Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul

Struggling and Living in Liquid Times

Bibliographic Data

ID8895988
AuthorsDavid Pierson (0000-0003-3368-6910, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume51
Issue3
Pages213-224
Publication date2021-02-05
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCanadian Review of American Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-7720 • E-ISSN: 1710-114X
PublisherUniversity of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3138/cras-2020-010
OpenAlexW3128117600
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited2

AMC’s TV series Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul both feature protagonists who can be seen as victims of institutions that do not appreciate their talents and abilities. Walter White in Breaking Bad, who once won a Nobel Prize in chemistry, is an under-appreciated and underpaid high school chemistry teacher who must work a second job to support his family. Jimmy McGill, a con artist–turned–lawyer who will eventually change his identity to Saul Goodman in Better Call Saul discovers that because of his earlier criminal exploits and non-traditional legal education, he will never be fully accepted within Albuquerque’s legal community. These series exemplify several core concepts from Zygmunt Bauman and Martin Shuster’s works, including liquid modernity and late capitalism, the loss of normative authority and deinstitutionalization, the process of individuation and identity formation, and the centrality of family in living and struggling in liquid times

Aesthetics · Capitalism · Identity (music · Individuation · Modernity · Normative · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Anarchism and Radical Politics · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Philosophy · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics · Psychology

Tools

Open DOI