Legality vs. Morality

In episode 7 season 1 of Breaking Bad, Walter and Jesse continue their Methamphetamine drug trade, getting involved in alternative, and more dangerous, ways to go about acquiring their ingredients.  Their involvement in their trade is pushed to ridiculous limits as each step of creating the product becomes even more of a challenge.  Not only are they getting involved with these more dangerous methods, but they are also getting involved with more dangerous people in their trades (Tuco), and they know that the police are after them.  Their dangerous and possibly imminent future is even laid in front of them at the scene closing episode 7 and opening season 2 episode 1—where Tuco kills his partner right in front of them, without thinking twice.  At this point, Walter and Jesse are faced with the reality of the industry they’ve gotten involved in.  However, as we see in season 2 episode 1, Walter’s involvement is directly tied to the well being of his family.  In the scene with Walter and Jesse in the car, Walter blatantly lays out his plan of making enough money to pay for his family’s well being for the rest of their life after he passes away from Cancer.  It is evident there that his focus and moral judgement is purely based on providing for his family, regardless of the detriment of the situation.   Therefore, this makes us, the audience, blend our views of legality and morality.

Though we are truly aware of how illegal the situation Walter and Jesse are, we sympathize with them because of their reasoning and moral "goodness" in our eyes.  In fact, there are many situations where legality is questioned in these two episodes: Walter and Jesse’s drug trade, Marie’s shoplifting problem, and Hank’s Cuban cigars.  Though Walter and Jesse’s drug trade definitely trumps both of the other situations by far in terms of their illegality, we still have the most sympathy for them, because we can empathize with their moral judgement.  When Walter posed the hypothetical question to Skyler asking her what she would do if he did something bad, but for the sake of the family, she replied with "you don't want to know what I would do".  This is the typical outsider reaction to situations like the one Walter is in that deter the laws of legality.  However, as audience, since we have been immersed in Walter's life, we understand his moral judgement and loosen our laws of morality towards him.