Even the Losers Get Lucky Sometimes

Season 4 of Breaking Bad has been wildly uneven and in many respects has veered off course from the storytelling that made the first three seasons so wildly compelling, but last night’s episode got back on track and in fact epitomized what I believe is one of the main points of the show as a whole.

“Maybe I’m not such a loser after all.” –Jesse Pinkman

Jesse says this to Walter White during a heated argument about the recent efforts of Gus and Mike to boost Jesse’s fragile self-esteem. If you asked me to sum up the theme of Breaking Bad in one sentence, I would choose that line of dialogue. Most of the main characters in this show—Walter, Skylar, Jesse, even Hank—are all trying to prove, both to themselves and to the world, that they are not losers.

Walter did not say it as explicitly as Jesse did, but his words and actions in last night’s episode clearly showed that he will not go back to playing the “loser.” As his wife Skylar proposes going to the police—which suggests Walt’s weakness and ineffectualness—Walter snaps back, “I am the danger...I am the one who knocks.” Walt emotionally, mentally, and even physically cannot listen to his wife berate his abilities and belittle his importance. He will not be a loser. And he will make his wife understand this.

Later in the episode, Walt takes possession of the car wash from his former boss, the sniveling, greasy, undermining Bogdan. When Walt worked as a cashier for Bogdan, he had reached his low point of Loserville.  Now he comes back to the car wash not as a Loser, but as a powerful, capable Boss. Watching the scene, I expected Walt to explode at Bogdan and show off his new take charge personality. Instead, the clever writers of Breaking Bad gave Walt something much more subtle, yet much more powerful, to do. Walt takes a framed dollar off the wall—the proverbial “first dollar I ever earned” that immigrant Bogdan has saved all these years—and uses it to buy a Coke. It’s a brilliant way of saying that Walter believes in himself, in his abilities, in his own power. He no longer even cares enough about Bogdan to shout and scream and swear. He has risen so far above Loser status that all Bogdan is worth to him anymore is a can of Coca-Cola.

From the very beginning of the show—from when we saw Walter White as the ultimate Nobody—Breaking Bad has always been about asserting one’s identity. Instead of taking charity from a rich former partner, Walter asserted his skills and knowledge to cook meth. He graduated to asserting himself physically, violently killing a number of people throughout the series. He asserts himself with his wife daily, refusing to give in to her passive-aggressive behavior. On last week’s episode, when he told Hank that Gale Boetticher was not the real meth mastermind, Walt subtly asserted himself as the real genius.

Perhaps this explains why Breaking Bad has struck such a chord with its small but devoted audience. In the midst of economic crisis and governmental stalemate, perhaps viewers applaud Walt’s continuing refusal to take shit from anyone. Walt has transformed from a classic Loser—“ineffectual” is the word that keeps coming to my mind to describe him—into a Boss. Along the way, so has Jesse, and even at times, so has Skylar. Walt has finally started participating in his own life and taking responsibility for his actions. He has finally asserted himself! True, he has done so by cooking meth, but the methods of assertion are less important than the assertion itself.

To me, this show is not ultimately about the temptation of crime, the thrill of illegal activities, or even about “providing for one’s family,” as Gus says. It is about normal people standing up and saying, “I won’t take shit from anyone. I’m not a loser.”

And with that message, the writers and creators of Breaking Bad have created the ultimate television show for the Great Recession. They have tapped into a deep need of individuals to assert themselves. Maybe we cannot all start cooking meth, but, like Walt and Jesse, we can all find some way of proving, at least to ourselves, that we are not losers.