From Mid-Life Crisis to Life of Crime: Breaking Bad's Basic Chemistry

White jockey underwear, semiautomatic handgun. The pilot episode of Breaking Bad opens with a frantic, middle-aged man recording his last rites into a video camera after crashing an RV in the desert. We have no idea how he got here or who’s after him, but he looks more like the dad next door than a hardened criminal. Which is he?

He’s definitely the first, and may be well on his way to the second. Breaking Bad tells the story of high school chemistry teacher Walter White, who decides the answer to his problems is to start cooking the dangerous and very illegal drug, crystal methamphetamine. If that sounds like an implausible choice, we learn in the pilot episode Walter’s got some valid reasons. He just turned 50, and money is tight. A new baby is on the way, and the family is struggling to make ends meet. He’s working in his spare time at a car wash, where he subjected to daily humiliations from his boss and customers. But it’s a cancer diagnosis that pushes Walter into this life of crime, to “break bad” as the series title puts it.

The pilot effectively establishes our protagonist Walter’s clear, but definitely shady, objective: make enough money to set his family up before he dies. Will Walter succeed, or will he get arrested? Is a high school chemistry teacher really equipped for a life of crime? The pilot shows us enough about Walter so suggest so, at least for a while. 

The illegality of Walter’s new vocation creates built-in conflict. This central dilemma will remain so long as he keeps cooking meth, and stays alive and not arrested. Compounding the conflict is the fact that a close family member, his brother-in-law Hank, is a D.E.A. agent. Hank’s temperament sets him up as everything Walter is not: brash, outgoing, and a little bit clueless. He relishes busting meth labs and the attention that goes along with it. “It’s easy money, till we catch you,” Hank says. He dares Walter to come along and witness a bust. After a cancer diagnosis, Walter takes him up on the offer. Things take a further turn when he recognizes a former student, Jesse, escaping the raid. Previously, we’ve seen how lackadaisical his students are to his spirited chemistry lessons. Maybe the Jesse and the meth heads will be more enthusiastic about Walter’s expertise.

Aside from the potential to get arrested or killed, which is established in the opening scene, there also an ongoing conflict of Walter keeping all this secret from his wife and son. The fact that money is tight, and a baby is on the way, are reiterated. But perhaps just as importantly, we see that Walter seems to have lost all sense of self. He has just turned 50—classic mid-life crisis time—and is bullied by a buffoon of a boss and taunted by jerk teenagers. We see framed documents that show he’s not only good at teaching chemistry, but was part of a research team that won a Nobel prize. How did he end up this unhappy, frankly pathetic, figure? We don’t know yet, but we do see that becoming involved in his new illicit pursuit provides Walter not just with money, but with some of the respect and power that has disappeared from his life. 

Breaking Bad is set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and its version of that city is a place where suburbia and the criminal underworld intermingle. The house which Hank and the D.E.A. raid looks like every other one on the block. This place doesn’t seem like one where we’d want to live, but it does seem like one where you could move back and forth between family life and a life of crime. It’s significant that the setting isn’t glamorous—this isn’t Miami, say, or even New York or Los Angeles. This is the suburban desert. Jesse might be a relatively successful meth dealer, but he looks more like a drug-addled kid you’d run into at a convenience store. The strongest sense of community that we get from the pilot is really Walter’s extended family. Hank is no glamourous, good-looking, law enforcement crusader. He’s Walter’s brother-in-law, a guy who passes around his handgun at Walter’s birthday party.  We have yet to get a bigger picture of the criminal underworld, but surely that will prove to be a different kind of family as well. Which will Walter choose? Or which will ultimately hold the greatest power over him.

At first the partnership with Jesse is based on Walter’s threat to turn him in, but we quickly see that the two work well together and have good…chemistry. They decide to purchase an RV to cook in. “A mobile meth lab? That would be the bomb,” Jesse says. But Jesse has concerns. He pushes Walter to explain why he’s decided to get involved in cooking meth. But Walter doesn’t foreclose his cancer diagnosis: “I am awake,” he says. It’s a little odd to watch a montage of TV characters cooking a dangerous drug, but the way Walter does it, it’s almost like a graceful dance.

Jesse surveys the product of their effort: “This is art, Mr. White.”

“Actually, it’s just basic chemistry,” he says.

We also get a peek at the useful chemistry tricks Walter has up his sleeve. The students in his classroom where unmoved by his chemistry tricks, but they prove a useful weapon is this new, dangerous lifestyle. When he and Jesse are held hostage, he mixes up a poisonous gas to help them escape. 

In the final scene, Walter returns home after escaping death and arrest. He crawls into bed. Previously he couldn’t respond to his wife’s sexual overtures. But rather than answer her questions about where he’s been, he initiates sex. It’s obvious he’s no middle-aged sap anymore. For Walter, the benefits of “breaking bad” are much more than monetary. 

(Blog Post Credits: Writer: Ethan, Photo Editor: Ethan, Producer: Ethan, Social Media: Ethan, Scribe: Ethan)