Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul embrace the dual identities of Walter White/Heisenberg and Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman, elevating their characters.
Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul have been praised as some of the best contemporary TV out today, with the former exploring Walter White's demise as the drug kingpin Heisenberg and the latter detailing Jimmy McGill's corruption and descent into the criminal lawyer Saul Goodman. Indeed, to really understand the beauty of their stories, it's important to treat Breaking Bad's Walter White and Heisenberg, as well as Better Call Saul's Jimmy McGill and Saul Goodman, as separate characters.
Metaphorically speaking, Heisenberg buries Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Saul Goodman buries Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk). The worst of them come out, and these dual identities break down into two important aspects of the shows: lies and love.
There's no reason not to believe Walter White doesn't love his family, and some part of him believed his path to Heisenberg was paved for them. However, by the time White takes on the name Heisenberg and he and Pinkman grow beyond the RV, that's no longer the truth. He'll tell Skyler, he'll tell everyone that he is cooking meth to provide for his family once he's dead and gone, but that's not true. Somewhere along the way, the man who was devoted father and chemistry teacher Walter White was buried by the drug kingpin Heisenberg. As he admits in the finale of Breaking Bad, he didn't do it for his family--he did it for himself. He was genuinely the best at something, and as he once told Pinkman, waiting for that to happen in life is a crime. The entire time, he is lying to himself, using his children and the love of Walter White for his children to justify his actions.
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