David Pierson - Breaking Bad

Walt will have to turn to the crawlspace several times during the series. In “Caballo sin Nombre” (03/28/10) he uses the crawlspace and trap-door he constructed during his renovations to break into the house after Skyler has kicked him out and changed the locks, a very prominent symbol of Walt’s criminality rising up from the depths to invade his home, and quite literally a transgressive act in and of itself. Further, Walt’s escape into the realm of lawlessness and the unrestrained primitive id is given physical substance as he twice attempts to use the crawlspace as a means of escape from his life. In “Crawl Space” (09/25/11), Walt dives under his house to access the money he needs to allow him and his family to escape the wrath of Gustavo Fring. Skyler, however, has given the money away, having earlier reached into this secret place to cover up her own criminal actions as Ted Beneke’s bookkeeper. The episode ends with a brilliant crane shot of Walt laughing hysterically in the crawlspace surrounded by the trapdoor’s frame. Trapped, that is, by secrets, and by his and Skyler’s desires, and trapped in this transgressive place. Later, as Walt’s battle with Fring escalates, he again uses the crawlspace and trap to enter and leave the house without alerting the hired killers who are watching the place (“End Times” 10/02/11). The crawlspace has become the means of covert entry and exit, the unconscious space of the home, bringing both secret knowledge and chaos.

Walt’s home also undergoes a fundamental change of meaning for him personally, by changing from a place of care to a largely empty emotional space. Despite his feelings of entrapment associated with the house, as the series begins Walt still has very significant roots there. He has lived his marriage there, raised a son there, and performed all of the everyday routines that make up the majority of human life. The house on Negra Arroyo Lane is his place , and he belongs there. This idea of rootedness in a particular place is at the core of the sense of home. Relph (1964) states that “To have roots in a place is to have a secure point from which to look out on the world, a firm grasp of one’s own position in the order of things, and a significant spiritual and psychological attachment to somewhere in particular” (38). After forcing his way back into the house against Skyler’s wishes, however, Walt has made an enemy who will eventually uproot him.

With Skyler’s affair in “I. F. T.” (04/04/10), Walt begins to lose his home while still inhabiting his house. Although there are periods of seeming rapprochement between Walt and Skyler, even after he has voluntarily moved back out in “Mas” (04/18/10), Walt’s sense of home at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane is progressively destroyed. As the truth of Walt’s criminal activities is revealed and Skyler decides to make herself a part of the enterprise, Walt finds himself forced to negotiate for the privilege of access to his own home (“Half Measures” 06/06/10), and from this point on Walt no longer truly belongs in his house. It has become Skyler’s place, and to a greater or lesser extent, Walt moves through it at her sufferance. This becomes strikingly apparent in season five when, despite having moved back in and apparently dominating Skyler, she nonetheless manages to remove their children from the house and to turn their home into a cold place of reheated take out and silent dinners. Walt may live there, but he no longer belongs. This may add impetus to Walt’s much more complete assumption of his Heisenberg persona in season five. As Anne Buttimer (1980) notes, “people’s sense of both personal and cultural identity is intimately bound up with place identity. Loss of home or ‘losing one’s place’ my often trigger an identity crisis” (167). As will be shown, however, Walt has put down new roots elsewhere long before season five.

The truth of the matter may be that, at least during the series, the only places where Walt ever feels completely at home, completely secure, and completely self-confident are the series of meth labs he runs. From their first cook in the RV, Walt makes it clear that, in the lab, he is in charge, and Jesse is to obey his rules. The lab is fundamentally Walt’s place, for he has mastered its mysteries to a greater depth than perhaps anyone in the country. Even the supremely talented Gale admits that he cannot match the purity of Walt’s crystal meth, and when his life literally depends upon the quality of his cook, Jesse is able only to match Gale’s best efforts, though that proves good enough. It is his labs to which Walt seems to devote the most attention, and the most care.

Walt’s adamantine insistence on respect for the chemistry, for lab procedures, and for a precision bordering on obsession when it comes to cooking all demonstrate a deep concern for the chemistry lab as a very personal place, and for his own self-image as a professional scientist. This kind of fully invested care for a particular place is defined by Relph (1964) as “a real responsibility and respect for that place for itself and for what it is to yourself and to others. There is, in fact, a complete commitment to that place, a commitment that is as profound as any that a person can make” (38). In all of his life, the meth lab is the one place where Walt consistently excels, where he is “the best at something” (“Say My Name” 08/26/12). While he may be losing his wife and his children, his job, and everything else that was once important to him, in the lab Walter White remains in control and in charge.

Walt sets up the first lab himself, converting a 1986 Fleetwood Bounder recreational vehicle (RV) into a mobile meth lab. The RV has become perhaps the most iconic symbol of Breaking Bad, and for the first three seasons, takes on such a central role that it can be considered a character in its own right. In terms of place, the RV is a complicated study. According to Tuan (1977), “place is a pause in movement…. The pause makes it possible for a locality to become a center of felt value” (138). This is underlined by the uniquely human conception of home as a place where one can recover from illness, further developing the idea of home as a place of refuge from the outside world (Tuan 1977; Bachelard 1964). Further, Anne Buttimer (1980) links the dualities of stillness and movement to something essential in human experience: “The lived reciprocity of rest and movement, territory and range, security and adventure, housekeeping and husbandry, community building and social organizations—these experiences may be universal among the inhabitants of Planet Earth” (170). The RV, however, partakes of all of these reciprocal experiences, and is both a place of pause and of movement (“Madrigal” 07/22/12).

The RV is inherently mobile, yet it also includes essential elements of home and of permanence. Though moving through the outside world, it provides a sheltered, inside place for anyone within it. The vehicle is designed to allow for the performance of all of the most basic human life-experiences including sleeping, eating, eliminating, and socializing. Though a hotel room provides the same type of space, the RV is personal property, literally the owner’s place, and often imbued with rooted memory by various personal possessions and the memories shared in it. This seeming paradox is humorously demonstrated by Hank’s attempt to enter and search the RV in “Sunset” (04/25/10), which is frustrated by the convoluted legal question of the RV as both vehicle and domicile. For Walt and Jesse, the RV becomes a true place of meaning and care, where their personal relationship is formed and solidified. In “4 Days Out” (05/03/09), it becomes their temporary home, shelter from the desert’s night-time cold, and the setting for the deep intimacy of facing death and finding a way out of a dangerous situation together.