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CHAPTER 1
"We've Got Rot"
Water, Pollution, Purification, and Transformation in Breaking Bad
Erin Bell
For a critically acclaimed series such as Breaking Bad, filming on location in Albuquerque, New Mexico, adds an air of authenticity that might not be achieved through the use of soundstage alone. Breaking Bad features a number of visual backdrops, many of which, like the Whites' ranch home and the Beneke Fabrications office, appear to be rather unremarkable. According to television critic David Segal, spaces like these are, "so bland they seem resistant to landmark status. The offices of Saul Goodman, Walter's sleazy lawyer, are in a strip mall that seems designed to be ignored." While the strip mall, the Whites' ranch home, and the various office spaces on the program are visually dull, the expanse of desert adjacent to Albuquerque is striking, if not sublime. Director and show creator Vince Gilligan's focus upon this vast landscape not only accentuates the cinematography of the series but also serves as a symbol of Walter White's life prior to his transformation into Heisenberg.
During the pilot episode of Breaking Bad, Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is depicted as being in a metaphorical desert — a "dry spell" — personally, professionally, financially, and intellectually and the desert in the outlying areas of New Mexico seems to mirror Walter's interior life. At home, sex with his wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) is lukewarm at best, and his work life is apparently a wasteland for his talents. Though Walter once contributed to a Nobel Prize-winning chemistry project and was rich with personal and professional successes, in the pilot episode, he is humbly stationed as a high school chemistry teacher — employment which offers little of the intellectual challenge his former studies provided and none of the glory or financial gain. The desert serves as an apt metaphor for Walter's intellectual and personal spheres, but it is also a key plot location throughout the program. Walt and Jesse's (Aaron Paul) first cook site occurs there, and later, Walter conceals his fortune in barrels buried in the dry earth. A number of key players in the program eventually meet their demise in the desert including Walt's brother-in-law and DEA special agent Hank Schrader (Dean Norris). Because the show often features the desert landscape as an important trope, conversely, water imagery becomes a vital symbol connected to the program's narrative arc. Interior scenes connected to the use of water demonstrate the themes of rebirth and transformation in the lives of characters as well as issues of pollution and contamination. This chapter discusses water's thematic importance within Breaking Bad and how the use of water in its interiors reflects the transformation and fluidity of the characters. The focus upon water also highlights how themes of cleanliness and contamination resonate throughout the series.
Water is a significant symbol in a number of cultural and religious contexts; the tension between the desert and oasis and between drought and flood have served as allegories for millennia. In Judeo-Christian tradition, water is depicted as simultaneously destructive, productive, and purifying. As God says to Noah, "I do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die." Later, Moses and the Israelites' trek through the desert serves as an allegorical message regarding how human suffering may end in freedom and exoneration. Water later arises as a significant symbol of life and rebirth as John the Baptist leads his followers to confess their sins, to be baptized in the Jordan River, and to be "born again." Beyond its use in the Judeo-Christian context, water is important in many other religious ceremonies. For Cherokee tribes in North America, "going to water" is a purification ritual that can take place daily as well as in specific rites. Water is also used in similar ceremonial rituals around the globe. British cultural anthropologist Victor Turner explores the use of water during such acts in his book The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, reporting that tribes such as the Ndembu in Zambia, Africa, use water as part of their rites of passage from one stage of life to the next. Turner describes the time between such passages as the liminal.
Gilligan's use of water imagery in Breaking Bad can be understood through the concept of liminality, which is defined as "relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process." Victor Turner interprets water-based rites of passage as a metaphorical crossing of a "threshold" as humans pass from one stage of their lives to the next. These movements across thresholds accompany every change of place, state, social positions, and age, Turner explains. "During the intervening 'liminal' period," he explains, "the characteristics of the ritual subject (the 'passenger') are ambiguous; he passes through a cultural realm that has few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state." One example of such a crossing is the passage from childhood to adulthood. Another common example of such a passage is the act of baptism, whereby a child or adult becomes a member of a church through the sacramental use of water as a symbolic blessing. Though none of the characters on Breaking Bad are depicted as particularly religious, the use of water in the series parallels the concepts of purification and rebirth; this is especially true of Skyler's self-immersion into the swimming pool in "Fifty-One" (5.4), a scene that will be discussed at length later in this chapter. Though Walter White refuses to repent from his sins on Breaking Bad, his transformation and journey to becoming Heisenberg are also suggestive of a symbolic rebirth and transformation. It is when Walter discovers that he is dying that he truly begins to live — he is resurrected, reborn, and rechristened Heisenberg.
"HAVE AN A-1 DAY!": FROM POLLUTION TO PURIFICATION
Several key moments in Walter White's transformation occur at the A1A Car Wash. Like any other establishment of this nature, the workers and machinery of A1A serve to remove the filth and debris from one's automobile, representing a ritual act of purification. (It is also ironic that Walter and Skyler eventually launder their "dirty" drug money through A1A.) Many scenes highlighting Walter's metamorphosis occur against the backdrop of the whirling waters of the car wash, a location which David Segal describes as "an ark built by a Noah gone mad." In "Pilot" (1.1), scenes showing Walter's work at the car wash are juxtaposed with those of his job at J.P. Wynne High School, highlighting how each position emasculates Walter in different ways. At A1A, Walter is humiliated when a student named Chad (Evan Bobrick) runs his Corvette (a symbol of American masculinity) through the car wash and Walter is forced onto his hands and knees to shine the car's tires. Chad adds to the insult by snapping a photo of Walter in this embarrassing position, ostensibly so he can forward it to other Wynne students and staff, humiliating his teacher even further.
The details of why Walter works at A1A are never really specified, but assumedly, it is because a meager teacher's income is not enough to support his family, hence the need for a second job which is beneath his qualifications. Walter's lack of financial provision is a theme throughout many of the first few episodes, further reinforcing his failure as provider for the family. This defeat is demonstrated through scenes that depict Skyler selling items online for extra money as well as when she scolds Walter for using a credit card without her permission. In the program's earliest episodes, Walter is characterized as powerless and unproductive at home as well as at each of his two jobs.
The embarrassment and indignities which occur at the car wash are significant to Walter's transformation as it is here that he finally begins to assert his independence, crossing over the threshold from meek and humble to assertive and strong. Walt loses consciousness after a coughing fit at A1A and is rushed to the hospital by ambulance. In the moments in the doctor's office as he receives his fatal diagnosis, Walter White is transformed. He learns that he is dying and thus, there is nothing more to lose. Later, when his boss Bogdan (Marius Stan), the owner of A1A, asks Walter to dry off cars during a shift, Walter refuses to demean himself any more, quitting the job on the spot. "Fuck you Bogdan! And your eyebrows!" This assertion of power is the first of many that the new Walter White will employ throughout his metamorphosis.
By the third season of Breaking Bad, Walter and Jesse's methamphetamine operation is not only up and running, but highly successful — so successful, in fact, that their lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) recommends buying a business to launder the drug money, thus highlighting another necessary course toward cleanliness and purification. In "Kafkaesque" (3.9), Saul invites Jesse to the Zen Nail Spa. "Don't you get it?" Saul asks. "It's the best money laundry a growing boy could ask for." Jesse, as usual, does not seem to "get it." By "Abiquiú" (3.11), however, both Walter and Skyler (who is now estranged from Walter) do see the inevitability of such a laundering scheme, though they do not agree with Saul's next recommendation for purchase: a laser tag franchise. Skyler says that buying such an operation simply "doesn't make any sense." Instead, Skyler offers her own suggestion: the A1A Car Wash. "It's a story people will believe, not laser tag," she says. "This is what we buy." Though Walt and Saul initially balk at Skyler's command, they both begrudgingly come around to the idea. Skyler's connection to the scheme signals a transformation in her own life. Up until this point, she has found Walter's business horrifying, and yet here she not only becomes complicit with the scheme but takes full control over it. Later in the episode, Skyler suggests that she should manage operations at the car wash, when they purchase it. "I'm in this," she says, revealing that she never actually filed her divorce papers because married couples cannot be compelled to testify against one another in a court of law.
Skyler's transformation continues as plans to purchase the car wash continue. She fully immerses herself in the planning and preparation for the possible purchase of A1A. In "Thirty-Eight Snub" (4.2), she performs surveillance on A1A, meticulously detailing the customers who visit the car wash and which services each car receives. She is shown making notes in her legal pad, so that when she approaches Bogdan with a proposal to buy the business, she is fully prepared with data and facts, including research on his revenue and expenses. Bogdan insults both Skyler and her price, making an obscene gesture and ridiculing Walter for "sending his woman" to conduct his business. Skyler, however, remains steadfast and determined. She has undergone her own conversion and is willing to resort to criminality to obtain what she wants. In "Open House" (4.3), Skyler continues her plan to buy the car wash even though Saul tells her that she "bombed." Skyler maintains that all Bogdan needs is a bit of "an attitude adjustment." Ironically, even though Walt did not initially wish to buy the car wash, Skyler needs only mention Bogdan's attempts to emasculate her husband in order for Walt to fully support the plan to purchase A1A.
Such scenes highlight Skyler's ongoing change. In the beginning of the series, Skyler places a premium on honesty and it is Walter's lies that lead (in part) to the disintegration of the Whites' marriage. By "Open House," however, Skyler has adjusted her moral barometer to justify deceit in order to get what she wants. Saul and Skyler trick Bogdan into selling the car wash with a con that even Walter would be proud of. A fake environmental audit on A1A is arranged, and a man with a headset presenting himself as an environmental inspector appears at Bogdan's business, claiming that faulty car wash equipment is responsible for contamination issues in the ground water nearby. According to this inspector figure, the pollution from Bogdan's waters will require him to overhaul his entire wastewater filtration system. The images in this montage slowly reveal that Skyler is actually feeding the inspector information through a Bluetooth headset in order to push Bogdan toward selling his supposedly bad investment, and in the end, Skyler wins. Though Walter thinks Skyler's scam has failed, Bogdan calls her late that night with an offer to sell A1A for $879,000. Skyler asserts herself, countering his offer with $800,000 and then hanging up the phone. Skyler's plan of deception succeeds, and ultimately Bogdan accepts her low offer. In the end, buying the A1A Car Wash is a symbolic gesture for both of the Whites. By taking the car wash from Bogdan, Walter is able to reclaim his masculinity lost during his time at the job. Skyler's role in the purchase highlights how she has renegotiated her moral barometer. Like Walter, she is willing to lie, to cheat, and even to break the law in order to protect her family.
"WE'VE GOT ROT": POLLUTION AND CLEANLINESS
While themes of pollution and contamination are key to Skyler's strategy to buy the car wash, these qualities inform her husband's work as well. Walter is a man obsessed with the purity of his product, but he also shows a keen eye for gauging the purity of other systems throughout the series. Such optics are demonstrated in brief scenes as well as in longer plot points. In "Caballo Sin Nombre" (3.2) Walter carefully fishes a bandage out of the pool, but two other episodes — "Over" (2.10) and "Fly" (3.10) — coalesce around themes of contamination and pollution in more complicated and drawn-out scenes. In addition to being set near water-related facilities (the pool and the industrial laundry complex, respectively) each episode demonstrates that even though Walter White attempts to control and clean up other messes, he cannot be cleansed from his own transgressions.
The thematic focus of "Over" (2.10) is upon issues of contamination and rot and demonstrates just how much Walter has transformed since Season One. The episode features two subplots that connect to water, transformation, and pollution. The opening shots focus in on the Whites' pool, which is littered with a variety of items. Workers outfitted in Hazmat suits are shown retrieving a pink teddy bear from the pool before the camera focuses in on two closed body bags in the driveway. The images are disconcerting, murky, and hard to decipher. Human remains, the debris in the pool, and the use of the Hazmat suits all gesture toward the grotesque and the motif of pollutants that make up much of this episode.
Later in "Over," an important scene of dialogue emerges during a poolside celebration for Walter's positive diagnosis — his cancer is in remission. Walter, Skyler, their friends and family are shown celebrating outdoors and the scene tightens in on Walter, Hank, and Walter Jr. (RJ Mitte). The three are sitting together and Hank is telling the story of Tortuga (Danny Trejo), the police informant, and his grisly demise in the desert. Similar to the party in "Pilot," Walt Jr. appears to be hanging on Hank's every word, affronting Walter's role as the family patriarch. Though Walter had passively accepted Hank's dominance over the discourse at the party in "Pilot" (1.1), allowing Hank to essentially hijack his party in order to celebrate his latest meth bust, here, Walter is no longer willing to passively listen to Hank brag about his heroic exploits. He turns attention away from Hank by pouring shots of tequila for himself, for Hank, and for Walter Jr. "What're you going for, Father of the Year?" Hank asks. The statement is ironic, as before Heisenberg, Walter White was a sort of "Father of the Year." Many early scenes depict Walter's tenderness as a father, but here, Walt is far from his former self. Walter Jr. looks at his uncle, seemingly for permission, before drinking the shot. Walt pours two more rounds of tequila for all three stating: "My son, my bottle, my house." Walt Jr. eventually reels from the alcohol and retches into the pool, contaminating what Walter has striven to keep so clean and pristine. The vomit from Walter's son fouls the blue waters of the swimming pool mirroring how Heisenberg and his blue meth have begun to defile the integrity of the White family home. The next day, Walter leaves a message on Skyler's voice mail apologizing for his monstrous behavior. "I'm not exactly sure who that was yesterday," says Walt, "but it wasn't me." Walter might not be sure of who it was, but the audience is already familiar with this antihero. Heisenberg, Walt's alter ego, has begun to taint the purity of his home life.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Interior Landscapes of Breaking Bad"
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