BREAKING BAD: THE HERO DILEMMA

BREAKING BAD: THE HERO DILEMMA
By Tom Ruff
July 26, 2011

After what seems like an eternity, the fourth season of AMC's award winning drama "Breaking Bad" is underway, and the action picked up right where the show left off. As the show starts, Walt and Jesse are having to deal with their actions at the end of the last season, and viewers are left wondering, who are we supposed to root for in this show?

Don't get me wrong, the series is one of the best shows on television, with some of the best writing and acting in the business, but one of the aspects that makes the show so unique is the lack of any traditional protagonist. When the series began Walter White was a married high-school chemistry teacher, working a second job at a car wash, and trying to raise a disabled teenage son and a baby on the way. White was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and chose to use his professional skills to make and sell crystal meth as a means of leaving his family a nest egg. While his actions seemed unconventional, there was something admirable about a guy who would do anything for his family. As the show has progressed though, we have seen a fundamental shift in Walter's character, as his willingness to do anything to become a drug kingpin paints him not so much as a man protecting his family, but a sociopath who used cancer as an excuse to let his dark side out. Although Walt is currently in remission, he has continued to pursue his new found "career" and escalated his role from drug-making chemist, to underboss who has committed murder (and ordered murder) stole and laundered money, lied so many times that his marriage is completely ruined, and put his family at so much risk that they are worse off then they were when he was first diagnosed with cancer.

The second episode of this season was very interesting, as Walt made it very clear that his intentions are to murder drug boss Gus, and take over the business himself. Although he continues to rationalize to other people that his emphasis is on self-defense, its hard to believe that when he is buying guns with filed off serial numbers and making it clear to Mike the bodyguard that he intends to kill Gus. A very telling scene happens outside Gus' house, when Walt puts on his fedora, almost transforming himself into his alter-ego "Heisenberg" in what can best be described as a Jekyll and Hyde homage. Looking back at the entire series now, it seems much more likely that Walt entered the meth business not to raise money for his family, but to cure his life of boredom and regret. I think he made the choices he made because he had a dark side that he wanted to let out, and cancer became his excuse and his crutch.

So if Walt isn't the hero of the series, then who is? At this point everyone seems morally bankrupt and nobody is black and white. Walt's wife threw him out over his lies and criminal actions, but now she's laundering and spending the money. Hank, the DEA brother in-law was the victim of a horrible tragedy last season when he was shot and left paralyzed, but its hard to really make the case that he has ever been anything but an obstacle to the show's leads. This leaves Jesse, Walt's partner, and possibly the most interesting character. Whereas Walt has shown himself to be the bad guy, Jesse is much more ambiguous. In his character you see a guy who is nothing more then a train wreck who got into drug dealing because he didn't know better. Jesse loves to call himself a bad guy, but he is the only one who seems to show true remorse over his actions. Early this season, Jesse is desperately trying to deal with his murdering Gale, an action he clearly did for self-defense, but one that is tearing up his character from the inside out. It will be interesting to see if Jesse can use this event to get himself off the downward spiral or not.

It will be interesting to see how the writers continue to develop the show's characters going into the later part of the series. A lot of comparison will be drawn to "The Sopranos" as a great deal of fans will want to see Walt brought down, and others will want to see him come out on top, but the difference between the two characters is that Tony was born into a system he never had a real shot at escaping, and Walt made the choice to become the villain. It wouldn't surprise me to see the close tight "partnership" between Walt and Jesse dissolve in future episodes, and I could envision a situation in which Jesse ends up working with the DEA to bring him down. It's equally possible that the show ends with Walt getting the better of everyone... a kingpin with his family at his side and all the money and power he clearly seems to want… or maybe it ends as it began, a sad and pathetic guy desperately trying to avoid dying of cancer. "Breaking Bad" airs on Sundays on AMC.