Breaking Bad…
Some thoughts on Heisenberg, the legend.
Warning: This post may contain spoilers!
“When we do what we do for good reasons, then we’ve got nothing to worry about. And there’s no better reason than family” — Walt White
I didn’t watch Breaking Bad for the longest time. I’m a softie. I usually stick to my usual genre of rom-coms and Suits. Guns, violence & a whole lot of Meth? It just didn’t sound like my cup of tea.But “Dair aaye, durust aaye,” as they say in Urdu.
Breaking Bad is a heartbreaking story about a man’s incredible gift of love for his family. This love was unbreakable. He goes to the end of the world to provide for them. The journey is a transformational one, however, and explores each and every angle of human emotion and psyche.
The biggest theme for me was Death & Rebirth. In knowing that he’s slowly inching towards his end, Walt White’s desperation at giving his family a roof over their head & something after he’s gone, leads him to kill his self as he knows it…Mr White — the soft law abiding high-school chemistry teacher — is gone. Walt kills that guy — that guy can’t be the rock solid wall he needs to be for his family, he can’t break the law, he can’t get him the $$ he desperately needs to give his family hope, that his cancer can be cured, that money is not a problem. Heisenberg is born — a razor sharp, calculating alter-ego who is unafraid of death. White tries to hold on to his old self as it becomes his shield of normalcy. Walt the husband, Walt the father, the brother-in-law, the teacher… Those facets of his life are still real in his life and something he has to contend with… But Heisenberg, with his symbolic pork pie hat that brings the Great Depression to mind, gives Walt an identity that will eventually help him become a Meth god, a name both feared and admired in this underground world he’s become cocooned in.
The idea of facing death makes Walt unafraid of it…he’s a man with nothing to lose. Yet, it has the opposite effect on his family. Walt Junior (later Flynn) is scared of losing his dad, who’s practically his super hero. Skyper, Walt’s wife, gets in touch with her strong side, and acquires the tenacity & will to save her family (it is an evolving process, however, there are no simple black & white, good & evil kind of characters in this show… every character shows nuance)… Each of us has a different way of dealing with death… but with Walt, I could not help recall Steve Jobs’ words:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.
I think that was true for Walt too… just the idea of death became the force that transformed his life into something he would never even have imagined in his wildest dreams.
Rest in peace, Mr. White.
