Breaking Bad (Just a Little Late)

For those of you who have been a part of the "Breaking Bad" phenomenon for these past years, you already know that Walter White was a high school chemistry teacher who was diagnosed with Stage III-A non-small cell lung carcinoma. He began using his Nobel Prize caliber chemistry skill-set to first manufacture methamphetamine first from pseudo-ephedrine then old school from methylamine when his "pseudo" source dries up. This "slip" into a moral wasteland was driven first by his desire to support his family after he is gone, to pay for his medical bills, and finally, we find, because he likes it and was good at it.

I read a headline last week entitled "Why People in Other Countries Don't Understand the Premise of Breaking Bad" and laughed cynically inside. But this blog isn't about socialized medicine or why America is the last bastion in the developed world that allows it's citizens to go bankrupt due to medical bills. Though my own current financial crisis has been precipitated in part by the $250 a month I have to pay on old medical bills (a trip to the ER for Archer, times 2, one for Aidan, and one for me...we've been paying for four years and we HAVE insurance). If you want to read that incredibly interesting story, click here.

No, this story is about Walter and a comment that my sister made when I sat down three days ago to watch the Pilot of "Breaking Bad" for the first time. She said, "Yeah, the pilot is okay, but it gets really boring after that." And she was right...sort of.

The reason episodes 2-5 of Season 1 don't speak to my sister is that they are all about Walter and his family living their normal lives and about Walter trying to find a way to wrap his mind around his own ingloriousness and/or accept his moral elasticity. The only overtly riveting moments in "Breaking Bad" involve the horror that Jesse and Walt experience when dealing with the upper echelons of the meth trade. It is no wonder Walter couldn't resist the illicit world that made him special.

We've all been told we are special, right?

Now, I'm only on season 2...two episodes in, in fact, so my analysis is totally irrelevant to you, the rest of the world. But I still felt compelled to write this because to some degree, I AM Walter White, crouched low and shining up the wheels of his student's car at the car wash where he held a second job. I AM Walter, looking around, wondering where all my "special" went.

And I think that his commitment to special, albeit in cooking methamphetamine, is what made Walter so important to so many people. We all want to feel that something sets us apart from the world and validates our being. And while I'm currently trapped in Walter's car wash job, unable to move just yet, I'm hurtling toward the day I steal some glassware, head to the desert, and get to cooking up something spectacular. Metaphorically, of course.