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Privatization of Everything in Breaking Bad
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Citation Lee, David. 2016. What's the Matter with Walter? The Privatization
of Everything in Breaking Bad. Master's thesis, Harvard Extension
School.
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What’s the Matter with Walter?
David R. Lee
Harvard University
November 2016
© 2016 David R. Lee
Abstract
can provide an important window into the cultural dynamics in a given period for a given
society. Vince Gilligan’s award-winning Breaking Bad is one of those shows that
powerfully engaged with its moment. Gilligan created a compelling protagonist in the
deeply flawed yet charismatic genius Walter White. He had Walter build an illegal drug
business at which he had savant-like skills, and situated Walt in a family characterized by
dysfunction. In showing how and why Walter traded a quiet but economically marginal
existence as a high school chemistry teacher for a violent but wealthy life as a drug lord,
Breaking Bad offered a compelling critique of one of the most insidious economic policy
primarily to the 20th century resurgence of 19th century ideas associated with laissez-
faire economic liberalism. These ideas include extensive economic liberalization policies
government spending, and dismantling of the welfare state in order to enhance the role of
the private sector in the economy. The insidiousness of the policy initiative lies in the
manner in which neoliberalism has influenced behavior in almost every facet of life. This
thesis locates and analyzes three spaces in society where Breaking Bad offers its critique
of neoliberalism: gender roles, law enforcement, and business. The thesis examines how
the show reveals neoliberalism to be ineffectual and destructive in the domains in which
Dedication
for ryan
iv
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my research advisor Dr. Donald Ostrowski. His support at
deeply grateful. Steve agreed to take on my unique project and to say his stewardship has
patience and intellect look like. I’m happy to call him mentor and friend.
I’d also like to thank my family: my wife Anne and son Nick. Their individual
successes in life have been truly inspiring. I hope I’ve done you both proud.
v
Table of Contents
Dedication…………………………………………………….………………................iv
Acknowledgements………………………………………….……………………….......v
I. Introduction...……………………..…….……………………….………….…...…..1
V. Epilogue…………………..…………………...……………………..……………..81
Bibliography……………………...……………………………………………………...89
vi
Chapter I
Introduction
A pair of khaki pants floats in suspended animation against a painfully bright blue
sky before landing on a desolate desert road, only to be run over by a speeding recreation
vehicle. The RV’s driver appears to be a middle-aged man wearing a gas mask and
dressed only in white briefs. In the passenger seat a younger man, either passed out or
dead, also wears a gas mask. As the Winnebago hurtles down the dirt road two bodies
slide lifelessly across the floor of the RV—which, along with the two bodies, is covered
with liquid and broken glass—until it crashes into a ditch. The driver, a somewhat
disturbing figure in his underwear, stumbles out of the Winnebago, which is apparently
thick with noxious fumes. He hastily puts on a dress shirt, then goes back in the RV to
retrieve a video camera and a gun. He records a brief, emotional farewell message to his
family, then stands defiantly as he prepares himself for oncoming sirens with a gun in his
hand. The pilot episode of Breaking Bad begins with this surreal sequence. We soon
discover through a series of flashbacks how three weeks earlier the man, Walter White,
intelligent, economically marginalized New Mexico high school chemistry teacher, who
begins producing and selling crystal methamphetamine, or meth. He enlists the help of
former student Jesse Pinkman, played by Aaron Paul, to help him sell his high-end
1
Breaking Bad, “Pilot,” Written and directed by Vince Gilligan, Sony Pictures
Television, Inc., January 20, 2008.
1
product to large illegal drug distributors in Albuquerque. We soon find out that Walter is
suffering from lung cancer and has been given only a few months to live. He takes stock
of his life and realizes he has very little to show for his many years as a teacher. He also
discovers that his City of Albuquerque medical insurance does not provide adequate
coverage to properly treat his illness. Caught unaware by his cancer diagnosis, Walter
decides that the best way to make lots of money quickly is to take his experience as a
chemist and apply it to making high-grade meth. While this may seem like an odd choice
contends that nearly forty years of neoliberal economic and political policy-making has
privatization, has permeated American society. Breaking Bad, through the vision of its
creator Vince Gilligan, confronts the expression of nearly forty years of neoliberal
policy-making at several crucial points: the evolution of gender roles, crime prevention,
capitalist catastrophe that penetrates nearly every aspect of modern life. The show’s arc
2
As recently as 2009 American President Barack Obama regarded the 2008
financial crisis as neoliberalism run amok.2 The object of the President’s criticism—the
neoliberal ideal of a “self-regulating market” as the main engine powering the “wealth of
nations”—has been a core tenet of classical liberal economists since the late 18th
century.3 The historical background of neoliberalism grew from liberal opposition “to the
mercantilism of monarchs who exercised almost total control over the economy in their
efforts to amass large quantities of gold for largely bellicose purposes.”4 Adam Smith is
economic man: the idea that people are isolated, rational individuals whose actions reflect
mostly their financial self-interests.5 According to this view, economic and political
matters occupy separate spheres of influence, “with economics claiming a superior status
natural laws.”6 The main tenet of the neoliberal world view is that “the state is to refrain
from interfering with the economic activities of self-interested citizens and instead use its
2
Manfred B. Steger and Ravi K. Roy, Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2010), location 388, Kindle Edition.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid., loc. 390, Kindle Edition.
5
"Homo economicus, n,". OED Online, New York: Oxford University Press, accessed
November28,2015,http://www.oed.com.ezpprod1.hul.harvard.edu/view/Entry/33678755?redirect
edFrom=homo+economicus.
6
Steger and Roy, Neoliberalism, loc. 390, Kindle Edition.
7
Ibid.
3
After World War II the U.S. witnessed nearly forty years of activist government
intervention in social and economic matters, defying the tenets of liberal economic
dogma. Two massive government initiatives—the New Deal of the 1930s and the Great
Society of the 1960s—expanded the welfare state and greatly contributed to the growth
of middle-class America. These programs expanded the welfare state to the dismay of
parts of the business community as each program mandated quality of life initiatives such
as safe workplaces and minimum wages, while increasing taxes in order to support
growing government social programs such as Medicaid and Medicare. By the late
during this period that the process of converting the U.S. to a neoliberal state began to
take shape.
The first great experiment with neoliberal state formation was conducted in Chile
after the ouster of Salvador Allende. On September 11, 1973, a Chilean military coup—
backed by the CIA and supported by U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger—was
launched against the democratically elected and social democratic government of Allende
and replaced him with Augusto Pinochet. Economists from the U.S., known as the
Chicago Boys because of their attachment to the neoliberal theories of the University of
Chicago’s Milton Friedman, were summoned to help Pinochet.8 They carried out their
mission along free-market lines, “privatizing public assets, opening up natural resources
8
David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press,
2005), 7.
4
to private exploitation, and facilitating foreign direct investment and free trade.”9 The
right of foreign companies to repatriate profits from their Chilean operations was
guaranteed. Export-led growth was favored over import substitution. The subsequent
revival of the Chilean economy in terms of growth, capital accumulation, and high rates
of return on foreign investments provided evidence upon which the subsequent turn to
In 1973, as governor of California, Reagan was already engaging in his own neoliberal
won a spot on the California ballot.10 In Chile, a brutal experiment in creative destruction
carried out in the aftermath of a CIA-sponsored coup became a model for the formulation
Social theorist and political economist David Harvey succinctly lays out the
economic system has “entailed much destruction, not only of prior institutional
frameworks and powers (such as the supposed prior state sovereignty over political-
economic affairs) but also of divisions of labor, social relations, welfare provisions,
technological mixes, ways of life, attachments to the land, habits of the heart, ways of
9
David Harvey, “Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction,” Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science 610, (2007): 26, accessed November 25, 2015,
http://www.jstor.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/stable/25097888.
10
Rick Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), 160.
5
thought, and the like.”11 The first move was to get the business community to act
In the early-to-mid 1970s corporate leaders were feeling a growing sense that the
anti-business and anti-imperialist climate that had emerged toward the end of the 1960s
had gone too far. In a 1971 memo, soon-to-be Supreme Court justice Lewis Powell urged
the American Chamber of Commerce to begin a campaign to demonstrate that what was
good for business was good for America.12 Corporate political action committees began
to assert their influence. With the Supreme Court setting the precedent of protecting
unlimited campaign contributions from political action committees under the First
Amendment as a form of free speech in the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision, “the
systematic capture of the Republican Party as a class instrument of collective (rather than
With the courts legally blurring the lines between individual and corporate free
constituency to carry out its objectives. The Republican party convinced “a large segment
of a disaffected, insecure, and largely white working class…to vote consistently against
its own material interests on cultural (antiliberal, antiblack, antifeminist and antigay),
11
Ibid, 23.
12
Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, Winner Take-All Politics: How Washington Made
the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010),
116-118.
13
Valerie A. Earle and Chester B. Earle, “The Supreme Court and the Electoral Process.”
World Affairs 140, no. 1 (1977): 38, accessed November 27, 2015, http://www.jstor.org.ezp-
prod1.hul.harvard.edu/stable/20671709.
6
nationalist and religious grounds.”14 This group would come to represent a reliable source
of donations for business-minded politicians as well as the votes to help them gain and
hold elected office. By the mid-1990s the Republican Party had shed the vast majority of
its liberal constituency. Long gone was the idea of a liberal Republican. The party had
financial resources of large corporate capital with a populist base, the Moral Majority,
“The recession of 1973 to 1975 diminished tax revenues at all levels at a time of rising
key problem. Something had to be done about the fiscal crisis of the state; the restoration
of monetary discipline was essential.”16 This idea allowed financial institutions that
controlled the lines of credit to government to decrease their largesse. In 1975 “they
refused to roll over New York's debt and forced that city to the edge of bankruptcy. A
powerful cabal of bankers joined together with the state to tighten control over the city.
This meant curbing the aspirations of municipal unions, layoffs in public employment,
wage freezes, cutbacks in social provision (education, public health, and transport
services), and the imposition of user fees (tuition was introduced in the CUNY university
14
Harvey, “Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction,” 26-27.
15
Ibid.
16
Ibid.
17
Ibid.
7
Many of these policy initiatives insinuate their way into the lives of Breaking
Bad’s cast of characters. Using the show and the characters as a heuristic, this thesis will
examine neoliberal policy initiatives in depth, and endeavor to understand how the
actions of Walter and other characters on the show personify the catastrophic damage
wrought by the effort to privatize many aspects of American life with the goal of
controlling the strain on governmental resources thereby reducing the scope of the
American welfare state. The show strives to explain to the viewer that the shrinking of
government intervention in the social and economic realm has not resulted in a utopian
existence. Instead, Gilligan depicts a dystopian America struggling to make ends meet.
8
Chapter II
“Cancer Man”
inextricably linked with late 20th and early-21st century concepts of masculinity. A large
part of Walter’s metamorphosis from Mr. Chips to Scarface is centered on recapturing his
manhood, and with that, his dignity.18 The first few scenes of the pilot episode address
the depth of his emasculation. From the opening scene, in which Walt crashes a
recreational vehicle into a mound of sand, to the scene at the White family breakfast
table, Walter White is portrayed as a man defeated by the circumstances of his life and
deeply affected by a changing family dynamic that began in the 1970s. While Walt is a
highly intelligent chemist, as well as a man of high moral principles, changing gender
roles over the past forty-plus years have left him uncertain of what is expected of him as
a man. Walt’s gender-based anxiety is not exclusive to him: historian Robert O. Self
explains the origin of male gender angst beginning in the 1970s as a reactionary response
to bolster the ideal nuclear family. Self terms this response “breadwinner conservatism,”
where conservatives won back the power to define the ideal American family—white,
nuclear, heterosexual—as needing protection rather than support from the government.
During this process, one that spans forty years, “the Great Society pledge to assist
18
Vince Gilligan has stated in several interviews that his goal was to transform Walter
White from Mr. Chips to Scarface; from an effete middle-aged school teacher to ruthless drug
kingpin.
9
families became the New Right pledge to protect them.”19 For Walt, his attempt to
confront his vulnerability, and in the process recover his dignity and manhood, begins
methamphetamine and is fully realized over the span of the series as Walt eliminates all
Walter White is introduced to the viewer in the first scene of the pilot episode as
the quiet of the beautiful New Mexico landscape is violently interrupted by a speeding
RV careening out of control down a dirt road until it flies off the road and into a mound
of sand. The serenity of the first few frames of the scene lulls the viewer into a sort of
reverie which is disrupted by the mobile home. We are immediately captivated by what
unfolds before us through the words and actions of Walter. This cinematic technique,
into a story at the beginning of the show before the opening credits are shown. On
television, this is often done on the theory that involving the audience in the plot as soon
as possible will reduce the likelihood of their switching away from a show during the
opening commercial.20 This does not represent the limit of the scene’s goal but rather the
19
Robert O. Self, All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the
1960s (New York: Hill and Wang, 2013), 4.
20
“What Is a Cold Open?” wisegeek.com, accessed December 9, 2015,
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-cold-open.htm#didyouknowout.
10
would wish to take if we were less powerfully compelled by desires such as
Walt’s.21
This opening sequence pulls us into Walt’s present consciousness and specifically allows
us to observe Walt’s vulnerability as he is exposed, not only in terms of his partial nudity,
but in comparison to the vastness of the desert: Walt appears in a subsequent long shot as
small and impotent against the expansive mesas and deep blue sky. This sense of
century America, has defined the challenges and expectations of masculinity in early-21st
century America.
It is important to point out that in this early scene Walt establishes for the first
time his rationale for wrongdoing, which he couches in terms of good-hearted love for his
three—dead bodies, he hears sirens heading his way and rushes back into the mobile
going to be arrested, he records a message for his family: “Skyler, you are the love of my
life. I hope you know that. Walter Jr., you’re my big man. There, there are going to be
some . . . things . . . things that you’ll come to learn about me in the next few days. I just
want you to know that no matter how it may look, I only had you in my heart.”22 While at
first he may actually believe his impetus is to make enough money to support his family
once he dies from lung cancer, this self-understanding is eventually belied by more
21
Elliot Logan, Breaking Bad and Dignity: Unity and Fragmentation in the Serial
Television Drama (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), loc. 676, Kindle Edition.
22
Breaking Bad, “Pilot.”
11
These early scenes also serve as an introduction to an important trope that will
recur throughout the series: the rugged individualism associated with the American West.
After Walt finishes the video for his family he places the recorder on the ground and
stands, contemplates his situation, and buttons the bottom buttons of the shirt he is
wearing as if he is fastening his exterior armor in order to steel himself for whatever is
coming his way. He then straightens up, takes a deep breath, and appears somewhat
larger. This small action indicates a transition in Walt’s mindset. Upon hearing sirens
earlier, Walt was in a state of panic. He then breathed deeply and stifled the panic-
inducing threat of the oncoming emergency vehicles. His newly defiant stance makes him
appear stronger and, in Logan’s words, “less susceptible to being moved by the world
around him. It is in this stance he is able to effect the most complete cleavage between his
prior state of humiliating vulnerability and his emerging one of more dignified
toughness.”23
Additionally, these early scenes convey an aspect of Walt that becomes apparent
as the show progresses: an ability to shed parts of himself when needed. The camera shot
responsibility”24 temporarily conceals, but does not fully erase, what are to him the
ordinary human frailties that lie just beneath the surface. These ordinary aspects of Walt’s
image that he seeks to disguise are still somewhat out in the open. Walt is portrayed
with both guile and shocking brutality. This flexibility in his personality is what makes
23
Logan, Breaking Bad and Dignity, loc. 713, Kindle Edition.
24
Ibid., loc. 688, Kindle Edition.
12
Walt such a compelling character on the screen, but, more importantly, it serves as a
reminder throughout the series of the inner conflict driving him as he tries to figure out
his place in the world. These opening scenes are crucial in explaining the psychological
basis for Walt’s hyper-masculine transformation that plays out as the show develops.
After the short introduction the show resumes with a shot that is quite different
from the cold opening in the desert. The first thing the viewer sees is a narrow view of a
modest home situated in either a city or suburban neighborhood. It is just before sunrise
and we see Walt on a small, cheap exercise step machine. He is in a room of the house
that appears to be in the process of becoming a nursery. Walt is going through the
motions detached from what he is doing at the moment as he is from his life. Compared
to the suddenness and dynamism that the opening scene in the desert, in this domestic
actions, and not the limited light offered by the early morning sun, that suffuses his home
with the claustrophobic shadows of depression. The choice of routine and its presentation
here is suggestive in that Walt’s static exercise represents his stalled life. Portraying him
on the unvarying, cheap step exerciser, exerting effort while staying in place, is an apt
This notion of running in place is further explored as the camera pans around the
soon-to-be-nursery and we see a series of awards on the wall. The image of a lethargic
Walt on the stepper is not easily reconciled with that of the awards, which suggest the
efforts of a much more impressive man. The filming sequence of this scene both
confronts and tries to make sense of these conflicting ideas of Walt. He coughs, and, as if
25
Ibid., loc. 845, Kindle Edition.
13
on cue, and the camera pans to a plaque hanging on the wall. It is an award from the Los
Alamos Science Research Center recognizing Walt for his contribution to Nobel Prize-
winning research. An extreme close-up focuses our attention on its date: 1985.26 Also in
the shot is an award from the New Mexico Public School System. The manner in which
the two awards are shown, “places Walt’s more remarkable, prestigious achievement as
long past, as having passed, decades ago. It also suggests a weighting of value, in which a
modest yet vital public contribution as an educator feels like wasted potential below the
The scene inside the frame—a rundown, seemingly defeated Walt juxtaposed
with a Nobel citation—shows the room in a way that places Walt’s past accomplishments
of his early career in science against his present, more private achievement of creating a
new human being with his wife as well as creating a happy home in which to care for
it.28 The scene informs the viewer of Walt’s extraordinary past achievements and places
them next to his current sense of stagnation. One gets the sense that fathering another
child, at age 50, is to Walter not nearly as rewarding as his contributions to science many
years ago. Being in that room, in the presence of his long past accomplishment, appears
to drain whatever strength he may have. He could very well be equally as proud of both
contributing to Nobel Prize-winning scientific research and being a father for the second
time; however, the framing of the scene suggests that this not the case with Walt. His
26
Breaking Bad, “Pilot.”
27
Ibid.
28
Logan, Breaking Bad and Dignity, loc. 860, Kindle Edition.
14
repetitive exercise in the room suggests that he is stuck, no longer a vigorous man of
While the sections of the pilot covered so far explain Walt’s current state of mind,
it is the scene of Walt’s birthday breakfast that exemplifies how his masculinity has been
subverted by the arc of his life, specifically represented here by his wife. The idea
conveyed in this scene is that Skyler’s arranging bacon in the shape of Walt’s age, in this
case 50, is a tradition in the White household. This year Skyler informs Walt the strips
arranged over his eggs are veggie bacon, an unmanly low-fat, low-cholesterol version of
the real thing. Skyler comes off as domineering in this scene as she dictates to Walt, and
Walt, Jr., exactly what they will be eating for breakfast, even though it is Walt’s birthday.
She then reminds Walt not to be home late from his second job at a carwash by warning
him to not let his boss “dick [him] around.”30 Walt, Jr. then joins them at the breakfast
table and states he will not eat the veggie bacon and that it smells like Band-Aids, to
which Skyler replies, “Eat. It.”31 She follows up this order with a stern look. Her
statement shows her concern for the family but also indicates that in effect Skyler is the
person who is in charge in the home, which is a situation that, as the series moves
forward, is destabilized as Walt attempts to recover his lost masculinity, and with that,
Early scenes also examine Walt in a struggle to maintain his dignity outside of the
domestic space. Gilligan accomplishes this through two revealing sequences. The first
29
Ibid.
30
Breaking Bad, “Pilot.”
31
Ibid.
15
shows Walt in his classroom lecturing on the topic of matter; the second shows him at his
second job in a carwash. The fact that he must hold down two low-paying jobs reveals his
precarious financial situation. His sense that he has failed as a male breadwinner proves
to be part of his motivation to take back control of his life. In the classroom, Walt is
interrupted by a male and female student carrying on in the back row of the classroom as
if they are flirting at a party. The male student is not in his assigned seat and when Walt
confronts the young man, Chad, by asking him if there is something wrong with his seat
the boy replies with a dismissive head shake and stands up as if Walt’s intervention in his
conversation with the girl is a great inconvenience. He then drags his chair across the
floor, pulling it back to where his assigned place is in such a manner as to create a
terribly loud and obnoxious squeaking sound. His action usurps Walt’s authority in the
The next scene has Walt at the car wash. It is later in the day and he is working
the cash register when his boss informs him that he must assist in wiping down the cars.
Walt objects meekly, reminding his boss that they had discussed Walt’s responsibilities at
some point earlier in their relationship and Walt made it clear that he would no longer
assist in the menial duties of the carwash. His boss insists and Walt is next shown wiping
down the tires of a late model sports car belonging to Chad, the student he had earlier
admonished. Walt is forced to swallow his pride as Chad again disrespects him and takes
his picture with his cell phone to, one may assume, send to other students as to further
mortify Walt. Additionally, Chad’s girlfriend tells whoever she is talking to on her cell
phone “you’ll never guess who’s wiping down Chad’s car. Mr. White.”32 In the course of
32
Ibid.
16
two scenes spanning one day in Walt’s life he is disrespected once by his boss and twice
by his students.
These pilot episode scenes fully establish the major themes and problems that
Walter faces as he struggles with the feeling that neither his family nor his students
respect him and that as a man he is inadequate as a provider for his family. His lack of
income appears to be the result of his desire to play by the rules and be a law-abiding
citizen, good husband, and father. The episode suggests that Walt’s economic difficulties
are understood by himself and others in gendered terms; his mild-mannered response to
his situation comes across as emasculation. In truth, Walter is potentially a genius; his
obnoxious, aggressive, manly brother-in-law Hank, who is a DEA agent, jokes about
Walter’s big brain when he toasts him at his fiftieth birthday party, “Walt, you got a brain
the size of Wisconsin, but we won’t hold that against ya. But your heart’s in the right
place.”33
The idea of a man being associated with emotions, having a good heart, is
celebrated and ridiculed by Hank in the scene when Hank shows off his service weapon
to the other men attending the party, including Walt’s disabled son. The look of adulation
makes clear that Walt Jr. idolizes his uncle and the status his job affords him. The other
men around Hank seem to be equally enamored with him. At this point, Walt can be seen
just behind Hank, outside of the circle or admirers, both men and women. Hank does
inviting Walt to handle his weapon. Even this gesture of inclusion is couched in sarcasm
as Hank remarks that Walt is so obviously uneasy with the gun that he looks like “Keith
33
Ibid.
17
Richards with a warm glass of milk.”34 Walt, also holding a beer in his hand that looks as
equally out of place as the gun, is clearly not comfortable with the firearm in his hand and
comments on the weight of it, to which Hank replies “that’s why they hire men,”
indicating that only manly men like himself should carry guns.35 Hank looks the part of a
manly man with his shaved head, big beer belly, and the way in which he holds his arms
in a ‘tough-guy” manner, out from his sides. The scene’s juxtaposition of Hank’s body
language with Walt’s hunched shoulders and limited eye contact shows the terrain of
masculinity in which Breaking Bad’s subsequent action will unfold. As critic Brian
Faucette writes, Walt “shows the first signs of dissatisfaction with his status as a man
when his brother-in- law, son, and the other men laugh at him. In that moment he comes
to realize that his family sees him as effeminate because he does not measure up to a man
like Hank.”36
based around the representation of men as boorish and violent.37 To further illustrate this
idea, Hank not only shows off his weapon but also further infringes on Walt’s party by
stealing the attention of the attendees by shifting the group’s focus to the television in
34
Ibid.
35
Ibid.
36
Brian Faucette, “Taking Control: Male Angst and the Re-Emergence of Hegemonic
Masculinity in Breaking Bad,” in Breaking Bad Critical Essays on the Contexts, Politics, Style,
and Reception of the Television Series, ed. David P. Pierson, (New York: Lexington Books,
2014), Kindle Edition, loc. 1532.
37
In gender studies, hegemonic masculinity is a concept popularized by sociologist R.W.
Connell of practices that promote the dominant social position of men and the subordinate social
position of women. Give a citation for Connell here?
18
order to ensure everyone sees his appearance on the local news from earlier in the day
when he was interviewed during a meth bust. A close reading of this particular scene
offers a glimpse into Hank’s insecurities. He is not the pillar of masculinity he wants the
world to think he is. The Pilot episode presents a stark distinction between Hank’s bluster
and Walt’s emasculation only to gradually undermine it in the episodes that follow. As
Walt comes to reclaim his masculinity, the series challenges its characters’ gendered
The bedroom scene with Walt and Skyler on the evening of his birthday party
disturbingly creepy moment in the trajectory of the show. The camera cuts from Walt’s
party to Skylar and Walt in bed together. They are both sitting up and Skylar is on her
laptop checking on an item she is trying to buy on the Internet. This is the extent of her
financial contribution to the household, but one gets the feeling that her being home with
Walt Jr. is Walt’s idea as he views himself as the sole breadwinner. Self’s idea of
the male role in the family is that of provider. He refuses any help in paying for his
Skylar, while cheering on her bid, reaches under the covers for Walt’s penis,
offering to manually satisfy him as part of his birthday celebration. At first, Walt seems
to be taken aback as if to say “you can’t even take a minute to concentrate on me,” and
they continue to have a conversation while Skylar’s hand works back and forth under the
covers. The mood is mundane, and the action perfunctory, with Walter talking about an
exhibit he wants to go see and both of them getting testy about painting the nursery,
19
which Skylar wants him to take care of. He even yawns, indicating that he finds their sex
life wearisome. At one point, with Walt not readily responding to Skylar’s erotic
manipulation, she lifts up the covers and asks Walt “what is going on down there? Is he
asleep?”38 Walt mumbles and almost cringes, “nothing, it’s just…”39 Eventually Walt
gets going but the moment is suddenly interrupted as Skylar is watching her item on the
laptop almost moaning “yes, yes, YES” as her bid is accepted, ruining the moment for
Walt.40
This scene represents the hold Skylar has on Walt—not just the obvious hold she
had at that moment, but the control she has over him generally. Her supplanting his
sexual gratification with her Internet shopping victory speaks to a deeper issue.
Metaphorically, the show is saying that Skyler has Walt in the palm of her hand and is
indeed content with controlling his access to happiness. The importance of Walt’s
sexuality and its link to his own understanding of his masculinity is addressed in the last
scene of the pilot when, after his early meth cooks, he climbs into bed, begins to
passionately kiss Skyler and then takes her from behind, indicating that he is now the
person in control in the bedroom. Where in the previous bedroom scene Skyler was in
charge of the Walt’s sexual satisfaction, Walt shows that he is beginning to transform
into a more dominant male figure. This change shocks and thrills Skyler as she inquiries
38
Breaking Bad, “Pilot.”
39
Ibid.
40
Ibid.
41
Ibid.
20
There is a certain irony to this notion that meshes nicely with the voyeuristic
nature of television viewing: the viewer knows the secrets and true nature of the
characters, even while the characters themselves may not. This mettlesome viewer
quality allows access to vital information such as Walter’s cancer diagnosis and how very
detached Walt is becoming in light of that diagnosis. It also allows the viewer a sense of
how unaware Skylar is regarding the signals her husband is sending—signals that he is
becoming disengaged with his surroundings to the point of alienation from the rational
world. It is obvious to the viewer that Walt is beginning to unravel, but Skylar is
oblivious to this.
Walter and Skylar, as well as other characters in the show, are representative of an
ongoing trend since the 1970s that has seen a drastic change in the outward manifestation
phenomenon is closely connected to the rise of neoliberalism. The series allows viewers
to see how the characters’ conformity to these norms represents their failure to
comprehend their real plight: the economic and social costs of neoliberalism. Walt sees
his inability to provide adequately for his family as a failure on his part to forcefully
secure a better job—or his failure to stay on with Gray Matter, the business that he co-
during the second half of the twentieth century, and he focuses on family dynamics to
make this transformation most visible. During the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson’s Great
21
Society operated on the assumption of breadwinner liberalism.42 Its programs, such as job
training, were intended to prop up the male heterosexual breadwinner of the traditional
family, in which the husband worked while the wife remained at home with the kids.
Such programs were supposed to ease entry of the traditional family into the middle
class. However, the idea of traditional gender roles, specifically within the family
dynamic, were beginning to change, and policy making around these changing gender-
based roles was struggling to keep up with the blurring lines of intra-familial
responsibilities.
The political left presented evidence that this version of the family did not match
reality. Feminists were encouraging women to realize their potential in the workplace,
Meanwhile, many women were already heads of households. As such, they were already
care centers and supplemental welfare payments to make ends meet. Feminists
challenged the view of the traditional family in other ways. They fought for the ability of
women to control their reproductive lives, such as the right to an abortion. For those who
could not exercise that right because of a lack of money, feminists believed the state
42
In the 1960s, New Frontier and Great Society liberals such as Lyndon Johnson, Daniel
Patrick Moynihan, and Sargent Shriver crafted social and economic policies they believed would
make the idealized nuclear family, which had been the object of liberal concern since the New
Deal, attainable for more Americans than ever before. Self refers to this as breadwinner
liberalism.
22
Additionally, gays and lesbians called for increased rights, which further upset the
traditional family model. For example, they advocated gay marriage and the right to be
heads of households, raising children as part of a family. Meanwhile, gays and lesbians
sought equality in a work place that discriminated against them. As a result, new
conceptions of the family emerged, from gay and lesbian heads of households to single,
working mothers demanding support from the state. Conservatives saw a moral threat to
the traditional family model. State-supported abortions, gay marriage, and welfare
payments to single mothers only encouraged nontraditional families, in their view, all too
often leading to what they perceived as more unnecessary state spending. According to
Self, Ronald Reagan was able to combine this alleged threat to moral stability within the
presidency by combining two seemingly disparate ideas: “One was that liberalism had
precipitated a revolution in gender, sexuality, and the family that had damaged the nation.
The second was that government based on regulatory and social welfare principles
impeded the ‘natural’ functioning of the market and was responsible for any economic
resentment directed toward minority groups perceived as threats to the economic and
social status quo, and a catalyst for the establishment of neoliberal policy initiatives. Self
argues that the political culture transformed from breadwinner liberalism—calling for
43
Self, All in theFamily, 399.
23
heterosexual—without the state intervention that encouraged alternative family
insists that rationality, individuality, and self-interest guide all actions.”45 Crucially,
neoliberalism “often views itself as a global social science capable of explaining all
such as the public good and community as obsolete components of a welfare state.
individual freedom and prosperity, the fact that rugged individualism is a prevalent trope
of the American dream, makes it challenging for many to realize that neoliberalism is
intended to benefit only a very small class of people. Such a perception also makes it
easier to justify the thought that certain people are deserving of much more than others
because, in keeping with the American dream motif, it is a common belief that we are all
44
Ibid.
45
Candace Smith, “A Brief Examination of Neoliberalism and Its Consequences,” The
Society Pages, last modified October 2, 2012,
http://thesocietypages.org/sociologylens/2012/10/02/a-brief-examination-of-neoliberalism-and-
its-consequences/.
46
Ibid.
47
Ibid.
48
Ibid.
24
Vince Gilligan’s use of the vast expanse of the New Mexican desert in many shots
speaks to this ideal. In many scenes throughout the series time-lapse filming is used to
show the passing of an entire day, from sunrise to sunset, in rapid sequence. It also
represents one of the central myths of Americanism, and when Gilligan uses the desert as
a backdrop for these shots, he is expressing the romanticism of the American West and
the ideal of self-reliance as internalized by Walter White. The individual fortitude needed
masculinity that critic Henry A. Giroux claims has spread out from the military to other
In tracking the hyper-masculine rise of Walter White through the five seasons of
the show, a particularly pernicious aspect of neoliberal philosophy emerges: the notion of
a zero-sum paradigm that interprets one’s gain as another’s loss. The show’s arc
incorporates this zero-sum mentality in that as Walt recovers his dignity, his masculinity,
other characters are robbed of theirs to the point of their actual or emotional demise. For
such a seemingly mild-mannered man, Walt easily resorts to violence when faced with
danger. We see this in the pilot when two of Jesse’s former meth partners, Emilio and
Crazy-8, show up in the desert while Walt and Jesse are cooking in the RV. The scene
immediately takes a threatening turn when Emilio recognized Walt and believes him to
be a police officer. Emilio and Crazy-8 attempt to eliminate Walt and Jesse, but Walt
intervenes with the promise of teaching the two interlopers how to cook meth using his
recipe. After Jesse is beaten and tied up Emilio joins Walt and Crazy-8 in the RV. Walt
has already decided on his course of action: he releases deadly phosphine gas by
49
Henry A. Giroux, Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics beyond the Age of
Greed (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press, 2008), 44.
25
throwing a bit of red phosphorus into boiling water. Once the poisonous gas is released,
Walt scurries from the RV holding the door closed, trapping Emilio and Crazy-8 in the
RV, with the intent of killing them. Emilio is killed, but Crazy-8 survives. Walt’s
instinctive action saves both him and Jesse, but it also reveals to the viewer an early
glimpse of the extent Walt will go to protect himself and his business.
This scene represents an example of the zero-sum world Walt is about to enter.
Ironically, he already inhabits that neoliberal milieu, and even though he is not aware of
that fact he has unknowingly been conditioned to respond violently to outside threats.
The next two episodes, “The Cat’s in the Bag” and “And the Bag’s in the River,” bear
this notion out. These two episodes show Walt as he works through the pros and cons of
killing Crazy-8, who is now secured to a pole in the basement of Jesse’s house with a U-
shaped bicycle lock around his neck. Walt knows that if he were to let Crazy-8 go free
chances are he would kill him and his family. True to his persona early in the series, he
feeds and takes care of Crazy-8. He even tries to get to know him with the intention of
finding some reason to let him go. In the end however, both men realize they are in a kill-
or-be-killed, zero-sum, situation. Crazy-8 accepts this and arms himself with a broken
piece of a plate, a plate that Walt provided for him along with a sandwich (the plate was
broken when Walt passed out while bringing the sandwich to Crazy-8). Walt ultimately
understands that he must kill Crazy-8 when he discovers he was concealing a shard of the
broken plate. Walt ends up using the bicycle lock to strangle Crazy-8 while, in the throes
50
Breaking Bad, “And the Bag’s in the River.”
26
Giroux’s notion of hyper-masculinity is played out in this scene; however, the
show presents this idea in an ironic fashion. Both men are intelligent, rational actors
(Crazy-8 has a degree in business from the University of New Mexico) who have been let
down by the neoliberal marketplace, but the show portrays Crazy-8 as the one who truly
understands his place in the neoliberal environment they both inhabit. He immediately
deduces that after what has transpired it is either him or Walt; they cannot co-exist. He
understands that each man presents an existential threat to the other, and his decision
making and strategy proceed along these lines. He attempts to smooth talk Walt into
kindness, telling him he was not suited for the meth business and trying to convince him
individualistic world he has created through what appears in the frame of each scene. The
protracted cat-and-mouse game between Walt and Crazy-8 is tightly framed, intensely
focusing on the two men as played out in the scene in Jesse’s basement. This set-up
allows the viewer to experience the extreme nature of the situation as there is little else to
focus on except for the two adversaries. Throughout the entirety of the scene, there are
also solo shots of Walt and Crazy-8 as they are contemplating their fates. This allows the
viewer a glimpse into how they process their situation, which offers an understanding of
their character traits. Walt is clearly rattled by what is happening while Crazy-8 is under
control and calculating. Initially, one would think that it is Crazy-8 who will connive his
way out of danger; however, it is Walter who emerges the victor, yet the viewer is still
not quite convinced that he has fully adapted to his new found venture as Walt is clearly
27
shaken by the ordeal and, staying true to his chameleon-like personality, he apologizes to
Crazy-8 after killing him.51 As Walt regains his dignity the remorse, as well as his
Walt’s metamorphosis from Mr. Chips to Scarface is linked to his tacit acceptance
of the neoliberal milieu he has inhabited for the past forty years. He personifies Self’s
for and financially protect his family in order to stave off the intrusion of government
agencies designed to assist them in his absence. Although he may not realize it, Walt is
hoping to project his hegemonic masculinity from the grave. Self describes how since the
1960s, debates over sex, gender, and the meaning of family have become inextricably
linked with battles over the role of government, fostering a trend to constrain government
interference in an idealized private family sphere by paving the way for breadwinner
market.52
refusing assistance from others as a form of charity. Most notably, he turns down a job
offer from Elliot Schwartz—co-founder, along with his wife Gretchen and Walter, of
Gray Matter Technologies—as a hand out, and admonishes his son for setting up an on-
line fund drive to help pay for his medical bills.53 This mindset is reinforced throughout
the series as even his adversaries have advice for him as to how a “real man” behaves,
51
Ibid.
52
Self, All in the Family, 6.
53
Breaking Bad, “Gray Matter,” & “Phoenix.’
28
and each bit of advice is imbued with a hyper-masculine ethos. Gustavo Fring, while
trying to convince Walt to continue to cook for him, asks, “What does a man do Walter?
A man provides for his family… a man, a man provides. And he does it even when he's
not appreciated, or respected, or even loved. He simply bears up and he does it. Because
he's a man.”54 This hyper-masculine, individualistic mindset, fused with a growing zero-
sum approach to life in general, becomes central in Walt’s ascendancy in the meth
business, and the show marks this rise, and his recovery of lost dignity and manhood,
By the end of the series, Walter has damaged the lives of all those around him. In
this zero-sum, neoliberal world all of his success comes at the expense of others. After
dispatching with Emilio and Crazy-8, Walt and Jesse are forced to find a new distributor
for their product. Jesse’s friend, Skinny Pete, puts them in contact with a person he knew
from prison named Tuco, a local wholesaler with connections to a Mexican meth cartel.
to all of life’s challenges violently and poses the most imminent threat to Walt and Jesse
due to his unpredictability. Jesse meets with Tuco and gets beaten and hospitalized
because he asked the wrong questions. Walter then meets with Tuco and detonates a
piece of fulminated mercury in Tuco’s office, destroying everything and dazing the
occupants, in order to send a message. Tuco is killed by Hank, but it was Walt’s actions
that caused Tuco’s death. As evidenced by the violent acts committed by Walter, directly
and indirectly, he has clearly started to understand the level of aggression needed to be
54
Breaking Bad, “Mas.”
29
successful in the meth business and appears to have lost any apprehension when it comes
to acting violently.
Walt ultimately kills everyone in his way, male and female. As he eerily informs
Skyler, “I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger…a guy opens the door and gets
shot…I am the one who knocks.”55 By this point Walt has greatly improved, in his mind,
his status in life. To him, all of the bad decisions of his past are mitigated by the fact that
he has taken back his manhood. He has not yet killed Gus, Mike, Hank, or Uncle Jack
and his clan, but he has established himself as a threat to the stability of his environment.
The elimination of these key characters later in the series solidifies Walt’s role as short-
killed—not by the cancer he feared early on, but by his own hubris, which has ironically
left him alone and with a mere fraction of the wealth he accumulated from his business.
Walt’s fall. The title of the episode is taken from a Shelley poem of the same name:
30
Shelley’s poem sums up what five years of attempting to take back his manhood
actually did for Walt. It is devoted to a single metaphor: the shattered, ruined statue in the
desert wasteland, with its arrogant, passionate face and an egotistical inscription: “Look
on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”57 The once-great man’s proud boast has been
ironically disproved as Ozymandias’s works have crumbled and disappeared, his world is
gone, all has been ruined by the impersonal, indiscriminate, destructive power of history.
The destroyed statue is now merely a decrepit monument to one man’s conceit and a
powerful statement about the insignificance of human beings in the passage of time.
Gilligan’s use of this poem for the title of the episode that sees Walt’s newly created,
neoliberal policy, serving as a warning about what such actions may result in:
unmitigated disaster.
Walter White is a man defined by his times. If Breaking Bad was set in the 1960s
Walt would most likely have had the comprehensive health insurance through his
employer needed to effectively treat his lung cancer. He would have also most likely
been able to afford life insurance to support his family in his absence. But Walt’s
pessimistic world view in the early-21st century has been shaped by years of downsizing
and privatization of essential services and of tightening bottom lines limiting potential
avenues of assistance. The limited access to essential services has produced a social and
political landscape that has shifted focus from the benefits of community to a survival-
57
Ibid.
31
Chapter III
“I See You”
Breaking Bad engages the criminal justice system by placing Walter at the center
of America’s decades-long war on drugs. In neoliberal terms, his decision to cook meth is
not the desperate choice of a deviant criminal, but instead a well thought-out course of
action by an individual actor looking to maximize his professional skill set in the
marketplace. According to critic David Pierson, crime in the neoliberal arena is viewed as
a routine event committed by persons who make a particular choice among many
potential choices.58 In choosing to manufacture meth, Walt has ditched his previously
inadequate approach to making ends meet by working two jobs in favor of the highly
profitable illegal drug business. Unlike with his low-paying teaching position and his
part-time car wash job, Walt is able to profit substantially from his chemistry knowledge
by producing high quality, potent crystal meth, which becomes the most sought-after
product in the American Southwest. The business of selling meth is criminal in nature,
and the show cleverly examines neoliberal business practices through the meth trade. By
examining neoliberal business policy in terms of the criminal activity associated with
meth manufacturing and distribution side-by-side, Chapters 3 and 4 will shed light on the
pernicious practices both share. Gilligan links the criminal practices of neoliberal
business and crime policy by situating Walt in the middle of his brother-in-law Hank
58
David Pierson, “Breaking Neoliberal? Contemporary Neoliberal Discourses and
Policies in Breaking Bad,” in Breaking Bad: Critical Essays on the Contexts, Politics, Style, and
Reception of the Television Series, ed. David Pierson (New York: Lexington Books, 2014),
Kindle Edition, loc. 294.
32
Schrader, a DEA agent, and Gustavo Fring, a local restaurateur and meth kingpin, in a
cat-and-mouse game that offers a critical rendering of the American criminal justice
The welfare state era conceived of crime as an aberrant event that can only be
resolved through the proper functioning and direct intervention of such social institutions
as family, education, and employment: the criminal was a deviant who diverged from
established social norms. Additionally, the welfare state posited that crime can only be
reduced through state intervention and that the criminal can be socially rehabilitated to fit
back into normal society. In contrast, neoliberal criminology disassociates itself from any
criminologists believe that crime can occur anywhere and can never be completely
eliminated. This idea is highlighted in Breaking Bad as Walt and Jesse conduct their
Two finale when he compares stopping the sale of meth to the arcade game Whack-a-
Mole: for every drug dealer eliminated, another pops right up.60 To the neoliberal
criminologist, the most effective way to reduce crime is through aggressive policing,
surveillance, penal disincentives, and proper zoning in potential high crime areas.61 These
policy initiatives aim to incentivize positive character traits such as hard work while at
59
Ibid., loc. 306.
60
Breaking Bad, “ABQ.”
61
Ibid.
33
the same time using the deterrents of arrest and prison as a warning to those who may
From the start, Breaking Bad embodies the neoliberal theory that the criminal is
person. The second episode of Season One begins with Hank addressing his agents at the
DEA offices in Albuquerque. He is briefing them about the 99.1% pure meth they found
in Crazy-8’s abandoned car and he informs his team he believes there is a new drug
kingpin in town. As he is speaking these words the scene shifts from the DEA offices to a
close shot of a shirtless Walt brushing his teeth in front of his bathroom mirror. The scene
ironically, and poignantly, illustrates the idea that a criminal does not have to look like a
rational economic actor who contemplates and calculates the risks and the rewards of
his/her actions. Crime is no longer a deviant activity outside the mainstream market, but
is rather one market among others. Walter is one manifestation of this theory; another is
Jesse Pinkman.
The viewer is introduced to Jesse in the pilot as he is escaping a DEA drug raid on
a house where he and his associate Emilio are cooking up a batch of meth. After Walt
kills Crazy-8, Jesse feels he needs to get away from the drug trade and attempts to find
legitimate employment. In the Season One episode “Gray Matter,” Jesse is shown sitting
down in an office at a mortgage company for a job interview. The scene alternates
between a tight shot of Jesse in suit and tie and a wider shot of him, the interviewer, and a
large picture window with vertical shades open just enough so the viewer can detect
movement on the other side. After Jesse hands the interviewer his resume, he is told that
34
the opening he is applying for is not in sales, as Jesse thought, but a job that “is really a
no experience necessary kind of thing.”62 The manager then informs Jesse that what he
has in mind for him is more of an advertising position. He stands, walks to the picture
window and opens the shades to reveal a young man in a dollar bill costume spinning a
red arrow over his head. Without experience, this is this type of menial, low-wage
position that Jesse qualifies for. As Jesse sits in his car after the interview reviewing the
want ads, the camera focuses on the folded newspaper he is holding, and in the
background, the guy in the dollar bill outfit—who is Jesse’s friend Badger—comes into
focus. The juxtaposition of the want ads and Badger in his “money suit” acts as a reality
check for Jesse. As a high school dropout,63 he is again reminded that his employment
potential is clearly limited by choices he has made in the past; however, his range of
deindustrialization, outsourcing, and the shrinking of public resources associated with job
training and job creation. While Jesse has made questionable decisions in his life that
certainly affected his earning potential in the “legitimate” workplace, the shift to a service
economy and the frayed social safety net have undoubtedly reduced his opportunities.
Jesse has been conditioned by the neoliberal paradigm in which he finds himself, and if
his goal is “mad stacks,” he cannot conceive of financially viable employment options
62
Breaking Bad, “Gray Matter.”
63
At the Breaking Bad Season 4 premiere Bryan Cranston refers to Jesse as a high school
dropout. Accessed February 6, 2016 from http://htbthomas.tumblr.com/post/7120397740/bryan-
cranston-hes-a-sweet-kid-you-look-at-this.
64
Jesse and his friends refer to large sums of money as “mad stacks” throughout the
series.
35
Breaking Bad portrays Jesse’s place in society as a result of his socialization
from powerful neoliberal influences in politics, big business, education, media, and
popular culture. French philosopher Michel Foucault posits that this confluence of
politically powerful entities have since the 1970s redefined the social sphere to
regulation and provision outside the penal sphere.65 Ultimately, the show confirms
with the man many consider the father of neoliberalism in America, Milton Friedman.
suggested that the role of government in the drug business is essential to its existence: “If
you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the
government is to protect the drug cartel. That’s literally true.”67 Friedman believed that
governmental drug prohibition enabled illegal drug dealers to charge exceedingly high
prices for their product. In this context, government becomes an enterprise whose task is
for individuals, groups, and institutions.68 The meth business is one of these market-based
65
Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978--
1979 (Lectures at the College de France) (New York: Picador, 2010), 216.
66
Ibid., 218.
67
Milton Friedman and Thomas S. Szasz, Friedman and Szasz on Liberty and Drugs:
Essays on the Free Market and Prohibition, ed. Arnold S. Trebach and Kevin B. Zeese (New
York: Drug Policy Foundation, 1992), 44.
68
Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 78-9.
36
systems of action. Operating within the strictures of this neoliberal framework, Walt—
like Jesse, unaware of how neoliberalism has shaped his worldview—becomes the hyper-
in general is unclear on the topic of drug legalization, and Friedman was not necessarily
advocating the legalization of drugs, his comments illuminate just how ubiquitous the
neoliberal mindset has become and offers an opportunity to examine how the drug trade
and law enforcement display the fecklessness of neoliberal crime policy in general, and
dichotomy, in Breaking Bad is Walt’s relationship with his brother-in-law, DEA agent
Hank Schrader. Ironically, it is Hank who, in the pilot, first introduces Walter to the idea
that selling methamphetamine can pay handsomely when, asked by Walt how much
money he took in a meth bust earlier in the day, he replies “It's about 700 grand.”69
Further prodded by Walt, Hank offers, “It's not the most we ever took. It's easy money
until we catch you.”70 A close-up of Walt reveals him in deep thought. This is the crucial
moment when the idea of cooking meth occurs to Walt—when he decides to capitalize on
his extensive experience teaching chemistry in a manner he could not have imagined in a
high school classroom. Additionally, it is Hank who takes Walt out on the DEA raid
where he first sees his former student Jesse getting away just as the DEA agents are
breaking in the door of his meth lab. As Walt’s famously pure blue methamphetamine
69
Breaking Bad, “Pilot.”
70
Ibid.
37
grows in popularity, Hank becomes increasingly obsessed with its prevalence in the U.S.
Southwest, yet spends the course of nearly the entire series unaware that its source is his
own brother-in-law.
There is another layer of irony, however: while Hank draws Walt into the drug
trade by informing him of its lucrativeness and taking him out on a drug raid, he—along
with several law enforcement agencies—are responsible for the highly lucrative and
violent nature of the drug business. In economic terms, Walter White’s illicit drug
empire—and all its ensuing mayhem and killing—is dependent upon the participation of
DEA agents like Hank. This is what Friedman was referring to when he said that the
governmental prohibition of drugs is propping up the cartels: the more the state interdicts
the illegal drug trade the more the product will cost, thereby lining the pockets of
entrepreneurs like Walt.71 Dawn Paley, in her book Drug War Capitalism, offers a
scathing critic of how free trade agreements and neoliberal restructuring have determined
the shape and violent nature of drug markets today. According to Paley, the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) contributed to driving down the price of legal
commodities such as maize to a point where Mexican farmers were drawn to planting
illegal drug crops in order to offset the loses incurred by NAFTA’s price structuring of
legal goods and services.72 Strikingly similar circumstances have led Walt into the meth
business. Breaking Bad is very much a parable of the failed drug war and focuses on
Walt and Hank’s relationship not only to portray this aspect of a failed crime policy, but
71
Friedman and Szasz, Friedman and Szasz on Liberty and Drugs, 45.
72
Dawn Paley, Drug War Capitalism (Oakland: AK Press, 2014), 48.
38
to emphasize how flawed the system is by having Walt conduct his criminal activity right
The series frequently mocks the law enforcement community. At the beginning of
Season Two, Walt disappears and Skyler calls on Hank to help find him. Unknown to
Hank and the rest of Walt’s family, Walt and Jesse have been kidnapped by Tuco and
taken to his remote desert hideout, a rundown house near the Mexican border. This scene
represents the beginning of the show’s critique of the law enforcement community in its
war on drugs. Season One offered a glimpse into what becomes a full-scale derision of
Gilligan begins to depict Hank and Walt engaged in a satirical game of cat-and-mouse.
The beginning of the episode is set in the DEA’s Albuquerque office and the viewer finds
Hank firing up his agents in the manner of a football coach giving a speech before the big
game. They have gathered evidence revealing Tuco as a major player in the Albuquerque
meth trade, and Hank asks the agents if they want to catch Tuco. When his question is
met with a smattering of “yeah,” “sure” and an “of course,” Hank, feeding off the
uninspired retorts of his fellow crime fighters, inquires again, “Do you wanna find this
guy?... Are you gonna find this guy?”73 The agents then respond with a bit more
enthusiasm and begin to loudly chant “Hell yeah, hell yeah, hell yeah!”74 Hank exits the
office area with his partner Steve Gomez to this chant, and as soon as they get beyond the
73
Breaking Bad, “Grilled.”
74
Ibid.
39
closing door Hank dejectedly says, “Ain’t gonna find this guy, he’s in Mexico by now.
portraying himself as an effective leader, and by extension, portraying the drug war as an
effective policy initiative. The show addresses this notion in the pivotal scene from the
pilot episode where Hank takes Walt on a ride-along as the DEA takes down a meth lab.
The visceral sensory assault this scene provides—DEA agents in military gear employing
first blush, allay concerns of the efficacy of the drug war. The troops put on a show to
make it appear they are actually having an impact on the meth trade. In reality, they take
down a small-time manufacturer. As it turns out Walt becomes the guy that the DEA
would love to bring down, and Walt’s elusiveness is central metaphor for the inefficacy
This metaphor is played out at the end of “Grilled,” and continues into the next
episode, “Bit by a Dead Bee.” “Grilled” closes with Hank approaching a rundown house
in the desert. In front of the house, he sees a man next to a car he identifies as belonging
to Jesse Pinkman and assumes it’s Jesse; however, it’s Tuco. Hank draws his weapon and
engages in a shootout with Tuco in which Tuco is shot and killed. While this is
happening, the camera cuts quickly to Walt and Jesse running away from Tuco’s house.
All the viewer sees is the back of both men as they escape. The next episode begins with
a shot of Walt and Jesse walking through the desert and planning how to get back to
town. The two episodes combine to tell an ironic tale: while looking for Walt, Hank
75
Ibid.
40
stumbles upon Tuco, who is wanted for questioning in the death of one of his
associates—the same Tuco whom Hank had written off as long gone earlier in “Grilled.”
That is one bit of irony. Another is how Hank happens upon Tuco. He is looking for
Walt, whom his family thinks suddenly disappeared. Hank is off the clock, so to speak;
looking for Walt on his own time. He has no clue about Walt and Tuco’s joint business
venture, yet there he is right in the middle of it, far away from the cover—and back-up
support—of the DEA. He is ultimately commended by the DEA for taking down a major
drug player, but he is clueless about Walt’s being there, and equally ignorant of Walt’s
alter-ego Heisenberg, the best meth cook in New Mexico. Furthermore, Gilligan mocks
Hank’s ignorance by placing Walt and Hank in the same shot with Walt fully able to see
Hank, but Hank unable to see Walt.76 This scene serves as a metaphor for the
A pivotal scene in the Season Four episode “Bullet Points” portrays the ineptitude
of police as a bulwark protecting innocent Americans from the evils of the drug trade.
Here, Hank comes face-to-face with Heisenberg but does not realize it because, while
Walt and Jesse cannot conceive of legitimate methods of amassing great wealth, Hank is
equally incapable of pushing beyond his preconception of the criminal element. The
scene takes place in Hank and Marie’s bedroom where Hank is convalescing after an
attempt on his life. His spinal cord is damaged during the attack and he is now confined
difficult murder case on his hands to help out. In the case file is a DVD of the murder
76
Ibid.
41
victim, Gale Boetticher—Walt’s one-time partner in Fring’s meth mega-lab who was
Notes.” Walt is clearly shaken when Hank plays the DVD for him. Hank—oblivious to
Walt’s mood change—says, “I'd say he's my guy…There's this, uh, mystery man I've
been, uh, chasing for the better part of a year. Cooks the purest meth that, uh, me or
anyone else has ever seen. Goes by the name of Heisenberg.”77 Heisenberg is sitting right
in front of him; Heisenberg is Walt. Walt is visibly shaken but manages to stifle a gasp
while asking, “Really?” The scene is a tight shot, with both men in the frame, in the
Schraders’ dimly lit bedroom. The low lighting forces the viewer to concentrate; the tight
shot conveys closeness: the emotional closeness of the two men, and more importantly,
the closeness of hunter to prey. The shot gets tighter still as Hank moves in. Walt
reappears in the frame in a close-up on his glasses as he is reading the notebook. The
reflection of the notebook, all that he is implicated in, in Walt’s s glasses—the idea of
being faced with his crime—adds to the tension. Hank then points something out: “Here,
let me—Let me—Let me show you something. Give it—Give it.”78 Walt hands the case
file to Hank, placing the evidence of his illegal activities in the hands of the DEA. “Right
here at the, uh—hear at the top. It says, uh, ‘To W.W. My star, my perfect silence…
W.W. I mean, who do you figure that is, huh? Woodrow Wilson? Willy Wonka? Walter
White?”79 Walter is visibly fighting back fear, and when he begins to speak we can
discern a slight quiver as he first exhales, then puts up his hands in surrender, “You got
77
Breaking Bad, “Bullet Points.”
78
Ibid.
79
Ibid.
42
me.”80 Walt then points out that W. W. is Walt Whitman, whose poem “When I Heard
the Learned Astronomer” is transcribed in the notebook. Walt knows this is Gale
Boetticher’s favorite poem, and when he sees the poem it serves as a way out of this very
tense situation. Hank feels it is a reasonable enough explanation and stops his line of
questioning.
The show is clearly questioning the competence of the U.S. law enforcement
community. On the surface this may seem a bit heavy-handed, and a closer look at how
law enforcement practices have evolved since the late-1970s might support the idea of
training and equipment alone do not make a competent police force. The drastic
departments now resembling deployed military cadres is a result of the drug war.
According to attorney and author Michelle Alexander “the drug war created something of
a dilemma for the Reagan administration. In order for the war to actually work— that is,
in order for it to succeed in achieving its political goals— it was necessary to build a
consensus among state and local law enforcement agencies that the drug war should be a
top priority in their hometowns. The solution: cash.”81 Massive cash grants were made to
law enforcement agencies willing to make enforcement of illegal drug activity a top
priority.82
In 1988, to assist state and local police agencies, the Reagan administration
80
Ibid.
81
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2012), 72.
82
Ibid.
43
requested that Congress revise the method in which federal aid is made to law
enforcement. The new funding plan, named “the Edward Byrne Memorial State and
Local Law Enforcement Assistance Program after a New York City police officer who
was shot to death while guarding the home of a drug-case witness, . . . was designed to
encourage every federal grant recipient to help fight the War on Drugs.”83 Almost
immediately the federal money began to flow. By the late 1990s, the vast majority of
U.S. state and local police departments had taken advantage of the newly available
According to the Cato Institute, in 1997 alone, the Pentagon made available to local
police more than 1.2 million pieces of military equipment.84 The National Defense
Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 1997 created the 1033 Program as part of the U. S.
military equipment to civilian law enforcement agencies. As of 2014, 8,000 local law
enforcement agencies participated in the reutilization program that has transferred $5.1
billion in military hardware from the Department of Defense to local American law
enforcement agencies since 1997.85 According to the DLA, material worth $449 million
was transferred in 2013 alone. Commonly requested items include “grenade launchers
83
Ibid, 73.
84
Ibid.
85
Aaron Poynton, “Military & Civilian Resources: Doing More with Less,” Domestic
Preparedness 10, no. 9 (2014) 25.
86
Ibid.
44
exponentially in the 1980s, historian Elizabeth Hinton identifies the genesis of this
This legislation was designed to improve the current training programs of local and state
law enforcement personnel. Its objective was to bolster the weaponry available to police
upgrade in police armament.87 Hinton views this extreme rearming of police departments
as ironic. It is on par with the many inconsistencies in crime policy identified in Breaking
many of the communities where they live. The militarization of police departments has
resulted in the paradox that it now suppresses the very citizens who have for years
unwittingly funded the initiative. While Hinton’s treatment of the rise of the Robocop
reflects the reality of living in depressed urban neighborhoods, especially for African
Americans, her conclusions are easily extrapolated to the story Gilligan is telling in
Breaking Bad. What the show bears out is that in any marginalized community—African
intervention from law enforcement is much greater than in more prosperous areas. While
police departments enjoy seemingly unlimited funding for weaponry and training, the
87
Paul M. Whisenand, “Equipping Men for Professional Development in the Police
Service: The Federal Law Enforcement Assistance Act of 1965,” Journal of Criminal Law,
Criminology and Police Science 57, no. 2 (1966): 223, DOI: 10.2307/1141305.
88
Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass
Incarceration in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), Kindle loc. 6101.
45
Furthermore, neoliberalism siphons untold amounts of money from social programs that
Breaking Bad features several scenes where DEA agents or Albuquerque police
conduct raids on suspected meth labs. Two such scenes almost bookend the series: the
initial DEA raid in the pilot episode, and the final scene of the series when Walt is killed.
The scene in the pilot episode has Walt in Hank’s DEA vehicle. Also in the truck is Steve
Gomez, Hank’s partner. As they prepare to raid a suspected meth lab, another DEA
vehicle, a black Suburban with dark tinted windows, rolls into view. Hanging on the
outside of the ominous-looking SUV—like infantry troops hanging from the side of an
assault helicopter heading into battle—are four DEA agents dressed head-to-toe in black.
They are wearing black military-style helmets with black protective armor covering the
majority of their bodies. They are armed with pistols and military assault rifles. The
vehicle with Hank, Steve, and Walt falls in behind the Suburban as Hank begins to
vocalize Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries, evoking images of a scene from the Vietnam
film Apocalypse Now where Wagner’s piece plays loudly as an attack formation of
helicopters bears down on a Vietnamese village, further reinforcing the military trope the
scene suggests and hinting at the futility of the effort. The four DEA agents dismount
from the Suburban and are joined by four others as they tactically maneuver into position
near the sliding door of the very stylish townhouse containing the targeted lab. As they
approach the slider, the scene switches to inside the house to show a lone individual
sitting in a room in complete disarray listening to music through his earbuds. There is a
sudden crash of glass and a loud explosion as one of the agents has discharged his/her
shotgun at the base of the glass slider. The man is arrested without incident. This scene
46
shows the extent of militarization now present in everyday police work. Gilligan’s point
here is to show the excesses of manpower and force used to subdue a relatively compliant
suspect.
The scene also exposes a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy that manifests itself in a
ratcheting-up of violence: the DEA equips itself with bigger and better weapons to match
the weapons of the “bad guys.” In turn, the criminal element increases its firepower to
match and exceed that of the DEA. The has resulted in the prevalence of SWAT teams,
like the group paramilitary DEA operators mentioned above, executing drug warrants.
According to an American Civil Liberties Union report from 2014, even though
paramilitary policing in the form of SWAT teams was created to deal with emergency
scenarios such as hostage or barricade situations, the use of SWAT to execute search
warrants in drug investigations has become commonplace and made up the majority of
is useful to understand that “[w]hen the police are executing a search warrant, there has
been no formal accusation of a crime; rather, the police are simply acting on the basis of
probable cause to believe that drugs will be present.”90 Critically, there is no specific
criminal case, usually no formal suspects, and often little proof. Probable cause strictures
mandate that proof of evidence of a criminal act must be present for a search warrant. In
most cases, no actual crime has been committed; the search warrant is merely an
investigatory tool. Thus, according to the ACLU, the use of a SWAT team to execute a
89
“War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing,” aclu.org, last
modified June 2014, https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/jus14-warcomeshome-
report-web-rel1.pdf.
90
Ibid.
47
search warrant essentially amounts to the use of paramilitary tactics to conduct domestic
The majority (79 percent) of SWAT deployments the ACLU studied were
for the purpose of executing a search warrant, most commonly in drug
investigations. Only a small handful of deployments (7 percent) were for
hostage, barricade, or active shooter scenarios. The remaining
deployments were for other purposes such as protecting visiting
dignitaries, capturing fleeing suspects, and responding to emergencies.
Our investigation found that in the majority of deployments the police did
not face genuine threats to their safety and security.91
The result of this excessive use of force creates a siege mentality in many U.S.
communities. Breaking Bad addresses this phenomenon in a subtle yet important scene in
the Season Three episode “Sunset.” Ever since Jesse was taken in for questioning by
Hank in Season Two, Hank has been out to get him. Hank senses Jesse is somehow
Albuquerque. Hank’s dogged perusal of his hunch has resulted in a promising lead.
Acting on information he has gathered, Hank finds himself tracking down old
recreational vehicles as he has come to believe the meth cook he is after has been
operating out of a Winnebago, cleverly moving around the New Mexican desert to evade
detection. A tip from the county sheriff takes Hank to a gas station on the outskirts of
town where he interviews a young lady who informs him that a customer paid for gas
with blue meth. The customer was Jesse; the gas he paid for was for the Winnebago.
Hank tracks the RV to Combo, the dealer friend of Jesse’s who was shot dead while
slinging meth in Season Two. Hank’s attention is now fully focused on Jesse. The siege
mentality aspect is played out as Hank stakes out Jesse’s house. Jesse knows that the
DEA is on him and he is afraid to leave his house, essentially blockading himself within
91
Ibid.
48
the walls of his home, for fear of being nabbed. In this scene, Gilligan places Hank—
sitting in his SUV and looking into his side view mirror—in the foreground of a long
camera shot with Jesse’s residence reflected, out of focus, in the mirror. This foggy
depiction of Jesse’s house encompasses more than just one single, targeted home: it
Gilligan’s depiction of Hank and Jesse represents the seemingly limitless scope
of neoliberal crime policy. The neoliberal image of crime and the criminal renders all
susceptible to the draw of illegal activities if the situation benefits them. The understated
nature of the scene described above buttresses the insidiousness at the heart of such a
policy: anyone, anytime could fall into the wide sweep of the justice system. While
Hank’s main objective is to surveil Jesse, he is also observing the other homes in the
neighborhood. This scene of surveillance and siege mentality conjures up the evils of
other policies of similar scope. David Simon, creator of HBO’s The Wire and for fifteen
years the police reporter for the Baltimore Sun newspaper, is a vocal opponent of such
policing methods, going as far as to regard the war on drugs as “a Holocaust in slow-
motion.”92 He explains this rationale in terms of increased police presence and weaponry
in the documentary The House I Live In: “[T]he war on drugs has given law enforcement
all of these tools, all of this authority, to pursue criminality and gangsters, but what it
actually did was it destroyed the police deterrent in a very subtle and unintended way.”93
92
Jeff Jurgens, “The House We All Live In,” hannaharendtcenter.org, last modified
January 22, 2013, http://www.hannaharendtcenter.org/the-house-we-all-live-in/2013.
93
David Simon, in Eugene Jarecki, The House I Live In (New York: Cinetic, 2012)
Netflix.
49
One of the unintended consequences Simon speaks of is the production of a siege
relation to nation-states; however, the idea is equally germane to the subject at hand. Bar-
Tal explains that “the siege beliefs may be maintained because of the imprint left by past
collective experiences, something that greatly affects the present perception of the world.
In these cases, societal channels, cultural institutions and the educational system, often
ubiquity. It sums up not only the effect of neoliberal crime policy on society, but the
influence neoliberalism in general has had on Americans since the 1970s. The
insidiousness of many detrimental policy initiatives has adversely affected the way the
U.S. educates and socializes its citizenry. This process of education and socialization has
resulted in a trickling down of a uniquely negative world view that is portrayed in the
actions of Walt, Jesse, and others as they are acting in response to an invisible hand,
gloved in neoliberal dogma, at once denying them access to legitimate means of self-
sufficiency and directing them into a zero-sum realm regulated by the assumption that
In “Sunset,” Hank now knows the Winnebago he has been looking for definitely
belongs to Jesse. He tracks the vehicle down in a junk yard, and as Hank is snooping
around the exterior the owner of the junk yard approaches him questioning his interest in
the RV.
50
[Hank] Who are you? Who are you? What do you know about this
RV?
[Owner] Well, I'm the owner of this lot, which means you're
trespassing on private property. As far as the RV goes, seems to me it's
locked, which means you're trying to break and enter, so I say again, you
got a warrant?
[Hank] Well, I don't need one if I've got probable cause, counselor.
[Owner] Probable cause usually relates to vehicles, is my
understanding, you know, traffic stops and whatnot.
[Hank] See these round rubber things? Wheels. This is a vehicle.
[Owner] This is a domicile, a residence, and thus protected by the
Fourth Amendment from unlawful search and seizure.
[Hank] Look buddy, why don't you just go out and…
[Owner] Did you see this drive in here? How do you know it runs?
Did you actually witness any wrongdoing? It seems to me you're just out
here fishing. Don't see that holding up in a court of law.95
The imperative to survive, and thrive, in such a besieged environment requires one to be
acutely aware of the milieu he/she occupies. In this case, the owner’s deep knowledge of
the intricacies of the legal system speaks to his understanding of the neoliberal world he
inhabits.
Breaking Bad saves its most damning critique of law enforcement for the Season
Five episode “Gliding All Over.” In the aftermath of Gus’s murder, Walter is keenly
aware of the vulnerability of his meth operation without Gus’s business to provide a
legitimate cover. More importantly, Walt is concerned about the fact that key players in
Gus’s operation, ten trusted associates, are now in jail or prison just sitting there
contemplating their fate. This presents a loose end that Walt is not comfortable with. He
proposes to eliminate Gus’s men while they are in prison by having them all “hit” at the
same time. Walt tasks his new associate Uncle Jack with the detail. What follows next is
a well-executed mass murder of the ten men, at three different correctional facilities,
within a two-minute time-frame. A phenomenon of neoliberal crime policy has been the
95
Breaking Bad, “Sunset.”
51
acute rise in America’s prison population since the 1970s. In 1970 the U.S. combined
state and federal prison population was roughly 200,000; by 2014 it had risen to
prison construction. According to Bryan Stevenson, “Between 1990 and 2005, a new
prison opened in the United States every ten days.”97 Prison growth has created what
capitalize on prison construction. Massive amounts of money were made available for
profitable that millions of dollars were spent lobbying state legislators to keep expanding
the use of incarceration to respond to just about any problem.”98 Again we see the
the answer for everything policy-makers felt the welfare state inadequately addressed:
health care issues like drug addiction; poverty that forced someone to write a bad check;
managing the mentally handicapped; even immigration control.99 This rationale would
indicate the best course of action for Walter after thirty years of neoliberal cuts to the
go to prison. He would get all the medical care he needed there. If Jesse wants to go to
college or find job training, he should go to prison as well. In this context, one comes to
96
“U.S. State and Federal Prison Population, 1925-2014,” The Sentencing Project,
accessed June 22, 2016, http://sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Trends-in-.-
Corrections.pdf.
97
Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (New York: Random
House, 2014), 260.
98
Ibid.
99
Ibid.
52
the conclusion that the prison-industrial complex has essentially replaced a
comprehensive social safety net eroded over the years by neoliberal policy making.
The prison hit is carried out with great precision: the objective is attained quickly
and without incident. Ironically, this horrific scene, along with Gus and Walt’s very
efficient meth operation, are represented by the show as effective and well-organized
while the DEA, police, and corrections officers are portrayed as inept. In the prison
scene, Gilligan does not have correctional staff save the day. There are very few
correction staff in the sequence. Prison management remains largely unaware of what is
going on. That fact that Uncle Jack’s crew had prison guards inside to help facilitate the
hits further chides the criminal justice infrastructure under neoliberal direction. Prison
staff who accept money and favors from the criminal element are usually doing so
because they need to augment their income or because they have come to realize crime
actually does pay better than the jobs they have. The show supports this perception as for
the majority of the series Gilligan depicts policing as impotent. Conversely, the criminal
The prison scene completes Gilligan’s critique of the neoliberal crime prevention
apparatus. By portraying the New Mexican prison system as inept, Gilligan has made
clear the most glaring irony regarding the effectiveness of neoliberalism when it comes to
fighting crime: viewers are left with the impression that after the billions of tax payer
dollars spent on training and equipping law enforcement agencies at every level to protect
society from the criminal element, the neoliberal approach to policing has produced
nothing less than a community of thriving law breakers. The ease with which Walter
manufactures and sells meth while carrying on a reasonable, rational relationship with his
53
DEA brother-in-law stands at the center of this critique. Hank and his DEA cronies are
Gilligan reveals institutions other than business that have been permanently
altered by the neoliberalism’s devastating undoing of the state-sponsored social safety net
established by the New Deal and The Great Society. The manner in which Breaking Bad
emphasizes how neoliberal policy has directly affected the characters in the show reveals
neoliberalism’s punitive ethos: its relentless punishment of individuals who have not
environment. Loïc Wacquant addresses the idea of disciplining the less fortunate. He
asserts that the neoliberal turn in penal theory, with its emphasis on strict punishment
practices and policies, has led to the formation of a “grand penal state” in America. This
initiative or specialized skill set and has contributed to a fivefold increase in the prison
population that now encompasses seven million Americans, which corresponds to one
adult male in twenty and one black man in three.100 He further argues that the rise of a
penal state in the United States is not a response to the rise of crime, which remained
constant in the time period, but rather is a response to the social dislocations caused by
the decline of the welfare state and the insecurities associated with low wage labor for
citizens trapped at the bottom of a polarizing class structure. Many of the show’s
system.
100
Loïc Wacquant, Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), page or location?
54
A closer examination of Wacquant reveals that the skewing of state activity from
the social to the penal arm and the emergent penalization of welfare, in turn, result in a
women’s movement and by the institutionalization of social rights in conflict with the
idea of male dominance.101 The neoliberal state interprets the welfare state as destructive
to personal achievement so much so that the welfare state has been recast as implicit in
devaluing the individual as a commodity to be traded on the market. This observation ties
in to Chapter 1’s exploration of gender roles and Walt’s quest to recapture his
tenets of neoliberal crime policy play a critical role in explaining his transformation from
on rebelling against his perceived place in the world according to his relationship with his
wife and society at large. Wacquant goes on to say, “The new priority given to duties
over rights, sanction over support, the stern rhetoric of the ‘obligations of citizenship,’
and the martial reaffirmation of the capacity of the state to lock the troublemaking poor
obedience’ toward state managers portrayed as virile protectors of the society against its
wayward members”102
laissez faire economic policy and mass incarceration. According to him, since the 18th
century, when French Physiocrats defined economics and crime as distinctly separate
101
Loïc Wacquant, “Crafting the Neoliberal State: Workfare, Prisonfare, and Social
Insecurity,” Sociological Forum 25, no. 2 (2010): 201, DOI: 10.1111/j.1573-7861.2010.01173.x.
102
Wacquant, Punishing the Poor, loc. 6366, Kindle Edition.
55
entities, to the Chicago School-influenced neoliberal Reagan Revolution of the 1980s,
there has been a slow but persistent flow of ideas that have reinforced the line between
free-market economics and penal policy. The line is forged, according to Harcourt, by a
misconception: the myth of natural order. Accordingly, market relations are orderly and
efficient because they are essentially a reflection of human nature itself, hence “natural.”
equal, market outcomes; however, market efficiency born of natural order is maximized
Conversely, the state, specifically the criminal law, should stay out of the market;
however, criminal law has an important protective role to play by punishing criminals
who violate the natural order by “bypassing” the market.104 In this way, Harcourt argues,
the myth of natural order both condemns state interference in market relations and
mandates punishment for those who bypass the market. According to this explication, the
notion of natural order has led to what today is an understanding that closely resembles
“the legal despotism of the eighteenth century: the legitimate sphere for state intervention
is the space outside the market, the zone of market bypassing.”105 Wacquant’s concept of
rolling out the police, the courts, jails and prisons, and their extensions.” Those include
probation and parole, which today supervise five million individuals, but also the
103
Bernard Harcourt, The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural
Order (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 38.
104
Ibid.
105
Ibid.
56
computerized diffusion of criminal databases, which cover some 30 million, and the
In Breaking Bad, this schema is exemplified by Jesse, Skinny Pete, Badger, and
Combo, four young men whom the system has left to their own devices in order to make
ends meet. Gilligan captures perfectly the marginalized nature of their existence as each
is on parole for meth-related offenses but chooses to remain in the meth business with
Jesse. So while, according to Wacquant, crime has not risen commensurate to the
increase in rates of incarceration, the show explains through these four disenfranchised
men how a certain segment of society has essentially given up on legitimate forms of
prison population since the 1970s. Their place in the criminal justice system is secured
when they leave jail or prison by placing them on parole, ensuring easy capture in the
future as they are essentially marked men. Even worse, strict sentencing policies virtually
guarantee a cycle of arrest and incarceration until the neoliberal state requires a lifetime
sentence. Jesse and his accomplices are vulnerable to this pattern of oppression as they
106
Karen J. Winkler, “When Workfare Meets Prisonfare: A Q&A With Loïc Wacquant,”
Chronicle of Higher Education, last modified July 13, 2009,
https://kruso.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/11/
57
Chapter IV
“Blood Money”
neoliberal business practices and their effects on society. The show represents
neoliberalism as an economic, social, cultural, and political nexus. In his 1999 book
Profit over People, Noam Chomsky advanced the idea that neoliberalism operates as an
ideological system relying on each of these components.107 Its moral assumptions shape
not just large-scale policy-making and political platforms, but also the decisions and
values of individuals like Walter White. Neoliberalism’s ideological aims were captured
method,” she said, “but the object is to change the soul.”108 Thatcher’s reference to the
soul serves as an apt description of Gilligan’s depiction of an ongoing battle for Walt’s
spirit. Thatcher’s idea of changing society’s and the individual’s compass to incorporate
heartless greed over sentimental largess illuminates Walt’s internal struggle as the series
progresses. Walt’s changing conscience, from a caring family man working two jobs to
support his family to ruthless and wealthy drug dealer, personifies Thatcher’s neoliberal
vision. Walt also embodies the Horatio Alger myth at the heart of the American Dream:
the entrepreneur who builds an empire from the ground up. The fact that he is a
107
Noam Chomsky, Profit over People (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999), 54.
108
Harvey, “Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction,” 23.
58
successful criminal capitalist in no way diminishes the show’s indictment of
neoliberalism in that the same ideology that drives illegitimate business enterprises also
The show reveals the integration of neoliberal business theory with the tenets of
permeates the series is a product of that integration and allows Gilligan to explore the
over the past forty years. Critical to explaining the insidiousness of neoliberalism,
Breaking Bad explores the subjective nature of neoliberalism as the characters internalize
and normalize behaviors associated with that phenomenon. The actions of various
logic, individuals are rational economic actors oriented toward maximizing their self-
interest and are therefore responsible for their own successes or failures.109 Gilligan
strongly presents the internalization of the ethos of personal responsibility through Walter
wealthy friends.110 He also balks at the idea of having his illegal drug money funneled
through a website set up by his son, Walter, Jr., and controlled by his lawyer, Saul
Goodman.
109
Pierson, “Breaking Neoliberal?” loc. 420, Kindle Edition.
110
In the Season One episode “Gray Matter” Walt refuses help from friends Elliot and
Gretchen Schwartz, owners of Gray Matter, an extremely successful bio-tech company, because
he perceives any help as charity and anathema to his beliefs.
59
In the Season Two episode “Phoenix” Walt is made aware of the website his son
created, SaveWalterWhite.com. We initially see pride on his face as he watches his son
scroll down the website filled with family photos and short entries about Walt’s life as
husband, father, and teacher. He is so moved by what he is seeing that he begins to tear
up and, after clearing his throat, says “My God, son, that’s wonderful.”111 As Walt, Jr.
continues to scroll down the page the scene switches to a tight shot of the computer
screen that now reads, “Click Here to Donate.” Walter’s demeanor immediately changes
and the look on his face shifts from fatherly delight to concern. The pride he has for his
son is quickly replaced by his own narcissistic pride. This change in demeanor reflects
reliance that it prevents him from accepting any help whatsoever. Rather quickly, Walt’s
look of concern turns to one of repressed anger. He is clearly distressed by what he sees.
He then says, “Wait a minute. You’re not asking for money, are you son?”112 Walt, Jr.
tells him that the whole point of creating the website was to solicit donations to help pay
for his cancer treatment. Walter begins to shake his head, “But we can’t ask for money.
No.”113 Skylar and Marie are also in the scene, and as Walt gently admonishes his son for
asking for money Skyler, Marie and Walt, Jr. all become upset. Walt senses the tension
and thanks his son for his effort and leaves the room with Skyler. Once they are out of
earshot of Walter, Jr. Skyler points out that it was all his son’s idea and that he just
wanted to help. Walt counters with, “Skyler, it’s charity” with a dismissive emphasis on
111
Breaking Bad, “Phoenix.”
112
Ibid.
113
Ibid.
60
the word “charity.”114 Skyler asks, “Why do you say that as if it’s some kind of dirty
word?”115 As Skyler walks away Walter answers with a look that asks “Well, isn’t it?” It
is this kind of stubborn self-reliance that informs Walt’s decision-making throughout the
remember that neoliberalism, as David Harvey encapsulates, is “in the first instance a
theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be
institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and
free trade.”116 In Walt’s case, neoliberalism has eroded the benefits attendant to his public
sector job as a high school chemistry teacher. But neoliberalism also enables his illegal
venture into producing meth by provided him with a growing market for able chemists
willing to take on the risk and exposure a criminal enterprise engenders. In the previous
typical person. The criminal is a rational economic actor who contemplates and calculates
the risks and the rewards of his actions. Crime is no longer a deviant activity outside the
mainstream market, but is rather one market among others. So the neoliberal model offers
Walt the opportunity for financial compensation that he never experienced as a teacher.
Additionally, the illegal drug business presents him with a free market alternative to the
114
Ibid.
115
Ibid.
116
Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 2.
61
depressed state of the public sector after years of neoliberal downsizing. In contrast to his
low-paying teaching position, Walt profits handsomely from his chemistry knowledge by
producing high quality, potent crystal meth, which becomes the most sought after product
carefully, weighs the attendant risks and benefits of his business plan, and enters a world
Yet the show reveals that marketplace to be—quite literally—a site of cutthroat
practices that lead not to the benefit of many but to the monopolization of power by the
few. Breaking Bad acknowledges the vexed nature of neoliberal business dealings
through the relationship between Walt and Gus, whose double identity as restaurateur and
meth kingpin embodies the slippage between legitimate and illegitimate capitalism. The
dynamic between Walt and Gus offers a glimpse into the character of each man when a
given situation becomes troubling. Just such a situation occurs in the Season Four
episode, “Box Cutter.” Tension has been growing between Gus and Walt over Walt’s
present and future role in their illegal drug venture. Walt has deduced that Gus wants him
killed once his three-month contract expires. Gus plans to replace Walt with Gale
Boetticher, a well-trained chemist and fellow meth cook and Walt’s current assistant.
Gale designed the enormous, well-equipped meth lab that Gus built under an industrial
Gus’s plan. Walt’s idea is to have Jesse kill Gale so Gus will continue to need Walt’s
unique skills. Jesse kills Gale, and this arouses the ruthless drug kingpin that Gus has
worked hard to keep under wraps. Gus sends his henchman Victor to find Jesse and bring
62
him to the lab. He also sends Mike to do the same with Walter. Once the four men are in
the lab, Gus makes his appearance. He eerily descends the spiral steel stairs into the
dimly lit lab. He stops in front of Walt and Jesse and glares at them for a few long
seconds before walking slowly to the locker area of the lab. He slowly and meticulously
removes his tie, dress shirt, and shoes and puts on an orange hazmat suit and tall rubber
boots. One gets the feeling that he is going to cook a quality batch of meth himself to
show Walt and Jesse the ultimate futility of Jesse’s homicidal action. As Gus is zipping
up the chem suit, Gilligan frames him and Walt in a long, narrow shot. Walt is in focus,
closest to the viewer; Gus is out of focus and in the background of the frame. Walt’s back
is to Gus and tension builds as Gus slowly makes his way to Walt. Gus is looking for
something in a tool chest and pulls out a green box cutter. The shot zooms in on the box
cutter as Gus slides the blade out with his thumb. Gus walks menacingly behind Jesse and
Walt as Walt makes a reasoned plea for his life. Gus then suddenly grabs Victor and runs
the box cutter across his associate’s throat. It is a startling turn of events as Gus holds
Victor up so the blood from his carotid artery spurts freely at the feet of Walt and Jesse.
Gus then calmly and quietly washes his face and hands, cleans his glasses, and ascends
This scene presents the viewer with the most violent portrayal of Gus to date. He
is in this moment anything but the mild-mannered fast food restaurant owner as he shows
his ability to adopt a persona that embraces extreme violence. This is an example of the
duplicitous nature of neoliberal business practice. But why the duplicitousness? “Box
Cutter” portrays Gus’s outwardly altruistic actions as necessary in advancing the rational
63
conceals and enables the ruthless, self-interested desire to advance his economic interests.
Gus seamlessly moves between legitimate and illegitimate business ventures, all the
while carefully cultivating his public profile in order to maintain an air of respectability.
Gus embodies the Janus face of neoliberalism: he is a respected supporter of many local
charities, notably a DEA-sponsored road race that leads to a personal relationship with
the agent-in-charge of the DEA field office in Albuquerque, and he never hesitates to
give his money and time to worthy social causes; however, we ultimately see what lies
behind his double identity.117 Breaking Bad portrays Gus’s altruism as a shady method of
appearing legitimate while he distributes high-octane meth under the noses of the very
introduced in the series. We first meet Gus in the second season through Saul Goodman,
Walt and Jesse’s lawyer. Saul suggests Walt and Jesse merge their business with Gus,
and he describes Gus as “an honest-to-God businessman: a businessman who treats your
product like the simple high-margin commodity that it is; who ships out of town, deals
only in bulk; who has been doing this for twenty years and never been caught.”118 A
meeting is set up at one of his restaurants and Gus is every bit the cautious man Saul
described. Gus takes notice of Jesse’s late arrival to the meeting, and the fact that he is
high, and decides to pass on introducing himself. It requires Walt’s return to the
restaurant the following day, and a large amount of convincing on Walt’s part, to get Gus
117
In her article “The Capitalist Nightmare at the Heart of Breaking Bad,” Erica Wagner
refers to Gus’s dual roles of respected businessman and meth trafficker as a Janus-faced
representation of neoliberal business practices, newstatesman.com, last modified December 22,
2014, http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/12/capitalist-nightmare-heart-breaking-bad.
118
Breaking Bad, “Mandala.”
64
on his side. He is, after all, a cautious man. Yet he is also audacious in the extent he will
go to maintain his cover. In the episode “ABQ,” Gus, along with other businessmen
sponsoring a DEA charity event, is given a private tour of the Albuquerque DEA offices
by the agent-in-charge, with whom he is close friends. In this scene, Hank meets Gus and
explains to him and two other men the duties of the Albuquerque field office. The
atmosphere is congenial as Hank tells Gus about his duties, including meth interdiction.
Gus, the meth kingpin of the Southwest United States, is so convincing with his feigned
concern about the scourge of meth use that he responds with an apparently heartfelt
“terrible” when Hank is done with his spiel.119 The scene ends with Hank telling the
visitors that sponsoring events such as the DEA fun run is one of the best ways to help in
the fight against meth distribution and usage. Gus emphatically agrees with this and
further ingratiates himself with Hank by contributing to a fundraising effort for Walt and
neoliberalism in an episode entitled “I See You.” In this installment, Hank has been shot
during a hit put on him by Gus, and the hospital is filled with law enforcement agents
from various agencies in Albuquerque. A concerned-looking Gus arrives with Los Polos
Hermanos chicken to feed the throngs of police and federal agents sitting vigil for Hank
as he undergoes surgery. As a show of solidarity with the police, Gus offers to feed all of
the law enforcement officers at the hospital. Walt, who is among those waiting, is
informed by Steve Gomez—Hank’s partner—of this gracious offer: “He’s a big supporter
119
Breaking Bad, “ABQ.”
120
Ibid.
65
of the DEA and he’s going to feed every cop in the building.”121 In this scene Gus is
actually serving three purposes: he is maintaining his cover as DEA supporter and
concerned, law-abiding citizen; he is keeping tabs on Walter; and he’s helping his
henchman, Mike Ehrmantraut, sneak into the hospital to eliminate the surviving assassin
from the hit he ordered on Hank. As mentioned earlier, Gus is a cautious man. This scene
exemplifies his prudence by portraying him as in control of the direction and continued
prosperity of his meth operation. By keeping a close, cordial relationship he maintains the
advantage he has over the ability of law enforcement agencies to detect his secret life. He
betrays nothing incriminating as to his true identity while staying involved with, and
informed of, the activity of the DEA and the Albuquerque PD. His generosity serves as a
cover for the rapaciousness and violence of his primary business activities. The series
neoliberal capitalism.
The business dynamic between Walter and Gus changes dramatically after “Box
Cutter” as Gus institutes a new security protocol: nonstop surveillance of Walt and Jesse.
He does this by installing cameras in the lab as well as assigning one of his subordinates
to follow his prized meth cook and his assistant while off duty. These measures are in
line with a component of neoliberal policy that journalist and critic Naomi Klein explains
in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Klein argues that free
entrepreneurs at many levels of the business world was difficult to put into practice.
121
Breaking Bad, “I See You.”
66
unpopular reforms could be carried through.122 Gus employs the same methods. He uses
Gale’s murder and manufactures the scene in “Box Cutter” as the shock needed to reign
in Walt and Jesse. This series of events exemplifies the extent of cold-bloodedness
needed to succeed in capitalist society at the end of the 20th/beginning of the 21st century.
The couching of capitalist business practices in the context of the ongoing U.S. drug war
allows Breaking Bad to examine the nature of each within the same frame of reference:
capitalist business practices. It also provides a point to examine the place of labor within
market and attached to the production of a specific commodity, but rather as ‘human
capital’ that is inextricably tied to the individual worker.”123 To the neoliberal mind, labor
is a subjective choice among many other activities for people to choose from in their
daily lives. In choosing labor, “a person is conceived as an entrepreneur who invests his
human capital to produce an income to finance his interest in other activities for his
personal development and pleasure.”124 Neoliberal conceptions of the role of labor are
apparent throughout the series. “Box Cutter” presents the viewer with one perception,
albeit an extreme one. Gus addresses the death of Gale Boetticher by slitting the throat of
one of his most trusted associates, Victor, to send a message to Walt and Jesse. That
67
entrepreneurship, the capitalist with the most assets does not want to lose the wealth and
their power and their fortunes. Walter represents a threat to the control Gus has over the
meth market in the American Southwest because he understands the business and has the
ability to undermine, and potentially take over, Gus’s operation. In order to control his
riches Gus must send a strong message. In the illegal drug world, the preferred method of
labor control is murder. Gilligan makes reference to controlling labor gone astray in the
illicit drug world in the episode “I. F. T.”125 The murder of Victor sheds light on the
create wealth; in practice, those who have wealth want to keep it. Therefore, the capitalist
imperative for those in power is to stay in power by disciplining workers to prevent them
“Box Cutter” also illustrates that labor is disposable. Although Victor was one of
Gus’s closest assistants—he was put in charge of Gus’s huge meth lab—Gus casually
eliminates him. While the scene conveys the ruthlessness of neoliberalism business-in-
action, it also portrays a core belief of capitalism: while labor is necessary to build an
enterprise, it is also expendable. Gilligan addresses the institution most at odds with
neoliberal capitalism: the labor union. The idea of well-trained workers organizing in
68
directly affects a business’s bottom line. Rumblings of union-busting began in the 1950s
and 1960s, but a sustained challenge to union power began in earnest in the 1980s.126
Ronald Reagan in the U.S. and Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain each provoked a
showdown with powerful labor unions: Reagan took on the Professional Air Traffic
Controllers Organization (PATCO) in 1981 and Thatcher took on Britain’s mining unions
in 1984. Strikes provided the pretext for both leaders to enact union-busting measures
that still resonate today. According to economist Richard Hurd, “the 1981 strike by over
stands out as a symbol of union decline.”127 The outcome for PATCO was devastating.
Air traffic has increased 20% since 1978, while the number of controllers and the level of
control tower equipment has remained the same.128 When air traffic backs up at any
airport, “a control tower supervisor will often demand that the controllers ‘get more tin
[planes] on the ground’ and then turn his back. The unspoken order is that the controllers
are supposed to violate federal safety rules by allowing planes to land too close together.
If this results in an accident, it is the controllers, not the supervisors, who are held
responsible.”129
This exact scenario is played out in the Season Two episode “ABQ.” Jesse has
just lost his girlfriend, Jane Margolis, to a heroin overdose. After a hiatus, Jane’s father
126
Harvey, “Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction,” 58.
127
Richard W. Hurd, Reactions on PATCO’s Legacy: Labor’s Strategic Challenges
Persist, accessed on July 6, 2016,http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1300&context=articles, 2.
128
Ibid., 6.
129
“The Economics of the Air Controllers’ Strike,” dollarsandsense.org, accessed July 6,
2016, http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/1981/1081patco.html.
69
Donald goes back to work despite still being distraught over his daughter's death. He
makes a fatal error that causes a 737, Wayfarer 515, to collide with another plane in the
skies over Albuquerque.130 According to a CNN report, during the time period covered in
“ABQ,” the FAA was experiencing a 27-year-long decline in the number of qualified air
responds to Jane’s question about how his work is going: “Same old, same old. I’m doing
backup training on my days off.”132 He’s working his assigned shifts and his days off.
His appearance confirms the fact that he’s working a lot: he appears tired, run-down, and
ill. He’s clearly overworked. Upon returning to work after taking bereavement leave he
responds to a question asked of him by one of his co-workers, who also appears
overworked: “After a period of time, time off doesn’t work. I’d rather be here. Focus on
work.”133 He returns too early. The next scene shows a sweaty, stressed-out Donald
vectoring two planes into each other over the Albuquerque sky. The show does not claim
he was mandated to return because of any shortage in manpower, but the implication is
clear. The idea of neoliberal subjectivity presents itself here as well. Donald has been
conditioned to work hard no matter what. Furthermore, he is not relying on any grief
130
Breaking Bad, “ABQ.”
131
Aaron Smith, “America's Air Traffic Controller Shortage,” money.cnn.com, last
modified October 14, 2015, http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/14/news/economy/air-traffic-
controllers/.
132
Breaking Bad, “Phoenix.”
133
Ibid, “ABQ.”
70
place of comfort and achievement away from the emotional chaos surrounding the loss of
his daughter.
calculated manner. He is obviously distraught, yet his behavior is cool and measured
from his decision of what Jane will wear at her funeral to returning to work sooner than
that hard work will provide a distraction in order to help salve his broken heart. This
his terms. Donald’s stoic demeanor conforms to the rugged individualist archetype
associated with the overarching theme of the show. It also connects with the opening
scene of the pilot episode where Walt stands defiantly against the sound of on-coming
danger in the form of emergency sirens in the distant New Mexican desert. In juxtaposing
the two scenes—Walt in the pilot episode and Donald in “ABQ”—the viewer is made
adversity. Both men confront feelings of inadequacy by trying to ameliorate their sense of
heart of neoliberalism, Gilligan’s choice of New Mexico as the show’s principle setting
enables a nuanced exploration of business and labor relationships in places where legal
and illegal commerce intersect. Situated in the American Southwest, one of the nation’s
fastest growing regions, Breaking Bad captures and expresses both the region’s dramatic
71
physical beauty and its dark socio-economic undercurrents.134 Since the passage of
NAFTA, the area’s long border with Mexico has been the hub of huge commerce and
trade, both legal and illegal. According to David Pierson: “The modern Southwest is on
the cusp of an expanding neoliberal economy promoting global trade, increased corporate
profits and entrepreneurial initiatives, along with minimizing the government’s role in
business and everyday life.”135 With the exception of California, it is a region with low
taxes, few labor unions, poor farming conditions, and limited government-supported
social programs; therefore, it is a place with great disparities of wealth between the rich
and the poor. Working and middle-class Americans often must work multiple jobs to
support their families. Remember, Walter’s initial foray into the meth business was
influenced by his career as an underpaid public school teacher forced to work another job
after school and on the weekends to support his pregnant wife and his disabled son. The
Southwest also contains the nation’s largest concentration of Latinos.136 The powerful
dynamic of race and immigration collides with business and labor in a manner unique to
the area. At the same time the American Southwest serves as an ideal model of neoliberal
Mexico has a long trade history with the U.S.; however, World War II saw an
increase in U.S. imports of Mexican oil as well as labor to augment the war effort. After
the war the relationship continued with the rise of maquiladoras, factories along the
134
Pierson, Kindle loc. 164.
135
Ibid.
136
Anna Brown and Mark Hugo Lopez, “Mapping the Latino Population by State,
County and City,” pewhispanic.org, last modified August 29, 2013,
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2013/08/29/mapping-the-latino-population-by-state-county-and-city/
72
Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexican border, designed to employ low-wage Mexican
workers to assemble goods for sale in America.137 The relationship was further cemented
in 1994 with the passage of NAFTA. NAFTA’s reliance on free-trade mechanisms has
yielded an unintended consequence: combined with the war on drugs, neoliberal free-
trade policies, like NAFTA, have only strengthened the positions of the cartels by
allowing them to use the millions of border truck crossings to effectively smuggle and
distribute their drugs throughout the continental United States.138 The show describes the
ease with which individuals cross the border through the actions of two minor yet very
dangerous and destructive characters: Leonel and Marco Salamanca, or The Cousins.
Gilligan depicts how easy it is to cross the border through what is portrayed on the screen
as much as what is missing: there are no scenes depicting lines of cars waiting to cross
the border at designated checkpoints. Nor are there scenes where any of the characters
must show a passport when entering or exiting the U.S. Instead, the show uses The
While Breaking Bad reflects this dynamic through the depiction of human capital
moving easily across the border, Gilligan further develops the idea of an international
marketplace as the meth empire Gus runs extends into Mexico by virtue of his connection
to a Mexican cartel. It is not only Mexican business connections that Gus exploits. He is
in Germany, which is the parent company of Los Polos Hermanos and Gus’s source for
methylamine, the key raw material in his, as well as Walt’s, meth cooks. Economist Dilip
137
“U.S.-Mexico Relations (1810-Present),” cfr.org, http://www.cfr.org/mexico/us-
mexico-relations-1810-present/p19092.
138
Pierson, loc. 554, Kindle Edition.
73
K. Das explains: “One characteristic of contemporary globalization is increased intra-
firm, cross-border collaborations in the form of joint ventures, non-equity agreements and
are beyond their technical and financial resources or capabilities.”139 Walt and Jesse need
methylamine to cook. Through his international associations Gus has been able to obtain
whatever amount of methylamine his operation needs. He uses his legal connections at
company in China—to his meth lab in Albuquerque. The manner in which Gus procures
the various chemicals needed to produce his product reveals his duplicitous mastery of
A scene that brings together the concept of self-reliance and the practicality of
procuring materials needed to sustain production occurs in the Season Five episode,
“Dead Freight.” Again, Gilligan deftly incorporates the New Mexican desert to help tell
the story. The first shot finds Jesse, Mike, and Walter, wearing the pork pie hat
synonymous with his alter ego Heisenberg, on a set of train tracks in the New Mexican
desert. The shot is from the ground up and the three men appear larger-than-life against a
beautiful sunset, giving the appearance of men in control of their destiny. Walt’s pork pie
hat recalls Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, notorious late-1880s outlaw train
robbers. They are measuring out the distance from a railroad crossing down the tracks in
order to determine where they should set up in order to steal methylamine from a freight
train. Gus is now dead, and they are left to their own wiles to continue the flow of this
essential ingredient for their cooks. They are alerted to the existence of a load of
139
Philip K. Das, The Two Faces of Globalization, Munificent and Malevolent
(Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2009), 14.
74
methylamine as well as the train schedule and the best place along the train’s route from
California to Houston to commit their robbery from a contact inside Madrigal who
The scene immediately changes to a distant side shot of the three men walking
down the tracks. At first, it is difficult the see them as they are so small on the screen.
This extreme change in perspective indicates that while they initially appear quite
confident, reality quickly sets in as the long side shot depicts the three men against the
enormity of vast desert wasteland. The shot serves as a harbinger of what is to come as
viewer now gets the sense that Walt and company are up against something much larger
than they anticipated. While the heist goes as planned, in the end a young boy is shot
dead by newcomer Todd, whom Walt, Jesse and Mike have taken on to help with the
This idea of unintended consequences is rife throughout the series and is manifest
in the death of several characters as well as the dissolution of Walt’s family and many
other relationships and institutional structures in the show. Events spinning out of control
are central to Breaking Bad. Many unintended consequences throughout the series can be
from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.”140 David
140
Joseph E. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York:
HarperCollins, 2008), 84.
75
Harvey observes that the “process of neoliberalization has… entailed much ‘creative
destruction’, not only of prior institutional frameworks and powers (even challenging
traditional forms of state sovereignty) but also of divisions of labour, social relations,
welfare provisions, technological mixes, ways of life and thought, reproductive activities,
attachments to the land and habits of the heart.”141 Schumpeter’s description of the
creative destruction associated with neoliberalism is accurate, but the show is wary of the
neoliberalism as destructive destruction. Destruction in this case does not result in the
emergence of something better, it just leaves a void where there was once something
tangible. The character that best exemplifies the destructive feature of the show is Jesse.
He serves as a metaphor for neoliberalism’s destructive nature as his physical and mental
decline corresponds with the violent events in the show. Jesse’s decline also appears
underachiever who is seemingly content with his life. He is by no means the picture of
rationality or stability, yet he seems to accept his place in society; however, from the
moment he reunites with Walter, his former high school chemistry teacher, his
contentment is in peril. The drastic decline in Jesse’s wellbeing from the pilot episode to
the series finale is unsettling at the very least. When we first meet Jesse he is already in
the meth business, but he appears to be a healthy, somewhat stable young man, although
he at times samples his product. Almost immediately after he joins up with Walter he
begins to crack at the edges. As the mayhem that comes to define the series begins,
Jesse’s discomfort with Walt’s approach to making and selling meth becomes evident and
141
Harvey, “Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction,” 3.
76
is manifested in his declining physical appearance. It is quite understandable, even
expected, that his involvement to this point in the show in the deaths of Krazy-8, Tuco,
Combo, Jane, the passengers on Wayfarer 151, as well as other peripheral characters, has
ensues, Walter becomes stronger, more self-assured. His cancer even goes into remission;
however, his ultimate death serves as a reminder that Walt is also negatively affected in
consequences for all involved. In fact, Breaking Bad suggests Jesse was better off as a
low-end meth dealer than he was as an entrepreneurial drug co-kingpin. The show
destruction and instead depicts its benefits as elusive. Gilligan subtly addresses this
After the cold open, “Fly” presents the viewer with a shot of Walter sitting in his
car outside of the laundry that houses the meth super-lab Gus had built in its basement.
The look on Walt’s face reveals a man deep in thought over the many changes and
challenges he’s encountered over the past year. He’s 51-years-old and his wife Skyler just
had a baby. That would be enough to tire even the healthiest of middle-aged men. Walt is
not healthy; he has lung cancer that, while in remission, has sapped him of some of his
vitality. That said, the show portrays Walt’s fatigue differently from that of Jesse’s. Jesse
is clearly not cut out for the rough stuff associated with the illegal drug business and his
appearance and mannerisms after Jane’s death betray his inner turmoil. After Jane’s death
77
dilapidated housing project and has to be rescued and taken to rehab by Walt.142 Walt’s
overall lethargy is located in his greed for more money. Part of him is invigorated by his
work and newfound wealth, but the cost of his sudden riches is a seemingly endless drive
for more. Since going into business with Gus, and expanding their meth sphere to include
the majority of the American Southwest, Walt and Jesse have increased production to
where they are cooking two hundred pounds of meth each week for Gus. This increase in
production has netted each of them $1.5 million for three months of work. More money
ultimately does not make Walter more content, but unlike Jesse’s torpor, Walter’s greed
is the source of his weariness—more so than the side effects of his lung cancer and the
chemotherapy treatment he has been receiving. This depiction of a dog-tired Walt is one
manner in which the show refutes the notion of neoliberalism as a force for progress.
Jesse’s physical decline offers another example. As the episode continues, Gilligan
expertly depicts the elusiveness of the neoliberal fantasy as he pits Walt against a slippery
house pest.
“Fly” centers around eliminating a contaminant that has infiltrated the meth lab: a
fly. The emergence of early neoliberal thought grew from the desire of its supporters to
eliminate what they believed to be a pestilence keen on destroying the economic vitality
of the American Dream: the welfare state.143 This project has already addressed the
Waqcuant’s condemnation of the rise of neoliberal’s punishment of the poor, this thesis
142
Breaking Bad, “ABQ.”
143
Steger and Roy, loc. 924-925, Kindle Edition.
78
has expressed the antagonistic stance of neoliberalism toward welfare statism. In this
episode, Gilligan provides commentary on this inimical view through the fly as a symbol
Back in the lab, Walt and Jesse begin the cook process by scouring every surface
of the lab. A pristine lab is essential to keeping out the adulterants that may mar the
efficacy of their meth. From the beginning of the series, Walter has been adamant about
they finish cleaning, they begin the fifteen-hour long process of synthesizing various
ingredients into the blue meth they are famous for. After Jesse leaves for the day, Walt
sound is heard in the quiet of the lab. A fly alights on the clipboard he is holding.144 Walt
immediately becomes concerned and goes about trying to kill the fly. When Jesse returns
to work the next morning, Walt, who has not left the lab or slept since the last time Jesse
saw him, tells Jesse there’s a fly in the lab and they cannot continue until this adulterant
is eliminated. Jesse is incredulous. Walt recognizes Jesse’s skepticism and replies, “A fly,
I know, may seem insignificant, but trust me, in a highly controlled environment, any
hears the fly again, but he has made his point: any contaminant, no matter how seemingly
unimportant, can completely destroy the batch of meth they are cooking. The fly has
symbolized many things: elusiveness, pestilence, conceptions of evil in the form of the
Devil, death, and transformation. In this case the fly represents the elusiveness of the
144
Breaking Bad, “Fly.”
145
Ibid.
79
neoliberal fantasy. As they skulk around the lab looking in every conceivable location we
find Walter hanging off of the top tier of the lab, swinging a homemade, industrial-sized
fly swatter. He falls from this position and bounces off one of the large, stainless steel
vats, landing on the floor. Later, Jesse balances precipitously on a shaky step ladder that
is sitting on two roll-away cabinets. As he reaches to swat the fly, which is now buzzing
around in the rafters, he nearly falls. This depiction of Jesse also engages the
precariousness of a free-market ideology that shuns ideas of a social safety net. Walt and
Jesse, at once eager and reluctant capitalists, stumble around their workplace trying and
failing to eliminate an evasive contaminant. In this insect—this tiny yet powerful threat to
the fantasy of self-reliance and rational control—Breaking Bad brilliantly conveys the
80
Chapter V
Epilogue
From the perspective of looking back over the five seasons of Breaking Bad, its
opening image—a pair of pants in a brilliant blue sky fluttering gently to the ground—
neoliberalism’s destructiveness. The show’s main protagonist Walter White embodies the
neoliberal fantasy of a lone individual, set lose from debilitating governmental restraints,
achieving his full potential. By the end of the series, Gilligan has confronted us with this
fantasy bringing Walter down. At the center of the ruinous neoliberal mindset is the idea
that the market is the best vehicle for individual success. What the series has shown
instead is that a market-driven economic model, buoyed by the privatization of just about
everything, does not result in a free-market utopia. Breaking Bad depicts a neoliberal
Fear is the show’s pervasive emotion. Walter is initially frightened by his cancer
diagnosis and his inability to provide for his family going forward. Skyler fears losing her
husband, son, daughter, and home. Hank, beneath the macho façade, is at some level
uneasy about his DEA position. Gus is concerned with staying one step ahead of the law.
Jesse’s apprehension lies in the fact that he realizes he is part of society’s disenfranchised
and has accepted that there is little he can do about it. The artistic beauty of the show, as
well as the irony, lies in how Walter and company unwittingly adapt the tenets of
81
the neoliberal imperative of fearing the truncheon of governmental interference. The
pervasive anxiety Gilligan brilliantly works into the show’s fabric is not exclusively for
entertainment purposes. The unease felt by the characters in the series mirrors the sense
of apprehension felt by many Americans over the past forty-plus years as opportunities
The show deftly chronicles the insinuation of neoliberalism into the lives of
unions and the drive to redefine the primacy of the market over the needs of society by
mechanisms of this mindset from the onset of the show when Walter is faced with the
reality of paying out of pocket for the cancer treatments that his benefits as a public
employee cannot cover. His decision to supplement his income by entering the illegal
business of producing and selling meth conforms to the neoliberal idea of maximizing
one’s unique talents in order to increase earning potential. This is exactly the type of
and diminished state that fails to provide an adequate safety net for its diverse population,
particularly those who are poor, young, marginalized, or disenfranchised.147 The move to
146
Giroux, Against the Terror of Neoliberalism, 112.
147
Ibid, 122-113.
82
privatize former public services such as health care, child care, public assistance,
education, and transportation has created a private welfare system subject to market
volatility. Yet the most devastating aspect of privatization lies in the fact that services
many benefits unaffordable to the poor and working class. The manner in which Breaking
Bad portrays the lives of Jesse, Badger, Skinny Pete, Combo, Jane, and others conforms
to this dictum. Two characters, Jesse’s Season Four/Five girlfriend Andrea and her six-
year-old son Brock, are particularly affected by the shrinkage of state-sponsored social
services such as daycare, job training, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children. She
is a recovering meth addict, which likely disqualifies her for some forms of public
assistance, and must rely on her mother to take care of Brock and to help out by buying
explained the militarization of police forces and touched on the war on drugs through the
actions of DEA agent Hank Schrader. Another aspect of the criminal justice system
altered by neoliberal crime policy is the nation’s prison apparatus. Neoliberal initiatives
have changed public perception of the utility of the prison system. Wacquant’s assertion
that the neoliberal turn in penal theory, with its emphasis on strict punishment practices
and policies, provides a logical corollary to addressing the problem of the disenfranchised
in relation to a depleted social safety network. Wacquant further argues that the rise of a
penal state in the United States is not a response to the rise of crime, which remained
constant in the time period he examined, but rather is a response to the social dislocations
caused by the decline of the welfare state and the insecurities associated with low-wage
83
labor for citizens trapped at the bottom of a polarizing class structure. He sums up the
drastic rise in incarceration rates over the past thirty years as an intentional “social
vacuum cleaner”148 that sucks up into the penal system the poor, the petty delinquents,
undocumented immigrants, the unemployed, handicapped, and mentally ill who have
been displaced by the neoliberal state.149 This mass removal of America’s untouchables
Wacquant’s assessment of the criminal justice system—a system that not only
neoliberalism poses to all who fall within its reach. Walter’s initial angst over his
diagnosis of terminal lung cancer mirrors the apprehension that drives the actions of
many of the show’s characters, and speaks to the subjective aspect of neoliberalism. This
apprehension is addressed subliminally throughout the series, and directly in the Season
One episode “Gray Matter.” The scene revolves around an intervention of sorts that
Skyler has arranged to confront Walter’s behavior since his cancer diagnosis. Walter,
Skyler, Marie, Hank, and Walter Jr. are seated around the coffee table in Walt and
Skyler’s home. The mood is understandably somber as Skyler explains that they are all
there because they love Walt and want to better understand what he is going through.
Walt begins talking haltingly with tears in his eyes: “Sometimes I feel like I never
actually make any of my own choices. I mean, my entire life it just seems I never had a
real say about any of it. This last one, cancer, all I have left is how I choose to approach
148
Ibid, 273.
149
Ibid.
84
this.”150 Walt’s fear in this scene is manifested in regret that he had been harboring for
quite some time. He is disappointed, perhaps bitter, that he has always conformed to
societal and familial demands and is now afraid he will never get the chance to make his
own choices in life before he dies. He is dismayed, regretful, and angry at himself for
This stew of regret, anger, and fear resembles the impetus behind the neoliberal
movement that began in the 1960s-70s as a reaction to the threat to the traditional male-
dominated U.S. power structure. Historian Robert O. Self explains the reaction to what he
vulnerable “to appropriation by the right. Stripped of its social welfare and government
conservatism: a defense of white male breadwinners and their nuclear families against the
claims of nonwhites, women, and ultimately gay men and lesbians.”151 That mindset
“that liberalism had precipitated a revolution in gender, sexuality, and the family that had
damaged the nation…[and] that government based on regulatory and social welfare
principles impeded the ‘natural’ functioning of the market and was responsible for any
economic downturn or sluggish growth.”152 Neoliberals continue to believe that the only
150
Breaking Bad, “Gray Matter.”
151
Self, 46.
152
Ibid., 399-400.
85
regulation, remaining diligent in the quest to diminish onerous tax burdens, and by
maintaining the moral center of national life around the heterosexual, male breadwinner
The latter speaks to the vitriolic public reaction toward Skyler, played by actress
Anna Gunn. Teasing out this animosity reveals the extent to which neoliberal sexism has
known as The Skyler White Effect. The Skyler White Effect occurs when “a female
character judges the male protagonist’s bad behavior in a completely rational way, and
the audience hates her for it.”153 Walt is a murderous meth dealer whose ultimate goal is
to dominate the illegal drug market. There is nothing noble about Walt’s immoral
ambition, but when Skyler offers criticism fans labeled her a “bitch.” This cognitive
dissonance became apparent when Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms
went into a meltdown during and after the series’ five-year run with derogatory, often
vile, messages about Skyler directed at Gunn.154 The nastiness became so prevalent that
Gunn took to the New York Times Op-Ed page to relate her dismay over “the popularity
of Web sites and Facebook pages devoted to hating her [Skyler], [which] has become a
flash point for many people’s feelings about strong, nonsubmissive, ill-treated
women.”155 The relative anonymity of cyber space allowed for uncensored criticisms of
153
Marion Johnson, “Mad Men, Megan Draper and the Skyler White Effect,” last
modified June 3, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marion-johnson/mad-men-
feminism_b_3005489.html.
154
There are Facebook pages called “Fuck Skyler White,” “Fuck Skyler White in the
Face,” and “I Hate Skyler White” that contain degrading comments directed at Skyler and Anna
Gunn as well as Twitter tweets that are equally offensive.
155
Anna Gunn, “I Have a Character Issue,” New York Times, August 23, 2013.
86
Gunn’s character, from both men and women. This outpouring of hate speaks to the
depth of fear and unease generated by the effort to empower women beginning in the
1960s.
It also says, at the very least, that Gilligan’s well-crafted critique of neoliberalism
in the early 21st century was lost on part of the massive viewership the show enjoyed. The
social media hatred directed at Skyler reflects the extent of internalized values
encouraged by neoliberalism that are revealed through Walt and Skyler’s relationship. In
Breaking Bad offered, many of the show’s devotees instead betrayed a complicity in the
revival of traditional gender roles and, most importantly, in how this narrative of
America ultimately succeeds by explicating the subtle beast of neoliberalism through the
actions of his well-wrought characters, sharp dialogue, suspenseful plot, and stunning
course, in the Season Five episode, “Felina,” where he finally admits the motive behind
his destructive journey: “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really... I
was alive.”156 Walt’s metamorphosis from Mr. Chips to Scarface provided trenchant
explaining how neoliberalism does not perform well in these domains. Instead of
156
Breaking Bad, “Felina.”
87
functioning as an effectual way of remaking policy and “souls,” Breaking Bad shows
neoliberalism to be an agent of destruction enriching the few at the expense of the many.
88
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