Breaking Bad Recap and Review

“Ryan! I want sports content!”

“Ryan, unless you’re comparing Gustavo Fring to Chad Morris I am NOT reading this!”

And I know, it’s 2020 and this AMC thriller ended in 2013. But in 9th grade my sweet parents wanted to protect me from the world of the crystal meth trade in Albuquerque, New Mexico and for that I will always be grateful. I figured quarantine is good of a time as any to sit down and watch Breaking Bad for the first time.

And holy crap. This show is bonkers.

The premise of Breaking Bad is relatively simple. A chemistry teacher named Walter White has lung cancer and he decides to cook crystal meth to set his family up for financial security before his death. The problem is, his brother-in-law is in the DEA and his wife is overly suspicious about his every move. Walter recruits his former student turned drug dealer Jesse Pinkman to be his partner and together they create the purest crystal meth ever and soon, everyone knows about this so-called “blue stuff”.

If you’re like anything like me, you enjoy thing like foreshadowing, symbolism and character development and this has all of it and more. Greed is most definitely the main theme as of this show, as we slowly see it transform Walter White from this fun-loving family man and chemistry teacher to a ruthless and manipulative kingpin doing whatever is necessary to get his money. His intensity can be best displayed when he mentions to Jesse that he’s in the “empire business”.

Walter White is one of the most complex characters I’ve encountered, as he is the protagonist of the show but he is kind of awful. You want to sympathize with him as he is doing this for his family, but he decides to keep participating in the drug trade and selling crystal meth.

As a viewer I often questioned my own morals while watching Breaking Bad. This was frequent though my viewing of the show, as I wondered to myself why I was rooting for such an egregious human being to come out on top.

The rest of the characters are top-notch too, and each has a place in the story. From his crippled son to his wacky lawyer, they all play a huge role and are all impacted my Walter’s illegal activities.

Breaking Bad is full of drama, suspense, and even pure horror at times. There’s no telling what Walter White will do to keep his drug empire afloat and what he might do to the people who get in his way. It’s interesting to see how much greed can change a man and the way it can grow and manifest itself in the form of a completely unrecognizable person among his friends and family.

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