Is Breaking Bad about Existencialism?

This week, I will talk about my favorite tv series, which is also by many, as much for popular acclamation and enough to some specialists the best series ever. I'm talking about Breaking Bad. 

(Yes, I know, was this neccesary?, you know from the title that this is about Breaking Bad, but I need to put some flavour to the introduction)

Well, Breaking Bad is about Walter White, an overqualified chemistry teacher that also has to work in a carwash to gain more money for his family and is diagnosed with lung cancer. With this last notice, he only wants to die and not face the due that will cause the treatment for his disease. Of course his wife Skyler and his son Walter Jr. (Who has cerebral palsy, what makes the life of the protagonist a bit harder) want him to beat the cancer whatever it costs.
That's when he decides to become a drug dealer to pay his treatment and help monetarily to his family.

This drama became so mesmerizing because, well, many reasons, the series is full of tiny details. But I will focus on one of the most mesmerizing parts, Walter White, the change in his personality and motivations.

Walter left his job as a chemistry teacher and in a progressive way became a metanphetamine druglord knows as Heisenberg. For Walter, in the beggining of the series, <<Chemistry is about transformation>>, so this is the main chemistry in the drama, his own transformation.

Heisenberg is in the beggining a pseudonym that Walt adopts to move in the criminal world, this pseudonym born with a personality, goals and ways to act, far away from Walt habits.
Little by little this kind of b-side erase Walt's personality. Heisenberg is a bit nihilistic, he has a sociopathic behavior, acts in cinic, machiavellian ways, it's a bit megalomanic or narcissistic, manipulates everyone because of his greed and does not have any kind of moral. So, we have this deep change from a shy, quiet, hardworking, submissive, fearless, cowardly, "good person" stereotype to a fearless sociopath kingpin.

The way he became Heisenberg is really interesting and for sake of time, I will simplify to the life meaning point of view of his transformation to explain it.

Viktor Frankl, was an austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a holocaust survivor. He's the founder of logotherapy, a way of therapy that focus on existencial meaning to the person. In his book Man's Search for Meaning (1946), Frankl narrates his own struggle to survive the concentration camps. In order to survive and keep mental sanity, he was only focus in the finish of a book. Frankl visualizes and describes what lose of life meaning do in people in concentration camps. In his thesis, what makes people happy (in existencial or philosophical terms) is having a purpose,<<There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life>>, <<What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task>>.

That worthwhile goal to Walter is in the beggining to pay the due of this lung cancer and leave his family good in economic terms. Soon, the danger, extreme situations, talk and be in contact with violent criminals makes him feel alive, actually he start to empower his personality and his situation in the criminal world. Little by little, in Heisenberg he reveals against whom he had been his entire life, his lack of purpose in life and wish to death fades with his new will to power.

Frankl describes very well the personality of Walter, who manifest this existencial vacuum in a short and rampant sexual libido. Frankl also describes that will to power manifest in a will to money. Walt accumulate a really really big fortune and power in his carrer of metanphetamine druglord.

"Existence precedes essence" Sartre famously said. This quote from an existencial-nihilistic perspective, says that we humans have not intrinsical meaning, we just exist. Frankl's logotherapy is an existencial treatment, he tries to guide people on finding his purpose to exist. It's very interesting that Aristotle, defined hapiness like "Eudaimonia", that etimologically means good-spirit. It's like a life fullfilment in terms of purpose, being virtuous (with all the aristotelian philosophy behind).

So, what could explain the mesmerizing transformation of Walt's character and goals, is this life meaning or eudaimonia theory. This view offers a way to understand the complex personality of Heisenberg struggles between his empowerment and greed, and his beloved ones.