This past Sunday night was one of the most significant evenings in cable television history. The masterpiece of a television show that is Breaking Bad came to a close with a resounding machine-gun like bang. The often surprising and always brilliant series that felt more like a movie due to its eloquently crafted dialogue, enthralling action scenes and gripping story lines is over; and so ends a run that will surely be viewed as one of the most prolific in all of television.
Accompanying the ending of the show is the end of its anti-hero protagonist, Walter White. Walter, in many ways, is the pioneer of a shift in culture that transcends the significance of the show itself. This refers to a restructuring of the fundamental perspective through which stories are told. A different kind of focus more centered on gray areas. The rise of the villain.
Contemporary television has presented us with a new brand of morally dubious anti-heroes as series’ leading characters. These characters often dabble in gray areas, leaving the viewer confused and conflicted over how they should feel. These characters have also served as the basis for what has been lauded as the golden age of television. This is because these days, bad, while wrong, is also oh-so good. While morally ambiguous, it provides for the most compelling subject matter. Society has reached the point of self-awareness, in which, much like Walter White in the series finale, it can finally admit that it enjoys indulging its ostensibly depraved impulses and vices. Bad is fun, bad in the words of Walter White, “feels good.”
Some of the most notable of these modern protagonists are Tony Soprano, the sometimes Mafia head, sometimes family-man star of the hit HBO series The Sopranos, Dexter’s Dexter Morgan, a serial killer who kills other serial killers, and recently House of Cards’ Frank Underwood, a corrupt politician with a penchant for diabolic tactics. The most intriguing, however, of this generation of bad characters we love to love is Walter White.
Walt, embodied by Bryan Cranston, is a chemistry genius with a fondness for cooking crystal meth. Walt is painfully stoic. Through five seasons, countless suspenseful, terrifying, emotional moments — and even more cooks — it is nearly impossible to be sure of what’s really happening inside of Walt’s shiny head. Walt finally gives us a glimpse in his last exchange with his beleaguered wife, a scene wrought with so much emotional tension and imminence that it is almost hard to watch. Walt flees his frigid hideout and makes his way back west to settle his final affairs. He visits Skyler for one concluding conversation, this time unguarded, free of all pretense and hubris.
“Don’t tell me you did this for the family,” argues a defeated Skyler.
“I did it for me,” confesses Walt, “I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really. . .I was alive.”
This is Walt exposed, naked of all duplicity and deceit, in his most honest hour. He admits his selfish motive, he owns up to his own nature, and the question we are left with is, can we blame him? Walt indubitably wears the black hat. He plays the villain, his hands are dirtied and his soul soiled. However, just because he is the villain, does this necessarily make him evil? Walt has done horrible, unforgivable things, he has intentionally poisoned a child, murdered many enemies and provided the world with an immense amount of high-grade crystal meth. He is also a passionate, eccentric genius taken down a road of awful irreversible circumstances in which he was perpetually conflicted.
No doubt he has performed many evil actions, but his initial motives were not evil, villainous and crude maybe, but not evil. Walter White is a villain, but is he evil? The answer to this question may have evolved as events unfolded, yet taken from the root it’s a moot point. After all, Walt was an ordinary chemistry teacher for twenty plus years; things can change very quickly.
The broader question begged by Breaking Bad and other shows with similarly themed characters, is the villain necessarily evil? Shows like these force the viewer to do a bit of self-reflection. Most of us are not meth cooks or mafia kingpins, but there is a reason we relate to these characters so strongly.
Definitions are relative and constantly changing. Thanks to Breaking Bad, we’re left asking: is bad really so bad after all?
