistry of the process that he forgets why he started doing it in the first place. He eventually drags his wife into the business to fudge the numbers and figure out how to launder all the money he is making. He eventually starts working for a “top dog” drug dealer Gustavo Fring is constantly trying to train other cookers to make meth as well as Walter so that he can kill him and make more money. Gus is caught in a stalemate as Walter’s partner, Jessie Pinkman, tells Gus that he will not work unless Walter is there. Drug cartels keep trying to recruit Walter and eventually Gus has no choice but to basically sell Walter to a cartel he owes a favor. The whole ordeal ends with Walter poisoning the whole cartel and escaping with Gus. Walter is still in danger working with Gus and eventually finds a way to kill him and does. This whole time Walter’s brother in law is just one step behind him as he is trying to catch the infamous “Heisenberg” which is actually Walter. Walter becomes too enticed by the drug world and becomes self-centered. He does what it takes to survive. He has turned into something he never wanted and is trapped with no way out but to go guns blazing.

            One of the biggest questions on the blogs for this show is whether or not Walter White is ultimately good or bad. In the beginning he was definitely a good person, but so much has happened that is really hard to infer the nature of his intentions. He poisons some people in the first episode, but it was to save his friend and himself; he blows up a floor in a drug building using fulminated mercury to get his drug money; he blows up a guys car because he is a douche bag; he kills a dealer named Krazy 8 because he would have killed Walter if not; he runs another drug dealer over then shoots him in the head as he is about to kill Jessie. Those all seem to be in self-defense, but there is one “murder” Walter indirectly commits that changes the game a little. Walter’s partner Jessie goes though this phase where all he does is shoot up heroin with this girl he likes. One day Walter breaks into the house they are in while they are sleeping after they shot up. Jessie’s girlfriend starts throwing up and has rolled onto her back so that she is choking on it. Walter is standing over her while this happens and does nothing because he thinks that she is bad for Jessie. Because of her death Jessie becomes depressed and goes to rehab to get off drugs. Now karma comes into play; that girl’s father was an air traffic controller and was so distraught that he could not perform his job properly. He makes mistakes at work and to airplanes collide in midair slinging debris all over the suburb where Walter lives and the surrounding area. In reality, Walter is somewhat responsible for the death of Jessie’s girlfriend and the deaths of everyone on those planes.

            I encourage you to watch the series and question Walter’s actions. Is Walter ultimately good or bad? Are his actions justified or has he become a criminal at heart? If he has become a criminal, do you think there is anyway back for him? My last question is is Walter really a family man or has he become too overcome by the money and thrill of the life of a drug dealer?