Breaking Bad and the Development of Evil
/The Villain’s Journey is layered with good intentions.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.-Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818
The real world Ozymandias-ruined statue of the Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II
What does it mean to be evil in the modern world? Neither Tolkiens’ innately evil orcs, nor Marvels’ mustache twirling villains born of tragic backstories seem to fit the world we live in today. A constant flood of information and inputs swirls around us constantly as we navigate the digital and physical world. Even the most basic facts are contested in real time from a hundred different angles, from actors both good faith and bad. Telling good from bad in this murky soup is as difficult as it’s ever been and no longer as simple as telling up from down. Even the worst villains in today’s world have millions of cheerleaders. What can evil really mean in a world like this? Where does it come from? Is it innate, or something that is developed over time?
One answer to these questions comes from an unusual source-Breaking Bad. Airing from 2008 to 2013 on AMC, Breaking Bad might be the closest we’ve gotten to Shakespeare in a very long time. Much like the tragic heroes of the great playwright, the show chronicles the rise and fall of its main protagonist-framing the journey in human terms that anyone throughout history could understand. Family, Greed, Power, Corruption, Money. Human nature. What do these very human characteristics tell us about evil? Needless to say, massive spoilers for all aspects of the show to follow.
In the Breaking Bad, Walter White begins as an unassuming high school chemistry teacher diagnosed with lung cancer. His diagnosis leads him to partner up with former student Jesse Pinkman in order to cook crystal meth, make a bunch of money, pay for his medical bills, save his family from financial ruin, and provide financial security for their futures. What starts as a somewhat noble, if illegal, plan to save his family ends with Walt becoming an absolute monster. Anyone genuinely still rooting for Walt after say…season 4 or so is almost certainly a psychopath. The journey to get to that evil, however, is not as simple as it might seem at first glance. The context and history of the moment influence Walt’s decisions and shape the environment that he makes decisions in.
“Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Rather than simply being a tale of drug dealers, cops, and criminals, in many respects Breaking Bad seems to be an allegory for the pitfalls of the modern capitalist system that so many feel alienated by today in the real world. The layers of this become evident the more you rewatch the show. You can really feel the desperation that a lower or middle class family struggles with. Like many lower status families in our current system, Walt and his wife Skyler are just one tragedy away from being in real trouble. Walt’s diagnosis and the astronomical bills and debts that would be incurred by any normal family provide the primary motivation for Walt’s villain journey, but also shine a light on real concerns that real people have in real life. Election after election, the American healthcare system is debated and dissected, with many seemingly taking for granted the absurd costs of quality medical care.
Perhaps more subtly, Walt also lives in the shadow of the 2008 financial crisis, an event which may prove to be underrated in historical terms. As a result of economic crisis, families struggled, institutions were cracked, and perceptions of authority were reshaped. Some have argued that populist movements led by incendiary leaders with a focus on burning down the establishment were forged in the embers of 2008. That will all be sorted out by historians later I suppose, but you can actually seel the desperation in the setting of Breaking Bad. The characters and environments of Breaking Bad often feel dilapidated. While the show is beautifully shot, Albuquerque, New Mexico is not exactly shown to be a vacation destination. This is no White Lotus. Instead we see a stream of worn down strip malls, old cars, ruined buildings, and beige warehouses. With a few exceptions, even the wealthy and powerful in the show live modestly. There are no fancy drug kingpin nests or pads. Tuco Salamanca’s beaten up top floor drug cave sets the stage for the rest of what we see. It’s true that Gus Fring does bring a level of professionalism and status to our setting, but even Gus’ fancy meth lab is on top of a no-frills industrial laundromat. And Gus himself drives a Volvo and lives modestly.
It is this setting of Breaking Bad and it’s historical context that make the actions of Walter White possible. In this bleak and desperate world, those who play by the rules and try to do the right thing are seemingly left behind in the scrap heap and swallowed up by the machine. Walt recognizes this, and his decision to begin his drug empire is thus understood by the audience, and perhaps even encouraged. Rather than some traumatic backstory that immediately vaults Walt into the realm of Marvel villain, Walt’s evil develops slowly over time, and is understood and normalized step by step. Given the context and history of the moment, it’s easy to understand his villainy. We can all identify with the little man getting crushed. The man who is just as talented as everyone else, maybe more so, but is holding on to some shred of integrity or whatever you want to call it for not selling out and cashing in (think Walt and his relationship with “Gray Matter” and it’s founders). Eventually, after getting beaten up for so long, Walt decides to screw the system and begin the Villain’s Journey.
And what a journey it is. It should be noted that a fairly standard interpretation of the show says that Walt was evil the whole time. He was a master lier who convinced his family (and maybe himself) that he was doing things for the right reasons, but some of his final lines seem to confirm that he was evil throughout his life when he tells Skyler that he did it all for himself. He did it because he liked it. And he did it because he was good at it.
While this is certainly true to an extent, I also believe there was a progression to Walt’s evil. A normalization process. The Walter White of season 1 is not the Heisenberg of season 5. He starts out doing what is necessary to save his family from financial hell-maybe his actions in early episodes are evil, maybe they aren’t. He then slowly continues on the journey towards allowing evil to happen. An example of this is his decision to allow Jane to die, rather than saving her. Good intentions and a difference between killing and letting die allow Walt to believe he is not a monster. Later on in his journey, Walt is not merely allowing evil to happen, he actively commits evil intentionally-believing that he is working for a greater good and that he is justified in his actions (think poisoning the kid, or killing Gus). The final step of Walt’s Villain Journey is actively doing evil for his own selfish benefit in order to save himself (think the killing of Mike, or the final betrayal of Jesse in the desert).
At each step along the way, Walt’s intentions seem to be good, yet by the end the audience sees clearly that he has become a monster. As the journey progresses, there are these flashpoint moments throughout the show where we have clearly entered a new phase. And it truly is Shakespearean tragedy to watch it all unfold.
Interestingly, as Walt’s level of evil and despicableness increases, so too does his sense of control. As the episodes progress, Walt feels as if he is in control of every situation, and he feels that everything is about him (“It’s all about ME!”). Even if he isn’t in control, Walt has to feel like he has it. Jesse calls him out on this a few times, but it isn’t enough to change anything and this feeling of needing and seeking control leads to even worse outcomes as the series goes along.
But the problem with control is that it is impossible to truly control the ripple effects and unintended consequences of your actions. Even actions done with the best intentions create a cause and effect chain that is impossible to predict at best and dangerous at worst. In the episode “Fly,” this idea is explored when Walt becomes completely obsessed with killing a fly that is buzzing around his lab. As Walt’s actions and their downstream effects become increasingly impossible to control and account for, it seems that Walt is losing control. The obsession with it requires him to spend a whole episode tracking down this fly and killing it. But there will always be another fly. There’s always more mission creep, or another downstream effect that can’t be accounted for.
Another process in the normalization of Walt’s evil is compartmentalization. At various points throughout the series, Walt and others think that they can overlook one aspect of a nefarious character because that person can benefit them in a separate way-believing that as long as the boxes are kept in separate compartments, there won’t be any spill over. But in the show and the real world, there is always spill over. A great example of this comes from Walt’s relationship with the Neo-Nazis at the end of the series. He slowly gets more involved with them through his relationship with Todd, believing that if their interests align on particular issues and certain moments, their brutal and violent nature won’t blowback on him. Big mistake.
The Neo-Nazis are interesting as the end point of the journey of evil in Breaking Bad. This is the final stage of evil. Just dumb, stupid violence for the enjoyment of it and the raw pursuit of power. There is little calculation here. A great example of this happens in one of the final episodes where the Neo-Nazi leader Jack and his buddy are sitting at a diner casually eating breakfast with about 500 gallons of stolen methylamine sitting outside tied up to their truck in plain view for anyone to see. The fact that Walt has fallen so far as to go into business with these goons shows just how far he has fallen. It fits the endpoint of Walt’s journey, as he is now lying, cheating, stealing, killing, and shamefully justifying all this with his survival of the fittest bullshit. Remember what Nietzsche said about monsters-“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”
It would be an oversight not to also mention the greed and selfishness on display in Walt over the course of the series. How many times could he have safely quit the drug business with enough money to secure his family’s future many times over? Yet he didn’t. How many times did other characters like Jesse or Skyler have the opportunity to quit, only to be pulled back in by the slow burn of normalization? As Skyler says in one episode, justifying murder with- “we’ve come this far, for us. What’s one more?” The house is made by laying one brick at a time and the boulder rolls downhill with progressively more momentum.
It’s also important to remember that throughout the series, Walt is genius, likable (at times), and even funny. Upon rewatching the series, one of the most striking aspects of the show is just how funny it is. Watching Walt and Jesse stumble and bumble their way from one insane scheme to the next often creates moments of real hilarity. It turns out there is a thin line between comedy and tragedy. But no doubt Walt is still evil by the end.
The Two best hitmen west of the mississippi.
Perhaps it is this human element of the show that makes a seemingly far-fetched idea such a relatable tragedy. To some extent we are all Walt. And we must grapple with this before passing judgment and dismissing his journey as that of a fictional drug dealer. One of the great ironies of evil is that we are all complicit. In the show this is true as well. Walter’s pride and ego slowly subsume everyone else (Jesse, Skyler, Saul, Mike, etc.) into his orbit, until he has destroyed them all. But to some extent at least, at various moments, they all had a chance to cut themselves out of it, but they carried on because of some combination of selfishness, greed, circumstance, or weakness. A cynical person might argue that just as Walt poisons babies, our society does as well-shoveling processed crap and fast food into our mouths while corporations benefit. Or poisoning young minds with unrestricted access to the very phones and devices you are using to read this right now. Or even our collectively sad inability to protect or prevent tragedies occurring to our children at schools. These realities are the cost of doing business in the real world just as they are the downstream effects of Walter’s decisions in Breaking Bad. The cost of living in our modern society-something I think Breaking Bad was trying to show. How will we respond to this cost in our world?
Walt has some final small measure of redemption in the series finale. Only at the end does his greed subside. He shoots Jack as Jack offers him money-something Walt would never have done before-showing that he’s not tethered to it anymore, and saving Jesse in the process. But this final moment does not erase the evil he has created. It does not bring back Gale or Andrea or Jane or anyone else.
Just like Ozymandias, Walt ends his journey alone, unloved, and dead. The remnants and tools of his empire all around him. Surrounded by the things that made him both alive and dead. There is something sad and disconcerting about even the worst evil eventually disintegrating, waiting to be swallowed up by the sands of time.
The Reflecting History Newsletter is a free, low stress, monthly-quarterly email offering historical perspective on modern day issues, behind the scenes content on my latest podcast episodes, and historical lessons/takeaways from the world of history, psychology, and philosophy. You can help by sharing, subscribing, or supporting: