BREAKING BAD - The Pink Bear's Meaning, Explained

welcome to screen crush i'm ryan airy breaking bad is filled with layers and symbolism from the show's color palette the parallel story lines the costume design but the most striking symbol on the show is the charred teddy bear and the dismembered eye that seems to follow walt wherever he goes what does it all mean basil so let's take a deep dive into the hidden meaning of this bear its burnt half and that creepy eyeball [Music] a little bit of backstory the bear was part of the debris that fell into walt's pool after the mid-air collision of a chartered plane and wayfair flight 515. remember walt indirectly caused these 167 innocent deaths he let jane die leading to the distraction of her father and air traffic controller one zero thousand juliet mike two one do you have that traffic at your nine o'clock way fair five one traffic do you have that traffic the bear appeared in the cold open of several episodes hinting that some awful fate awaited the white family the scenes are in black and white except for the bear which is a bright hot pink now every color in breaking bad has a special significance we made a whole video about it if you want to check that out pink means innocence youth and tragedy for instance jesse's last name is pinkman to highlight his childlike nature and tragic path in fact the bear first appeared in the digital release of a music video for jesse's band [ __ ] hammer the video and this mockumentary about the band are both set before the events of breaking bad when jesse was more naive and innocent see now you made me say the word what you can say i can't say all right how are we gonna get this on vh1 the bear next appeared in the hi-lo mart during walt's fugue state by pretending to be in amnesiac he's basically casting himself as a big naked innocent baby and after this moment he's temporarily freed from a life of crime i'm done so when you see this bear pop up in the show it signifies innocence but that innocence is about to be destroyed by catastrophe when we look at this bear we don't see just a toy we see the child holding that toy instantly the audience and walt understands that he has caused the death of a child an innocent life cut short by his evil deeds walt even wears a pink sweater during this crash to emphasize his connection to the disaster the character on breaking bad who most often wears pink is holly white when these scenes first aired they were something of a misdirect they're framed to make the audience think that something awful is going to happen to walt's family note the double body bags and the broken windshield on his car but remember when the season started skyler was still pregnant so the audience assumed that this bear would belong to baby holly when actually symbolically the bear is baby holly she's even dressed as a pink bear in season four and walt tucks her in with a pink bear in season three so why is holly a symbol of both innocence and tragedy well because holly's birth instead of being a joyous family occasion actually marked the beginning of her family's downfall she was born on the same day that walt made his first meth delivery to gus the day he took his first step into a larger world of organized crime that's right daddy did that in fact walt missed holly's birth just to make his first big deal and did you notice what's lying in the rubble outside the warehouse where they made this exchange it's a pink teddy bear lying face down like it's dead foreshadowing the real tragedy of season two jane's death jane has a very strong connection to the bear there's a mural in her bedroom presumably painted by her now like any art there are many ways to interpret this work jane most likely meant this to depict herself sleeping note the alarm clock the woman is riding a rainbow into the night sky or a kind of dreamland this is a naive innocent way to interpret this work but like everything good in breaking bad there's tragedy lurking within knowing jane's fate and the aftermath causes us to see this painting differently the woman jane is dead being carried into the afterlife into the heavens note that jane died lying on her back just like this woman the alarm clock is indicating that her time has run out and what's this a pink teddy bear falling from the sky a symbol of innocent dreams crashing down to reality the image is mirrored in the season six episode rabid dog jesse has decided to betray walt to the dea in a sense reconnecting with his original innocence behind him way up in this tree is a pink teddy bear much like jane it's watching over him from above jane also represents what is pure in jesse's life i'm in recovery and you know pot it's like stepping stones while walt pulls him toward the darkness jane keeps him in the light symbolized by the light and dark sides of the bear now not that jane is completely innocent after all she did try to blackmail walt however this happened after she was corrupted by drugs once shane stopped being clean her judgment was impaired she was no longer as innocent jane is damned when she's corrupted by walt's money this is freedom this is saying i can go anywhere i want i can be anybody similarly love of money corrupts and destroys holly's family the connection between holly and jane is made overt in the episode phoenix this is holly's first day on earth and jane's last early in the episode walt and skylar carefully lay holly on her side so she won't choke in her sleep which later walt refuses to do for jane in my opinion this is the moment when walt becomes damned in a previous video we discussed the moment he decided to break bad but this is the first time walt deliberately takes an innocent life now like i said jane did threaten to blackmail him but unlike tuco or crazy8 she's not a career criminal she's a drug addict who's held captive by her disease and just before this scene walt shared a beer with jane's father donald they begin by discussing an optimistic future where mars is the new key to space travel ostensibly turning mars into a giant gas station then these two middle-aged dads begin discussing their families can't give up on them never this conversation is vital because later it helps walt put a human face on his crime and understand that this disaster is his fault i sit down and this man this stranger he engages me in conversation he's a complete stranger but but he turns out to be jane's father it's easy for us to dismiss death when it's an abstract statistic casualty wise is just the 50th worst air disaster but talking to donald helps walt put a human face on this tragedy he sees himself and donald he feels empathy for him he's a scared dad who's just trying to make the world better for his kid just like walt because walt feels this empathy he doesn't just feel like he killed donald's daughter it's like he killed his own daughter as well just like he killed the little girl who was holding this pink teddy bear now this scene is a brilliant piece of acting by brian cranston he goes from concerned and fatherly and then indecisive as he begins to calculate the possibilities and when he makes his decision a coldness washes over his face shades of heisenberg to come and then finally he's filled with guilt and regret it's heartbreaking in an instant walt stops seeing jane as an obstacle a potential blackmailer and he sees her as a young woman a daughter and someday it could be his daughter lying dead at the mercy of an evil man like him it's also fitting that just before the crash walt does lose his daughter skyler leaves him and takes holly with her so walt's criminal actions have caused the loss of three daughters holly jane and the little girl holding the bear the bear scarred appearance is also a key component of its symbolism half of its face is charred and blackened just as walt lives two lives good and bad the color pink represents what is innocent in his life like baby holly while black is the primary caller worn by heisenberg the show's embodiment of evil gus also lived a double life i hide in plain sight same as you when he's killed half his face is burned away both gus and the bear scarred faces were revealed by a slow camera movement the image also calls to mind the comic book villain two-face a character who embodies the binary nature of good and evil when walt jesse and gus are all at their lowest points they are pressed to the ground and forced to watch their loved ones die much like harvey dent and the dark knight half of jesse's face was also mutilated by hank and by the end of the show half his face is permanently scarred by the aryan brotherhood gail bettiker also lived a double life and when he was murdered he was shot just beneath one eye the same eye that is torn away from the teddy bear so let's talk about the eyeball this common connection of scarred faces and tragic deaths implies that there's good and evil inside all of these characters and they were all forced down a darker path by evil violent men now we actually see the eye first floating in the water like a grisly dismembered body part it's violently sucked into the pool filter signaling that it's now a part of walter white it lives inside of him vince gilligan did discuss the meaning of the eye saying when we were coming up with that eye as an image it probably represented some form of the universe the eye of god the eye of morality i guess if you're going to hold my feet to the fire what it means to me is the eye of god on walt if not necessarily judging him nonetheless watching him keeping tabs on him and then the question if that is what the symbolism stands for then why does walt keep that eye why does he keep it in his drawer versus discarding it i believe that walt keeps the eye because he can't throw it away it's part of him sucked into the pool filter of his soul he draws it from the water of his pool and breaking bad often uses swimming pools as a symbol of emotions a place where the rawest parts of the characters are revealed so this eye comes from walt's raw feelings of guilt it's his inner moral light the kind of jiminy cricket who's always judging him and walt does feel guilt about jane at least initially he tries to rationalize the plane crash with statistics well at any rate what you're left with casualty wise is just the 50th worst air disaster so he clearly researched all of these numbers to assuage his own feelings of guilt and he also cast himself as the victim of this tragedy things i've had to do i've got to live with them but his inner truth is revealed in fly an episode that strips away the trappings of breaking bad to reveal the character's true emotional selves i'm sorry about jane so the bear symbolizes walt's attachment to his own humanity and this is also why the toy is bright pink in a sterile black and white world gilligan and his team were inspired by this iconic scene in schindler's list [Music] now if you haven't seen the movie as nazis destroy the krakow ghetto schindler sees a girl in a red coat running through the streets before this moment schindler was a calculating war profiteer jews were used as cheap labor in his factories to make material for the nazi war effort but this girl calls out to schindler through her he sees the jewish people as human beings not just workers she is a symbol of goodness in a world devastated by evil and she awakens the man's humanity just as the pink bear represents what walt loves in life his family his daughter and jesse but just as the girl's red coat later appears in a wheelbarrow full of corpses the bear is destroyed by the evil in the world the evil he created and the eye unburned by the crash is all that remains of the bear it sees waltz unblinking always looking at his true self he can lie about his reasons for turning to crime but the eye can see what's really inside of him i did it for me i liked it in many respects this is the eye of god or at least the eye of universal object of truth the cousins find it while they're waiting to kill wall but they don't seem to care after they leave walt sees the eyes been disturbed in a way informing him that he's being watched in season four skyler skyler's about to help walt break bad so she can help hank and marie while looking for walt she finds the eye in a drawer and then discards it so this eye this higher power is slowly judging her as well walt can lie live a double life kill murder but the eye sees what he really is there is also some evidence that the supernatural or at least a belief in the supernatural exists in breaking bad the youtube channel life is a story posited that in the final episode felina walt actually speaks to god now in this moment when the cops are bearing down on walt he says and then the car keys magically fall from the visor as if a gift from heaven so the bear came from the heavens and landed in walt's pool a symbol of his roiling emotions the bear is taken away in a metaphorical bodybag much like jane but this eye of innocence mangled by walt's sin is pulled inside of his home and it never leaves him wherever walt goes the eye follows watching judging seeing him for what he always was an evil prideful man searching for an excuse to break bat well guys what do you think about the pink teddy bear let me know in the comments below and if it's your first time here please subscribe for screen crush i'm ryan airy [Music] you

Channel: ScreenCrush

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Keywords: breaking bad, video essay, better call saul, most important episodes, breaking bad video essay, the take breaking bad, screenprism breaking bad, lessons form the screenplay breaking bad, nerdwriter breaking bad, lindsay ellis breaking bad, breaking bad symbolism, breaking bad pink berar, breaking bad jane, walt jane

Id: y0ealqsk5gY

Length: 14min 37sec (877 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 10 2020