Breaking Bad came out in the late 2000s and this was a time when being "politically incorrect" was epic - and by politically incorrect I mean just punching down and being hateful. Slurs for disabled people were used without any meaningful pushback, and at least in my experience, kids were happily reciting lines from South Park and Family Guy at school and mocking kids from SpEd classes. These things still obviously happen today, but now there seems to be more criticism of when it happens and even the "anti pc" crowd will hesitantly shut up if called out.
Anyway, Walt Jr. has cerebral palsy, but unlike much of the media of the time, he isn't the butt of the joke (aside from that one scene in the store but the bully got his ass kicked) or made cynically by someone who doesn't care or know anything about the disability to get a cheap emotional response from audience. Obviously he doesn't have an identical life to someone who is fully able bodied, but overall he's just a kid with his own angst and goals who just happens to be different. Sometimes he needs assistance, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes his parents struggle to relate and help him (both for his disability and puberty in general) and that's just life, especially for a lower income family that doesn't have access to all the resources or free time to discuss problems.
I'm not surprised that they made :dean-malice: racist because he's a DEA agent, but rewatching it I'm surprised they didn't make Walt Jr. a caricature because most people wouldn't have bat an eye.
I remember wondering if the actor was playing a part or really had cerebral palsy but never took the time to look it up.
For whatever its faults Prestige TV at least treats its characters like characters and takes them very seriously, even if they ultimately serve as comic relief.
What makes Walt Jr so great is that he's one of the very few unambiguously, fundamentally good people in a pretty bleak and cynical setting. By the end when faced with the question of temptation he rejects it utterly and without any hesitation whatsoever.
It's crazy that Walt Jr basically invented GoFundMe for medical expenses.
I think online fundraisers were a thing before Breaking Bad, but I swear to god that after GoFundMe reality got rewritten and I can't find evidence of them ever existing.
Iirc other platforms were used for it like indiegogo or that even smaller Kickstarter clone. Or they'd just link Paypal on Facebook.
I've definitely seen yellow "donate" buttons on personal websites before, but every one of them was bespoke so once they stopped being maintained they disappeared.
It was a real strength of the show that even characters who were primarily comic relief (like Badger and Skinny Pete) had levels of depth and realism to them. If Walt jr was portrayed as anything other than an ordinary teenager with a physical disability, it would feel very incongruent with the rest of the series.
I owe this show a rewatch.
There's this one scene in BB where Badger and Skinny Pete are in a music store trying to buy gear for the fumigation meth lab, and Skinny starts playing this classical piece on a piano. It's subtle and over quick, but it showed what untreated addiction can strip away from a person
Have you seen El Camino? I always liked Skinny Pete, but his goodbye to Pinkman had me in tears. I feel like I definitely got lulled into a certain perception of his character and had it shattered.
They also get into really in-depth stoner discussions of Star Trek canon in one episode, shows they were just normal nerdy teenagers before the meth and poverty
I agree with this, but it makes the uber-edgy twin Mexican hitmen from season 2 all the more ridiculous. It’s like they are holdovers from when the show was supposed to be much more comedic, but the writers forgot to put in the punchline.
That's just Gilligan leaning hard into the wild west film tropes that BB is built on top of. Kind of comedic but the Salamanca cartel would definitely have Salamanca muscle. Gilligan specifically requested the actors try to move in tandem as much as possible, so they'll have the same gait and pace when on screen. The villainous skull-tip boots. The matching suits. The ominous soundtrack whenever they're on screen. The iron determination to kill their target. Nobody else in the show is anything like that.
Frankly, they were much worse in BCS since they had plot armor and used it to kill dozens of people by themselves to show how formidable they are to the point of parody.
they weren't even very good hitmen in breaking bad they pretty much failed to kill even one person they were sent after
Yeah but they killed a bunch of people en route so BB could show just how competent and tough Schrader was
they killed a bunch of random people who weren't armed or prepared.
Yeah that was pretty silly when the two of them + nacho wiped out an entire compound
The writers were like, What if the terminator was Mexican and there were two of them
That and the 6 degrees of separation plane crash right over Walter's house make season 2 very silly
I found it really funny when the ATC guy complained about new hires with no experience, motherfucker how do you get experience being an air traffic controller outside of the military
These new kids don’t know what they’re doing!
Proceeds to fail at his job catastrophically
Yeah that was a bit eye rolling, too much of a coincidence for a serious drama. If it was a sitcom or something that would be different, but there’s supposed to be dramatic weight to the guilt Walt feels for being indirectly responsible and it’s just a bit hard to take seriously. How could Walt have possibly known the Rube Goldberg machine he set off?
My hot take on that: Gilligan decided to start season 2 with an allusion to the house blowing up in a meth explosion but decided halfway through to make it about the plane crash instead.
I remember being a little surprised when Walt Jr. gave his parents attitude or otherwise acted like a bit of an asshole. I was used to characters with visible physical conditions being portrayed as paragons of virtue, as though their purpose was to portray their conditions in a purely positive light, apart from the reality of the human experience. Walt Jr.'s condition adds to the story, but he's still a complete character without it. He's a good person, but not a caricature of upright morality.
Pffft. Donald Trump is clearly just a script kiddie. Dumbass doxxed his grandma's house and claimed it was his own.
And I know that there are people whose lives fit the stereotype or caricature, and I've yet to really see them portrayed accurately or respectfully in the media outside of emotional documentaries. Of course, that struggle needs to be known as well, but I think Walt Jr. was a pretty good start especially for its time period
I am watching this for the first time and you’re spot on with how he isn’t defined his disability and not pigeonholed into just being the absolutely perfectly moral character.
i admit i haven't watched the show, but the inciting incident is Walter White getting cancer, right? if the show affirmed the idea that physical infirmity or needing help from others makes someone inherently lesser, i feel like that would severely undercut any moral ambiguity it has.
IIRC the inciting incident is Walter White getting cancer and treatment not being covered by insurance. Not so much needing help making him lesser as it is the nightmare that is the American healthcare system creating a drug kingpin. Been many years though, could be misremembering.
The whole point of Schwartz offering him to pay for it is to show you no, he is not forced into this by any external means. He does this because he's got weird hang ups about masculinity.
I know it can be tempting to paint it as a critique of the american healthcare, especially as a leftist, but the show makes it very clear it is not about that, almost to a point of breaking down the 4th wall to have Walter say it straight to the camera at the end.
While you're very right about Walt and Schwartz, there's no denying that the inciting incident and rising action of BB wouldn't work within an America with universal healthcare. Walt didn't want the handout from someone he has old, embittered feeling towards, sure. But if we lived in a sane society where everyone had access to free healthcare at the point of service Walt would've just gotten healthcare the normal way, because that's just what everyone would do. And he wouldn't be staring down massive medical debt. Financing his healthcare and avoiding that debt and financial hardship for his family was how he got started with cooking meth.
In other words, the show would've had to come up with a different premise to get to its destination. In this country there's a few ways that someone can get innocently bankrupted, and medical debt is probably #1. But again, I agree with you that the show isn't making a point of critiquing the american healthcare system. This is all inference.
If Breaking Bad was set somewhere else he'd still have his whole "I need to provide for my family in the event of my death" thing going on as an excuse to go out and start cooking meth, really. I mean you could just as well argue Breaking Bad is about how teachers are underpaid and in dire need of widowers pensions in that sense, it fits as well as the healthcare does, it just doesn't really come up in the series
I don't think that makes sense. I mean just imagine how much Walt Jr's healthcare must've costed them before we are even introduced to the characters. What if that was never a cost? With a proper healthcare system Walt dying wouldn't double punish his family by removing him as a provider as he incurs medical debts while he tries to treat his cancer.
The fact that he was a low earning school teacher didn't incite him to start making drugs. Not even the fact that he got cancer. The fact that he was facing debt from medical care is what set things off. Like I said, in a different country the premise of the show would have to change, because there would have to be some justification to get him to have his first taste in illicit activity.
When Walter does his calculations as to how much money he'll need to make, Walt Jr's healthcare doesn't even pop up. Either it's a non issue or Walter doesn't give a shit.
The fact that he was a low earning school teacher didn’t incite him to start making drugs. Not even the fact that he got cancer. The fact that he was facing debt from medical care is what set things off.
That was an excuse. By how he's portrayed, he'd have found another one eventually
Would he though? His whole "trying to provide for my family" thing is just cover in the end, he straight up admits that. He did the Meth thing cause he was good at it and he always felt like he'd been cheated out of reaping the rewards of being that good a chemist. I don't think there's really an equivalent here that'd land you at being a casanova or counting cards.
There is the additional bit where his old business partner who he seems to have had some degree of bad blood with in the past offers to cover the medical expenses, couched in a job offer to try to avoid offending Walter's pride. It sets up that he really, really didn't need to do all he did, and that he instead actively makes the conscious choice to live out some toxic power fantasy.
Well in the first few episodes a friend offers to cover his healthcare, but Walt makes the choice to become a Meth Kingpin instead, ruining his entire life and family on the way. So I don't think the show really endorses the lone wolf mentality ( but some of the fans do seem to ).
Sure, but it's still not that bad, IIRC? They were close enough for him to invite Walt to his birthday..
It's kind of a one way thing, Walt is the one carrying all the resentment toward them that would make it near impossible for him to accept their assistance.
