Over the course of five seasons, Breaking Bad told the tale of Walter White, a man whose
cancer diagnosis drove him to cook and sell meth.
Now, we’re going to dig deep and explain the story of the timid chemistry teacher who
finally broke bad.
In the first episode of Breaking Bad, high school chemistry teacher Walter White is diagnosed
with terminal lung cancer.
After finding out from Hank Schrader, his DEA agent brother-in-law, how profitable cooking
meth can be, Walt teams up with a former student named Jesse Pinkman to cook meth so that he
can make enough money to provide for his family after he's gone.
Unfortunately, Jesse and their batch of newly cooked meth are snatched up by a pair of dealers
named Krazy-8 and Emilio.
The two force Jesse to take them to the RV where Walt and Jesse have been cooking, presumably
to kill the two and to take their materials.
Walt poisons the two of them, but Krazy-8 survives long enough that Walt is forced to
kill the meth dealer himself.
Soon after, Walt's family pushes him to pursue chemotherapy rather than just accept his fate.
Ultimately, Walt agrees to seek treatment, even though the cost would put his family
even further into debt.
Walt and Jesse make their partnership official with a simple division of labor: Walt will
cook, while Jesse will sell.
"The chemistry is my realm.
I am in charge of the cooking.
Out there on the street, you deal with that."
Jesse reaches out to a local crime boss, Tuco Salamanca, to see if he'd be interested in
buying larger quantities of the pair's high-quality meth.
To put it simply, negotiations do not go well.
Walt moves in to handle Tuco, using his chemistry skills to prepare an explosion to intimidate
Tuco.
Impressed and amused, Tuco agrees to work with Walt and Jesse.
The two make a deal with Tuco that they'll make meth for him to sell, while he pays them
enough to make it worth their while.
To keep his identity a secret, Walt adopts the persona of "Heisenberg," and it seems
like Walter will be able to keep his "second job" a secret from his family.
Unfortunately, Tuco is about as stable as a meth kingpin can be when said kingpin also
indulges in his own product.
After a paranoid fit in which he believes that the DEA is closing in on him, Tuco kidnaps
Walt and Jesse to force them to continue cooking meth for him.
While being held hostage, Walt and Jesse nearly manage to poison Tuco with ricin, but Tuco's
mute, wheelchair-bound uncle, Hector, alerts him to their plan.
Luckily, they're saved when Hank stumbles onto Tuco and shoots him dead during a shootout.
Having barely survived their run-in with the real criminal underworld, Jesse and Walt try
to take a break from the meth business.
Jesse shacks up with a friend of his to provide an alibi when the cops come looking for him,
while Walt feigns stress-induced amnesia to explain his extended disappearance.
Walt tries to reconnect with his family when they become worried about his health after
his "fugue state," but that only brings up more underlying issues with his pregnant wife,
Skyler.
Meanwhile, Jesse finds himself kicked out of his aunt's house and out of friends after
the double whammy of being kidnapped and drawing the interest of the DEA.
On the other side of the law, Hank's killing of Tuco leads to a sizable promotion for him,
but it also causes a heaping amount of stress and anxiety after the shootout.
Walt and Jesse try to establish themselves as serious contenders in the power vacuum
created by Tuco's death, operating as cooks and distributors within Tuco's former territory.
A series of accidents leaves Jesse with a reputation as a cold-blooded killer, which
seems to establish "Heisenberg" as a genuine power player.
On the home front, things have gotten complicated.
As a cover for all his meth money, Walt has been telling Skyler that his former business
partners, Gretchen and Elliott, have been paying for his cancer treatments.
But when Gretchen finds out about the lie, she tells Skyler than she won't be paying
for any more therapy, leaving Walt to search for another cover story.
"We'll get through this, okay?
I mean, they've already paid for most of my treatment, right?"
On top of all that, Walt and Jesse end up attracting attention from the law after Badger,
one of their meth dealers, is arrested.
With the help of Saul Goodman, a local criminal lawyer, they devise a plan to trick the DEA
into arresting a fake "Heisenberg," freeing Badger and taking the heat off Walt.
The plan goes smoothly, although Hank remains convinced that something is wrong.
Everything seems to be going to plan.
Walt is making money, and Jesse's ongoing romance with his neighbor and landlord, Jane,
continues even when she realizes that he's a drug dealer, and he realizes that she's
in recovery for addiction.
After one of Jesse's drug dealer friends is killed by a rival gang, Jesse and Walt realize
they aren't cut out to manage a crew of drug dealers.
So with Saul's help, Walt and Jesse find a distributor for their surplus meth.
The mysterious buyer, Gus Fring, is a fast food franchise owner and model citizen who
uses his role as the public face of Los Pollos Hermanos to disguise his illicit activities.
Those high expectations extend to his employees, and when Jesse shows up to a meeting high,
Gus doesn't think that Jesse is competent enough to handle the work.
It turns out he might have been right.
When Walt gets notice that Gus needs their drugs on short notice, he finds that Jesse
is completely incapacitated from his drug use and unable to make the drop.
Unfortunately, Walt is also needed at the hospital, where Skyler is in labor, delivering
their daughter.
Walt ultimately chooses to make the delivery, missing the birth of his child, but he nets
over $1 million for him and Jesse to split.
However, Walt refuses to pay Jesse his share until he gets clean.
Desperate for cash after her father nearly takes her to rehab, Jane blackmails Walt into
giving them the money immediately.
Walt does, but finds himself coming back to check on Jesse and try to get him help.
While shaking a sleeping Jesse, Walt accidentally knocks an unconscious Jane onto her back,
and when she starts to choke on her own vomit, he watches her die without interfering.
Weeks later, incapacitated by grief, Jane's father, an air traffic controller, lets two
planes collide over the skies of Albuquerque.
After the plane crash, Jesse lands in rehab, blaming himself for Jane's death and everything
else, while Skyler's taken the kids and moved out, leaving Walt to contemplate what he's
still working towards.
Skyler finds out the truth that Walt is a meth cook and offers him an ultimatum; agree
to a divorce, or she'll tell Hank.
"Nobody will hear it from me.
But only if you grant me this divorce and stay out of our lives."
Things get even more complicated when Gus shows up with a new offer: $3 million for
three months work in a state-of-the art laboratory.
Walt refuses in the moment, but trouble is arriving from Mexico in the form of bloodthirsty
twins looking to enact vengeance on Heisenberg.
Walt's attempts to get out of the drug business aren't exactly helped along by anyone.
Saul wants him to go back to cooking, while Skyler is horrified by what he's already done.
Unbeknownst to Walt, Gus strikes a deal with the twins, who are Tuco Salamanca's cousins,
out for revenge, to keep Walt alive for Gus' own purposes.
Meanwhile, Jesse makes his own batch of meth, offering to sell it to Gus against Walt's
wishes.
Gus accepts the deal, knowing that Walt's pride will bring him back to the meth cooking
business, a prediction that's ultimately proven right.
Walt accepts Gus' offer and pushes Jesse out of the business, while Hank finds clues that
are starting to lead him to Jesse.
Walt's feeling like a new man with his own condo and a hidden laboratory for cooking
meth.
Even better, he's got a new, eager-to-please lab assistant, Gale Boetticher, who seems
like a serious upgrade compared to Jesse.
Unfortunately, Walt's brought back into Jesse's orbit when Hank accidentally warns Walt that
he's closing in on their old RV.
Walt and Jesse manage to distract Hank with a phony phone call alleging that his wife,
Marie, is in the hospital.
Things get even worse for Hank when Gus, forced to bargain with the twins, offers them Hank's
life instead of Heisenberg's, on the basis that Hank is the one who actually killed their
cousin, Tuco.
Believing Jesse to be behind the fake phone call, Hank attacks Jesse, savagely beating
him.
After Jesse threatens to use the illegal beating to make Hank's life miserable, Walt tries
to placate Jesse, offering him a job in the meth lab. Jesse accepts the deal, which means
Walt has to fire Gale.
The Salamanca twins attack Hank, but the DEA agent kills one and puts the other in the
hospital, although he's wounded himself.
Walt and Jesse resume their cooking for Gus, although Jesse begins to take some of the
excess product in order to sell it on the side.
With Walt making plenty of money and Hank's hospital bills stacking up, Skyler offers
to pay for his recovery, with the cover story that Walt's meth money is actually earnings
from a gambling habit.
But things never run smoothly for long in Breaking Bad.
After getting involved with Andrea, a woman at his Narcotics Anonymous meetings, Jesse
is horrified to discover that the drug dealers who killed his friend last season are also
using Andrea's 11-year-old brother to sell meth.
Skyler, now fully aware of Walt's criminal enterprise, hatches a plan to safely launder
their money through the car wash that Walt once worked at.
Meanwhile, Jesse's moving on the drug dealers, first by asking Walt to prepare ricin poison,
then by threatening to kill them any way that he can, with or without Walt's help.
His plan is interrupted by Gus Fring, who's known about Jesse's plan the entire time.
The three of them have a meeting, where Gus tells the drug dealers to stop using children.
In response, they kill Andrea's brother, and Jesse responds by driving up with a gun of
his own to enact revenge.
He's saved by Walt, who kills the dealers, putting his own relationship with Gus at risk.
Jesse goes into hiding, while Walt begins to suspect that Gale is operating under orders
from Gus to fully replicate Walt's meth formula, so the kingpin can get rid of Walt for good.
With the help of Saul, Walt lays a trap for Gus, giving Jesse enough time to kill Gale,
ensuring that the drug lord won't be able to kill them without crippling his meth operation.
Their plan more or less works, but Gus responds by isolating himself entirely from Walt and
Jesse.
"Walter, you're never going to see him again."
Instead, all communication will be handled by his "fixer," Mike Ehrmantraut.
As a result, both Walt and Jesse begin spiraling into darkness.
Walt decides to buy a gun in case he needs to kill Gus before Gus kills him, and while
dealing with serious guilt over killing Gale, Jesse starts throwing money to the wind.
Jesse's unhinged, depressed behavior is bad news for Mike and Gus, so Mike begins taking
the young chemist on some of his errand runs in an attempt to provide a bit more purpose
to Jesse's life.
Jesse's not the only one acting erratic, though.
When Gale's body is discovered, law enforcement assumes that he's Heisenberg, and that nearly
throws Hank off the trail, until Walt's ego gets in the way, and he convinces his brother-in-law
that Gale wasn't such a genius after all.
"All his brilliance looks like nothing more than just simple rote copying."
Still worried about Gus' vengeance, Walt convinces Jesse to kill Gus with ricin hidden in a cigarette,
but Jesse misses his opportunity.
However, Gus has other fish to fry besides Walt, as a meeting with the cartel involves
completing a decades-long vendetta after Hector Salamanca killed Gus' business partner years
earlier.
The cartel is soon destroyed in an epic massacre, and with Jesse's usefulness proven on the
trip, Gus asks him to take over the lab in Walt's stead.
Gus then tells Walt two pieces of very bad news.
First, Walt's out, with the understanding that the only reason he's even alive is due
to Jesse's intervention.
Second, Gus is going to kill Hank for investigating him, with worse consequences for Walt and
his family if anyone interferes.
Andrea's son, Brock, ends up in the hospital with a flu-like illness, and when Jesse finds
that the ricin hidden in his cigarette is gone, he blames Walt, thinking that he poisoned
the child.
Walt convinces him that it was Gus, and the two agree to kill the drug lord, ultimately
succeeding with the help of Hector Salamanca and his explosive wheelchair.
Gus is dead, the underground laboratory is destroyed, and Walt and Jesse both managed
to survive.
However, Gus kept a laptop with security footage of the lab, and with Gus' death, it's been
confiscated by the police.
Walt teams up with Jesse and a reluctant Mike, now healed from his cartel shootout, to wipe
the laptop and keep them all out of jail.
The plan goes smoothly, but their use of a giant magnet accidentally reveals some of
Gus' hidden bank accounts, giving the police a fresh lead on Fring's secret meth empire.
It's also revealed that Walt really did poison Brock in order to turn Jesse against Gus,
and that Walt has no intention of stopping his criminal activities.
"You never told me that kid would wind up in the hospital!"
"We're done when I say we're done."
With Gus out of the way, Walt sees the potential for a replacement in the criminal underworld.
Gus ran a massive organization with multi-state distribution, and Walt believes that he, Jesse,
and Mike are just the men who can fill his shoes.
With the help of Lydia Rodarte-Quayle, an executive at Madrigal, an international conglomerate
with ties to Gus' old organization, the three men plan to take over the distribution of
Gus' empire.
With Lydia, Mike, and Saul's help, Walt and Jesse start a new operation, moving their
meth lab from house to house under the guise of a pest removal company.
However, even though Walt is now the boss of a huge business, that comes with assorted
costs, like payouts to the pest removal company, to his partners, and to Gus' former men serving
prison sentences in order to keep their silence.
Meanwhile, Walt's success in business comes with a failure in his personal life.
Skyler is becoming increasingly depressed and horrified by Walt, and Walt's own separation
between his "Heisenberg" identity and his day-to-day life is becoming blurred.
When the DEA begins tracking one of the key ingredients for their meth business at Madrigal,
Lydia offers them an alternative, a daring train robbery that, if executed properly,
will mean enough methylamine for plenty of cooks.
In order to make the operation go smoothly, Walt and Jesse bring in Todd, one of the pest
removal employees.
The robbery seems to go smoothly, but it ends in tragedy when the trio notice a young boy
watching them as they celebrate the desert heist.
Todd immediately shoots the kid, which forces the crew to dispose of the body in a barrel
full of hydrochloric acid.
Although the team manages to get away with all the methylamine they could need, the boy's
death weighs heavily on Jesse.
When Mike tries to buy out of the business on the basis that the increased DEA surveillance
is too much for him, Jesse tries to leave, too.
However, Mike's buyer for his share of the methylamine will only accept all or none of
it, since the offer is contingent on getting rid of the blue meth that Walt makes.
Walt refuses to give up on his criminal empire since, with Skyler becoming increasingly horrified
by him, he has nothing left but his money and his criminal reputation.
Walt eventually manages to convince the buyer to take over as distributor for his meth,
while buying out Mike's share of the methylamine.
Mike agrees to continue paying for Gus' imprisoned men out of his own share, but his plan is
stymied when the DEA catch his lawyer making the money drops.
Mike is forced to flee town, but Walt refuses to let him leave unless he gives up the names
of Gus' men so Walt can silence them before they have the chance to talk.
The two men argue, and Walt shoots Mike to death before remembering that Lydia also has
access to that information.
With the help of Todd's uncle, who runs a crew of neo-Nazis, Walt has Gus' men killed
before Hank can get them to give up any information on Heisenberg.
With his business safe, and Todd proving to be an adept lab assistant, Walt rakes in the
cash for months before finally retiring.
That is, until Hank finds a book given to Walt by Gale on the toilet, and finally connects
all the pieces.
Even though Walt is retired with plenty of money, Hank is on his trail.
Just before leaving town to start a new life, Jesse realizes that Walt was actually behind
Brock's poisoning, which sends him on a crusade against his former partner.
Hank picks Jesse up before he can burn down the White household, and the two join forces
to gather evidence to take out Walt.
Together, they trick Walt into revealing where he stashed his drug money, and, desperate,
Walt calls his former neo-Nazi partners for help.
The neo-Nazis arrive, kill Hank, and kidnap Jesse.
Walt goes into hiding in New Hampshire, but after seeing Elliott and Gretchen Schwartz
on TV denying his involvement in the company he co-founded, he comes back to tie up his
loose ends.
He forces Elliott and Gretchen to launder the rest of his drug money for his family,
and he admits to Skyler that everything he did was for selfish reasons.
"If I have to hear one more time that you did this for the family-"
"I did it for me."
He then heads to the neo-Nazi compound, kills the skinheads, and ultimately saves Jesse's
life in the process.
Dying of blood loss from a stray bullet, Walt collapses in the neo-Nazis' meth lab, surrounded
by chemical equipment as the police arrive.
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