Breaking Down Breaking Bad

Cont.

As we see Jesse grow from a hood rat boy to a man under Walt's tutelage, he also gets pushed again and again to do terrible things that go against his own nature. And unlike Walt, Jesse has a good nature. Vince Gilligan said once (probably many times) that Walt is a criminal who never should have been a good man, and Jesse was a good man who never should have been a criminal, but when we first meet them they're both in the wrong roles. But that isn't revealed until near the end of the show's run, and the writers didn't even know it until then. Things grew season by season, and their personalities came into focus more and more.

Anyway, wow, how did I end up writing all that? I came in here to talk about Jesse and how Walt messed him up monumentally. But I needed to set the stage first by explaining how Walt constantly deluded himself about how dark and twisted he's always been inside. That's necessary to understand first.

He forced him to murder Gale Boetteker in cold blood—a nice, friendly nerdy guy that's totally likable. Of course in a way it was Gus who forced that, but Walt is the one who called Jesse and told him he needs to go and murder him right now! Immediately, or both Walt and Jesse will be dead within the hour. And honestly, if you think it through, Jesse would never have gotten into any of this mess if Walt didn't drag him into it. So many times Jesse had an opportunity to straighten up his life and live much better, and he tried, and he found happiness a couple of times. A beautiful and amazing girlfriend (Krysten Ritter), and later a onther one, this time with two little boys. In other words twice he was very close to having a real family, and that's the major theme of the show. Family = happiness and the good life, and Jesse was always denied it because of his involvement with Walt, despite coming so tantalizingly close to it twice!! The show is so complex and things are so intertwined, you really have to think it through in long lines like this to figure things out. It takes many paragraphs at least to think your way through all the twists and turns involved.

The first girl—Jane (Krysten Ritter)—died by choking on her own vomit in bed right beside Jesse while they were both on heroin. Walt was there, in fact he inadvertently jostled her while trying to shake Jesse awake, and it caused her to roll onto her back. She had explained to Jesse earlier, as she gave him his first shot of heroin, that when you pass out you want to make sure you're on your side and not your back, or you can throw up and choke to death. So they were spooning, both on their sides. She started throwing up as Walt watched (Jesse was still passed out), and Walt started to move to help her, then he froze, his face went all Heisenberg (amazing how he can just change it like that), and he stood and watched her die. Then you could see waves of horror and self-incrimination pass across his incredibly expressive face at what he had just done, what he's become. Heisenberg is almost in full control now, and Walter is horrified, but Walter has no control anymore. From here on out it's Heisenberg who pulls all the strings.

Then later, when Jesse finds another beautiful young woman, this one with two boys (Jesse loves children), the older boy gets killed because of involvement with the drug trade, the second one gets poisoned (by Walt), and the woman is killed right in front of Jesse as punishment by the Neo Nazis he's now a prisoner of. Because he tried to escape the cage they keep him in when they're not forcing him to cook meth for them. By this time his face is all scarred up as you see in the picture above, because the Nazis cut him up while breaking him to his new life as their slave. Maybe all this gets across some sense of how badly his life has been utterly destroyed, because of his involvement with Walt. It isn't clear at the end if Jesse is fully sane anymore. He's the only associate of Walt, besides Walt's immediate family, who lives in the end.

So Walter White, this man we became so invested in at the beginning, completely ruined the lives of basically everyone close to him. But mostly he ruined Jesse's. The secondary character, the magical child to Walt's stern and abusive straight man. From a writing perspective, this is all genius level stuff. From a humanist standpoint, it's disgusting and horrifying. And I'm beginning to see the deeper levels that make the show so perfect. I knew there was more going on down there!

Special bonus video:

Poor Jesse



I'm almost done reading the book Breaking Down Breaking Bad (They stole the title from me!)

I was aware poor Jesse really got dragged through the shit (quite literally at one point, when he fell through the roof of a port-a-potty and emerged dyed blue), but I didn't quite understand what was happening to his character. Apparently I'm not very good at understanding the emotional arcs of characters, or I just didn't look deep enough into the depths of the show. To be fair though, those depths go really deeeep! We're made from the beginning to empathize with Walt, and Vince Gilligan said he understood that was absolutely key—he really needed viewers to see themselves in him or empathize with him or the show wouldn't work. So he spent a good deal of time early on showing us who he is and making us feel what it's like to be him. But there was an undercurrent of resentment and darkness in him already that was very subtle, or that I (and I think a lot of people) missed or were willing to ignore. So we believed he really was "Mister chips becoming Scarface." Which he really wasn't.

In reality, from well before the show begins, Walt was a nasty piece of work. He was filled with bitterness and resentment, but that was not focused on directly, it was shown subtly. And when he discovers he's dying of cancer and begins his heroic arc into what seems to be a badass, strong version of himself at first, we feel great for him (with him). And so maybe we do ignore those subtle little hints that he's deeply troubled from the very beginning. This is part of the Vince Gilligan magic. It's there, but somehow you didn't notice it or let it go by and forgot about it.

So you (by which I mean I) missed the fact that Jesse served mainly as Walt's kicking pet. Yes, Walt became his mentor, but Walt was a horrible twisted man with a darkness inside him that was growing through much of his life, he just was afraid to let it show before. He kept it locked down inside and it grew darker and more twisted. And to him Jesse was just a dumb kid who had failed his Chemistry class a few years ago, and who could usher him into the meth business. The fact that Jesse saw him (after a while) as a mentor/father figure (which is something he badly needed), and that Walt really didn't have much of a relationship with his own son, made us see it in a positive light. I feel so manipulated!! There's a great deal of subtlety and levels of meaning in this show folks!! More than I was aware of, even after my second viewing (the one I just completed recently). I didn't pick up on most of this until reading about it in a few books.

So—Walt is Jesse's father figure, but in the way Darth Vader was Luke's father. Because Heisenberg was already locked away deep inside Walt from the beginning, in latent form, and had yet to be released and grow into his really badass self. But the twisted, dark evil was already in him, and like what I said long ago in here on my analyses of the Minotaur myth, all of his progeny come out twisted and dark. All his thoughts, all his projects, his achievements, all are tainted with the evil that issues forth from inside this deceptively ordinary looking man. It's sort of like having Hitler for a daddy. The main reason Walt liked working with Jesse is because, and he even explicitly stated it this way once, Jesse does what Walt wants him to.

He uses him. No matter how happy they seem at times, or how good their relationship looks on the surface, this is always lurking just underneath. And it taints Walt's relationship to everybody, despite his constant claims that he did everything in order to provide for his family. That was his cover story, and it wasn't really true. He admitted that too near the end. He told Skyler "I did it because I wanted to. I liked the power." Probably the most honest thing he ever said. Though I think for a long time he really believed his own cover story. Heisenberg was well hidden in there, even from himself. But his evil manipulative nature comes through all the time, and poisons everything he does. The genius of the show is that, unless you're much more perceptive than I was, you don't notice it, or maybe you sort of do at times but can't quite add it all up until you've seen the show a few times (or read about it, from people who have). But to be fair, I wasn't paying close attention to Jesse's arc. I was just enjoying the awesome. I generally don't start going into analysis mode until I've seen something a few times.

Walt's real REAL legacy

Correcting what I said 3 posts back.

I said his family rejected his blood money with extreme contempt, and that's true, But I forgot he then gave it all to Elliott and Gretchen and told them to give it to Walt. Jr on his 18th birthday with instructions to share it with the family. And to never reveal where they got it. Assuming they went ahead and did it, then he absolutely did meet his goal of providing for his family for the rest of their lives. Though it would have been nice to see a coda where Walt Jr recieves the gift, to remind us of that little factoid. And to make it clear that they accepted it since they didn't know it was from Walt.

That makes it more of a bittersweet ending and a major triumph. It was pretty much of a downer the way I understood it, just pure tragedy.

Booo-Yah!!!

Here it is—#17:



Somewhere back on page 1 I think, I wondered if there was a connection with Reservoir Dogs.

Here's that ten-year reunion video. I really enjoyed it, and it seems like a good way to close this thread out:



Though I can't be sure I'm really done with it. Usually I find a second round of ideas start coming in after I've made a full first pass on something, and those ideas are better than the original ones. I start seeing it at a higher level of understanding, and being able to connect up the ideas I found the first time through much better. Time will tell if that happens.

Actually I've already made a bunch of second-pass type connections, and maybe even third-pass. Not sure if any more will be forthcoming or not.

Walt's Real Change, and His Real Legacy

I once said somewhere on this thread that I thought Walt ended up providing for his family in the end. Wow, was I wrong!! He tried several different ways to get his money to them, and all of them failed. And when he finally talked to his wife and his son, they both rejected his blood money with contempt. So despite everything he went through, ostensibly to provide for his family, his major change was into a self-centered psychopathic monster. They might not have respected him much in the beginning, and maybe they walked all over him, but he was goofy old dad, and in a way they loved him. But because of what he changed into they ended up fearing and despising him. But I guess he did get to live out his repressed fantasy of being powerful and feared, and of being extremely good at something. Like world-class good. And his name being known around the world for it.

A Show About Change

In the first episode, when he's teaching his class, Walt asks what chemistry is. A student says it's the study of chemicals. Walt responds with "No, it's actually the study of matter. But I like to think of it as the study of CHANGE." And right there I think we have another premise, or at least a major theme. It isn't really worded right to be a premise.

I've seen Vince Gilligan say several times that the characters in the show aren't stable, they're undergoing a process of change. It seems to be true for all the main cast—Walt, Jesse, Skyler, Hank, Marie (maybe not Marie)—and possibly Walt jr. And I guess all Walt's enemies change to corpses.

Another line Gilligan says all over the place is that the hero changes from being Mister Chips to Scarface. I don't really know who Mister Chips is, though I've heard the name. I finally saw a brief clip on a video about a ten-year reunion for the show, and Mister Chips is a very kind and helpful English college professor in an old black-and white movie.

These two things taken together—that chemistry is the study of change and that all the main characters undergo changes throughout the show, is support for the idea that the characters are meant to be seen as chemicals or elements that interact with each other in various ways.

Comedy Duo?

When I was thinking about the chemistry between Walt and Jesse it suddenly occurred to me—they're like the classic comedy team—the straight man and the magical child. Walt is often mean and garrulous, sometimes downright abusive, and Jesse, especially at the beginning, is a buffoon with idiotic ideas. Very much like a child, and somewhat magical I suppose. This is the setup for the classical comedy duos like Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello, and even The Three Stooges. I know, there were three, it was a somewhat more complex setup. Basically Moe was the straight man when nobody else was around, who harangued and slapped around the other guys, but as soon as one of the authoritarian straight men (or women) showed up then all three became magical children. I'd say The Marx Brothers had the same setup, where Groucho did double duty.

Breaking Bad isn't really a comedy, but it does include a pretty liberal dose of black comedy, and Jesse is one of the comic relief characters, at least in the beginning. He grows out of it into a much more mature character and his friends take his place, and so does Saul the lawyer, though Saul is also very good at what he does, highly knowledgeable about crime and related subjects, and extremely smart. I suppose really Saul is more of a serious character who has a funny persona as almost a disguise, or maybe a useful way to defuse situations and make people feel at ease. His humor is mostly in things he says, but nothing he says is ever stupid or childish. It's more of a self-aware humor, very deliberate. I've seen clips from his previous shows, and in both of them he essentially plays exactly the same guy.

Ok, so, my question at that point was—if Breaking Bad isn't really a comedy, is it right to say the main characters are a comedy duo? Or would it be more accurate to say they function somewhat like a comedy duo?

Then it hit me. The same can be said about Riggs and Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon movies, though those are more definitely comedies. Yeah, the older more staid Murtaugh is definitely the straight man, and Riggs is the scrappy, sometimes goofy magical child. Maybe that dynamic isn't always there—the movie also has to function as a serious detective drama too. I'd say the most comedic scene in the first movie is when they meet in the police station, when Riggs stupidly pulls his gun out, somebody shouts "Gun!" and Murtaugh tackles him. Riggs is literally like an innocent and idiotic child, only for that scene. But I'm off topic.

Anyway, I suppose there's the same kind of dynamic in buddy cop movies, and BB can be said to be the dark counterpart of one of those. Rather than cops they're criminals (anti-heroes?). So yeah, I'd say it isn't as pure as it would be in a real comedy, but the straight man/magical child dynamic is definitely there.

Walt's Skills and Chemistry as a Theme

Why Jesse had to kill Gale Boettecher, his one big act of violence previously.

One of the biggest elements of the show is Walt's incredible skill and brilliance as a chemist. His meth is something like 96% pure, and if I remember right, the best most cooks can manage is more like 65%. This skill is what allowed just about everything else to go down the way it did. It's why his meth was the best anyone had ever seen, why his reputation skyrocketed so fast. Only Jesse could come close, after assisting Walt several times and learning his methods. There's more to that though, it's metaphorical for the 'chemistry' between them as characters. Each had something the other needed desperately, and when they got together and started making meth they both improved because of it. Walt became a mentor and father figure to Jesse, and Jesse a proxy son to Walt (Walt's own son and namesake doesn't like him very much, and prefers Uncle Hank).

But on the surface level of the show this insane skill gives them all kinds of power and opportunities. Because only they can make the infamous Blue Sky meth (so named for its unusual blue color) they can get meetings with some of the big kingpins in the area like Tuco and later Gustavo Fring, and can make deals with them to become their main suppliers. And frequently it's the only reason their lives are spared after Walt does something insane out of his rage and fragile ego. If you want the Blue Sky to continue to flow, you must be nice to Walt and Jesse, that unlikely duo, and you also must protect them against your competitors and the DEA.

When Gayle Boetecher comes into the picture it's as a new rival to Walt and Jesse. He's a well-trained and highly talented chemist, almost on a level with Walt, but apparently Walt knows a few secret tricks that he just can't figure out. Jesse knows them as well, so his meth is better than Gayle's. Gus Fring, the kingpin who built the underground superlab specifically for Walt and Jesse to cook in, hires Gayle and has them train him in their method. They never taught him the secret tricks, but his meth comes up to very nearly as pure as Jesse's. After a while Gus decides Walt is too much of a loose cannon, too unstable and potentially disastrous to work with, and that Gayle's skills are good enough, and he's going to kill Walt and Jesse and let Gayle make his product.

This is why Jesse had to kill Gayle. It wasn't done in a fit of rage or anger or anything, he's not unstable like Walt is. It was a calculated move done in self defense for both of them. Now that Gayle is gone, Gus needs Walt and Jesse. There's no one else who can do anywhere neas as good of a job.

All of this is absolutely built around the idea of Walt's insane skill levels, and the fact that through their (chemical) bond Jesse picked up a nearly equivalent level of skill. That later makes them rivals, because Gus could always kill Walt and force Jesse to keep making meth. But Walt and Jesse swear
a pact to never work alone—each refuses to work unless the other is working with him. This gets them through a lot of jams.

But it's such a brilliant move to use the meth-cooking skill this way, and to distribute various skill levels to certain characters and use them as game pieces in a way. And the writers explored many different possibilities it offered, and squeezed out the maximum drama from each.

I'm not sure if I even got my point across. I think I kind of lost it in writing all that. But it ties in with the chemical bonding theme of the characters—the way they can have positive, negative, or unstable bonds with each other. And it's also made to tie in with the Family theme, by having Walt and Jesse's bond be that of proxy father and son to each other. I'm not sure I'm expressing this well enough. Maybe it's not even something that can be clearly expressed, or maybe I just lack the writing skill to do it justice, I don't know. Or maybe I don't understand it clearly enough at this point (likely). But I can see some angles to it that I don't know how to express. Hopefully I'll be able to use some of this understanding in my own writing.

Not Just Juxtaposition

I want to modify what I said a few posts back about juxtaposition. As I understand it, the word simply means to hold two things up side by side so their differences can be seen. That in itself doesn't create any drama. Going back to my previous example yes, the two very different worlds of Family and Violent Crime are juxtaposed, but in order for it to become dramatized, you must smash them together at some point. Let the one start to destroy the other right in front of your eyes.

There's always been the threat that Walt's violence, or the violence of the crime world he lives in, will come crashing in to his peaceful family life, right into the very house where we see him living. But it isn't dramatized until we see it actually happen. Mere threat isn't dramatic. The threat must become a reality, or at least begin to. Something like this:



Even from the very first moment (and this is the beginning of the episode, though a little is cut off at the very start) we see a car moving down a peaceful suburban street, but there's violence in the way it's being driven, and in the music. Already the two worlds are being smashed into each other, the one contaminated by the other that doesn't belong. Then we see the way it 'pulls into the driveway'. Nothing normal about that! Rage and desperation have so infected Jesse at this point that he destroys the boundary between driveway and yard. The violence has moved from the street into a familiar yard. Then the door is destroyed. We actually see pieces of it break off and fly into the living room. How rude, he didn't even knock first, as you're supposed to! That's how we've always seen everyone else enter this nice house before. And then of course he proceeds to just ruin the carpet and furniture. Those stains and that smell will never come out! And the worst thing about it is, it's Jesse—Walt's sort-of proxy son, who has largely been a decent person and has been dragged through all kinds of hell himself, but has never exploded into a violent rage. Certainly not in someone's house! He's been the target of violence and cruelty, but has never been its agent (unless I'm forgetting something). So this hits hard, on several levels at once. While you're still trying to process one aspect of it they hit you simultaneously with several more.

Which brings up another thing that's handled brilliantly—


Cliches and Stereotypes

Every now and then something happens that looks like it's going to be a standard cliche or stereotyped situation. But they never go there. Just when you think you know exactly what's about to happen, it gets inverted or transformed into something completely unexpected and becomes a revelation rather than a tired old trope.

Sophistication

Here's an example of it. The neo Nazis have Jesse trapped in a pit and they tortured him. We know that for two reasons. One, they made it clear they were going to. They didn't actually say it, I forget what was said. Something like "We can get it out of him when we get him back home." When this was said, Jesse whimpered in terror, knowing what was coming, and Walt gloated in evil glee. At the time it served his purpose for Jesse to be not only killed but tortured as well.

And the second reason we know is that, next time we see Jesse, he's lying on the floor of the pit chained hand and foot, looking like he's been there a long time. He's got some cuts all over his face that weren't there before, they're not bandaged but it looks like they should be. The roof of the pit is cage bars, and above it sky—he's out in the middle of the desert somewhere. Here comes one of his jailers and opens the hatch with a clang, and Jesse whimpers and cowers like a beaten animal. I think he whispers "No no no no no." He doesn't say "Not again!" or "Don't torture me again!" or anything. No theatrics, not hysteria, and most importantly we never see a torture scene or even the typical scene where they have a tray of wicked utensils and start to reach for one and the screen goes black. It's never the cliche you'd see in a dozen other shows. It's always handled in a more sophisticated way. Understated, until it's time for fierce brutality, and then it's over the top, but not in a stupid way. Somehow the brutality is sophisticated too. I need to study this much more. I'm getting deeper and deeper into what makes it work.

And next I'm going to have to watch El Camino and Better Call Saul.

Juxtaposition

The reason they're able to wring so much high-impact drama out of the show, at such intensity levels, is because of the close juxtaposition of the tender feelings and vulnerability of family, with a newborn baby and a crippled son, against the ruthless brutal world of murder and drugs.

Walt has a persona for each, but as I said, they keep showing up at the wrong times and places. Though sometimes when he goes all Heisenberg in the house or with the family he needs to, like when his disabled son was trying on pants at a store and some bully kids were making fun of him. That's one of the first times we saw Walt be a badass, and it felt amazing!! His wife and son both thought so too. It was definitely the first time his family had seen him like that. That's that Jeff Goldblum from The Fly thing—at first it's liberating and empowering, but it gradually turns darker, morphs into toxic masculinity and then full monster-mania.

And also at key moments in the middle of a drug deal or some kind of out-in-the-desert meetup where he needs to be a full-on badass, suddenly his face goes all happy-Walt and he turns all soft and gentle. Usually when family is somehow invoked or involved, like when the Nazis were about to shoot Hank. Really it would serve Walt's purposes (Heisenberg's anyway) for Hank to be dead. Otherwise Walt ends up either dead or in prison. But he turns fully into Walter White, decent loving family man, and begs them not to kill him, because he's family. The way he said it made it absolutely clear Walt has weird delusions about family, or rather about his place in his family. He has a good family, but he's become a monster, and sorry, but unless it's at 1313 Mockingbird Lane, a monster has no place in a decent family. Maybe if he'd move into some meth-head's house, he'd fit right in there. They wouldn't care, they probably wouldn't notice. But that's not a family, it's an empty house with only nihilism and addiction and the living dead in it.


By season 6 (or season 5, part deux?) he's so delusional that he's in full rampaging Godzilla mode and still shouts "We're a FAMILY!! We love each other!" Dude! Where have you been for the last few seasons? Did you not get the memo? They've all seen your dark side too many times now, and they realized they don't know who the hell you are. They're afraid of you. They hate you. That's not a family anymore, at least not the kind you desperately want it to be/believe it is. But the writers once again pulled a magic bunny rabbit out of their hat. On the phone call to Skyler while the police are listening in and tracking his location, he screams insanely at her, finally going fully off the deep end and becoming a real abusive asshole. She's horrified and cries. Excellent performances all around of course. But later it's revealed that it was largely an act on his part, because he knew the police were listening, and he set it up so he looked like the complete asshole and she looked like an innocent victim. She wasn't. She had teamed up with him for a season or so and helped him launder his money. He did it to keep her out of jail.

Geez! Every time! They do something amazing and you're stunned and can't believe how excellent it is, and how unexpected. And then you realize it was a trick. Really what they were doing under your nose is far more devious and amazing than you even realized.

This happens almost routinely on this show.

I'd like to add sophisticated to the earlier mature. It's both, but again, it's also able to get intense and dark and insane and violent and gritty and exciting as hell at the drop of Heisenberg's hat.

And it's also funny as hell.

Walt's Two Worlds Colliding (as well as his two personae)

It isn't just that Walt has 2 people in him—Walter White and Heisenberg—he also inhabits two different worlds. The world of drugs/crime, and the world of his family. He desperately wants to keep those worlds apart, but they keep bleeding into each other, or occasionally colliding violently. I think this is why he's so concerned about what he calls 'contamination'. He wants both worlds to remain pure. And ideally his two personae would be totally separate as well. Walter would only exist when he's with his family, and Heisenberg only when he needs to be a badass drug lord. But elements of each world and each persona have a nasty habit of contaminating the other one.

I suppose this counts as another double dialectic, like the one I found in All That Jazz, but it works differently. Or is it a quadruple dialectic (a quadrilectic?)? Two worlds and two personae, and in each case, as one advances its opposite recedes. The more he becomes Heisenberg, the less Walt he has in him. And the more he lives in his drug/murder world, the less quality family time he has. Until eventually all of them are hopelessly fouled. It goes beyond contamination, the two worlds and the two personae just all mash together and get hopelessly smeared into each other. Like the old commercial—"You got your Heisenberg in my family!" "You got your Walter White in my drug cartel!" And they're definitely not two great tastes that taste great together.

In the comments under a video I watched the other day somebody said after seeing the show several times and trying to figure out why it's so good, the word that floated up is mature. I agree, it is very mature, but that's not the whole story. There are plenty of mature movies and stories that bore me to tears, and this isn't one of them. Somehow it handles things in a very mature way, and yet there's intense action, violence, and power aplenty. It somehow works as both mature drama and powerful addictive entertainment.

Real Housewives of Breaking Bad—dark sides of the main female characters

Everybody has their dark side on this show, and that includes the females. For the first episode or two I thought Walt's wife Skyler was a bit one-dimensional, little more than a put-upon housewife working hard to keep the family together and getting stretched thin by the effort. But pretty early on we begin to see her dark side. She has a knack for deception and manipulation—when she was taken into the 'security room' in a jewelry store, accused of shoplifting (that her sister Marie, Hank's wife, actually committed), she gets out of it by pretending she's going into labor (she was well into her pregnancy at the time, very obviously).

And when the two sisters get together to talk it out, Marie repeatedly denies committing the crime, but Skyler insists that she's always been like this and Skyler knows her too well to buy into this old innocence routine. And basically (if I remember right) Skyler bullies her into confessing.

So Marie, married to a law enforcement agent, likes to steal from stores, including some very valuable things, and then lie about it. Hank knows about it and just treats it as a very minor thing to be kept in the family and not talked about openly. A little minor corruption in the family of a law enforcement agent.

Skyler begins to escate her dark side as the pressure mounts because her husband is clearly lying to her about a number of things and she starts to suspect he's having an affair. In later seasons she decides to help out her boss, who's been cooking his books (this makes him similar to her husband, who "cooks" meth). She becomes his assistant and does the book-cooking for him, and has to work some real power plays in order to keep from going down with the ship when his stupidity and selfishness gets him audited by the IRS. This actually parallels Walt quite closely, as I said already he bought an expensive sports car for his son to try to win him over (largely to win the son's loyalty against his wife), and she had to strongly caution him that it will bring the attention of the IRS and cause his downfall and the destruction of the family. So Beneke is in some way a caricature of Walt, and Skyler gets involved with him. Showing, I suppose, that she has a weakness for criminal men who need some help. Codependency/enabling much?

Then in season 5 Walt and Skyler really start sparring with each other. It's power play city as he blackmails her to try to force her to stay with him despite her terror over what he's becoming (the real danger to the family he thinks he's protecting). She really steps up to the blackmailing plate by threatening to have very public 'episodes' (of mental instability caused by the stress of living with him). I forget exactly what that was going to accomplish (humiliate him maybe?), but his retort is a threat to have her committed to an asylum and then the kids will live with Walt. So she steps right up into his face, looks him coldly in the eye, and threatens to choke herself and blacken her eyes and claim he did it. Holy shit!! Skyler stepping into the big leagues.

Meanwhile Marie starts ramping up her shoplifting exploits, visiting open houses in really nice swanky neighborhoods and stealing expensive things.

Complexity of themes—Masculinity

Hank Shrader is the ultimate guy's guy in the show—Walt's brother-in-law and a DEA agent. This sets things up for intense conflict—Walt makes and deals a highly illegal drug and lives in the criminal underworld, and his worst enemy is right in his family. Not only that, but at the beginning of the show Walt is the ultimate emasculated man, defeated on every front by life though he came from a very promising beginning. He definitely doesn't wear the pants in his own family, and his brother-in-law is a strutting rooster of masculine stereotypes. At Walt's own birthday party Hank humiliates him by demonstrating how much more masculine he is in several ways, and Walt just accepts it though you can tell it burns him deep inside. And to really add to the insult, Walt's own son—his namesake Walt jr—is fascinated by Hank and his gun. Then Hank steals all the attention (at Walt's birthday party) when a segment comes on the news showing him leading a bust on a meth house where the camera lingers on huge rolls of hundred-dollar bills. Walt hesitantly asks "How much money was that Hank?" and Hank replies that it was a massive fortune, and that it's very common to find huge sums of money like that when raiding meth labs.

See, this stuff is so skillfully interwoven I can't really separate out just one theme, several of them are tied together usually. Hanks takes all the fame and fortune at Walt's own party (those being two things Walt, in his secret inner Heisenberg form, craves most of all). Going forward, this is the man Walt will have to contend with and clash with repeatedly, his only saving grace being that Hank can't see Walt as masculine or powerful, so he continually overlooks that his brother-in-law might actually be the very drug kingpin he's searching for.

But to get back to what I was setting up to say—each time Hank does something really brave or heroic (which he does repeatedly), he suffers for it. After getting involved in a shootout with Tuco in Mexico and killing him, Hank suffers from panic attacks that he has to hide from his fellow DEA agents and his wife and extended family. So we know his exaggerated masculinity is at least partly a put-on. He's shorter than Walt, it may well be some kind of little-man syndrome.

Later, when Hank gets sent to Mexico to work on the cartel problem down there, he sees a severed head (of a man he was talking to not long before) on top of a turtle that's walking around in the desert—an informant in their witness protection program that the cartel got to anyway (as they tend to do). We've already been told that severed heads are common along the border, as symbols of the strength and savagery of the cartels. But this is different. The character is played by Danny Trejo, and is named Tortuga, which means tortoise. He has a motto—"I'm slow, but I always win." Well this time he didn't, and Hank is horrified on seeing his head being carried around on the back of the tortoise. It wanders near their group and suddenly explodes. Hank survives only because he was revolted, nauseated by the sight (not such a tough guy in front of all these Mexican agents, who see this stuff all the time), and he went next to his car, I think to throw up. It saved his life when all the rest died or lost limbs. The only thing that saved Hank was his lack of real manliness.

In Breaking Bad masculinity is a double-edged sword—cowardice kills, but so does courage. There is nothing that guarantees safety or security, this is simply a life that comes with endless dangers.

And as Walt eases into being Heisenberg and his masculinity and courage grow exponentially (toward ruthlessness and savagery) he finds himself in increasing danger, and the only thing that saves him is often his own resourcefulness and deceptiveness, or sometimes great ideas that Jesse comes up with (the guy seen as a fumbling idiot at the beginning, absolute contrast to Walt's intelligence and cleverness with chemicals).

It's really hard to separate these themes out, they interweave so much they become inextricable. I'm not going to be able to clearly delineate each theme, at best I can do jumbled posts like this one where several of them intertwine, but of course the real goal here is for me to increase my understanding of these themes and how they're used. Theme is one of the key elements of story, and it's used brilliantly in this show.