Gale Boetticher’s death in Breaking Bad is one of the most heavily accented of the show’s 271 deaths. If you haven’t seen the show or want a refresher, here’s a quick summary of Gale from Breaking Bad Wiki:
Gale Boetticher, B.S., M.S., was a was a German American chemist hired by Gustavo Fring to help set up the superlab and manufacture methamphetamine. Gus Fring hired Walter White after Gale praised a sample of Walt’s blue meth as the purest he’d ever seen. Following this point, Gale became Walt’s lab assistant.
Gale holds an MS degree in organic chemistry and is a specialist in X-ray crystallography. He described his political views as libertarian, and had an open-minded attitude regarding meth. A self-described “nerd,” Gale was single, vegan, apparently quite cultured, and was perhaps near to being an intellectual equal of Walt. As a side project, he was working on a process for brewing a superior cup of coffee, and impresses Walt with his results.
This doesn’t do justice to the extent to which Gale’s character is developed on the show. It’s not just that he’s a vegan, it’s that he’s got a recipe for vegan Graham crackers in his notebook, written in impeccable handwriting and surrounded by quirky drawings. It’s not just that he’s cultured, it’s that he listens to world music and has a collection of eclectic records. It’s not just that he’s meant to be a libertarian but that he’s apparently thought his involvement in the meth trade through. “Consenting adults want what they want. At least with me they’re getting exactly what they pay for.” And not only is he really really great at science but he also retains the wonder of the natural world. He recites The Learn’d Astronomer by Walt Whitman to Walter White and even has a nice rendition of it in his notebook complete with a beautiful drawing:
It’s natural that the viewers develop some kind of relationship with Gale, which can make his death scene pretty hard to watch. The video is below but it’s actually missing a whole initial part. Jesse Pinkman is on his way to kill Gale, having been convinced by Walt that this is the only way to save Walt’s life (to make him indispensable to their boss as the sole remaining meth cook). The camera cuts to Gale, oblivious to what’s going to happen. He’s literally soaking in culture, making herbal tea to the 1938 Chinese song Man Chiang Fei (which I couldn’t find much info about except this but it’s apparently about the Zhang Fei of the Three Kingdoms epic). Gale is so eclectic, so quirky, so artistic and cultured and his life is snuffed out.
As should be obvious even if you’ve never seen Breaking Bad, the show tries really really hard for us to like Gale. Even Walt loves the guy and feels as bad as Walt can feel about having him killed. This is what first tipped me off to the problem with the whole Gale setup. It’s easy for me to identify with Gale as a white middle-class tertiary educated science nerd who’s interested in art and a multitude of cultures for reasons that are really really fucking obvious. The show lets us in on the little aspects of Gale’s life precisely in order to make us identify with him, even if we don’t see that much of ourselves in him directly.
The wider question is then, how many other characters are not humanised, either because the show didn’t spend much time on them or because I didn’t identify much with the character because of race or class? Breaking Bad has received some very fair criticism about its treatment of race. At the top level, it’s a show about the drug world and the War on DrugsTM that spends next to no time acknowledging the immense racial aspects of the war. So the natural question is why should Gale get to be humanised so much when most of the other 270 people who die get so little? Of course it’s not like the show only gets us to empathise with the white victims. But the immense setup that it performs with Gale’s character is at least striking compared to other characters. If that didn’t feel like a setup, I suggest you reexamine your reaction to the show.
This is why I think representation in art is pretty fucking important. It’s possible to watch an entire series like Breaking Bad and literally cry at the injustice of Gale’s death and talk about how much of a nice guy he was (which fans have done) without ever stepping outside the tiny slice of cultural life that you find yourself in that lets you identify so much with Gale but not others. Not that there’s anything wrong with liking Gale and finding his death tragic — but if that’s used to reinforce some harmful opinion of the drug war that’s a problem. We humans tend to believe fiction as if it’s real. For example, watching Grey’s Anatomy reduced people’s opinions of organ donations, based on made-up storylines. It’s time give characters who are culturally Gale Boetticher the same kind of fictional considerations.
0 Comments