Breaking Bad: What was Walter's final lesson?

Breaking bad ended a week ago, so I decided to write an analysis of this meaningful series, now that is still fresh in my mind.



First of all, I have to say that Breaking Bad it's the best television series that I have ever watched in terms of quality and pacing. By that I mean that it has no downfalls, there are no low seasons, it's impossible to find a boring episode, impossible to detect a bad or useless character, this series is an achievement of storytelling and dramatic pacing. It's a rare phenomenon to find a series in which everything just fits perfectly at the perfect moment in an over all time-lapse of 5 seasons. There is no other series for me that has done this, not even The Sopranos were able to pull this off. (the first part of the six season was definitively a downer.)
In Breaking Bad nothing like this ever happened, all that was written had a purpose and all the pieces fell at the right moment.
But leaving all of those factors behind, let's analyze Breaking Bad like the great modern literary work that it is. Let's analyze this series as people analyze The Great Gatsby or Crime and Punishment. Breaking Bad deserves this.
And of course, we have to ask ourselves, what is the main theme of Breaking Bad? What was its lesson? What did this show taught us?

Crime is bad, actions have consequences, crime is addictive, power corrupts people, crime can destroy your family.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought of them too, but after re-watching the pilot episode I realized none of these themes are the crucial message this story wanted to transmit.
Of course, the themes I mentioned above are present throughout the whole series, but they are just the consequences of the real deal.
In my opinion, the central theme of Breaking Bad is: The terrible damage that a life of unfulfillment can do.
First, let me start with the fact that Walter was a genius. Brilliant Mind type of genius or as Hank puts it "A freaking brainiac". A man who was destined to be the leader of an important scientific revolution or the head of a giant technological company. But, that never happened. He was an ambitious genius who never had a chance to shine. Betrayed by his friends and blinded by conformity, he threw away a life full of potential to become the man we meet at the first episode.

This theme of numbness that we see in the pilot episode it's so important because that's exactly what happens to many people. A lot of us are just blinded with conformity and carried away by time that when we realize, half of our life has passed and we haven't accomplish anything that we desired when we were younger. The world and the passing of time just made us numb, and now you just have to coupe with this life you have right now, which is also the rest of it.
At the beginning of the series, Walt (our genius) was a prisoner of this numbness in which many of us are, but when he got his cancer diagnosis everything changed for him.
Receiving his cancer diagnosis (which lead him becoming a criminal) was the moment in which the real Walt, that ambitious mastermind, awoke from this numbness. You can clearly see this in the Pilot episode.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="437"] "I am awake"[/caption]

The cancer diagnosis was just the perfect justification to turn his life around and escape this horrible and conformist present he now lived in.
Walter never (and when I say never it's NEVER) needed to cook crystal meth to begin with.
He had his pals (or not so pals) of Gray Matter to back up his treatment, but he decided to reject them. Partly because of pride but also because that option wouldn't help him escape this horrible unfulfilled life he now lived in.
Initially, cooking meth was just a "badass" way to prove to himself that he was able to handle this situation. When he got more involved in the drug underworld of Alburquerque as Heisenberg, he realized that he was a desired and respected entity there. Finally someone recognized his abilities and the criminal world was the place where he received that absent fulfillment. The criminal world was the perfect place to build his empire.
But of course, this was the worst possible way in which someone could "awoke". This awakening had brutal and irredeemable consequences for himself, his family and a lot of other people by the end of the series.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="445"] He was Ozymandias king of kings. Now nothing besides remains.[/caption]

But I believe this was the great lesson that Heisenberg had to taught us at the end. This story is not just about an unfulfilled genius. The overall message of this story could apply to any other human being:
Wake up, take control of your life right now, do what you want to do, find fulfillment, before it's too late, before you're old and trapped in a life style in which you can't escape, in which escaping means to hurt someone else, before you have to do what Walter did, before the last two options that you have left are: living whatever is left of this unfulfilled life or breaking bad.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="384"] Learn from this man, cause this man is a story.[/caption]

Thanks for reading.

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Monster's University: The Hard work vs Talent Paradigm

Do you remember when you were a child and your parents use to read to you different types of tales every time you were about to go to sleep?  I don't. But anyway, you know which stories I'm referring to, you know these types of tales and you know that there's always an underlying lesson that you must have acquired by the end of the story. Usually , it's a lesson that you've already acquired or is something so obvious or dorky that you completely forget about it within few minutes. Classic Disney movies work the same way, hell, even the most popular and classical Disney movies are based upon these stories. Except Pixar movies, those are different. Pixar movies tend to explore themes that we don't ordinary see in kids movies and some of these themes and lessons are actually quite complex than just the classics : "The true beauty is inside", "True love conquers everything", "You're the only one holding you back", etc. Take the revolution and oppression theme that revolves around "A Bug's Life":



The middle-aged crisis and the family issues that Mr.Incredible has to endure and how these things put his family in danger, the dilemma that Woody has to face while choosing a momentary period of happiness with Andy or an eternity of fame in a museum but alone.

The conflicts that these characters face are quite complex but at the end of the day, they always learn the lesson that we expect them to learn, they always make the choices that we expect them to may. Except in this final release: Monster's University.



The overall theme that Monster's University presents us is the classic "Talent vs Hard-work" paradigm; Mike Wazowski representing the notion of hard work and determination and  Sulley (and all of the other successful monsters) the notion of talent and natural ability. You may think that this is nothing new, we have been presented with this same paradigm in a lot of different movies and what is the lesson that they always teach us? It doesn't matter if you don't have talent, if you keep on trying, you will succeed. If you show determination and hard work you can keep up with the ones with natural talent and even overtake them. Hard work is always going to defeat talent. That's the lesson that we have learned but now here it comes Monster's University and this movie doesn't come to retell this lesson, what it does is actually the opposite: this movie challenges and question this idea that we thought we have learned and in the process that teach us the true hard lesson about the "Talent vs Hard work" paradigm.

What Monster's University and Mike Wazowski's quest of becoming a "scarer" are trying to tell us is that, this paradigm is not always true, hard work doesn't always manifests in success and in some disciplines, a degree of natural talent is required and cannot be acquired through hard work.

You can try, you can be determined but hard work is not always going to defeat natural talent. Just because you desire a dream so much and you try everything to reach it, that doesn't mean that it's going to eventually come true. But when you fail you need to know that this wasn't your fault. With the other lesson, failing is such a painful process because everything is up to you, success is there and you can take it, if you couldn't take it that means that you didn't tried hard enough and your failure is completely your fault. In real life this is not true, Mike had the knowledge and determination to become the greatest scarer of them all but he lacked the essential natural talent. After learning this hard lesson, Mike modified his dream based on the realities he has faced and that's exactly what we do in real life, that is the true lesson that we have to learn about this paradigm: Sometimes we have to just accept failure, move on and try something else, if you've tried really hard there's no shame in that.

So as you can see this is not the typical lesson that you get from your typical fairy tales or your typical Disney movie, this is a hard lesson to learn but an important one and Monster's University does an excellent job in teaching it.

Thanks for reading :)

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