Media Analysis: Breaking Bad Interpersonal Communication

Blue meth? This is what the TV series Breaking Bad is shaped around. First, I will be discussing why I chose Breaking Bad to analyze. Secondly, I will discuss the topic of communicating verbally with Walter and Jesse. Thirdly, I will see how they managed conflict and power. Fourthly, I will look at Walter White's relationship with his friends. Fifthly, I will see how listing actively played a role in Breaking Bad. Next, I will dissect Walter and Jesse's relationship in the workplace. Lastly, I will see what this means for communication as a whole.

The reason for me picking Breaking Bad for my media analysis paper is because it was a fantastic TV series. This for me was one of the very few TV series I have followed across all five seasons.

It did a great job keeping my interest and making me want more after every episode. The idea behind Breaking Bad is brilliant and unique. A high school chemistry teacher who finds out that he has stage three lung cancer and he has only two years to live. He decides that he has nothing to lose. Walter White's kid has cerebral palsy as well. He stumbles across a drug, which is known as methamphetamine. Fortunately for Walter, he can make the highest potency in the world. He teams up with Jesse Pinkman who is Walter's former student. They make this super drug, which everyone knows as blue meth because of its color. The reason for him making meth is to secure his family's future, so just in case if he does pass away from his lung cancer. He can make sure his family has plenty of money to live. What got me so interested in this series was the idea. They director's behind the Breaking Bad TV series do a fantastic job keeping the viewer's attention. Their script writing was none like I have ever seen. The amount of information and detail they put into the series is truly amazing. There is always a twist in the story, which they usually add at the end of the episodes. This was a brilliant idea for them because they will put the twist at the end of the episode. Then they will give a tiny glimpse of what's going to happen. Then they end the episode so it makes you needing to watch the next episode to see what happens next. This cycle keeps on repeating itself throughout the series. It also had a great main story line that was full plot twists and action. The idea behind the series is to show how a regular hard working man is diagnosed with a fatal condition. This changes his morality and transformers him into a major player in the drug trade. This is what made me so interested in this TV series. It also helped that there acting for each charter was amazing and well thought out. There acting made it feel like it was real life and that this story was unfolding real time. The acting of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman stood out to me the most. There is no other TV series that comes close to what Breaking Bad has done.
One of the major concepts in Breaking Bad is communicating verbally. We use words to communicate with others in our lives. Languages have certain rules that people tend to bend. People in close relationships often create personal idioms. Personal idioms are words or phrases that have a unique meaning to them. For example, Walter White always says, “let's go out with a bang”. The hidden message behind this is that he is going to do something that is very destructive. Most of the time he says it to Jessie and it involves killing or shooting someone. But someone who is not close to Walter might not know what he means by this. Another concept with communicating verbally is cooperative verbal communication. This is the idea that you produce a message that is understandable. You want to take ownership for what you are saying by using the word “I”. The idea is to make others feel included. A scene in particular that this concept relates to is when Walter tells his wife whose name is Skyler that he has been deceiving her about his criminality. This simple disclosure destroyed Walters’s marriage with Skyler. When he was telling Skyler about what he is really doing, he tries to make it easy for her to understand because what he actually does is very complicated and overwhelming. While he is doing this he makes it clear that he is the one who did this by using the word “I” a lot when he is talking. Walter told Skyler because he wanted her to be in the loop and have him stop lying to her. A big concept that Walter is most notable for when communicating to others in the show is his verbal aggression. Verbal aggression is when a person attacks others character, abilities, or physical appearance instead of their positions on topics of conversation. When he is talking to Skyler about his criminal activities, he says “you don’t know whom you are talking to” (White). He had a very aggressive tone when he had said that to Skyler. Walter White's most dominant feature is deception. Walter around season two gets kidnapped by one of the drug lords. He was gone for several days. When he does come back, he said he took a business trip. So he had clearly had lied to his family and Walter does it a lot throughout the series.
The second major concept in Breaking Bad is how they are managing conflict and power. There is a lot of conflict throughout the TV series. With close relationships, conflicts arise from usually three issues. One is irritating behavior, disagreement with relationship rules, and also personality clashes. Walter has a lot of situations of conflict with his partner Jesse. They both have different personalities because of this conflict arises between them. For example, when Walter is caught by a woman doing an illegal activity he wants to kill her. Jesse and Walter follow her home to go and kill her. But Jesse sees a kid with her. Walter is unfazed by this, but Jesse loses it. Walter is cold hearted and cares about himself and his family. So he needs to get rid of her because she could comprise his whole scheme. Jesse, on the other hand, is kind-hearted when he sees that she is a single mother. They have huge fights that cause them to split up for a short time. Next power plays a critical role in this TV series. Especially with Walter and Jesse. Their power is imbalanced and it leads to complementary relationships. Walter is the boss; he is the one who thought of this plan. He is the one who came up with the formula, but with Jesse, none of this would be a reality. You can start to see the power shifting towards Walter when he starts giving orders to Jesse. Or even starts to talk down to Jesse when he makes a mistake telling him none of this would be possible without me. A big concept that is prevalent in Breaking Bad is power currencies. To have the power you must control or possess a resource that other people value. For example resource currency is a way Walter holds power. He controls the money, which is the most important part of being a drug dealer. Since he controls the money it gives him influence over Jesse because Jesse values that resource. Lastly, Walter holds an expertise currency as well. Which is a special skill or knowledge. Since Walter handles all the technical stuff he holds the power over Jesse. Without Walter, the business will fail because he is the one with the knowledge to make the drug at such a high potency.
Thirdly an important communication concept in Breaking Bad is the relationship with friends. Walter and Jesse have a friendship driven by shared interests. Both of them have the same interests and do the same activity. Once their common reasons change their friendship will end. You can see this throughout the series with Walter and Jesse. When Walter wants to kill that woman because she saw too much and Jesse couldn't. Their friendship from there started to fade. Walter cares about the money and privacy so does Jesse but he will not hurt anyone because of it. On the other hand, Walter will hurt other people to protect his money or privacy. Another function of their friendship is that they help each other achieve a particular goal personally. This is called an agentic friendship. The reason they are together is because they both need the money. Walter needs Jesse because he does all the hard work as well help growing the business. Jesse needs Walter because he is on the technical side. So with one of them out they will not be able to achieve their goal of making money. One of the reasons why Walter and Jesse's relationship lasted so long is because they had friendship rules. There are many rules the book goes over. Some of them apply to Walter and Jesse such as making each other happy. As long as both of them do their job and get their money without anyone getting hurt. They maintain a stable relationship. They also keep confidence with each other. They know that neither of them will snitch nor turn the back against each other. Sometimes throughout the episode confidence does fade a little bit. This is when they are put into sticky situations.
Fourthly listening actively is critical in Breaking Bad. There is a five-step process for listing. The first step is receiving. When Walter and his wife Skyler are talking about what he does. Walter does an all right job listing to Skyler's concerns about him making methamphetamine. The second step is going to be attending. This involves devoting attention to the information you have received. Walter is not doing anything else during her conversation with Skyler. He is just talking to her face to face with no distractions. Thirdly, we move on to understanding the information that has been received. He clarifies the misconceptions that Skyler has about his activities and understands where she is coming from as a mother's point of view to protect her son. Fourthly responding is a very important process for listing. During the conversation, Walter uses a lot of back-channel cues, which are signals that you are paying attention. Lastly recalling is the fifth stage of listening. This is remembering and responding to what has been said. Walter probably didn't do the best job when talking to Skyler because he used a very aggressive tone towards her. He raises his voice and is very assertive. He also leaves out very valid points Skyler brings up. For example, she says that he is jeopardizing their family's security and well-being by doing what he is doing. Next Walter has a unique listening style. Walter falls under action-oriented listener. He is very brief and to the point. If there is a problem that went wrong, he wants to know why it went wrong and then figures out a solution to it. During the later season, the cops start to put the pieces together and start to link it to Walter. The cops find their highly sophisticated lab, but neither Walter nor Jesse is there. So they destroy it. When Walter hears of this news the first thing he says, who did this and how did this happen. He figures out someone snitched to the cops and told him where his lab was located. So he then has a solution of killing this individual so this doesn't happen again.
Next, the relationships in the workplace are an important part of Breaking Bad. Walter and Jesse have a very important workplace relationship. The organizational climate is one of a defensive climate and a supportive climate. It is a blend of the two because they do encourage each other to keep on working. They also do collaborate to solve problems, for example, when they needed to find a new location for the lab. They had to work together to come up with a cover front. As well as order new equipment and supplies. At the same time, they are in a defensive climate. Some situations they are unsupportive of each other's situation. They only think in the best interest of themselves and not each other as a team. Since Walter is very commanding which you would suspect from a drug lord. There is a lot of workplace bullying that happens throughout the TV series. He will tell Jesse that there is nothing without him. Or that he is lucky to be part of this. Comments like these leads to a very hostile work environment. Soon or later someone will snap usually the one getting bullied and they will take action to stop it.
Lastly, the importance of communication is severely overlooked.

Interpersonal communication is underappreciated. When doing this media analysis paper for Breaking Bad I did not realize how much interpersonal communication played a role in this TV series. Communication, especially in TV series or movies, is critical to making a piece of media desirable and fun to watch for the viewer. Breaking Bad’s producers did a fantastic job with their writing of the script. Everything they wanted to communicate to the audience through the characters was fully understandable. Communication in our everyday life plays such an important part because it is how we communicate to the people around. It is how we express our emotions and thoughts. It is a very powerful tool that could be used positively or negatively. We see both of the situations in Breaking Bad. Walter and Jesse used it positively in Breaking Bad because they grew their drug empire to stretch across the globe. It was also used negatively when Walter is communicating with Skyler. Walter does lie to Skyler a lot and does not do the best job get his point out to her. He makes it a very hostile environment where communication from Skyler is oppressed because of fear. Even in Breaking Bad Walter could improve on his interpersonal communication skills. Even myself, I can improve my interpersonal communication skills. When I do work on my interpersonal communication all my relationships will improve dramatically as well as me being able to express my thoughts more

clearly.
In conclusion, Breaking Bad uses a plethora of interpersonal communication concepts throughout the TV series. Such as communicating verbally, managing conflict and power, relationships with friends, listening actively, and relationships in the workplace. As we can see communication plays a vital role in this TV series, but also in our everyday lives. It is something that we can all work on to improve.