"Hi, baby. I'm your Aunt Marie." Marie Schrader tends to get
the least attention of the four adult members
of the central family in Breaking Bad, which would not please Marie. "Now I'm supposed to go,
'Hank, please what can I possibly do to further benefit my spoiled,
kleptomaniac, bitch sister who somehow always manages
to be the center of attention?'" But it’s a big mistake to overlook her
because Marie holds a key to understanding the show as a whole. As we’re watching,
we start to realize the writers use Marie to offer
a secret, warped mirror of Walt himself. "You're a thief." "Excuse me?" "And a liar, making stories up about yourself. What's wrong with you?" Through Marie, the show explores
central questions of Walt’s story -- like, why do people
do bad things? And where’s that line separating selfish
and spiteful from truly evil? In Walt these questions take on
a grand dramatic tone; in Marie, they’re repeated
on a smaller, more comic scale. "Don't worry, I wouldn't hurt anybody,
but it just... it just feels good
to think about it." Thus the character unlocks
a hidden commentary that makes us re-evaluate
our initial take on Walt’s journey and sheds some light on
what makes a person break bad, or stop short. So here’s our take on
why Marie Schrader is Walter White, Lite. Before we go on, we want to tell you a little bit
about this video's sponsor, BetterHelp. BetterHelp is an online counseling service
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to sign up now. And back to Marie. Skyler and Hank are both,
to some extent, Walt’s antagonists -- they’re often in clear opposition to him,
either knowingly or unknowingly. Meanwhile, Marie actually has a lot more in
common with her brother-in-law than first meets the eye. "I think you should do
whatever you want to do." "What?" Comparing Walt and Marie can help us
understand Walt’s motivations for breaking bad. If you look at
the fourth episode of Season 1, it contains a very revealing sequence of events
that sheds some light on why Walt does what he does. Skyler tells the family
about Walt’s diagnosis, and Hank, though he means well,
says the worst thing he could say to Walt. "Whatever happens, I want you to know
that I'll always take care of your family." Hearing this, Walt feels powerless
and emasculated. Later, a guy swipes
Walt’s parking spot. "Hey! Oh come on!" And when Walt runs into the guy again,
he sets fire to the guy’s car. Unhappy that he can’t
provide for his family -- and, more to the point, that the world sees him as a man
who can’t provide for his family and who will just stand by
as his parking spot is stolen -- Walter asserts himself. Marie has a parallel situation
an episode earlier. First she complains
that her shoes are ugly. "These shoes make me look like
I should be changing bedpans, like I should be squeaking around
bringing soup to some disgusting old person, then take the bus home
to my 16 cats." Then she goes window-shopping,
is annoyed by a rude salesperson, "Excuse me, ma'am. Ma'am. You need to be wearing footies
before you try those on." "I'm extremely clean." "Yeah, well,
I'd really appreciate it." and, on impulse, it seems,
walks out of the store wearing shoes
she did not pay for. Both Walt and Marie feel unhappy
with who they are, and more specifically with the fact
that others view them in a way they don't like. Both act out of spite,
to punish the people they think slighted them. They begin breaking the law
as an instinctive response to feeling their egos bruised
and their worth not recognized. And as they go on, their deeper psychological desire is
very much the same, too. Bryan Cranston once said about
Walter White turning into Heisenberg: "Personally I feel it had happened
in the very first episode when he attempted to
become someone he wasn't." So according to Cranston,
Walter’s fatal flaw is wanting to overstep the boundaries of who he is --
to become something he’s not. Marie’s stealing is
a similar overstepping -- she is very literally disregarding the boundary
between “mine” and “yours.” And Marie goes even further
in trying to become someone else. "Any children?" "Yes, as a matter of fact,
a little boy." "Oh, how old?" "He turned 4 in May. He’s a Gemini." In Season 4, when her relationship
with Hank is struggling, she finds solace in a new,
more elaborate ritual -- she goes house-shopping, pretending to be
a different person in each house she visits, "Tori Costner." "Charlotte Blattner." "So nice to meet you, Charlotte." and stealing little trophies
along the way. Marie wants to be seen as a creative,
glamorous and happily married woman, "My husband is an illustrator,
so we traveled a lot -- Paris, Italy, Denmark. It was before the kids were in school,
so it was easy to pick up and go." while Walter wants to be seen as
the great and mighty Heisenberg. "I am the one who knocks." Yet both are driven by the ambition
to swap a dissatisfying life for a better one,
via shortcuts. "Between his pension and the income
I bring in from hand modelling, we're, you know, comfortable." The key psychological similarity
that Walt and Marie share is an inflated yet fragile ego. "You were returning it? Why would you return it?" We’ve talked Walter’s ego at length
in earlier videos. "Bring the bottle back." Marie has an ego that could probably compare,
even if it’s not as obvious. "When you watch this 20 years from now,
I will look exactly the same as I do now. I know it is amazing. I have aged shockingly well, haven't I?" Her self-centeredness manifests
most often in her insensitivity to the people she’s talking to. "I was talking to Melinda,
Hank's boss's wife. I told you about the one with helmet hair
and permanent lip liner. Anyway, she was saying
that when they were there --" "Shhh!" She can’t read a room
to save her life. "Yeah! Hey!" And one quirk that expresses
Marie’s egomania is her famous obsession with purple. Betsy Brandt, who plays Marie,
once explained that each cast member was assigned their own distinctive color
at the beginning of the show, but that she was the one
who suggested taking Marie’s love of purple to the extreme. She said, quote,
“And they just ran with that.” Purple is associated with royalty, so it's fitting that the color makes Marie
feel special and important. Like a child, she equates herself
with her favorite color -- surrounding herself with it is a way of
remaking her world in her own image. Of course, this is a superficial
and largely imaginary pursuit -- which is more evidence that Marie is
a lighter version of Walter. He’s trying to bend
the whole world to his will, even taking and destroying lives
to build his empire, whereas Marie's crimes are
largely victimless. She indulges her egotistical whims
in a more solipsistic fantasy space. Yet the comparison between the two
leads to the important observation that what Walt’s doing is
just as childish and deluded, if far less harmless. Marie and Walt are also
both prolific liars. "You better just back off, okay? My husband is a DEA agent." "I thought he was an astronaut or an illustrator. You better get your crazy lies straight." And they excel especially
in lying to themselves. "You’re a drug dealer." "No, what, how--" "The shoplifting. You're not going
to admit this, are you?" "I can't really admit to something
when I have no knowledge of what it is that I'm admitting." They seem to have
a defensive barrier that helps them repress
what they really feel deep down. And that self-delusion results in
a lot of misdirected emotions. When Hank is in the hospital,
Marie’s anxiety over his health surfaces as a rant about
the hospital cafeteria forks. "We're in a hospital. Do you think that sick people aren't
eating with this bacteria-infected silverware? My God, how are you supposed to
survive this death trap?" Walt has a very similar hygiene-related obsession
in the famous “Fly” episode. "This fly is a major problem for us. Now, we need to destroy it
and every trace of it. Failing that we're dead." Of course, it’s not the fly
Walt is really worried about; he’s concerned over his increasingly
dangerous stalemate with Gus. But both Marie and Walt are so good
at keeping themselves in denial, that sometimes they don’t even know
when they’re doing it. "I have no idea
what the hell you’re even talking about." So the parallels between Walt’s and Marie’s
psychological makeup are striking: the dangerous ego, the lying to themselves,
the impulsivity and spitefulness, the need for recognition, and the feeling that they’re entitled
to be more than they are. It’s no coincidence that both Marie and
Walt try to steal Holly from Skyler in Season 5. "Give me my baby." "Skyler, we're not leaving without her!" "Walt, no! Let her go!" Both have such big egos and ability
to delude themselves that they confidently overstep boundaries
others would consider sacred and untouchable. In season one, we learn that Walt’s not
the only member of his family breaking the law -- "You know that tiara
that Marie gave us?" "Hmm." "Well, she stole it." The audience thus gets to feel out
each of the main characters’ approaches to morality, and their reactions to Marie foreshadow
what Walt will face from his family in the future. Skyler’s response to her sister’s shoplifting
lets us fast forward in our minds to the moment when she’ll inevitably
find out about her husband -- and we can see
it’s not going to be pretty. "Your lies. To me. The shoplifting. All of it. Did you really think it was all
just neatly gonna go away?" "Well, if you hadn't tried
to return it --" "Apologise." Her reaction to Marie tells us
that Skyler’s morality is pretty rigidly unbending -- this is not a woman who will rush
to make excuses for her family's transgressions. "You knew about this." "W-We're working on it." Meanwhile, Hank, the tough DEA agent
who treats his perps like scum, "Sit your ass down! Comprendé? Sientate!" is nothing but supportive
when it comes to his wife’s “issues.” "We gotta support
the shit out of her." So we see that he has a soft spot
when it comes to family -- and that will come into play later
when it takes him so long to realize the truth about Walt,
even when it’s in front of his eyes. We see that Marie’s own moral code isn’t
lax or forgiving, "Maybe you should just go ahead
and die then." except when it comes to making room
for herself as an exception. She’s outraged at the idea
that Walter Jr. is, she wrongly believes,
smoking pot. "Walter Jr." "Yeah, what about him?" "Marijuana --
he's smoking it." but she shoplifts a pair of shoes
immediately after this conversation. So her behavior shows how easy it is
to excuse yourself while judging others -- and that gives us a preview
of exactly the kind of hypocrisy we’re going to see later
magnified in Walt. "I am not a criminal. No offense to any people who are." Walter’s own reaction to
Marie’s crimes is deeply revealing -- trying to justify his own behavior,
he reinterprets Marie’s. "Oh, well. People sometimes do things
for their families." "People sometimes do things
for their families? And, what, that justifies stealing?" This exchange is so interesting
because we can see that Walt is already using Marie’s compulsion
as an opportunity to practice his skills of rationalization -- something he will eventually
turn into an art form. "That is college tuition
for Walter Jr. And Holly." So in the end, what separates
Marie and Walt? Why does Marie never kill anyone,
poison any children, or torture her nearest
and dearest? Surely if they are really so similar,
she would have done something worse than stealing a few knickknacks? Well, there are three significant things
that Marie doesn’t have, which weigh greatly on Walt: the deadline of a cancer diagnosis
breathing down her neck; the unrealized potential
of wasted scientific genius; and the pressures of society’s
expectations of masculinity. These factors separating
Walt's story from Marie's suggest to us that at least part of
what leads someone down a darker path is circumstance --
environment. But Marie also has a very important thing
that Walt doesn’t, and that’s a consistently loving,
resilient marriage. Her truest redeeming quality is
her devotion to her husband. And maybe it’s largely thanks to
his patient support that Marie stays mostly true
to her better side. "Marie! Do it now. Give her back." Marie and Hank constantly
berate each other, "I must've said Cheetos like ten times. You need me to write it down for you?" "No, and I don't need you to be
mean about it either, Mr. Grumpy." but they also understand each other
without words and share their own intimate language. "If I can get the groundhog
to see his shadow --" "It's not going to happen. I'm sorry." "I'm betting it will, and if he does,
you check out of here." They’re an unlikely contender
for the title, but we might argue that these two make
one of the the sweetest TV couples out there -- in their own way. "Pain is weakness leaving your body." "Pain is my foot in your ass, Marie." "Hey, if you can get your leg up that high,
I say go for it." There’s a chicken-or-the-egg
mystery here -- is it the strength of their relationship
that keeps Marie from succumbing to her bad side, or is it because Marie is more good than bad
that their relationship stays more nurturing than Skyler and Walter’s? Either way, Marie gives us the answer
to why most people with the potential to break bad don’t turn into Heisenbergs -- true connection to others keeps us
tethered to our better selves. Characters are not supposed
to be real people. They’re elements in a story -- collections of traits and motivations
deliberately crafted to move the narrative along and illuminate its key themes. Marie’s character is designed to
double the issues we see in Walt's personality, but in a smaller,
unthreatening form. Think of it this way -- if Heisenberg were a T-Rex,
Marie would be a little, mini T-Rex. Now, if you shrink down a big scary dinosaur
to the size of a lapdog, the fearsome creature becomes
essentially harmless, even funny and ridiculous. "Welcome to your baby shower,
Esmeralda!" Walt wants the universe to look upon him
with fear and awe -- yet this little yappy mirror of him in Marie
undermines that mighty image and forces us to wonder -- is Heisenberg’s ego trip not a little bit
silly and pitiable after all? "He was... naked, naked in a supermarket? It wasn't Whole Foods, was it?" In the end, this kleptomaniac
radiology technician with a penchant for purple is
the “Heisenberg everywoman” -- proof that you don’t have to be
exceptionally talented or diagnosed with cancer
to have Heisenbergian egomania within you. But even if you are an unpleasant,
selfish person in many ways, it’s not a done deal
that you can’t lead a good life. If you're ever in doubt, clinging to your bonds
with the people you love will help you stay on
the right track. "The officers spoke to the homeowners
and they're not gonna press charges." "Good, I won't either." Hey guys, The fact is everyone can benefit
from counseling, but there's a whole laundry list
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Jesus Marie
I hate these posts where the title barely gives any information on the video. Posts like these I’ll watch 2-3 min and realize I have no interest in the topic and back out. Why can’t you just add a description. What about Marie and Walter?!?