In the most recent era of “golden age” television, Breaking Bad looms large for many reasons—its relentlessly inventive writing and ground-breaking cinematography; the rare conjunction of an ensemble cast, writing team, and director lineup that would be the envy of any production; and a dramatic lead performance for the ages by Bryan Cranston. And yet the series is often misconstrued, even by some of its most ardent admirers, as a wish-fulfillment exercise in immoral criminal fantasy; to the contrary, Breaking Bad is among the most seriously moral works of art in the American tradition.

In its unsparing look at Walter White’s tragic fall—an arc famously described by creator Vince Gilligan as the protagonist’s transformation from “Mr. Chips to Scarface”—Breaking Bad is about the nature and consequences of choices that we all face every single day. Blending the genre conventions of the gangster film, the western, and the family drama (with some healthy doses of brilliant, macabre comedy), Breaking Bad depicts the moral equivalent of the “butterfly effect” with a relentlessness of craft that would be appreciated by Sophocles or Shakespeare. In documenting the seductions, rationalizations, and perverse charisma of evil, Breaking Bad is a tragic drama that somehow fuses classical sensibilities and a richly contemporary take on how we live today. This seminar takes stock of the program’s many dimensions, touches on some of the cinematic, literary, and philosophical inspirations that contribute to its unique formula, and considers its legacy.