Breaking Bad

Bryan Cranston’s Walter H. White stands at the center of this story. He is the tragic hero, as well as the villain. He begins his journey as a high school chemistry teacher who lives a quiet, suburban life with his lovely wife, Skyler, his disabled son and (after a few seasons) newborn baby Holly in Albuquerque New Mexico. It’s clearly not the life he would’ve chosen, but he pushes through day by day. That is until he learns he has incurable lung cancer. Walt’s dying. And if he dies, there’ll be no one to support his family.

So, Walt signs away his soul. He teams up with Jesse, a former student and current petty criminal, and the two begin to cook methamphetamine—all with the object of funding Walt’s experimental cancer treatment and provide for his family.

Walt cooks. Walt distributes. Walt cheats. Walt kills. And even when his cancer goes into remission, we still see Walt die a little bit every day, his humanity slipping from him like blood from a wound. He becomes used to the horrors that surround him, accepting the monsters he deals with and the monster he’s becoming. Breaking Bad is a study in an illustration of evil. As twisted as it is, Breaking Bad is truly a masterpiece.