THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:

Like Ivan, this show is concerned with both the depth of human suffering and the awful, astounding lengths that human beings will take to destroy one another. But even more remarkably, Gilligan profoundly echoes Ivan Karamazov in the way that he makes his point about the injustice of suffering not through the pain of his adult characters (who, frankly, often deserve what comes to them), but through the suffering of children.

Indeed, this argument is baked into the premise of the series. Walter White's primary reason for becoming a drug dealer is his fear that his wife and children will suffer when he dies. As a chemistry teacher, Walt has no money to leave his family when (presumably) his lung cancer finally kills him. He fears that both his teenage son, who already suffers from cerebral palsy, and his unborn daughter will struggle without a father to provide for them--and so he turns to dealing meth as the only way to leave an inheritance behind for them.

Besides this structural element, we find another example of Gilligan's emphasis on suffering children in Walt's partner Jesse Pinkman, whose endearing youthfulness and moral compass mark him, in many ways, as the show's emotional core. Although Walt initially disdains Jesse as a good-for-nothing who couldn't even pass high school chemistry, he eventually comes to care for and treat Jesse like one of his own children. To Jesse, who has a turbulent relationship with his own family, Walt becomes something of a surrogate (if deeply flawed) father. Indeed, there is something childlike about Jesse, who never stops calling Walt "Mr. White," despite the fact that it has been years since Walt taught him chemistry.

But although Jesse is willing to help Walt cook and distribute the meth for him, he also possesses a sensitivity to evil that stands out among his degenerate colleagues. In particular, Jesse responds in horror and grief every time that his partnership with Walt inflicts suffering--intentionally or unintentionally--upon a child.

It is, perhaps, ironic that Walt's secret life as a drug dealer--which he initially undertakes in order to protect his own children from harm--so often ends up inflicting pain and suffering on children who are merely innocent bystanders. Key examples include 11-year-old Tomas, who is first used as a hit man and then murdered by drug dealers, 6-year-old Brock, who is poisoned and nearly dies in the hospital, and 14-year-old Drew, who is shot because he happens to witness Walt and his employees robbing a train.

Maybe even more telling is the fact that although Gilligan kills off many of the adult characters with hardly a second thought, he presents each of these events involving children as a crucial plot device, rather than a throwaway casualty. Each suffering child marks a pivotal moment in the plot, a moment whose repercussions echo throughout the narrative as a whole. Every time that an innocent child is caught in the crossfire, the main characters must wrestle with the guilt and moral consequences--but none more intensely than Walt's partner Jesse.

Jesse has a soft spot for children. In one early episode, Walt sends Jesse to retrieve money from a drug-addicted couple who ripped off one of Walt's distributors. But upon entering their home with a loaded gun, Jesse finds out that the couple have a young, neglected son. Throughout the episode, he struggles to do his job while simultaneously protecting the child from both physical harm and the psychological trauma of seeing his parents being threatened. But when the boy's mother, angry and high, murders his father, Jesse calls 9-1-1 and quickly takes the boy outside so that he won't see.

"Hey, you remember peekaboo?" he asks the boy. "Can you go peekaboo like this? Can you keep your eyes closed?.... It's a little game we're gonna play, okay?" Jesse leaves the boy wrapped in a blanket on the front steps of their house, begging him, "Just don't go back inside."

In his compassion for children, Jesse embodies Ivan Karamazov's point that the children "haven't eaten anything," that they deserve to be protected from even the knowledge of the suffering inflicted by the sins of their fathers. Instinctively, Jesse understands that he must shield the boy from the gruesome results of his parents' crimes. The murder itself is disturbing, of course--but not nearly as disturbing as the torment inflicted on a neglected child who doesn't know any better, who can't escape the consequences of his parents' actions.

Throughout the series, Jesse's empathy for children clashes violently with his choice of occupation. Whenever Walt or one of his employees makes a decision that brings about the suffering of a child, Jesse responds in anger and sorrow. He weeps on behalf of the sins committed by those around him. He experiences the guilt and shame of their actions as acutely as if he himself had harmed the children. Like Ivan, Jesse understands that pain is an inevitable consequence of human evil. After all, he has no moral qualms with cooking and selling meth to adults who have the agency to face the consequences of their own bad decisions. But the children have nothing to do with it, and they suffer anyway, and Jesse does not know what to do about them.

The existential vision of Breaking Bad is practically inseparable from the philosophy of Ivan Karamazov: There is an evil in humanity so selfish, so profound, that it results in unimaginable suffering. When that suffering falls back upon the perpetrators, the murderers, the drug dealers, we feel no sympathy for them. But then there are the children--the Tomases, Brocks, and Drews of the world--who did nothing to deserve the knife, the poison, the bullet. The children suffer not for anything they have done, but for the evil of others. When Gilligan highlights the suffering of children, he compels us in turn to ask Ivan's climactic question: What are we going to do about them?

Although it takes him over 800 pages to do so, Dostoevsky answers this question. And, against all odds, so does Walter White.

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