My wife and I just recently started watching the TV series, Breaking Bad on Netflix. We were well aware it featured a lot of violence and cussing but since I am a huge Bryan Cranston fan, we decided to give it a try.

 

Didn’t take long at all for both of us to get hooked, just like the drug featured in the show.

 

(The show has been around for eight years so anything I discuss in this column should not be considered a spoiler necessarily — but if you are someone who hasn’t seen the show and don’t want to know anything about it, I would advise you to read no further.)

 

Breaking Bad is a tale of a ordinary man with a growing family living an ordinary life. He got gypped by a couple of former business associates and has had to take on a second job to supplant the lost income of his wife’s job due to pregnancy.

 

The struggle to provide for one’s family is a struggle most everyone in America faces at one time or another.

 

The kicker...Walter White (Bryan Cranston) finds out he has inoperable lung cancer and becomes worried the treatment and hospital bills are going to financially decimate his burgeoning family. He turns to manufacturing crystallized methamphetamine and recruits a young former student of his (Jesse) to help distribute.

 

 

The show features a unique concept where the protagonist becomes the antagonist and yet, you find yourself rooting for the bad guys whose backstories make you feel sympathy for them.

 

Breaking Bad precisely depicts the effects drugs and the greed for money can take on an ordinary life. Corruption, lying, killing, stealing, money-laundering, deceit and abuse all stem from the one decision Walter makes to try and help his family — a decision that has consequences that are dire and eternal.

 

Growing up, I remember being told by my parents that drugs were bad and yet I saw drug use right there among my family members. When I reached high school age, one of the first days I was in the cafeteria, a “druggie” approached my table and sat right across from me. Nobody else was at the table, so I felt very nervous and almost got up and walked away. Instead, I sat there and noticed him slide his hand over to me and present me with a joint — then he slouched back in his chair like he was a king.

 

I slid the doobie back to his space and said, “no thanks” and grabbed my lunch tray. He stopped me and tried again to give me the joint as he said, “no, keep it. It’s free.”

 

This was that turning point in my life where this one decision at this moment was going to forever change who I was to become.

 

I politely shook my head and said, “no thanks” once again and walked away to my next class. I never saw that kid around that much after that and he sure as all heck didn’t waste his time with me anymore.

 

I made a life-altering decision that day and I’m so grateful I had the guts to say, “no”.

 

I just wish Walter had taken it upon himself to just say “no” to the idea of doing something criminal to help his family. There were other ways he could have truned — but then that probably wouldn’t make for much of a TV series, Walter created his own hell and he is left to feel the burn.

 

 In an interview with The New York Times, Breaking Bad series creator Vince Gilligan said the larger lesson of the series is that “actions have consequences”.

 

“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,” Gilligan said. “I feel some sort of need for Biblical atonement, or justice, or something. I like to believe there is some comeuppance, that karma kicks in at some point, even if it takes years or decades to happen. My girlfriend says this great thing that's become my philosophy as well. ‘I want to believe there's a heaven. But I can't not believe there's a hell.”

 

And this world can at times be a superhighway to the abyss.