David Pierson - Breaking Bad

As Jesse begins to recover from his downward spiral, his psychological state is again reflected in his efforts to recover his home from the forces he has invited in. The brilliant episode “Problem Dog” (08/28/11) opens with Jesse having begun to clean his house, and later in the same episode Jesse is seen carefully repainting the walls of his living-room. In a nice bit of symbolism, the graffiti still shows through the first coat of paint, a reminder that this passage too is now an indelible part of the history of this place. By literally getting his house in order Jesse is also restoring order within himself and in his life. In “Bug” (09/11/11) the climax of this process occurs with a violent confrontation in Jesse’s living-room in which he brutally beats Walt and tells him to leave his house and never come back again. With this demand, Jesse’s house has once again become a place where he controls access and which is clearly separated from the outside world. By the end of season four and into season five, Jesse has once again found his place, and for the first time since season one, his home has returned to a traditional state of being a place of respite and care. At least for now, Jesse has found his place in his home, and while none of his experiences there can be erased from history and memory, all are important parts of this place, and of Jesse’s peace within it.

Walter White’s home begins the series as a place shared with his family: his wife, Skyler; teenaged son, Walter Jr. and—by the end of season two—infant daughter Holly. The White house of season one presents a very traditional, middle-class, white depiction of home and of family. In the episode “Full Measure” (06/13/10), the viewer learns that the house at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane is the only home the White family has ever had, and two very effective scenes encapsulate the transformation of the place from empty house to family home. In the cold open to the episode, set some sixteen years prior to the main storyline, the camera reveals an empty space of unfurnished rooms that is so visually different from the place the audience has become used to seeing that it is only belatedly recognized as the White’s future home. Later, in the opening to the fourth act, the same camera sequence is repeated exactly, revealing in this instance the more familiar, thoroughly lived-in, White home of the series’ present. Superimposed on the empty floors and walls of the house seen earlier are all of the furnishings, decorations, and history both diegetic and beyond which make the house a home, and a familiar place to the viewer. The material artifacts of the family’s life in this place are symbolic for the meaning they have created in this place. This sense of deep significance taps into the audience’s own experience of home and place, where according to Gaston Bachelard (1964) “our house is our corner of the world… it is our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word” (4). However, while the White home is very much a place of deep rootedness and care, it is also an example of the darker nature of place.

In season one, Walt is a man who, in the words of actor Bryan Cranston (Walter White), has “imploded into his life… [Walt] carries the weight of regret and lost opportunities” (Gilligan, et al . , 2009). Walt’s story in “Bit by a Dead Bee” (03/22/09), though told in order to escape the consequences of having disappeared for several days, reveals some essential truths about the pressures he faces with a pregnant wife, a son with cerebral palsy, a low-paying teaching job, and the shame of having all of his past colleagues pass him by in their successful careers. Walt feels trapped by and in his life, and apparently has for some time. His is an extreme example of what Edward Relph (1976) calls the drudgery of place, “a sense of being tied inevitably to this place, of being bound by the established scenes and symbols and routines” [emphasis in the original] (41). This mood of being trapped in his life is pervasive, beginning in the pilot episode as Walt is seen exercising in what was once his study and is now being remodeled into a nursery for a new baby. As he robotically moves up and down on a stair-step machine, Walt stares at a plaque on the wall celebrating his participation as leader of the crystallography project in research that was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1985 (“Pilot” 01/20/08).

Twenty-three years after receiving this award, Walt is a high school chemistry teacher forced to work a crappy second job just to get by. In large part, Walt’s decision to break bad is a last, desperate attempt to escape this feeling of being entrapped by his own life, and in the place he once disdainfully referred to as a “starter-home” (“Full Measure” 06/13/10). A place of refuge for most, Walt’s home has become something of an ever-constricting prison. Ironically, as the series progresses, Walt is revealed not as a failure, but as a man who has built a strong and loving family, a bond that extends to his brother and sister-in-law. Walt is much admired by his superiors, parents, and peers at the high school. He has enough friends to fill his house to overflowing, and his son comes close to worshipping the ground he walks on. Walt’s prison is a life that many would both admire and envy, but Walt’s tragic flaw may be that he is incapable of seeing what he already has. Instead, Walt only sees what he thinks he lacks.

As with Jesse and the house on Margo Street, basement space becomes important for Walt’s home as well. In “Over” (05/10/09), during his first abortive attempt to stop cooking meth, Walt is drawn into the hidden places in his home, as represented by the closet-sized utility room which contains the leaky, barely functioning water heater for the house. After imposing order on this place by replacing the water-heater, Walt moves even deeper into the recesses of his home, going beneath the house and into the Bachelardian cellar place of the crawlspace beneath. It is while Walt is buying supplies to repair this space that he confronts the truth he has been trying to deny—he doesn’t want to quit. In a chilling scene wherein he lays claim to his subconscious desires, Walt warns two wannabe cooks to leave his territory. [91] 1 Interestingly, the two men Walt confronts in the parking-lot have more than a passing resemblance to Walt and Jesse. One is goateed and bald, while the other wears a toboggan and loose, hip-hop inspired clothing. In addition, the two mean are travelling in a large van which is not too dissimilar to Walt and Jesse’s RV. In Bachelard’s (1964) terms, Walt’s journey into the crawlspace, though ostensibly driven by the logic of home maintenance, takes place within “the dark entity of the house, the one that partakes of subterranean forces… in harmony with the irrationality of the depths” [emphasis in the original] (18). Walt’s desire to keep cooking, even after making enough crystal meth to secure the money he needs, and despite his cancer being in remission, is the psychological manifestation of that irrational depth, and of his own irrepressible id. Later, Skyler will use the crawlspace to hide the money from Walt’s cooking she is unable to launder, emphasizing this as a place of secrets and illegality.

For both Walt and Skyler, the crawlspace mirrors their psychological condition as each separates life into the legal and the criminal, the known and the hidden. Though it is a part of their home, the crawlspace is separate from the rest of the place, and divorced from the existential meanings inherent in the upper places in the house. Where the upper rooms partake of the order and routine of the Whites’ lives, the crawlspace is disordered and dirty, often shown festooned with cobwebs. It is only when outside forces have a profound effect on their lives that the crawlspace is entered, when its secrets are needed. It is a transgressive place where the usual boundaries are blurred. Outside and inside, order and chaos are mixed beneath the White house.