Revisionism about Breaking Bad's Plane Crash Scene from 2008

Testing the limits of television censorship & 16 years later interpretative analysis

There are several iconic moments in the history of Breaking Bad (2008-2013).

Those iconic moments are not simply artistically well-done moments, they coincide with major transformations for the main character, Walter White, as he descends into darkness building his meth empire.

“…Heisenberg.”

I would say that, of course, the moment when Walt blows up Tuco’s office as a kind of metamorphosis into Heisenberg (S1E6), was a big one. It signaled that he was willing to blow everything up to get what he wanted.

Another was when Walt explained to Skyler that “I am the one who knocks” (S4E6) when she was worried that there’s danger at the door.

Another is when Walt insisted that he be referred to as Heisenberg after killing Gus (S5E7). Where he was flexing his status and power to dangerous drug dealers.

Those are iconic moments. They capture great dialogue, great setups, great acting, into a powerful moment.

They are pivotal moments in the ultimate transformation of Walt from hero to anti-hero, which was creator Vince Gilligan’s stated main idea when writing the show. Gilligan wanted the audience to take the everyman and watch him descend into a total monster.

In writing a character’s descent, that kind of transformation is a task that is both challenging and yet seemingly simple. It is challenging in that it works best when gradual and persuasive, when it exists as an almost Socratic method with the audience where they see something obvious happen on screen visually, and then watch the character make a choice they don’t entirely agree with but which reveals their character.

Main character Walt is constantly presented with opportunities to leave the meth business, cure his cancer, save his family, but he chooses his own pride instead, until it’s way too late.

It is simple in the sense that you can just direct a fictional character to do awful things. You can turn someone evil in a moment in literary devices by dropping them into a vat of acid, or by having something horrible happen to them, or some other instant event that puts them on a different course. That cheat by writers feels fake, though, because most people don’t change their lives on a dime. They make roughly the same choices as they did the day before, but might change on the margins. They make small choices.

Showing the small choices, the small changes, the small moral compromises, is what makes Breaking Bad excellent television. Walt isn’t forced into his situation by a Zombie Apocalypse or by a bad acid trip, or at the end of a gun, he receives a cancer diagnosis and doesn’t want to beg his rich friends for help.

Walt makes his own problems by being prideful and stubborn, because he was discontent in his life, career, and marriage.

This is why Walt turned towards evil: for the power and pride.

There’s a great deal written about the show online. I’m not trying to wade into one faction or another from the various fans of the show, their discussions and disagreements, even heated debates about this episode in particular, and also those of its worthy successor Better Call Saul, (2015-2022).

For further context here: this is a fan base that put out a 15 minute video dissecting the meaning of swimming pools in the show after all.

I just think there’s one misunderstood scene in Breaking Bad and I want to bring your attention to it.

It’s the moment when Walt’s guilty acts causes the greatest loss of life in the series: the destruction of two passenger planes in the skies above Albuquerque at the end of season two. The collision in-universe was between Wayfarer 515, which was a 737-900, and a charter jet, causing the deaths of 167 souls.

Here’s the scene in question:

So here’s the basic mainstream interpretation I have seen about this scene, here’s what the normies say:

Walt indirectly causes the death of Jane, by letting her overdose because it would keep Jesse working for him cooking meth. The grief over her loss causes her Air Traffic Control father Donald Margolis to zone out at work and cause the collision. The collision caused a variety of things from the planes to rain down on the city, including a pink toy stuffed animal teddy bear, charred on one side, which fell into Walt’s pool as he sat in his backyard contemplating his actions.

Show creator and writer Vince Gilligan has said that this moment represents all the bad that Walt has brought into the world, and is also the “judgment of God.”

Everyone agrees that the teddy bear carried symbolism with it.

This is the basic interpretation: Walt was bad, he was sitting by the pool, the planes explode, the teddy bear falls into the pool, Walt is horrified at what has happened.

Here’s my contention: what fell was not a teddy bear.

What fell was a young toddler who just hit the water and died, holding the teddy bear.

I think the show gives us some clues as to why this might be true.

Here are my arguments in favor of that macabre interpretation:

First: the splash is larger than what a teddy bear would cause, even traveling at terminal velocity.

Now, to be thorough, what is portrayed on screen was made to look like a teddy bear even when the camera is positioned to be underwater. I took a frame-by-frame snapshot so you can see how they portrayed this in the scene, for a moment that goes by very quickly, as seen here:

Second: Walt’s reaction is not consistent with the fallen item being a teddy bear.

Third: Walt would not have been able to quickly figure out that the underwater item was a teddy bear. But a body would have been very obvious.

Fourth: later, a discussion happens during the school meeting in the gymnasium where one of the students related how his neighbor found human legs in his front yard, wherein Walt becomes defensive and urges everyone to ‘look on the bright side’ of the disaster, saying that “at least it was no Tenerife.”

Fifth: obviously a dead, or live, toddler falling into the pool would have fallen afoul of standards and practices. The controversy over showing it would have overshadowed everything else in the episode and possibly, the show itself.

Sixth: the show actually presents the point of view of whatever was falling in a series of twisting views. Obviously a teddy bear is not experiencing the fall.

Seventh: if this was a teddy bear, it would have been held in the hands of a toddler. The toddler would likely not have let it go, so it would most likely be the thing that the child clung to on the way down. In a collision, the explosion is unlikely to cause the death, it would be the trauma of the fall’s impact that would cause death.

Eighth: the orientation of the explosion above Walt’s home makes it seem as though most items are going to be falling elsewhere in the city. What would most likely fall straight down would be a toddler blown out of the plane in the collision.

Ninth: The beginning of S2E13, the episode that features the mid-air collision, it starts with an eyeball floating in Walt’s pool. This is the typical foreshadowing that the show engages in, which is a great hook to the show. However, if one notices the eyeball floating around, it does not have any back hook or way for the eye to connect to the bear.

So it is either glued onto the bear, which would be unlike any other child’s toy because it wouldn’t stand up to normal wear and tear, or it’s not a toy’s eye.

Of note here is that Walt holds onto the eye as a kind of guilty good-luck charm after finding it in his pool drain.

Tenth: As a HazMat crew removes the teddy bear from the White household, they show two members of the crew standing over two bodybags in the driveway.

Next it features a charred, laces tied, shoe. But the shoe is lacking a foot inside.

Eleventh: This is a show that was not above showing the way in which the drug business hurt people and even kids. The series even had Walt poison a young child, Brock, with lily of the valley because the kid and his mother were causing Jesse to pull away from the meth business (S4E13).

And of course there was the infamous moment when Todd shot and killed the motorcycle kid (S5E5).

Twelfth, and finally: the scene and the moment represents this tug of war between Walt and God. Walt thinks that he can manage the meth business to be less dangerous, less destructive, and less fatal. This incident is the reminder that his plans were ultimately impossible because what he was doing was morally wrong: he was condemning people to chemical slavery and families to ruin. Walt was expecting to build his family up on the death and destruction of Donald Margolis’ life. In the show, Margolis later takes his life out of guilt for what he had done, and for the grief of losing his daughter Jane. In that context, then, it makes a lot more sense for what is falling out of the sky to be a body than a teddy bear.

Subconsciously I think the viewer knows that something is wrong and off about the plane crash scene. You can tell that the splash is disproportionate and one’s mind and imagination fills in the blanks.

There are all these visual cues that indicate that this show is not just showing a mid-air plane collision, but it is also showing you the very human toll of Walt’s decisions.

A teddy bear is great symbolism, but the show seems to be heavily suggesting to the viewer that there was a body along with it.

The other inconsistencies of the moment resolve and hide amongst an otherwise terrible emotion knowing that dozens of others were dying on-screen.

Breaking Bad takes a very horrible drug trade, which daily causes heartbreak across the nation, and glamorizes it, but is also very careful to show that all the glitz comes with very human costs.

It would be somewhat out of form for the show not to provide a visual representation of a major loss like this. This is a show that earlier in that episode showed the slow, puking, overdose death of a 26 year old heroin addict (S2E12).

So the show wasn’t shy about showing the human cost of the drug trade, and about the many morally-compromised choices that constitutes this huge industry.

The analysis here can crack under the plain observation that “it’s just a show” or “it was just a literary device to manifest guilt” and so many other dismissive asides. Those dismissals aren’t wrong, but it’s worth remembering that everything on screen is put there for a reason. Every action was a conscious decision by a writer, producer, editor, and director.

The episode was directed by Adam Bernstein, and was written by Vince Gilligan.