This write-up was written under the assumption that the reader has watched all of Breaking Bad. Please be aware that there are spoilers from the entire series within, and proceed with caution.
There’s a great scene towards the end of Paul Thomas Anderson’s film The Master in which the film’s title comes to light. After Joaquin Phoenix’s Freddie Quell returns to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd following a long absence, Dodd explains that we’re all slaves to our “masters,” the drives and motivations that inform every decision that we make. The speech explains a lot about about Freddie, who has spent his life substituting his love for a woman with extreme alcohol abuse, followed by religion, and eventually a renewed appetite for women. Whenever he felt the need to give up one “master,” a hole was left in his being that he needed to fill with a new one.
A similar situation plagues Walter White, the protagonist of the ceaselessly brilliant and widely acclaimed Breaking Bad. Several thought pieces have been written since the finale last night about the show’s morality, and whether the ending was a cop-out. Given the reckoning that he received in “Ozymandias” and the common consensus that the show has chronicled Walt’s downfall from a “good guy” to a “bad guy” in a linear fashion, these concerns are understandable. A lot of people are also applying traditionally Christian concepts of good, evil, sin, and redemption. This seems to have tempered their enthusiasm for the ending, in which Walt “wins” a lot more than some had hoped.
This is a fair interpretation of the series, but I’ve always viewed it to be more in line with the “masters” concept. While it’s not apparent for the first few episodes, the Walt that we meet in the pilot already has a hole in the form of wounded pride. After being driven for years by his eagerness to succeed in the field of chemistry, and after being spurred on by winning a Nobel Prize and starting a promising company, he walked away from it all due to a personal vendetta with his friend Elliot and the woman of his affection, Gretchen.
Since his time at Gray Matter, Walt had tried to fill the void in his soul with his family, but it never really amounted to the same thing. It was like trying to fit a square peg into a triangle-shaped hole; it didn’t fit, and he ended up picking up a new “master” altogether. He may have loved his family, but every day he had to work through the humiliation of having dropped to a common high school teacher. Adding insult to injury, he had to take on a side job at a car wash, where he had no power and was degraded even by the students he taught at his other job.
A lot has been made about how Walt did not necessarily transform into Heisenberg, and instead had been Heisenberg all along, waiting for an opportunity to break free. This may be true, but I believe it shortchanges Walt’s initial motivation. When he was diagnosed with cancer and realized that he was financially incapable of providing for his family after his death, I believe that he WAS looking out for them, serving his newest “master.” He doesn’t see the pride in creating a substance that is predominately consumed by low-lives and junkies. He just sees the drug bust money on TV, considers the competition, and figures “I could do better.”
The problem is that his family is simply not a powerful enough master for him to follow. The more successful Walt becomes, the more and more that his other master, the master of power and pride, takes over. The void that he had been covering up for so many years starts to fill, and as it fills with sustenance Walt begins to realize how hungry he has been for years. The “master” of his family never completely subsides, and some of his decisions (not killing Hank, rescuing Jesse on several occasions, trying to get his family out of harm’s way whenever possible) are clearly motivated by that need. However, his family is simply no match for his renewed pride, which frequently pushes it aside.
The power and greed of Walt’s pride starts to become most notable in Season 2, when Walt skips the birth of his daughter to meet a deadline and deliver meth to Gus. From this point on, Walt continually makes decisions that, while justifiable, are heavily informed by his lust for power. He tries to quit cooking meth during Season 3 and is tempted back not by money (he initially turns down Gus’ offer of $3 million for 3 months of work), but by a huge lab, where he can be a prized and respected part of an enormous operation. When Jesse’s actions against the child-killing drug dealers and Walt’s protection (motivated by his sense of family) lead to a tense working situation with Gus, Walt’s decision to take Gus out morphs from a place of fear to a place of pride. Calling the super-lab a “hostile work environment” after Gale’s death would be an understatement, but Walt and Jesse could have gone on cooking meth for Gus without change and easily provided for Walt’s family. But killing Gus isn’t just a relief for Walt: it’s a major win against a man of power, and a huge boost for Walt’s pride. Heisenberg may have once been an insight into the man Walt wanted to be, but that was no more. Now, Walt WAS Heisenberg, the greatest meth cook who ever lived and the most powerful man in his field.
His pride peaks in the first half of Season 5, as he takes over where Gus left off, establishes his own methods of distribution, and takes out the one man from the old guard who was inhibiting his progress. However, Walt finally hits the point where he cannot climb any higher. He’s the most powerful meth cook in the world, he has an international empire behind his product, and he has so much money that he could not launder it all within a full lifetime, let alone one limited by cancer. He’s won. That “master” needs no further sustenance. So he falls back on the one master that had been pushed aside for years: his family. He quits the business. He severs his ties with Lydia, Declan, and the neo-Nazis. And it may have been Happily Ever After…had Hank not discovered his secret.
Most of Walt’s actions in the second half of Season 5, while reprehensible, come from a desire to protect his family or save his own life. He can’t let Hank arrest him, because that would have repercussions on his family, who would no longer receive the results of his year of hard work. So, he’s willing to blackmail Hank, as it’s ultimately the best thing for them. When Jesse nearly burns the White’s house down, Walt does everything he can to calm Jesse down before being directly threatened, at which point he decides the only way to protect his family is to kill Jesse.
But the most telling moment comes in the desert, when Walt is apprehended by Hank, Gomez, and Jesse. Walt asks the neo-Nazis to kill Jesse for him but, as soon as he realizes this would put Hank in danger, he calls them off. He would rather go to jail and lose his money than see Hank killed. After the Nazis show up anyway, he further reinforces this idea by telling them where his money is, and that he would gladly trade all of it in exchange for Hank’s life.
This is because, aside from the initial $737,000 that Walt decided he needed, it had never been about the money. Again, it was about pride. It was about being somebody that others feared. About being a figure, a name that people would recognize immediately. The legacy of Heisenberg would continue, regardless of what happened to him or anybody else. But when it came to family, he would much rather keep everybody alive than pass on a fortune to them.
Unfortunately, Walt does not get his wish, and his next 24 hours are the most destructive of his life. He makes several rash decisions, ends up with no family or loved ones to care for him personally, and tries to exonerate his wife in what is, on its face, a terrible and hateful conversation. When all is said and done, he’s left a sick man in a cold hut far from civilization, with nothing but a barrel full of cash and two copies of Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium to keep him company.
What’s interesting (and most likely to be controversial) about the finale is that his actions are not driven by a resurgence of his pride. When he watches Gretchen and Elliot on the Charlie Rose Show, discussing how Walt had played no significant part in his contributions to Gray Matter, the audience is set up to believe that this shot to his pride is what will spur him into action. Instead, Walt is driven by the reminder that Gretchen and Elliot are wealthy and, most likely, easily manipulated into passing along his earnings to his family. He doesn’t care if the world sees his family as a charity case in the future, as long as he knows that they are living off of his hard work. It’s a personal victory, even if nobody else can know about it.
Throughout the finale, Walt passes back through Albequerque, righting wrongs like a reformed Grinch. In addition to making sure his earnings reach his family, he also gets to see his family one last time. He comes clean to Skyler about having been in this for himself, for having liked doing it. He realizes that the situation he placed Jesse in was already a form of hell, and that instead of killing him he should be working to save him. He leaves his fate in Jesse’s hands, while simultaneously admitting that there’s a part of him that is manipulating Jesse into killing him. And he takes out everybody who would be involved in continuing his legacy.
Free from his desire for pride or any expectations of survival, Walt’s master is once again his family. He achieves a sort of clarity that he was blind to before. It’s obvious to him now why he did what he did, and what the repercussions have been. He can’t take those actions back, but he can do everything in his power to serve his original master and make sure that, at the very least, his original wishes are fulfilled. He dies, but the remaining people he cares about will live on and be financially secure.
Maybe there’s something to the redemption concept, after all.
Leave a Reply