Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are...
We're not just scratching the surface here. We
are excavating an absolute monument. Oh, without
a doubt. We're talking about a show that didn't
just capture the cultural zeitgeist. I mean,
it practically invented a completely new form
of television chemistry. We are talking, of course,
about Breaking Bad. Yeah, it's really rare that
we get to look at a piece of media that is so
universally acclaimed, yet so deeply complex
in its morality. It is a crime drama, yes, but
to call it just a crime drama, feels like a total
disservice. Right. It's really a tragedy in the
classical sense. A complete morality play where
actions have inescapable consequences. Exactly.
And look, I think we can skip the standard high
school teacher cooks meth elevator pitch. If
you are listening to this deep dive, you know
who Walter White is. You know who Heisenberg
is. You definitely do. What I really want to
unpack today, the mission for this deep dive,
is how a premise that sounds like a bad joke
or maybe a dark comedy sketch, how that morphed
into one of the most significant evaluations
of the human ego in modern history. That is the
core question. Because honestly, on paper, this
show should not have worked. No. It shouldn't
have been made. And frankly, We shouldn't have
rooted for the protagonist for as long as we
did. That is the part that always gets me, the
absolute complicity of the audience. But before
we get to the psychology of the viewer, I think
we need to go back to the chemistry of the creation
itself. Oh, the origin story. Yeah, because I
was looking through the notes on the origin of
this series. And it is actually kind of terrifying
how close this show came to just never existing
at all. It hangs by a thread. I mean, you have
Vince Gilligan, who had come off the X -Files,
and he's in this period of unemployment. And
The Spark wasn't some grand artistic vision about
the American dream gone wrong. It was literally
a joke about desperation. Yeah, he's talking
to Thomas Schnauss, another writer, and they're
just complaining about the industry, joking about
their unemployment. Yeah, they're joking that
the only way to actually make money is to buy
an RV and put a meth lab in the back. Which is
the classic, you know, I'm broke, maybe I should
turn to crime joke that basically everyone has
made at a bar at some point. Totally. But Gilligan
actually wrote it down. And that little seed.
grew into something very specific. He had this
goal that was actually quite revolutionary for
television at the time. The Mr. Chips to Scarface
thing. Exactly. He called it the Mr. Chips to
Scarface transformation. We hear that phrase
a lot now, Mr. Chips to Scarface. But I think
we really take for granted how incredibly risky
that was in, what, 2005 or 2006. It was completely
unheard of. If you look at the history of television,
the entire medium was built on what we call self
-imposed stasis. Self -imposed. stasis. Right.
Think about Gunsmoke or MH or Law and Order.
You want to be able to tune in whenever. Exactly.
Even the Sopranos, to a degree. You need the
main character to be completely recognizable
in Season 10 as the exact same person they were
in the pilot. Because that's how syndication
works? That's how you sell ads. You definitely
don't want the sheriff to suddenly become the
villain halfway through the run. Because if the
sheriff becomes the villain, you break the engine
of the show. You just can't solve the crime of
the week if the detective is the one committing
them. Precisely. But Gilligan wanted to design
a show that was finite. A show where the entire
point was the metamorphosis. Reactive change?
Yes. He wanted to document the chemical reaction
of a man's soul -changing states. He wasn't interested
in maintaining the status quo at all. He wanted
to destroy it. So he takes this radical idea,
he writes the pilot, and then he just gets rejected
by basically everyone. Everyone. And this is
a really fascinating look at the industry lanes
back then. Showtime passed. HBO passed. TNT passed.
The Showtime rejection is the one that really
fascinates me, actually, because they had weeds
at the time. That was exactly their reasoning.
They said, we already have a show about a suburban
parent selling drugs to support their family.
Which, okay, on the surface is technically true,
but tonally. I mean, Weeds is a satire, it's
a dark comedy. Breaking Bad is, I don't even
know what you call it initially, it's incredibly
grim. It's an existential Western, but networks
are incredibly risk -averse. Yeah. They saw the
drug -dealing parent box was checked, so they
just moved on. And then there's FX, because they
actually bought the script, right? They started
discussions, yeah. It really looked like it was
gonna happen in FX. But then... The executives
had to make a choice between Breaking Bad and
a show called Dirt. Dirt. Starring Courtney Cox.
I vaguely remember that. It was about tabloids,
right? It was. And they chose Dirt. It just goes
to show you that quality isn't always the deciding
factor in Hollywood. Sometimes it's star power.
Or just what the network thinks is hot at that
exact moment. So Breaking Bad ends up at AMC
almost by default. Pretty much. AMC was known
for classic movies back then, not original programming.
aside from Mad Men, which was really just starting
to find its footing. So it lands at AMC. And
now we have to talk about the setting. Because
when I close my eyes and think of Breaking Bad,
I see the desert. Wide open spaces. I see the
Sandia Mountains. I see that specific yellowish
filter. But none of that was the original plan.
No, not at all. The script was actually set in
Riverside, California. It was supposed to be
the Inland Empire. Which makes a lot of sense
for a meth story, honestly. It totally does.
But Sony, the production studio, came to Gilligan
and said, look, New Mexico has a 25 % tax rebate.
We need you to shoot there. Financial incentives
driving art. Always. But this is where the genius
comes in. Gilligan didn't try to make Albuquerque
look like Riverside. He didn't try to frame the
shots to hide the mountains. He embraced it.
He realized that if he turned the camera east,
he had this massive mythic landscape right there.
It fundamentally changes the genre, doesn't it?
I mean, if you shoot in Riverside, it's a gritty
suburban drama. But if you shoot in the New Mexico
desert with those incredible wide horizons, it
becomes a Western. Exactly. It becomes a neo
-Western. The isolation is palpable. In a California
suburb, you're always watched by neighbors. In
the desert, you are completely alone with your
morality. Those wide angle shots that just dwarf
the RV in the middle of nowhere. That's visual
rhetoric. It literally says, there is no law
here. There is only what you decide to do. It's
absolutely amazing that a budget line item created
the show's most iconic visual signature. But
speaking of happy accidents, we really have to
talk about the writer's strike of 2007 to 2008.
This is probably the single most important event
in the show's entire history. narratively speaking
explain that for the listener because usually
when we talk about strikes they kill shows they
don't save them right well season one was supposed
to be nine episodes the strike cut it short to
seven Now Gilligan had a major plan for that
finale of episode 9. He wanted to be ballsy He
was planning to kill off a major character just
to stake his claim and show the audience He meant
business and that character was either Hank Schrader
or Jesse Pinkman most likely Jesse Okay, let's
just pause on that for a second. Can you imagine
the show without Jesse Pinkman? It would be a
fundamentally different series if Jesse dies
in season 1 Walt is just He's just a monster
or maybe a victim seeking revenge, right? Jesse
provides the heartbeat. He's the one who actually
suffers. Walt schemes. But Jesse feels everything.
Without Jesse, you lose the odd couple dynamic.
You lose the entire father -son proxy war. You
lose the moral counterweight. But because the
season was cut short by the strike, they couldn't
film that death scene. Thank goodness. And during
the break, Gilligan watched the dailies. He saw
the incredible chemistry between Bryan Cranston
and Aaron Paul. It's that lightening in a bottle
you just can't plan for. He realized that killing
Jesse would be a colossal mistake. The strike
forced them to slow down. It forced them to let
the characters actually breathe rather than rushing
to a shocking plot twist. It proves that sometimes
external constraints save writers from their
own worst impulses. It gave them the time to
realize what they actually had on their hands.
So we've got the setting, we've got the lucky
breaks with the strike. Now let's move into section
two and talk about the man himself, Walter White.
Casting Bryan Cranston seems so obvious to us
now, but at the time, this was a massive gamble.
A huge gamble. To the executives at AMC, Bryan
Cranston was just Hal from Malcolm in the Middle.
He was a goofy, roller skating, frantic sitcom
dad. I can honestly see why they were hesitant.
It's hard to see the intense danger in Hal. They
wanted a movie star. They wanted John Cusack.
They even wanted Matthew Broderick. I'm sorry,
but Matthew Broderick is Heisenberg, Ferris Bueller
saying, say my name. It just does not work in
my head at all. It would have been a completely
different energy. But Gilligan had this card
up his sleeve. He'd worked with Cranston on an
episode of The X -Files called Drive. I've actually
seen this episode. Cranston plays a guy who basically
has to keep driving Wes at high speeds or his
head will explode. Right, but the character,
Crump, is a virulent anti -semite. He's nasty,
he's incredibly mean, but the role required the
audience to somehow feel bad for him when he
inevitably dies. Which is a tough tightrope to
walk. Gilligan realized that Cranston had this
completely unique ability to be loathsome and
sympathetic simultaneously. And that right there
is the secret sauce of Walter White. It is the
underlying humanity that makes the entire tragedy
work. If Walt is just a mustache twirling villain
from day one, we tune out. We need to see the
desperate father. We need to see the guy who
just wants to leave something for his kids. Cranston
brought that warmth, which made the chilling
moments later on so much worse. And he transformed
physically for this, too. This wasn't just acting
from the neck up. No, not at all. He gained 10
pounds to look a bit softer, a bit doughy. He
dyed his hair brown to look completely unremarkable.
He worked with the costume designer to pick these
drab colors. The greens and the beiges. You want
to look like part of the wallpaper. And we cannot
forget the mustache. The dead caterpillar, as
he called it. It's so pathetic. It really is.
It practically screams impotence. That was the
exact point. Walt at the beginning is a man with
absolutely zero agency. He's overqualified, underpaid,
scrubbing cars at the car wash to make ends meet,
and literally being laughed at by his own teenage
students. The mustache was the physical symbol
of a man who had completely given up. So you
have Cranston anchoring the show with this incredible
nuanced performance. And then you have Aaron
Paul. as Jesse. Who, as we said, was never supposed
to be the co -lead. He was just a former student,
a lost soul. Aaron Paul brought this incredibly
frantic, nervous energy to the screen. But he
also brought a really deep vulnerability. Yeah.
You look at his eyes in those early seasons,
he's just a kid pretending to be a gangster,
while Walt is a literal genius pretending to
be a novice. It's a perfect inversion. It really
is. Now we have to wade into the Schuyler problem.
because you simply cannot talk about the legacy
of Breaking Bad without talking about the intense
vitriol directed at Skylar White. It is definitely
one of the most intense audience reactions in
television history. Anna Gunn, the actress who
played Skylar, actually wrote an op -ed for the
New York Times about it. It was called I Have
a Character Issue. She was getting actual death
threats. People were creating I Hate Skylar White
Facebook pages with thousands of members. It
was incredibly ugly. And we have to unpack why
that happened impartially. based on the analysis.
Obviously, there is a layer of sexism there,
this ingrained idea of the nagging wife standing
in the way of the male hero's exciting adventure.
Right. But there is also a structural narrative
manipulation happening that we have to acknowledge.
Right, because the show is heavily POV locked
to Walt. Exactly. Gilligan actually admitted
this. years later. He said the storytelling was
rigged. We see Walt's fear. We see his quote
unquote noble intentions. So when Skylar asks
a perfectly reasonable question like where were
you all night or where did this duffel bag of
cash come from? She isn't framed as a rational
partner trying to protect her family. She is
visually and narratively framed as an antagonist.
She is an obstacle to the fund. It's the buzzkill
effect. We want Walt to blow things up and outsmart
the cartel and she wants to pay the bills legally
and do the laundry. And yet, if you re -watch
the show now, completely removed from that weekly
hype cycle of rooting for the bad guy, Skyler
is often the only rational actor in the room.
As Anna Gunn noted, she has a backbone of steel.
She doesn't just collapse. She protects those
kids with a ferocity that easily rivals Waltz.
but entirely without the massive ego. It's a
huge testament to Anna Gunn that she held her
ground against that massive wave of hate. It
really makes the performance even more impressive
in hindsight. Absolutely. She played the reality
of the situation, not the fantasy the audience
wanted. I also want to touch on the supporting
cast, because the texture of this world is so
incredibly rich. Jam Carlo Esposito as Gus Fring.
The absolute anti -Tuco. Yes. Tuco was chaotic,
screaming, constantly snorting meth off a hunting
knife. Gus was, he was just dead. Dead calm.
Esposito based that performance on Edward James
Olmos in Miami Vice. He actually practiced yoga
to get that intense stillness. He wanted to be
a man completely hiding in plain sight. It's
terrifying because you never know what he's thinking.
He's just so still in the fire. And then there's
Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman. I read that he
based the voice on Robert Evans. The legendary
film producer, yes. The kid stays in the picture.
You can completely hear it in Saul's cadence.
That rapid fire slick Hollywood schmooze. Odenkirk
would literally do a Robert Evans impression
before scenes to find the rhythm. Yeah. It brought
a comedic relief that the show desperately needed
as the plots got darker and darker. It's incredible
that Odenkirk, who was a sketch comedy legend
for Mr. Show, became the absolute pivot point
for this entire Albuquerque universe. And we
definitely should mention R .J. Mideas -Walt
Jr. He has cerebral palsy in real life. just
like the character. But a milder form than the
character. Yes. He actually had to learn to walk
on crutches and purposefully slur his speech
more than he naturally does for the role. It
adds such a crucial layer of authenticity to
the family dynamic. Walt isn't just providing
for a generic family, he's providing for a son
with very specific long -term medical needs,
which really ramps up his justification for needing
the money early on. So we have the players. Now
let's get into the game. The philosophy of it
all. Section three. You mentioned earlier that
this is a tragedy. Vince Gilligan has a very
specific moral worldview that informs all of
this, doesn't he? He does. He has this fantastic
quote about his own beliefs. He said, I want
to believe in heaven, but I need to believe in
hell. That is heavy. Need to believe in hell.
It means he deeply believes in consequences.
He believes that the universe has a moral arc,
and if you break it, it snaps back on you. Wrongdoers
must be punished. This isn't a nihilistic show
where everything is random. It's a show entirely
about karma. But it's a very specific kind of
karma. It's not immediate lightning bolts. No,
it's slow. But it is entirely inevitable. The
central question the show constantly poses to
you is about the nature of evil. Is Walt bad
because of his actions? Is he bad because of
his motives? Or was the badness always in him
just waiting for the right catalyst? There's
the classic comparison to Tony Soprano. Tony
was born into the mob. He didn't really have
a choice in a way. Tony Soprano was born in darkness
and actively refused the light. Walter White
lived in the light. He was a teacher, a father,
a law -abiding citizen, and he actively chose
the darkness. He walked into it with his eyes
wide open. And I think we can pinpoint the exact
moment he made that conscious decision. It's
not the pilot episode. It's the gray matter offer.
Oh, absolutely. This is the Rosetta Stone of
Walter White's entire psyche. For listeners who
might have forgotten the exact details, in season
one, his old partners, Gretchen and Elliot Schwartz
from Grey Matter, they offered to pay for his
cancer treatment. They offer him a job. It is
a complete golden parachute. It is the solution
to every single one of his problems. His family
is provided for. He gets the best medical care.
He gets his dignity back in the scientific community.
He says no. He says no. And that is the exact
moment the show stops being about a desperate
man doing what he has to do to survive and starts
being about an incredibly prideful man doing
what he wants to do. It was never actually about
the money or the family. It was always about
the ego. He felt cut out of Grey Matter years
ago, which was his own fault, by the way, for
walking away, and he just couldn't stand the
idea of taking charity from them. He would literally
rather cook meth and kill people than say thank
you to his ex -girlfriend. That intense pride
connects directly to the finale. The confession
scene with Skylar in the kitchen. I did it for
me that line gives me chills every single time
It's the moment the whole eye collapses. He finally
admits to her I did it for me. I liked it. I
was good at it. It brilliantly deconstructs that
provider archetype that toxic masculinity relies
on so heavily. Duskfring uses that exact archetype
as a weapon against Walt. Remember when he manipulates
Walt by telling him a man provides and he does
it even when he's not appreciated or respected
or even loved. It sounds so incredibly noble
when Gus says it. It's seductive. But it's a
trap. It's a convenient way to justify absolute
monstrosity. Walt latches on to that because
it allows him to feel like a martyr and a hero
while he's literally dissolving bodies in acid.
But in the end, Walt admits that the provider
thing was just a cover story he told himself
to justify his own massive ambition. And that
ambition leads us inevitably to Ozymandias. The
absolute collapse. We have to geek out on this
for a second because it's so good. The season
five episode title comes from the Percy Bish
Shelley poem. They even used Cranston reading
it in the promotional material. Look on my works,
you mighty and despair. It's a poem about a traveler
finding a shattered ruined statue of an ancient
king in the desert, two vast and trunkless legs
of stone. The inscription basically says, look
at how powerful I am, but there's absolutely
nothing around it but endless sand. The empire
is completely gone. And that is exactly what
happens to Walt in that specific episode. It
is a perfect one -to -one mapping. He has his
literal barrels of money, his works buried in
the desert, but what actually happens, Hank is
killed. Jesse is enslaved. His family is completely
destroyed and terrified of him. He loses everything
that gave the money meaning in the first place.
There's that incredible shot of Walt falling
to the ground in the desert in slow motion. He
looks so small against the landscape. He is the
fallen king of kings. It perfectly encapsulates
the theme of the futility of hubris. You can
build a massive empire. But time and sand conquer
absolutely everything. It really elevates the
show from a pulpy crime story to a true literary
tragedy. It really does. Now let's pivot from
the literary themes to the literal mechanics,
the science and the craft. Section four. This
is a show about a chemistry teacher. How much
of the science was actually real? More than usual
for television, but definitely less than you
might think. They had a real advisor, Dr. Donna
Nelson. She's a chemistry professor, and she
vetted scripts and actually drew the accurate
chemical structures on the whiteboards. So the
jargon was right. But what about the blue meth,
the famous blue sky? This is the single biggest
scientific liberty they took in the entire run.
Break it down for us. Why can't it be blue? Because
pure methamphetamine is a crystal. It should
be totally clear or white. If it's blue, that
inherently implies an impurity. So if Walt is
making the purest product ever recorded 99 .1%,
it should logically be perfectly clear. Exactly.
The blue color was purely a creative liberty,
a marketing gimmick by the writers. They needed
a very clear visual signifier so the audience
could instantly recognize Walt's meth versus
the generic street meth. It's brilliant for television,
but chemically. It makes absolutely no sense.
And then there's the manufacturing method itself.
They actually depict two different methods on
the show. Which is historically accurate to how
real -world meth production evolved over time.
They start with the pseudoephedrine -based method.
The Nagai red phosphorus and iodine method. Cooking
down cold medicine. Right. But to scale that
up, you need hundreds and hundreds of boxes of
pills. It creates a massive bottleneck for production.
So they switch to the PDP method. Phenyl 2 -propanone.
The reductive amination method. The heavy barrel
with the golden moth on it. Methylamine. Exactly.
Now here's the actual scientific catch. The P2P
method is much easier to scale up industrially,
but it naturally produces what's called erasemic
mixture. Okay, let's slow down for a second.
Explain erasemic mixture to us. Sure. Chemistry
101. Molecules can have a handedness to them,
like your left and right hands. They're exact
mirror images of each other, and they're called
enantiomers. Right. In meth, one version gets
you high. The mirror image version does basically
nothing or acts like a mild decongestant. The
PDP method naturally creates a 50 -50 mix of
both. So it's only 50 % potent by default. So
Walt's true genius wasn't just cooking it, it
was filtering it somehow. That's the scientific
implication, that he found some revolutionary
way to isolate the good in antiumer using a highly
specific reduction method. The show smartly glosses
over exactly how he does that because, well,
They understandably don't want to give a literal
step -by -step tutorial on how to make super
potent cartel meth. Probably a very responsible
choice by AMC. But the show Mythbusters actually
did step in to test some of the more explosive
scientific claims. They did. They did an entire
Breaking Bad special. It was fantastic. Let's
talk about the bathtub scene from season one.
Jesse tries to dissolve Emilio's body with hydrofluoric
acid in a ceramic bathtub. It melts the tub,
melts the wooden floor, and drops the whole gruesome
mess into the hallway downstairs. It's an incredibly
memorable visceral scene. but MythBusters completely
busted it. Hydrofluoric acid is nasty, dangerous
stuff, but it is impossible for it to eat through
a ceramic bathtub and a solid wood floor that
quickly. So it wouldn't happen like that? It'd
take a very long time, and it wouldn't be anywhere
near that dramatically destructive to the floorboards.
Good to know. And what about the Mercury fulminate?
This is the famous scene where Walt goes to Tuco's
office, throws a little crystal on the ground,
and violently blows out all the windows. This
is not math. Iconic moments. But is it real?
Bust it again. Mercury fulminate is a real explosive,
yes. But to get an explosion that completely
shattered all the windows and blew the heavy
AC unit out of the wall? He would have needed
a significantly larger amount than that little
crystal. And the blast radius. Right. Physics
is physics. If the shockwave was strong enough
to blow out the windows, it would have turned
Walt's internal organs into jelly right where
he stood. He would have needed to throw it much
faster, and it would have killed everyone in
the room. So Walt essentially has superhero durability
in that scene? A little bit of TV magic to establish
Heisenberg. Yeah. But, and this makes me very
happy, they tested the machine gun in the trunk
from the series finale. The M60 on the automated
swivel mount. Yes. Mythbusters tested it, and
it is actually plausible. You really can build
a remote -controlled turret that sweeps back
and forth using a garage door opener motor. It
is mechanically sound. That is extremely satisfying.
I really wanted that one to be real. Now, moving
from science to visual language, let's talk about
the symbolism. Because Vince Gilligan absolutely
loves his motifs. The pink teddy bear. It falls
from the sky into Walt's pool in season two.
It's missing an eye. It's a brilliant harbinger.
It represents the innocent lives completely destroyed
by Walt's actions. The plane crash was a direct
result of Walt letting Jane die. That bear is
the judgment of God. It's the universe looking
down and saying, I see the damage you are responsible
for. And it's in color. Right. The flash -forward
teasers in season two were entirely in black
and white, but the bear was bright pink. It's
a very direct homage to Schindler's List, the
little girl in the red coat. It forcefully draws
the viewer's eye to the tragedy and the loss
of innocence. And then there's the book, Leaves
of Grass by Walt Whitman. To my other favorite,
WW. Gale Buititre gives it to him. It's such
a small, innocuous prop, but it literally brings
the whole empire crashing down when Hank finds
it in the bathroom. It's incredibly fitting thematically.
Walt Whitman wrote Song of Myself. He was a poet
of the mass of ego, in a way. And the specific
poem featured in the show when I heard The Learned
Astronomer is entirely about the difference between
studying the stars on a chart in a classroom
and actually going outside to look up at them
in perfect silence. Which perfectly mirrors Walt's
journey from the theory of the classroom to the
visceral practice of the meth lab. Exactly. But
it's the sheer arrogance of keeping that book
that ultimately kills him. He couldn't burn it.
He couldn't throw it away. His pride demanded
he keep the trophy of his own brilliance. Let's
also look at the colors. We mentioned the clothes
a bit earlier with Cranston, but the color theory
applied across this entire show is borderline
obsessive. Oh, it really is. There's a specific
color chart Gilligan and the production team
used. Wardrobe colors represented characters
exact states of mind. Walt starts in beige, completely
neutral, bland, basically nonexistent. As he
gets deeper into the meth trade, he starts wearing
dark green. representing money and his dark growth.
And as he fully becomes Heisenberg, he wears
stark black. And Marie Schrader is almost always
in purple. Always. Purple traditionally represents
royalty. But in this context, it's also deception.
She's a kleptomaniac. She lives in an incredibly
manicured fantasy world. And Skylar. She starts
out in a lot of blue. Innocence. Clear sky. But
as the seasons progress, she moves steadily toward
darker colors as she gets dragged further into
the mud with Walt. The wardrobe literally tells
the story before the characters even open their
mouths. We also really need to appreciate the
cinematography. They shot on 35mm film, right?
Yes, which was robust, relatively economic at
the time, and brilliantly allowed for 4K transfers
later on. But beyond the format, it's the specific
visual style. The POV shots. The classic Breaking
Bad shot. Looking up from the bottom of a plastic
bucket. looking out from inside a spinning dryer,
looking directly through the glass of a coffee
pot while it's brewing. It's weird. One major
critic perfectly called it trans -fixing weirdness.
It intentionally forces you to look at completely
mundane objects from a brand new, unnatural perspective.
It makes the world feel slightly alien. which
is exactly how Walt feels. He is completely alienating
himself from normal human life. OK, we've completely
dissected the show's inner workings. Now let's
look at the blast radius. Section five, reception,
legacy and real world impact. The footprint of
this show is just immense. You look at the critical
rankings from Rolling Stone, Empire, Variety.
It's consistently ranked as one of the greatest
TV shows of all time. usually top three, if not
number one. It actually holds a Guinness World
Record. Yes, the 2013 record for highest rated
TV series. Season five hold a Metacritic score
of 99 out of 100. That is statistically absurd.
That essentially means every single major critic
agreed it was flawless. And then you have the
Anthony Hopkins letter. This is genuinely my
favorite piece of trivia about the show's reception.
Sir Anthony Hopkins actually binge watched the
entire show in two weeks. Which is very relatable
for all of us. And he was so moved, he wrote
an incredible fan letter to Bryan Cranston. He
literally said, your performance as Walter White
was the best acting I have seen ever. Imagine
waking up to that email from Hannibal Lecter
himself. He compared the show to Shakespeare
and Greek tragedy. It really validated the series
as high art in the eyes of the old guard. But
art influences life and not always in good ways.
We have to talk about the cultural impact and
the controversies, the Breaking Bad effect. This
is the dark side of that massive popularity.
Law enforcement actually started reporting blue
meth appearing on real streets. Real drug dealers
were intentionally dying their meth blue. Yes.
They were actively branding it to cash in on
the show's popularity. It actually made the drug
significantly more dangerous because buyers thought
blue meant pure, just like on TV, when in reality
it just meant some copycat added food coloring
or harsh industrial chemicals. That is deeply
disturbing. Life imitating art in the worst possible
way. And then there were the literal copycats.
There were actual chemistry professors caught
running meth labs after the show aired. And then
there are the slightly lighter but still intense
controversies. The Toys R Us saga. Oh, the action
figures. Right. Toys R Us was selling a Walter
White action figure. He came with a little tiny
bag of blue crystals and a little plastic duffel
bag of cash. And a Florida mom was walking down
the aisle and thought, you know, maybe this isn't
appropriate for a children's toy store. Which.
To be completely fair, she has a valid point.
It's a toy of a ruthless murderer selling narcotics
next to the Lego sets. She started a petition.
Toys R' Us quickly pulled them from the shelves.
Bryan Cranston, being the joker he is, tweeted,
I'm burning my Florida mom action figure in protest.
But the fans, the fans are intense. We have to
talk about the pizza throwing. The pizza on the
roof. Set the scene for us real quick. Season
three. Walt brings a massive dipping sticks pizza
to Skylar as a peace offering. She locks him
out of the house. In a fit of petty rage, he
throws the pizza. It sails perfectly out of the
box and lands flat on the garage roof. And that
was one take, right? One single take. Cranston
couldn't have done it again if he tried all day.
But the fans thought it was the most hilarious
thing ever. So they started traveling to the
real house in Albuquerque where a real very normal
lady lives, and actually throwing large pizzas
on her roof. It became a weird pop culture pilgrimage.
It became an absolute nightmare for the homeowner.
She had to put up a huge iron fence. Vincent
Gilligan actually had to go on a podcast and
publicly beg people to stop doing it. He said
there is nothing cool or funny about throwing
a pizza on a lady's roof. It really shows how
the line between fiction and reality blurred
for people. They just desperately wanted to physically
participate in the meme. And Albuquerque has
had a very complicated relationship with the
show because of that intense fandom. On one hand,
it brought millions of dollars in tax revenue
and a thriving film industry to the state. On
the other hand, it inextricably linked the city
to meth production in the global consciousness.
But they did lean into it eventually. They put
up statues in twenty twenty two. Yes, bronze
statues of what and Jesse at the Albuquerque
Convention Center, which naturally caused quite
a stir. It did. It's important to note the differing
views here. Some conservative politicians and
radio hosts strongly criticized the move, arguing
that erecting monuments to fictional drug dealers
glorifies crime and sends the wrong message to
the community. On the other side, the mayor defended
the statues, arguing that it wasn't about glorifying
drugs at all, but rather acknowledging the massive
positive economic impact the production had on
the city, putting Albuquerque on the map for
tourism and film. It's very similar to the debate
people have about the statue of Rocky Balboa
in Philadelphia, just with significantly more
moral baggage attached. Exactly. It's a complex
civic issue. And the universe didn't just end
with Breaking Bad. It expanded into a massive
franchise. We got Better Call Saul. Which is
an absolute miracle of television, and prequels
are almost always bad. But Better Call Saul might
be just as good, if not better, depending on
who you ask in the fandom. It's definitely a
different kind of show. It's quieter, more legal
drama. but it proved the incredible depth of
that writing team. And El Camino, the sequel
movie, which finally gave us actual closure for
Jessie's character. Plus the Spanish language
adaptation, Metastasis. Yes. So as we hit the
outter and wrap this up. We've looked at the
production miracles, the phenomenal acting, the
science, and the massive real -world legacy.
We've traced the journey of a desperate chemistry
teacher turning into a tragic figure of absolute
hubris. A complete transformation. But I want
to leave the listener with a final provocative
thought. We talked about the ending we got. Walt
dies in the lab. He lovingly touches the stainless
steel equipment. He falls over, the camera cranes
up, and the song Baby Blue plays. A very clean,
structurally satisfying ending. But is it too
satisfying? That is the ultimate debate among
critics. The writers actually heavily considered
an alternate ending, a much, much darker one.
Tell us about that alternate ending. They toyed
with the idea that Walt would be the only survivor
of the entire ordeal, that Skylar would commit
suicide or be killed, that Walter Jr. would die,
that the baby would be lost, and Walt would be
left standing in the ashes, completely alive,
with all of his bloody money. Oh, wow. That sounds
unbearable to watch. It would have been a true
punishing Greek tragedy, the ultimate karmic
retribution, living forever with the complete
void he created. Instead, the ending we got lets
him tie up loose ends. He gets to save Jesse.
He gets to violently kill the Nazis. He manages
to leave the money for his son through Elliot
and Gretchen, and he dies on his own terms in
the place he loved most, the meth lab. In a weird
way. Walt won. He achieved his core goals. He
became a terrifying legend. He felt alive and
he died right before the handcuffs clicked. So
the question I have for you listening right now,
something to mull over, is did the show let Walter
White off the hook too easily? Did we, the complicit
audience, get the satisfying action movie catharsis
we wanted rather than the brutal punishment Walt
actually deserved for the pain he caused? I think
that's exactly the question Gilligan wants us
all to ask ourselves. Is a good death really
redemption? Or is it just one final brilliant
manipulation by Walter White? Definitely something
to think about next time you see a blue crystal
or re -watch the pilot. Keep an eye out for that
pathetic dead caterpillar mustache and really
watch the color theory unfold. It changes how
you view the whole series. Well, thanks for going
deep with us today. It's been an incredible ride
unpacking this masterpiece. A completely wild
one. We'll catch you on the next deep dive. Keep
looking up at the stars, not just the charts.