According to the numbers, only about 15% of the chemical
energy of the gasoline you put in your car actually is used to get you to
Suzy’s soccer practice. The rest, according to the US Department of
Energy, gets dissipated as ground-up metal, burnt rubber, and hot air.
Entropy’s a bitch. Everyone needs to think about thermodynamics. Not as a dry
and difficult academic torture, but as a philosophy, a way of organizing
reality. These are laws that no strip-mall shyster can plead out.
Walter White, the brilliant chemist of AMC’s hit series, Breaking
Bad, should understand this better than anyone. In physical chemistry
class, he probably memorized what is called Ginsburg’s version of the three
laws of thermodynamics, “You can’t win, you can’t break even, and you can’t get
out of the game.” He might even know the modification of Ginsburg’s Theory, the
zero’th law, “You must play the game.”
Because of the awful calculus of cancer, we sympathize with
Walter White. In a world where health care is subject to the
irrationality of economics, White is not only doomed but he’s not even allowed
to imagine a better world without him. His family will be financially
devastated, first by his care, then by his unintended failure to provide. Like
so many of us, disaster is only a diagnosis away, as he spends each paycheck to
meet the banal calamities of living. And so, when death appears on the adjacent
barstool, Walter White forgets his thermodynamics and makes a terrible
decision. He begins to cook meth.
The first two seasons of Breaking Bad have painted
the most grim and unapologetic picture of the drug trade ever seen on network
television. Each brutality of the plot is delivered with its consequences, and
the blackest of humor. The bodies have piled up, been blown to bits, and even
dissolved in the bathtub. But what is also unsparing is the brutalization of
everyone Walter White cares about. When he is caught, his wife, his son, will
be destroyed. Even his dimwit brother-in-law, a DEA officer, will have his
career ruined. The facts of his desperation can never justify what he has done.
So in the end, Walter White will have his day of judgment. And if the
series maintains its integrity, his fate will be horrible. If he’s
lucky, he’ll be dead; otherwise, he’ll sit in prison for the rest of his life,
contemplating the ruin. He might think to himself about the cruelty of laws.
He might think about entropy. But he’ll never again think about winning.