The Science of “Breaking Bad” is explored in a captivating lecture at UW
Professor Donna J. Nelson delivers a talk at UW about how she became a science advisor on one of TV’s most popular shows.
An article from a 2008 issue of the Chemical and Engineering News, the official publication of the American Chemical Society, wrote a story about a new TV show that revolved around the life of a chemist. At that point, “Breaking Bad” hadn’t become the cultural hegemon that it would eventually be and was only finishing up its first season. A photo of star Bryan Cranston in a lab apron and little else, plus this following passage, got the attention of University of Oklahoma Professor of Chemistry Donna J. Nelson:
{Show creator Vince} Gilligan and his fellow “Breaking Bad” writers determined that fulminated mercury makes crystals somewhat similar to crystal meth, so they’d pass as a substitute. “Hopefully this is correct,” Gilligan says, noting that a lot of the science information in the show was researched on the Internet because the show’s budget didn’t allow for a paid chemistry adviser. He welcomes constructive comments from a chemically inclined audience, he adds.
Dr. Nelson came to the University of Washington earlier this week to give a talk called “The Science of ‘Breaking Bad’ A Look Behind the Hollywood Screen” to a full and riveted crowd inside Kane Hall.
After deciding that she could reconcile offering to help a show about homemade methamphetamine production with her conscience because of how the show punishes its characters for their bad decisions, Dr. Nelson said she contacted the author of the article to pass on to the “Breaking Bad” powers that be that she was interested in volunteering to answer any questions the show’s writers or producers had about chemistry. Besides, she said the Drug Enforcement Agency was already reviewing the show to prevent it from being a how-to guide for would-be homemade drug manufacturers.
Dr. Nelson said that she saw it as an opportunity to offer correct science on television, something she said was uncommon on fictional TV series. She also said there’s a myth that hit shows don’t have science advisors because they’d pooh-pooh any plot devices that the laws of physics would deem impossible. The threat of a Neil DeGrasse Tyson tweetstorm then wasn’t quite what it is today.
Dr. Nelson said that her offer was well-received and she found herself visiting the writer’s room in Burbank on her next trip to Southern California. At first, she was fielding questions about what type of person becomes a scientist, but then it progressed to “Using the P2P method, how much meth can you synthesize with 30 gallons of methylamine?” (223 lbs, if my notes are accurate.)
What I thought was so interesting about Dr. Nelson’s talk was the insight she provided about the balance between a show being scientifically accurate and entertaining for viewers. She said that when she provided the writers with a list of reagents, they chose to go with aluminum mercury because of how it would sound when spoken, even though the information about aluminum mercury was somewhat scarce to come by.
With regard to the creator, Vince Gilligan, she said that he was very interested in having the science be a major component of the show and like its own important character. He clearly valued Dr. Nelson’s input, telling NPR’s Terry Gross in 2011, “[Because] Walter White was talking to his students, I was able to dumb down certain moments of description and dialogue in the early episodes which held me until we had some help from some honest-to-god chemists,” and, “We have a [chemist] named Dr. Donna Nelson at the University of Oklahoma who is very helpful to us and vets our scripts to make sure our chemistry dialogue is accurate and up to date.”
Dr. Nelson showed clips from the show where she had an influence on the show, first showing where a diagram she illustrated ended up being replicated on Walter White’s chalkboard, and another scene had Bryan Cranson as White extolling the virtues of trained chemists to the captors who had him tied up.
The audience for Dr. Nelson’s talk was populated with a lot of students from the UW’s chemistry department, plus lots of other science and/or pop culture nerds (the latter applies to me). I think everyone was engrossed in her talk. I certainly was, and I don’t have the first clue what mono-alkenes are.
It was fascinating hearing Dr. Nelson talk about her chance encounter with Hollywood, and how Vince Gilligan said that she was the only one who responded to his request for help through his interview with Chemical and Engineering News. She said the magazine goes out to 160,000 scientists. I found that remarkable because today “science advisor on ‘Breaking Bad’” is at least one of the five sexiest job titles I could think of, even if it was unpaid. And that list grows shorter when you take out ones that involve winning the Super Bowl or World Series. At least one person in the audience agreed as a variation of “How can I do that?” came from a PhD student during the Q&A.
Dr. Nelson said that she not only hoped that she could improve the quality of science depicted on TV, but also to impress upon the writers of “Breaking Bad” the importance of science so they would go to work on other TV shows with the knowledge of how important science advisors are and hope they would push for scientifically-accurate representation.
For Dr. Nelson, she wanted to impress upon the audience that the public at large should appreciate scientists more than they do, and that people should look for opportunities and seek them out when they open up. Her four characteristics for innovation and success are: Dream big; be persistent; be ready; and look for “the gaps” of where your knowledge or expertise could be useful. She parlayed her experience on the show with helping Oklahoma law enforcement to get designer drugs deemed illegal.
It was a fascinating and engrossing talk that is sure to be more than a little inspirational for anyone in the audience.
*One more thing: Journal of Precipitation is a new, Seattle-area arts and/or culture website that is dedicated to exploring the Pacific Northwest outside of the “usual places” and the cultural zeitgeist. We believe in compensating all of our contributors (even though it is probably modest, compared to larger websites and magazines). If you value what we’re doing, please consider contributing to our Patreon, and allow us to continue to grow and provide coverage of our community.
