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canyonwalkerAs I've been watching Breaking Bad midway through Season 2, one thing little thing bothers me about the series. It seems like almost none of the characters are sympathetic.
Yes, it's a story about a main character who becomes a villain; Walt's transformation from Mr. Chips to Scarface. And along the way he works with a lot of criminals, so there are a lot of bad people in the story. And, of course, the point of the narrative is to get us rooting for at least some of the bad folks. But it's a principle of writing that there should be character we readers can feel genuinely good about cheering on. Here it's not clear if there are any.
The first place one might look for a good person in this story is the protagonist's wife, Skyler. She's not involved in Walt's criminal enterprise. He's keeping secrets from her and treating her brusquely. But while she's the aggrieved spouse she's not without fault. She shows little sympathy for him as he struggles to accept a diagnosis of inoperable lung cancer. She's not interested in his opinion about it. She feels she knows better than him how he should feel and what he should want to do. When she does literally ask him what he thinks, it's actually a bad-faith effort to get his family to gang up on him. Then, as Walt becomes distant from her and seems to suffer a memory lapse, she responds not by attempting to understand what he's going through but simply by giving him a taste of his own medicine, walking out of the house on him repeatedly and refusing to share where she's going. "Do unto others the shit they do unto you" may be cathartic but it is not how you improve a struggling relationship. In fact it's generally how you take joint responsibility for killing it.
Skyler is hardly the only supporting character who might've been a breath of fresh, good-person air but isn't. Sklyer's sister, Marie, is a narcissist with a shoplifting habit. As part of her narcissism (just one example but not the only one), when Skyler confronts her after almost being arrested at a store for possessing a necklace, Marie absolutely refuses even to acknowledge she stole the necklace. She instead reverses victim and offender (a classic narcissist trait) and faults Skyler for being rude to her.
The cops in the story are another place you might look for a good person. Walt's brother-in-law, Hank, is a DEA agent. He and his colleagues are out there busting drug dealers. But Hank is a blowhard who frequently makes racist jokes about Hispanic people. Perhaps Hank's partner, "Gomez", is the one good person here. He is a Hispanic man who quietly puts up with Hank's racist ribbing. Though he does go along with all of Hank's racially motivated decisions.
Walt's ex-fiance, Gretchen, might've been a sympathetic character, too, but isn't. She's married to Walt's grad school buddy; and together, she and that buddy have become wealthy building a successful tech company based on research Walt's conducted as a grad student. Who's responsible for their relationship failing? Who's responsible for Walt getting cut out of the riches from his own work? Sure, some of it is Walt, but though Gretchen sees herself as a saint, she isn't. In confronting Walt about his lie to his family that he's taking their charity when actually he refused it, she demands to know the secret he won't tell his family. "You've involved me in the lie now, so you have to tell me everything," she says. That may sound reasonable... but let me translate it like this: "You're keeping a secret from your own family, and I, as your ex from 16+ years ago, assert I have a right to know what it is." How about, no?
The one regular supporting character who's left as a sympathetic person is Walt's son, Walt, Jr. Or "Flynn", as he's told his friends to start calling him. Flynn hasn't really done anything wrong. I mean, he got busted by an off-duty cop for asking him to buy beer for underage kids... but I'm not going to call him bad for that as underage drinking is something almost everyone in the US has done.
There's also one minor character who's done nothing wrong... yet. That's Carmen, the principal at Walt's school. I say "...yet" because I wonder, when does the other shoe drop? Since "nobody's genuinely good" is apparently a theme of Breaking Bad, when will Carmen be revealed as a bad person? Does she hit kids in the school? Does she have a drug habit of her own? And what about Walt, Jr./Flynn. Is he going to... break bad... at some point?
Yes, it's a story about a main character who becomes a villain; Walt's transformation from Mr. Chips to Scarface. And along the way he works with a lot of criminals, so there are a lot of bad people in the story. And, of course, the point of the narrative is to get us rooting for at least some of the bad folks. But it's a principle of writing that there should be character we readers can feel genuinely good about cheering on. Here it's not clear if there are any.
The first place one might look for a good person in this story is the protagonist's wife, Skyler. She's not involved in Walt's criminal enterprise. He's keeping secrets from her and treating her brusquely. But while she's the aggrieved spouse she's not without fault. She shows little sympathy for him as he struggles to accept a diagnosis of inoperable lung cancer. She's not interested in his opinion about it. She feels she knows better than him how he should feel and what he should want to do. When she does literally ask him what he thinks, it's actually a bad-faith effort to get his family to gang up on him. Then, as Walt becomes distant from her and seems to suffer a memory lapse, she responds not by attempting to understand what he's going through but simply by giving him a taste of his own medicine, walking out of the house on him repeatedly and refusing to share where she's going. "Do unto others the shit they do unto you" may be cathartic but it is not how you improve a struggling relationship. In fact it's generally how you take joint responsibility for killing it.
Skyler is hardly the only supporting character who might've been a breath of fresh, good-person air but isn't. Sklyer's sister, Marie, is a narcissist with a shoplifting habit. As part of her narcissism (just one example but not the only one), when Skyler confronts her after almost being arrested at a store for possessing a necklace, Marie absolutely refuses even to acknowledge she stole the necklace. She instead reverses victim and offender (a classic narcissist trait) and faults Skyler for being rude to her.
The cops in the story are another place you might look for a good person. Walt's brother-in-law, Hank, is a DEA agent. He and his colleagues are out there busting drug dealers. But Hank is a blowhard who frequently makes racist jokes about Hispanic people. Perhaps Hank's partner, "Gomez", is the one good person here. He is a Hispanic man who quietly puts up with Hank's racist ribbing. Though he does go along with all of Hank's racially motivated decisions.
Walt's ex-fiance, Gretchen, might've been a sympathetic character, too, but isn't. She's married to Walt's grad school buddy; and together, she and that buddy have become wealthy building a successful tech company based on research Walt's conducted as a grad student. Who's responsible for their relationship failing? Who's responsible for Walt getting cut out of the riches from his own work? Sure, some of it is Walt, but though Gretchen sees herself as a saint, she isn't. In confronting Walt about his lie to his family that he's taking their charity when actually he refused it, she demands to know the secret he won't tell his family. "You've involved me in the lie now, so you have to tell me everything," she says. That may sound reasonable... but let me translate it like this: "You're keeping a secret from your own family, and I, as your ex from 16+ years ago, assert I have a right to know what it is." How about, no?
The one regular supporting character who's left as a sympathetic person is Walt's son, Walt, Jr. Or "Flynn", as he's told his friends to start calling him. Flynn hasn't really done anything wrong. I mean, he got busted by an off-duty cop for asking him to buy beer for underage kids... but I'm not going to call him bad for that as underage drinking is something almost everyone in the US has done.
There's also one minor character who's done nothing wrong... yet. That's Carmen, the principal at Walt's school. I say "...yet" because I wonder, when does the other shoe drop? Since "nobody's genuinely good" is apparently a theme of Breaking Bad, when will Carmen be revealed as a bad person? Does she hit kids in the school? Does she have a drug habit of her own? And what about Walt, Jr./Flynn. Is he going to... break bad... at some point?
