I finished watching every season of the American crime television series Breaking Bad and the sequel movie El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019). Breaking Bad was a little difficult for me to watch, because the main character Walter White is so stubborn and obstinate in their pursuit to stroke his own ego that he ignores the pain and suffering he causes and the very clear and repeated signs that he is losing the very thing he’s supposedly working for.
Walter White is traumatized from selling his share in the company he helped found, Gray Matter Technologies, for 2.1 billion enterprise. This creates a deep feeling of inadequacy and insecurity in his ego.
As he becomes a drug kingpin, he constantly reiterates to himself and to others that he’s only making methamphetamine and selling it for his family. He wants all of the money to go to them, but he is only doing this because he wants to fulfill his fantasy of being a man who provides for his family. He doesn’t want anyone else to provide for his family, as he specifically requests the married owners of Gray Matter Technologies, Gretchen and Elliot, that they only use his drug money to help his children and not their own money. He tries to command his wife and his child Flynn to follow his orders without explanation after Hank is killed. He continues to practice the drug trade “for his family”, even when given opportunities to, as his continued involvement rips the family apart. Walter also tries to become Jesse’s father figure (though Ehrmantraut does a much better job of this than Walter), but ends up manipulating Jesse to further his own ends. At one point he begs Skyler to give the money to the kids so that everything he’s done wasn’t for nothing.
It’s only at the end that he finally admits to his wife Skyler that he did it all for himself. This fantasy of being the family’s provider was a core pillar of his sense of worth and ego, and it consumes him and those around him.
I feel like the ending of Breaking Bad was too nice to Walter White. He does end up convincing Gretchen and Elliot to send the money to his family and he dies with a smile on his face. In the end, he felt like he accomplished what he originally set out to do. Certainly, Gretchen and Elliot would have been savvy enough to realize they could disobey his orders, but imagining it is up to the viewer’s imagination. For the wanton death and destruction he caused, he sure does get off easy. I feel the ending would have been more satisfying if the “victory” he achieves by the end of the series was not just pyrrhic, but really, indeed, all for nothing.
Also, I don’t feel like there was a point to El Camino. It feels like a fan-service story; one that is just a wish-fulfillment story for Jesse. It doesn’t feel like it has much to say and the story just meanders around. This was kind of a disappointment after seeing Breaking Bad, but it wasn’t terribly surprising either as I’m not sure I can think of a way to make a sequel to Breaking Bad that would have something more to say. It feels like all of the plot threads and themes had been fully explored already by the end of the series.