The Methods of Breaking Bad: Essays on Narrative, Character and EthicsJacobBlevins and DafyddWood, Editors. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015.

Abstract

The Methods of Breaking Bad: Essays on Narrative, Character and Ethics Jacob Blevins and Dafydd Wood, Editors. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015.It is hardly surprising that a series whose finale drew 10.3 million viewers should generate substantial scholarly interest. Already, several collections and numerous articles have emerged from fields as varied as law, criminology, psychiatry, education, and literary/cultural studies. The Methods of Breaking Bad, drawing on an almost equally diverse range of disciplines, is overall a worthy addition to the literature.Most of the contributions echo one another in satisfying ways. Certain themes-masculinity, neo liberalism, and defamiliarization-are interwoven throughout with some of the show's more memorable and/or vexing moments, including the Fly episode, the one-eyed bear sequence, and the iconic opening shot of Walter's trousers in the wind. However, the broad interdisciplinarity sometimes yields mixed results.The richest contributions come from literary scholars, namely Wood, Jeffrey DiLeo, Jason Landrum, and Cheryl E de Is on. Wood offers a comprehensive account of the show's achievements, situating his observations between two no less polarizing figures than the respective fathers of Kulturkritik (Theodor Adorno) and cultural studies (Raymond Williams). DiLeo makes a compelling case for Fly as the thematic center (29) of the show, embedding the latter's critique of neoliberalism within a broader philosophical tradition. Having traced the episode's Nietzschean heritage through Superman and Flies in the MarketPlace, he anchors his reading in the present via the Genealogy of Morals, contrasting indebted with entrepreneurial man (42) and connecting the neoliberal condition to that of existential man, responsible for his freedom and [...] guilty for his fate (44).Landrum's is the densest piece, positing that postpatriarchal (96) male characters inhabit a state of emergency (95) between two Lacanian figures: the symbolic Name-of-the-Father who prohibits the subject's enjoyment and the transgressive primal father (96-8) who commands it. Landrum sees Walter oscillating (99) between these poles in a rich essay that incorporates desire, loss, and drive and situates the masculine dilemma within late capitalism's own injunction to enjoy. The essays on masculinity read in sequence, however, point to one of the book's shortcomings: demanding pieces like Landrum's alternate a little too readily with more accessible ones-in this case Philip Poe's sound, but simpler, reading of Walter as driven by patriarchal ideology in a more general sense.Edelson puts an intriguing spin on the mad scientist motif, contrasting Walter's literary/cinema tic predecessors, in their domination of Foucauldian place, with Walter's own Certeauvian use of space (187). …