Generational Themes in Breaking Bad
Episode Stats
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117.90794
Summary
Breaking Bad is a TV show that takes place in the late 80's and early 90's in a broken society. It's a time when Baby Boomers were the dominant generation and Millennials were the new kids. In this episode, I discuss the main character of the show, Walt, and how he's a Baby Boomer turned narcissist.
Transcript
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This is a video I've been meaning to get to for a while now and somebody just
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reminded me of that so thank you. It's a review of Breaking Bad and what it
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means for us men alive today in this world. The ones that have have woken up
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or are waking up whose eyes aren't screwed shut to what's going on. But
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before I get to the show itself, I want to talk about the book The Fourth Turning.
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Now I'm currently still reading The Fourth Turning. I will probably review it when I'm
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done but I can confidently tell you that this book is absolutely amazing. It's ahead
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of the curve. It's ahead of history. This is a book that in the 90s predicted the
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economic collapse almost to the year, not even based upon economics. It is a book of
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generational dynamics. It argues that there's four cycles of generations that occur. One
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one that creates a civilization, one that excels a civilization, one that tears it down, and
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one that wanders through the broken ruins of the old civilization.
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And they, on the surface, this seems like such a pseudo theory. It's one of those things that you
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could easily plug anything, any set of data into to prove it. And yet they predicted the 2007 collapse.
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And it makes a lot of sense on top of that. It's a great heuristic to use. So far, its predictions have
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been pretty bang on. And it helps explain so much of the frustration we see in the world. So if we're gonna try and
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jump ahead of history, this is a great tool to be using. If we're gonna try and plan for the future, the future that's
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actually going to happen, not the future that the guy selling you RRSPs says is going to happen.
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And that's the dynamic I'm going to be using to review this book, or sorry, this book, this TV series, which is a phenomenal,
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phenomenal series. Because the characters in it are Baby Boomers and Millennials. No Gen X present whatsoever.
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And it's absolutely fascinating how broken and narcissistic these Baby Boomers are.
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Here's a woman, married to a good man, that loves her. And she's just not happy. She's living in paradise. They
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have a beautiful home. They have great automobiles. They have an easy life. You know, their son is disabled.
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But he's coping extremely well with it. They have an enviable life for most people throughout history.
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And so what does she do? Does she try and create a constructive solution?
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No. She shits all over tradition. And cheats on her husband. Disrespects him. Treats him like garbage.
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And Walt becomes the badass. He goes through that transformation. There's even words on TV tropes for it.
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The bald head of evil, or the important haircut.
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Which is a reference to Star Trek The Next Generation.
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Stopped sucking at the same time that Will Riker grew a beard.
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So Walt goes from this meek, timid man to this badass alpha.
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Signified by the baldness and the excellent, excellent goatee.
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And Skyler, now instead of supporting him, turns against him because of the drug trade that she's benefiting from.
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Meanwhile, she's helping the guy she was cheating on him with cook the books.
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Not to try and help build him into a better man.
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And he is the classic, the classic baby boomer.
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And supposedly his friends stole his patent and they made a billion dollars for this company while he got kicked out.
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But more to the point, this is the narrative of the baby boomer thinking they have all the ideas back in the 60s.
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Their parents had handed them wealth and civilization and happiness on a golden platter.
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And the baby boomers completely screwed the whole thing up.
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So you have Walt becoming a high school teacher.
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Here's this man, an absolute genius, and he's stuck as a high school teacher.
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When you have this much education in chemistry, this much raw natural talent,
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And the series begins when he finally gets the kick in the ass he needs to go do something
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about improving himself and improving the world.
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But does he try and create a positive contribution?
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And I'm sure you guys all know my stance on legalization of drugs.
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But as things currently stand, meth is not sold or used responsibly.
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It's sold to make a blind, immoral profit, even if drugs be-a-be drugs are morally neutral.
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It's not that he's working out, for instance, to be really strong.
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He's working out to have really big muscles and impress everybody else.
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And he doesn't care how many people have to get crushed on his way there.
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Him and Skylar have the most disgustingly dysfunctional relationship I've ever seen.
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And it is a credit to the writers of the show that they do such a good job describing this.
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Here are these two people that have shared a life together.
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They have very opulent wealth compared to most people in most times.
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But their own need to satiate their ego caused them to destroy everything beautiful that they have.
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Well, Walt doesn't care about his family so much as he cares about having a family, if you see the difference.
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And then you get Jesse involved in this whole mix.
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With a couple of boomer parents that never really cared about him.
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As Captain Capitalism has pointed out, a lot of these breeders have kids for the sake of saying they have kids.
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Rather than actually wanting to raise a person.
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Despite the fact that he is a man with a lot of potential.
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He has no motivation to do anything with himself.
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But he's got a fair bit of intelligence with him.
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He managed to learn how to cook this meth up to the same standards as Walt.
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For a lot of millennials, it becomes getting hammered, playing video games 24-7, having no goals or life ambition.
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And while Walt teaches him a lot about the world, Walt does not have his best interests at heart.
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Walt manipulates Jesse to serve himself, even when it's not in Jesse's best interest.
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Walt is fundamentally selfish, but he's the only guiding influence that Jesse can find.
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But despite all of this, Jesse manages to find some catharsis, some hope.
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Even though Walt certainly doesn't give him any good advice about relationships.
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Jesse manages to find a warm household with his girlfriend and her kid.
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Something to give some meaning to his life beyond getting the top score in Halo.
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Another narcissistic, violent baby boomer that doesn't care about anybody but himself.
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The inability of Fring and Walt to come to an agreement in the last couple seasons is because they're both narcissistic baby boomers.
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They make far better friends and partners than they do enemies.
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But each of them has this knee-jerk desire to put the other one down.
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You can see this when the video cameras are installed in the cookhouse.
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And it's actually that camera system that really drives him to go kill Fring.
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He got kicked off the department for corruption.
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And ultimately he's just as screwed up as Walt is.
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That both he and Walt feel a need to achieve victory over the other person.
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And the element that's missing is Generation X in all of this.
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But he's screwed up the way that baby boomers always are.
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We got to touch and see and smell that society.
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And we are the wanderer generation that have seen our parents get divorced.
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And seen how most divorces end in misery for all parties.
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And ironically the generation that coined the term don't trust anyone over 30.
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And they're not going to care about anything after their deaths.
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Look at how the GI generation invested in their children.
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Versus how the baby boomers are investing in their children.
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Who don't have the same economic opportunities that they did.
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The millennials are accustomed to growing up in this shitty broken environment.
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When it's already fallen apart and it's what you're used to.
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You get a more natural sort of hope for the future.
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And yet to understand how everything went wrong.
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To understand that the BS you see in Disney movies.
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We're the ones that it's our, what we need to do.
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Rather than try and subscribe to this baby boomer mythos.
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To try and enter, you know, that corporate, you know, rat race world.
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To have the biggest cookie cutter house in a cookie cutter neighborhood.
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And we might seem cynical, but to explain it to the millennials.
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Because it's going to be the millennials that one way or another create the next society.
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I've seen some indications of a very nasty police state coming soon.
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So, we have, the Americans have their own Hitler youth now.
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And these kids, bright eyed and bushy tailed, are going to create a wonderful baby boomer dystopia.
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Then we've got the alt-right, the counter-culture, the counter-counter-culture movement.
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The social critics who are the, the opposite of the post-modernists.
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And if we wind up being successful, it'll be a pretty cool future.
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I can't, as much as I hate all the characters except Jesse, I can't get enough of a bloody thing.
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And that's sort of a little mini-review of a book I haven't finished reading, The Fourth Turning.
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Which, yes, I heartily recommend that you read that book.