Sunday Night With John: Breaking Bad, We Shouldn't Be Saying Goodbye

For some time now, I have watched Walter White turn from a mild mannered emotional wreck with cancer, to a meth cooker/drug king pin with cancer who is an even bigger emotional wreck. The show has created numerous conversations with my friends around morality and ethical choices. I have debated when it’s ok to let go of feeling sorry for someone who has cancer.  What drives someone who seems to have a decent life down the road Mr. White chose (I love that the writers made the decision to have Jessie call him Mr. White the entire run of the show)?   Why did Hank’s behavior at the end make my skin crawl even though he was a good guy, and how much blame does Skylar have to shoulder?  The question I have always wanted to debate with others is just how we are all wired with emotional weak spots that can take us down a road to our own personal hell.

My favorite scene in the whole series is the flashback where Walt tells his first lie about making drugs. It says everything about where he is in life. He feels trapped by his lack of control over life.  Gray Matter hit big without him, his wife treats him as an after thought, he hates teaching, he has cancer, and he can’t leave any money to his loved ones. That lie lead to the door opening up on Mr. White’s down sides, where he forces control over every and anything he can.  Many people can attest to the slippery slope around the first lie, first hit from a drug, or a first sip of alcohol. We justify to ourselves, and say its only this one time, it’s not who I really am.

As we have seen the series unfold, the lies added up and the line between Mr. White and Heisenburg blurred, and then, as life unfolded, and he lost control.  You could no longer tell where Mr. White ended and Heisenburg began. They were one in the same person. That’s the problem with trying to convince ourselves that our emotional weak spots are something outside of us.  We can trick ourselves into thinking it’s not me. We tell ourselves I can turn it off when I want.  We won’t be defined by the bad we did, but we will be defined by the good we caused. Breaking Bad has made it painfully clear that Mr. White’s intentions to leave his family with more money than they ever needed won’t be his legacy. All his bad deeds will forever be his story.  The motives will wash away and what will be left is the path of destruction that ruined numerous lives.

As the series wraps up tonight, I’m reminded of my own personal emotional weak spots of becoming arrogant, selfish, pushing away loved ones, not dealing with sad emotions that can cause me to become depressed.  If I once thought committing suicide was the answer, could I end up there again?  A good friend once said something profoundly smart, “John, on some level you will always be that hurt and confused 17 year-old kid who didn’t know what to do. The further you move away from it, the smaller it will be, but I hope it’s always a part of you, so you don’t forget.”   We all have the potential to break bad, hopefully not to the extent of Walter White. We all have weak spots, we all are going to experience hurt and pain in life, and we all will have the tough choices of how not to break bad. We should never say goodbye to Breaking Bad, being aware that we all have potential to lean bad, gives a better chance to break good.