Does Breaking Bad Say Something Universal About the American Dream? #breakingbad

Wednesday brought character profiles, Thursday saw a countdown of the best episodes, and today’s big Breaking Bad theme is…well, Big Themes. Earlier today I pointed out that the show’s five seasons—-whether intentionally or not—-actually mirror the five stages of learning you’re dying. And now it’s time to wonder if the show really speaks to larger themes in society like income inequality, health care, working class rage, or middle class anxiety.

I was surprised to learn that BB creator Vince Gilligan downplays the presence of larger themes on Breaking Bad. When he appeared on The Writer’s Room (a Sundance show that interviews writers and creators of critically acclaimed series…and New Girl), he was asked about Breaking Bad’s prescience in showing a disappearing middle class. I was disappointed to see him immediately downplay any “politics” in his show.

I’m not sure that even bringing up income inequality, a disappearing middle class, and health care costs is really political. But I’m even less sure that a creator should really be trying to limit the discussion of deeper themes on his own work.

Vince stated that Breaking Bad was really just about this one character’s journey and how evil he really was, but that feels like a very narrow way to direct the conversation. [I could never imagine Mad Men’s Matthew Weiner or The Walking Dead’s Robert Kirkman—-who routinely tries to make his work sound deeper than it really is—-trying to discourage people looking at their work as allegorical for larger societal problems.]

All great works of fiction will inevitably be about something other than just the characters. It’s true that Breaking Bad is a phenomenal character study, and it’s actually the most literary show on television given the great arc of Walter White. He’s TV’s first character to undergo significant changes throughout the course of the show’s run (some say from protagonist to antagonist). It’s amazing that TV has never done it before, but it’s also amazing that the show’s creator wouldn’t see Walter as symbolic of larger things in the culture.

Yes, he’s an amazing character with a trajectory worthy of an epic novel or Greek tragedy. He’s also the living, breathing embodiment of a screwed-over middle-class that is furious at their own disposability in the wake of the economic meltdown, and angry at the direction they see their lives heading. Breaking Bad isn’t just about one man’s soul rot, but the hollowness of the American Dream. [Walter thinks he can buy his way into invincibility and immortality, his upward mobility sponsored by a million dollar meth empire.]

It’s saying just as much about consumerist striving (where you have to be rich to “matter”), commercial anxieties, and the vanishing of American stability as it ever was about just one man. And it’s a shame that the creator’s assertions are perhaps the single biggest reasons it’s not being talked about as having deeper themes than “Will Walt survive? Will the next gun battle be bloody? Will Walt Jr. get killed?” The show is about more than just snare-drum tight plot dynamics, and it’d be nice if the deeper conversations could finally begin.