breaking bad essay

Series “Breaking Bad” Essay

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“Breaking Bad” is one of the best drama action series on television which introduces Walter White, a middle-class chemistry teacher who calls himself Heisenberg. Due to the fact that the episodes in the series vary in their dramatic effect and tension, the episodes’ culminations and endings are always unpredictable, and this aspect, along with the focus on the antagonist as the main character, influences the audience’s great interest in the series.

Although the series started as the typical television crime show, it developed its dramatic effect in several following episodes. In the first episode, Walter White is portrayed as an ordinary chemistry teacher, and the viewer does not expect that he can become a cool-headed killer and the greatest methamphetamine dealer at the West Coast and in some European countries (“Breaking Bad: Official Site”).

The motives for Walter’s crime activities are in the fact that he is diagnosed with lung cancer, and Walter knows that he is dying slowly (Stanley). As a result, Walter becomes ‘bad’ and chooses the easiest way to make money for his family while selling methamphetamine with his ex-student Jessie Pinkman.

The former student Jessie Pinkman is the supporting negative character in the show who reflects the true nature of Walter’s actions. Pinkman was a terrible student in high school, and his parents punished him because of the drug abuse. Thus, Walter took Jessie under his wing and taught him how to cook and sell methamphetamine to become richer (“Breaking Bad: Official Site”; Stanley).

It is possible to state that Walter had no intentions to kill, but circumstances forced him to act in such a way. However, the show was in progress, and it became clear that there were no boundaries for Walter. Walter’s wife Skyler was also affected by the husband’s negative behaviours (“Breaking Bad: Official Site”). There are moments in the series when Walter can make the audience angry because he goes too far to protect his methamphetamine business, for instance, from his brother-in-law’s intrusion because he works for the DEA.

Even though Walter White is the protagonist, the other vivid characters are Saul Goodman, the dirty lawyer with a good heart, and Gustavo Fring, the international fast food franchise owner and the largest methamphetamine dealer in the North America. With references to these characters, the series can demonstrate whom a person can or cannot trust.

The show is interesting because of the preserved dramatic effect and manipulation of the audience’s expectations. It is almost impossible to stop watching the episodes because of the desire to know the characters’ fate and outcomes at the end. Thus, the chemistry teacher destroyed his family life because he did not know where to draw the line. The series can be ranked ten on a scale of ten.

The Checklist for a Research Paper

The thesis is presented as the final sentence of the introductory paragraph, and the reader can refer to its main points as indicators of the essay’s direction.
Topic sentences and body paragraphs are clear and well developed to provide the supporting evidences from the show’s plot and to present the discussion of the evidences.
The thesis is completely supported with the necessary details and factual examples while referring to the show’s plot, examples from the episodes, and to the discussion of the episodes in The New York Times’ review.
I have used the appropriate number of sources to provide the examples from the series with references to the show’s official site and to cite the critical discussion of the series in The New York Times.
All the sources are properly cited according to the MLA format.
The conclusion effectively summarizes the main points and restates the thesis with presenting the personal opinion on the series.
The paper is proofread and revised.
The work cited page includes every source cited in the text in the correct format.
The paper is formatted according to the MLA Style requirements.

Works Cited

Breaking Bad: Official Site . 2013. Web.

Stanley, Alessandra. A Clear Ending to a Mysterious Beginning : The Final Episode of ‘Breaking Bad’ Leaves One Question Unanswered . 2013. Web.

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The Moral Universe of 'Breaking Bad'

On this show, actions have consequences.

Breaking Bad 's first season started with a man in despair. Working two degrading, unsatisfying jobs to support a pregnant wife and teenage son, protagonist Walter White's life didn't seem like it could get much worse. And then—like the punchline to the world's blackest joke—he was diagnosed with cancer.

In the years since that first episode, Breaking Bad 's remarkable four-season run has seen its main character undergo a transformation unrivalled by any series in television history. In interviews about the series, creator and showrunner Vince Gilligan has repeatedly stated that his goal for Breaking Bad is to "turn Mr. Chips into Scarface ." In the elaborate scheme that brought down rival Gus Fring in last season's finale, Walter White crossed a line that even Scarface refused to cross: he harmed a child. If Scarface was the old model for just how bad Walter White could get, it's time to set the bar even lower.

Last night's season-five premiere, "Live Free or Die," explores the immediate aftermath of the explosive attack that defeated Gus Fring and left a kingpin-sized hole in the southwestern meth trade. The promotional posters for season five of Breaking Bad show Walter on a folding-chair throne, surrounded by money, under the slogan "all hail the king." But there's no clear line of succession in the illegal drug business, and Gus didn't leave much of a kingdom behind. In "Live Free or Die," Walter and his partners in crime are concerned with a more immediate part of Gus' legacy: a laptop that may contain footage of the men working in the meth lab.

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At heart, Breaking Bad is a tragedy in the most classical sense, and "Live Free or Die" sees Walter White in the throes of his fatal flaw: hubris. Having dispatched his chief rival and—for the moment—cheated the cancer that life unjustly dealt him, Walter's sense of ego is so inflated that it borders on godlike (his "I forgive you" to Skyler, which closes the episode, has a particularly disturbing, unjustified piety). If Breaking Bad were a more cynical series, it might be content to let Walter revel in the glory of his revenge.

But Breaking Bad , more than any other drama currently on television, is set in a moral universe (a quality it shares with The Sopranos , the closest Breaking Bad has to an antecedent on television). There's always been a kind of fatalism to Breaking Bad , from the plane crash over the White household that Walter inadvertently caused by letting Jane die, to the drug deal that Walter chose, both literally and metaphorically, over the birth of his daughter. Breaking Bad operates by the rules of science; every action causes an equal and opposite reaction, and at this point in the series, Walter is a man of very extreme action.

In "Live Free or Die," the immorality of Walt, Jesse, and Mike's plan to destroy the laptop—which, in addition to destroying the evidence against them, will destroy dozens of other unrelated pieces of evidence—initially seems to go unpunished. But the fates that govern the Breaking Bad universe have an ironic punishment to deal out. The magnet that destroys the laptop also breaks a picture frame that belonged to Gus, revealing the numbers of a series of offshore bank accounts—a piece of evidence that could easily prove to be far more damning than anything the laptop might have contained.

It's not yet clear what the long-term consequences of the newfound evidence will be, but "Live Free or Die" also opens a tantalizing glimpse into Breaking Bad 's eventual future. The episode opens, jarringly, with a flash-forward to a nearly unrecognizable Walt's 52nd birthday, where he orders a solitary breakfast at a Denny's before entering the bathroom, where he trades a wad of money for a set of car keys. After exiting the diner, he opens the trunk of his new car to reveal a machine gun.

There's an inherent suspense to any flash-forward, which drops us into unfamiliar territory and asks us to puzzle out what might be happening. (Among the many dropped clues within last night's flash-forward, it's worth noting that the camera lingered on Walt popping a pill in the bathroom—a possible sign that his cancer has returned). But in Breaking Bad 's case, the flash-forward also serves a deeper, more important thematic purpose: It reminds us that the fate of Walter White—and, by extension, the rest of Breaking Bad —is already set in stone. Walter White is on a path that he can't escape; no matter what happens this season, and no matter how long it takes to get there, his fate will lead him to that parking lot, and to that machine gun. There's a reason that virtually every critic (including me) predicts that Breaking Bad will end with Walter not living free, but dying: It's what he's earned. And Breaking Bad lets no bad deed go unpunished for long.

About the Author

The Theology of Breaking Bad

Editor’s Note: Massive Spoilers. Read at your own risk.

Breaking Bad is one of the most ethically complicated dramas on television today. The series explores themes of sin, guilt, forgiveness, and damantion through the transformation of Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin. Calling the series’s thematic landscape a philosophy fails to fully appreciate its religious dimensions; in this essay, I will sketch a few tenets of what we might call the theology of Breaking Bad .

In the beginning, Walter could hardly be a more sympathetic character. He is passionate about his subject (if not about his frequently inattentive students). But one day, he receives a diagnosis of advanced lung cancer that forces him to confront his mortality. With a disabled son and pregnant wife, Walter worries that his death will leave his family impoverished. As he runs the numbers, he realizes that to keep his family comfortable after his death, he would need to make more than a million dollars in just a few months. When he sees a drug bust on television, Walter realizes his best option to make fast cash is to put his chemical expertise to use manufacturing methamphetamine.

Over the course of five seasons, Walter descends deeper and deeper into evil, becoming the ultimate anti-hero. So how does one go from a common chemistry teacher to a murderous drug lord? Or as series creator Vince Gilligan puts it, “What if it was essentially me— in other words—a guy who has never broken a law, barely littered or jaywalked, who has never broken the law in any serious way suddenly finding himself being a meth cook, doing something reprehensible?” Gilligan’s answer takes three primary forms: Walter’s evil deeds are motivated by pride, rationalized with good intentions, and lead him slowly but surely into total depravity.

Ultimately, Walter’s descent is driven by the most formidable and dangerous of sins: pride. His wealthy friends offer to cover the cost of his cancer treatment, in part because they owe him a great intellectual debt, but Walter refuses to go “begging for [their] charity.” He is offended by the very idea of relying on others and spurns the offer.

In Mere Christianity , C.S. Lewis calls pride “The Great Sin” for it “has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began… it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice.” We see in Walter’s case that it is his pride—an unwillingness to accept normal treatment, a refusal to be a charity case even when faced with his own impending death—that starts him on the path toward manufacturing meth. Pride is the catalyst that leads to all of Walter’s other sins.

Of course, Walter would argue that his motivation is actually noble: he rationalizes his behavior by appealing to the need to provide for his family. Here we get one of the most accurate pictures of middle class life on television today. While Walter and his wife Skylar have more than enough—a home, two cars, a pool out back—they still seem to be struggling to make ends meet. Skylar once worked as an accountant but quit after her boss made sexual advances toward her. Left with a single income, their family faces financial insecurity. And there are more expenses on the horizon: between college for the kids, medical care for his disabled son, and leaving enough for his unborn daughter, Walter realizes he would need another two decades to provide for his family on an honest income. Facing mere months to make up the difference, he wonders how he can do right by his family. And this is how he begins to do wrong.

Philosopher Kierkegaard explains why it is that good intentions actually make the situation worse:

When a person turns his back on someone and walks away, it is easy to see which way he is going. That is that! But when a person finds a way of turning his face towards him who he is walking away from, and in so doing walks backwards while appearing to greet the person, giving assurances again and again that he is coming, or incessantly saying “Here I am”—though he gets farther and farther away by walking backwards— then it is not so easy to become aware. And so it is with the one who, rich in good intentions and quick to promise, retreats backwards farther and farther from the good.

In Walter’s case, we see that each step— taken in some measure of blindness— leads him closer and closer to perdition. Each step can be rationalized and justified out of an appeal to the superior end he is trying to accomplish.

Whatever his intentions, the evil of Walter’s conduct is undeniable. He uses his extensive training in chemistry to produce methamphetamine, a dangerous drug that destroys the lives of its users. Of all the shows engaging the question of substance abuse today, Breaking Bad is perhaps the most honest in its depiction of addiction’s tragic destructiveness. Walter tries to avoid his culpability in fueling his customers’ addictions, realizing they would get the meth from somewhere anyway. His partnership with drug user and former student Jesse Pinkman spares him from direct contact with his “victims.”

It takes more pressure for Walter to commit personal transgressions. His first act of deliberate violence, killing a drug dealer inside his mobile RV meth lab, is hastily performed in self-defense. We consider self-defense a tragic, if reasonable, excuse for killing. He then hesitates to kill the second drug dealer, Krazy 8, sympathetically giving him a sandwich and beer as he tries to muster up the courage to finish the job. Only when he realizes that Krazy 8 will certainly murder him if he get free does Walter carry out the execution. Even then, the improvised manner of the killing suggests a retreat from cold blooded agression to a more plausible act of self-defense. But this, too, is a small step backward—going from hasty self-defense to calculated self- defense—permitting Walter to become increasingly desensitized to his own sin.

The turning point comes in Season 2, when Walter stands by and allows Jane, Jesse’s goodhearted but troubled girlfriend, to choke to death on her own vomit so that Jesse will remain his partner. Again, Walter can rationalize his action: this is for Jesse’s own good, to save him from further addiction. But this is a thin veneer over his real motivation of keeping his partner around so that he can continue profiting in the meth business.

By the end of Season 3, Walter is asking Jesse to kill a peer in cold blood to save his own skin, as a pre-emptive strike. And by the end of Season 4, Walter recruits an elderly suicide bomber to take out his chief rival, Gus Fring, and ensure his own continued safety. And that’s not the worst of it. To manipulate Jesse, Walter poisons someone close to him and accuses Gus of the crime. We finally learn the extent of Walter’s capacity for betrayal, lies, manipulation, and callous indifference.

Four seasons ago, no one would have expected good old high school teacher Walter White to kill a man in cold blood or to poison a child—probably because the Walter White at the beginning of the story would have immediately refused and denounced such behavior. But his willingness at the beginning to engage in a passive sort of evil (feeding the destructive addiction of others) paves the way for killing in self-defense, committing pre-emptive strikes, and threatening the lives of children to accomplish his ends. The lesson here is that one doesn’t simply Break Bad in an instant; it’s a long process of moral erosion.

In one episode, Walter asks Jesse why they kept cooking meth, even after they had made more money than they could possibly need. He attributes it to simple inertia—the tendency of matter to continue in a state of motion. What Walter encountered was not simply financial inertia, but moral inertia. Once he has thrown out the line between good and evil by indulging pride and behaving inhumanly, it takes a great deal of will-power to stop at killing. Each level of indifference to the suffering of others permits their further dehumanization to the point of becoming mere tools to achieve Walter’s ends. Because each step is made facing backward—with good intentions—it’s difficult to realize when we’ve transgressed inviolable ethical boundaries and become truly evil.

Chuck Klosterman made a good case in his Grantland article that Breaking Bad is unique because Walter White’s sins are “not the product of his era or his upbringing or his social environment. It’s a product of his own consciousness. He changed himself. At some point, he decided to become bad, and that’s what matters.” Yet the most important feature of Walter’s transformation is not merely the fact that he chose it, but that he continued to choose evil each step along the way. In terms of his ultimate destination, the earlier decisions were just as harmful as the later ones. As Jackson Cuidon put it, “Walt’s pride at a dinner table is ultimately as important to the villain he becomes as his murder, his lying as corruptive as his violence.”

It’s important here to note that Breaking Bad is not a story of a good person gone wrong; we see nothing in Walter’s character in the first few episodes to suggest that he is an exemplar of virtue. Rather, it’s that finally the opportunity has really opened up for evil, and he chooses to take it. In a Rolling Stone interview, Gilligan explains, Walter’s cancer “means that he is now awake, and this awakening from sleepwalking through the first five decades of his life, this sudden lack of constraint or inhibition, allows him to be the person that he truly is. Unfortunately, the person that he truly is most definitely not all good.” The sinful nature simply lay dormant until being awakened by circumstance.

In Mere Christianity , C.S. Lewis offers an illuminating metaphor:

“If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am.”

Unfortunately, rats rarely stay in a single cellar, but usually spread throughout entire neighborhoods. One infestation permitted to linger affects everyone nearby. Thus, Walter’s sin has tragic consequences for everyone around him. The clearest illustration of this is after Walter lets Jane die.

Jane’s distraught father, an air traffic controller, misdirects two planes. The planes collide directly above Walter’s house, and bodies rain over his entire neighborhood. It’s a clever, if rather blunt, exploration of how Walter’s sin unleashes havoc all around him. Sin is not without serious consequences.

After the crash, Walter finds the plastic eyeball of a teddy bear that fell into his pool and keeps it in his pocket. Like one of those small trinkets of trash that you forget to throw away, the eye continues to haunt him—peeking out from under the bed at him or peering upward at his wife from the dresser drawer. The eye serves as a regular reminder not only of Walt’s transgressions, but also of the devastating consequences that he will never escape.

Gilligan explained during another interview, “If there’s a larger lesson to Breaking Bad, it’s that actions have consequences.” During lunch one day in his trailer, Gilligan said, “If religion is a reaction of man, and nothing more, it seems to me that it represents a human desire for wrongdoers to be punished… I want to believe there’s a heaven. But I can’t not believe there’s a hell.”

Yet surprisingly, we don’t want Walter to burn in hell. The most incredible thing about the entire story is not simply Walter’s tragic decline, but the capacity of Bryan Cranston, as an actor, to make Walter White still loveable in some sad way. While we recognize the depths of evil to which Walter has sunk, we cannot fully hate him. We sympathize with his motivations; we appreciate how logical each step along the way has been. We hope—as that final shot closes in on the lily of the valley plant in his backyard—that maybe, maybe it really wasn’t Walter who poisoned the child.

In this way, Cranston has provided a plausible example of that threadbare Christian saying, “Hate the sin, but love the sinner.” Even if we hope that he faces some level of justice, we want Walter to make it through okay. We cannot completely loathe him even when his actions are utterly despicable. I worry, given Gilligan’s predilection for justice, that there may be no redemption for Walter.

This, I think, is where the Christian narrative is most helpful: while there is forgiveness, it is hard earned. God doesn’t simply want to wash away the sin—nor would it be consistent with his justice to pretend that the evil has not been committed. Instead, God himself takes on human flesh to offer us a model of true goodness and to save us from sin by his death on the cross. He doesn’t want to wipe us clean on the outside, but to transform our broken hearts from the inside out. Jesus stops our moral inertia and can push us in the opposite direction.

Breaking Bad offers one of the richest insights into human nature on television today. Gilligan slyly signals his overarching theme when Walter stands before his class and tells his students, “Chemistry is… well, technically it’s the study of matter, but I prefer to see it as the study of change.” And so, too, Breaking Bad is the study of change—of a change from moral indifference to horrendous evil. It paints a picture of the development of sin in a way unparalleled in today’s television story-telling. And it makes us pause to ask important ethical questions:

• Must sin have consequences?

• Will there be justice in this life?

• How can we resist negative moral inertia?

• How do we avoid breaking bad ourselves?

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Our Favorite Lessons on Screenwriting from 'Breaking Bad'

Breaking bad left an indelible mark on television forever. it was exciting, emotional, and dangerous. but what did we learn .

What is a Deuteragonist? (Definition and Examples)

When Walter White stepped out in his whitey tighties he became part of the cultural lexicon. He and meth became household names as we watched him cook his way into oblivion. But the real takeaway from Breaking Bad was the excellent writing. It had an interesting structure, unexpected twists , and lots of well-developed characters .

Today, we're going to go over the writing lessons in Breaking Bad . We'll go through ten of the biggest ones, watch some clips from Breaking Bad , and relive our best days in the desert.

Come with me if you want to cook meth.

I meant...learn to write.

What writing lessons can we learn from Breaking Bad?

Watching a great television show can be intimidating. When the writing is *THAT* good, it can be daunting to start your own screenplay or to learn how to write a tv pilot . But even Breaking Bad was only an idea one. A joke kicked around by Vince Gilligan when he was out of work. It was a spark and he wrote the fire. So, when you get down or feel like you can't make anything this good, finish a first draft. Rewrite . Then, see where it takes you.

And follow these lessons.

Hook them right away

The opening of Breaking Bad might be the best of any TV show ever. It grabs you right away. You HAVE TO know how this guy got in the desert with his pants flying in the air. That doesn't mean you should start your pilot with a flash-forward. It just means you should be creative when introducing your characters and world. Make some noise and give us a scene that shakes us up.

Allow your characters to change

One of the things that drew Bryan Cranston to the show is that he was used to being in projects where characters stayed the same. The ability to not only arc Walter, but to change him into Heisenberg, was unique and special. when you're writing, set your characters up to be different people. Let yourself take that complicated leap and your actors and viewers will thank you.

Don't shy away from backstory

One of the biggest breakthroughs they had in the writer's room of Breaking Bad was when Walt refused to take the money from his rich friends. It was a moment where Walt let his own ego get in the way. And a moment that drew his continuation of the creation of meth and his personality. When you're crafting what happens in your season, don't be afraid to visit the character's past. Think outside the box. What decisions in the past or present can affect the future?

Role reversals

When we meet Walt, he's a good guy but actually a dark criminal. When we meet Jesse he's a criminal but he desperately wants to be Walt. These role reversals were key to making that show tick. Who can we meet that has a secret inside? How can we switch the expected tropes or norms to create something that much more engaging?

You don't have to like them

One of the WORST pieces of advice to arise in the current screenwriting climate is the idea of "likable" characters. People don't have to be likable, but they do have to be interesting. Walt becomes a real piece of shit by the end of the series. And, if you think about it, even his "I am the one who knocks" speech is sort of an abusive jab at Skylar. He's cooking meth and ruining people's lives. But he's interesting. Always be interesting. And don't worry about if the character is likable.

Writing is structure

If you read No Film School regularly, then you know I am obsessed with screenplay structure . Breaking Bad writes in five acts. And they outline using a corkboard and notecards. They make sure every beat services plot and story . So plan each of your works out meticulously.

Great scenes need to fit a great story

We all know we are supposed to "kill our darlings," but do we actually do it? Sure, you might have a great scene written, but if it doesn't carry the story, and you can't repurpose it, then it might be time to leave it on the cutting room floor. This can be hard because nothing is scarier than the blank page, but you owe it to yourself to rely on your creativity. That means cuts.

Question good and bad ideas

On Breaking Bad , the writers constantly asked: "Where's THIS CHARACTER's head at?" You can learn a lot by getting in the headspace of everyone in the scene. Actions need to be motivated, so if you take a minute to walk in someone's shoes, you can determine actions, reactions, and next moves. This will keep your work true to the character and true to the story.

Smart is good

Tell me if this has happened to you: you write a bad guy and they kind of seem dumb, because, at the end of the day, your good guy has to thwart that bad guy. Well, Gus Fring is super smart. and when his face melts off, we love it. Because Walt is also a smart guy, and outsmarting Gus makes us understand just how smart Walt is at the end of the day. Don't make your characters dumb or easily surmountable. Challenge yourself to write smart characters that get outsmarted by our characters. It's hard, but it will be worth it.

Look at your tools and options, then make use of them

"Write what you know" is kind of dumb. You should write what you want to explore because once you enter the world you need to steep yourself in it. But there is a value in doing a self-check. What do you know about? I like to use our Le Menu for ourselves. Learn about what you have in your life and use it to write your story.

BONUS LESSON: Love "having written"

Writing is hard! So take joy in any pages or paragraphs that push this story forward. Reward yourself with a cookie or a box of cookies. Just find a way to love the process and to trust the process. Your story is a journey. Love where it takes you, and feel free to complain about the turns in the comments. Find your happiness and chase it.

What's next? Learn writing lessons from Game of Thrones !

We're living in the Golden Age of television. There's been an embarrassment of riches of shows, and all of them come with their own lessons. We recently ran an entire series on how to write a tv pilot and a lot of the reactions to that article wants us to go over some of the greatest tv series of all time. We touched on The Office last week, and today we want to highlight ten writing lessons you can get from Game of Thrones.

So click the link to learn more!

Neon Treats Potential Longlegs Victims to Free Screening

If you were born on the 14th of any month enjoy a free screening of longlegs ..

Want to see one of the buzziest horror movies of the summer for free? Well, if your birthday happens to land on the 14th of any month of the year, you can go see Longlegs for free thanks to a collaboration from Neon and Atom Tickets.

The promotion, cleverly available today, August 1 through Sunday, August 4 (get it?) is another clever marketing ploy amongst a radically fun and terrifying marketing strategy from Neon. Considering this is Neon's second biggest film ever after Academy Award Winning Parasite (currently at $70 million globally) they can probably spare a couple bucks. It's also a smart, spooky way to give more people a chance to watch Longlegs for the first, second, or fourteenth time.

For those unfamiliar ( mild spoilers ) part of Longleg's (Nic Cage) M.O. is targeting families with nine-year-old daughters whose birthdays fall on the 14th of any given month. Considering they could be on Longlegs radar already, this will make the screening especially scary for them, right??

I'm a little worried this is a plan from "The Man Downstairs", so be careful out there, moviegoers...

The Significance of 14

Longlegs promotion

The cryptic nature of Longleg's sadistic killing spree leaves a lot to interpretation by the time the credits roll, but one of the more popular connections to the number fourteen is the bible verse from Revelations 13:1 (14!!)

The verse is:

"And I saw a beast rise out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his head the name of blasphemy. "

Whether the best at hand is Longlegs or Satan themself—or commonly theorized to be three beasts connecting the inverted triangle to a blasphemous inversion of the holy trinity analogous to our big three villains behind the scenes of Longlegs— is up for interpretation. Considering Longlegs clear inspiration from Twin Peaks and touching on more the universal nature of evil versus a motivated killer like Silence of the Lambs , who knows for sure other than writer-director Oz Perkins himself.

Either way, here's hoping for the Longlegs singalong re-release next (cough, cough, Neon marketing team).

"Fire Fire Fire, Hiss" - A Song from 'Longlegs'

If you were born on the unholy date of 14, enjoy the screening! You can get tickets here .

Buy new: $136.74

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Breaking Bad: Critical Essays on the Contexts, Politics, Style, and Reception of the Television Series

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Breaking Bad: Critical Essays on the Contexts, Politics, Style, and Reception of the Television Series Hardcover – November 21, 2013

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Print length 232 pages
Language English
Publisher Lexington Books
Publication date November 21, 2013
Dimensions 6.32 x 0.89 x 9.19 inches
ISBN-10 0739179241
ISBN-13 978-0739179246
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Publisher ‏ : ‎ Lexington Books (November 21, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 232 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0739179241
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0739179246
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.04 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.32 x 0.89 x 9.19 inches
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David pierson.

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Ensley F. Guffey

Ensley F. Guffey has at one time or another been a chef, waiter, bartender, bouncer, car rental agent, cardiac model, restaurant manager, gas station attendant, electronic gambling associate, and ditch-digger third class. In recent years he has become an academic late bloomer, and in a burst of energy has completed his AA, BA, an MA in History, and an MLIS. He is currently undergoing treatment for allergic reactions to the words “class,” “coursework,” and “higher education.”

Throughout his adventures, in spite (or because) of bad livers, broken hearts, and other ailments common to the modern world, Ensley has managed to marry well, and to help raise one of the great American mutts, and three cats of indeterminate, though likely royal, lineage. He has also always been a reader, writer, and TV and film watcher par-excellence. He has presented papers at regional, national, and international academic conferences on topics ranging from the American industrialist Samuel Colt to the television show Breaking Bad, and he has published peer-reviewed scholarly essays on Babylon 5, Breaking Bad, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Farscape, and Marvel's the Avengers. With his wife, K. Dale Koontz, Ensley is co-author of Wanna Cook? The Complete, Unofficial Companion to Breaking Bad, and A Dream Given Form: An Unofficial Guide to the Universe of Babylon 5, both of which are available right here on Amazon!

Since 2020, Ensley has been the tribal archivist for the Catawba Indian Nation, working out of the Catawba Nation Archives in the Catawba Cultural Center on the Old Reservation outside of Rock Hill, South Carolina. There he cares for a multi-media collection including everything from documents to pottery to projectile points to traditional regalia to audio and video on a variety of formats. He can generally be found in his basement lair in the archives, where it is always a civilized 65 degrees Fahrenheit and 40% relative humidity – as it should be.

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Home / Essay Samples / Entertainment / TV / Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad Essay Examples

The theme of ambition in breaking bad and shakespeare’s macbeth.

A person is not truly ambitious unless they are willing to make sacrifices in the name of his ambition. Even though sometimes it is not worth it but the greatest achievements of men were either through ambition or accidents. Ambition is like the dangling carrot...

Representation of Masculinity in Breaking Bad

Power is a recurring theme and central to the crisis of masculinity seen in the narrative of Breaking Bad. “the criminal drug culture in Breaking Bad is coded as hyper-masculine with an emphasis on power, dominance and aggression” (Pierson 2013:25) Gus is an important character...

Breaking Bad Sequence and Characters

A drama series designed by Vince Gillian and published on the AMC channel, Breakin bad was released on January 20, 2008. Directors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg proved successful in the director's seat in the lead role of Emmy's home directory has won 4 Times...

The Goal is Money: Breaking Bad

In Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad, the main character Walter White was placed on an impeccable journey through the last several years of his life. Walter’s character had developed remarkably, going from a very average high school chemistry teacher to New Mexico’s top methamphetamine cook. Throughout...

Breaking Bad, Spin Off 'The Road'

One of the best series of world television returns, via Netflix, with 'The Road', a story that begins where the original ends, but without the leading weight of Bryan Cranston. Films as epilogues of hit series seem to be the new reef opened by the...

Breaking Bad as a Media Product

Netflix is a subscription-based online media streaming service provider that offers movies, TV series, and shows to over 139 million subscribers worldwide in January 2019. It was founded in 1997 by Marc Randolph and current CEO Reed Hastings, who came up with the idea for...

Breaking Bad Show: Focused on the Actual Events

Breaking Bad is a TV show that has been made in Albuquerque New Mexico which focuses on the life of Walter White who is a school science teacher who is trying to make ends meet. Being diagnosed with cancer he decides to go against the...

Breaking Bad: Nature of Sin and Its Consequences

“Chemistry is… well, technically it’s the study of matter, but I prefer to see it as the study of change.” So says Walter Hartwell White, played by Bryan Cranston, to a classroom of bored high school chemistry students, kicking off Vince Gilligan’s famed television series...

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