Breaking Bad under the lens
The five seasons of Breaking Bad read through criminology: which theory to watch for in each, which villains from the archive appear and a question for debate. With spoilers folded away.
Breaking Bad is, among other things, the portrait of a complete criminal career: the first offence, the escalation, the organisation, the power and the fall. Each season focuses on one part of that journey, which is why it works so well for understanding different theories. This guide walks you through it without spoiling anything unless you want it to.
Season 1 2008
Walter White, a brilliant and frustrated chemistry teacher, is diagnosed with lung cancer. With his family short of money, he teams up with a former student to make methamphetamine.
With spoilers
The first deaths come almost by accident, and Walter discovers he is capable of killing to protect himself. By the end of the season he is dealing with a violent trafficker, Tuco Salamanca, and has started using the name Heisenberg.
Count all the pressures that build up on Walter before he cooks for the first time: the illness, the money, the humiliation of his second job, the feeling of a wasted life. Robert Agnew would say crime starts there.
To debate: Would Walter have offended without the diagnosis? How much of his decision is strain, and how much is something else?
Season 2 2009
The business grows and so do the risks: the traffickers’ violence, the lies at home and a very particular lawyer, Saul Goodman, who enters the scene.
With spoilers
Walter lets Jane, Jesse’s girlfriend, die when he could have saved her, and convinces himself he did it for his partner’s good. The season ends with an air disaster that is an indirect consequence of that death.
Listen to how Walter justifies himself: he does it for his family, the other person asked for it, it is not that bad. These are the moral disengagement mechanisms Albert Bandura described.
To debate: At what exact moment does Walter stop feeling guilty? Is there a scene that marks it?
Season 3 2010
Walter works for Gustavo Fring, a respectable businessman who secretly runs the region’s largest methamphetamine distribution network from a hidden industrial lab.
With spoilers
Gus treats drug trafficking as a business: quality, discretion and risk control. Walter earns more money than ever, but loses control. The season ends with Walter ordering Jesse to kill Gale, the chemist who could replace him.
Look at Gus the way Gary Becker would look at a businessman: every decision is a calculation of benefits, risks and costs. Violence only appears when it is cheaper than the alternative.
To debate: Is Gus more dangerous than a violent trafficker like Tuco, or less? Why?
Season 4 2011
The relationship between Walter and Gus becomes a cold war: each knows the other wants to get rid of him. Jesse is caught in the middle.
With spoilers
Gus cuts the throat of one of his own men in front of Walter and Jesse to teach them a lesson. Walter poisons a child, Brock, to turn Jesse against Gus, and finishes Gus off using his old enemy, Hector Salamanca.
Walter is convinced he does everything to survive and protect his own. Watch for Sykes and Matza’s techniques of neutralisation: denying the harm, blaming the victim, appealing to a higher loyalty.
To debate: Poisoning a child to win a war: is there any justification Walter cannot neutralise?
Season 5 2012-2013
With no rivals in sight, Walter builds his own empire. But his brother-in-law, DEA agent Hank Schrader, is getting ever closer to the truth.
With spoilers
In a train robbery, Todd Alquist, the new assistant, kills without blinking a boy who has seen them. Hank discovers who Heisenberg is and dies at the hands of the neo-Nazi gang run by Todd’s uncle. Walter loses his family and, in the end, admits he did not do it for them but for himself, because he liked it and was good at it.
Compare Todd with Walter. Todd kills without emotion and without needing to justify himself: the profile of antisocial personality disorder. Walter always needed a reason, right to the end.
To debate: In the end, is Walter more like Todd or like the teacher of the first episode?