Jesse's Girls

            Imagine you’re a teenager again. For some of us it might not be that long ago. For others it may seem like ages ago (even though I’m sure it was closer to the present than you think). Can you remember doing anything that you would now consider stupid or silly? I remember way back when (about three years ago, I'm not actually that old) there was a gated and abandoned rehab community known as Seaview Hospital. As a teen, there was a sense of empowerment in the ability to slip past the hole in the gate and trudge around this “haunted” community. Looking back, I now think of it as childish and pointless. I mean, I went during the daytime, where no police could see me, with a big group of friends so no other wandering groups would hurt us. It was literally the safest form of rebellion I could have achieved.

I’m sure everyone has one of those stories from their teenage years. You know, those rebellious years, when you would stay out past your curfew just to see how far you could push it. Perhaps the character that embodies this personality the most in any show I've ever seen is Jesse Pinkman. Jesse’s a special kind of character, and probably my favorite character of the show Breaking Bad. He has the type of personality where you never quite know why he does what he does; you just understand that it’s something he would do.  The show delves into so many opportunities Jesse has to turn his life around, yet he barely takes any of them. As a viewer, you completely understand that he does these seemingly childish things. It just doesn't seem far-fetched when it should; it seems to fit perfectly with his character. You just don’t know why you understand it. It's hard to explain until you dig deep into the show, which is what makes Jesse Pinkman such an interesting character.

This might seem like an abstract idea, but allow me to attempt to unravel this medical case of a teenager-who-never-grew-up. We first meet Jesse in the show climbing out of a window of what Walter describes as poor excuse for a Meth-lab. What exactly got Jesse into this predicament? All we know is that Walter was Jesse’s Chemistry teacher in high school and that Jesse was a bad student. Why was he a bad student? What led him to an addiction to Meth-Amphetamine? What led him to cook Meth?

An interesting trait about Jesse, which seems to answer these questions, is that Jesse seems to fail at or mess up everything he does. When cooking in an RV, he leaves the keys in the ignition. Thus, he kills the battery, leaving him and Walter stranded in the desert. When in high school, he fails Chemistry. When his parents try to help him rehabilitate, he covers for his little brother’s drug use and gets kicked out of their house for good. No matter where he goes, he can never seem to do right. Of course, like any other teenager would assume, it's not really his fault in his own eyes. Bad things happen to him so often that he just learns to shrug it off and chalk it up to "the world's out to get me". He just has the attitude and heir of a punk.

I personally assume that Jesse was just always that “trouble-maker”. I think he’s the kind of person whose ambitions lie in working with his hands. He’s a creationist, and books mean nothing to a man who creates. To propel this theory, at one point in his rehabilitation, Jesse states that the one thing he was really good at was a project in wood shop class. A project he tried so many times to get right, and wouldn’t stop until it was perfect. This would answer why he is good at cooking Meth, and enjoys doing so.

 I believe that these underlying ideas, in a way, push him to continue to cook Meth with Walter after many endeavors in a nefarious style. In the beginning, it seems like Walter and Jesse mentor each other. Walter teaches him how to cook pure Meth, and Jesse teaches him the street life. At this time both continue to maintain their respective personalities. However, after making so much money and learning how to cook meth so well, Jesse’s finally found a place where he’s good at something. While Jesse is cooking with Walter, it is the only time we see them not fighting. Then, after personality changes, it’s the only times they actually get along as equals- without Walter’s bossy, Heisenberg-like attitude getting in the way. It’s also during these periods that he actually lives an appropriate lifestyle - that is, aside from the whole cooking Meth part. These are the times when Jesse goes to rehab. He also finds love and lives in a hospitable house. Literally the best moments of his life occur when he is cooking Meth. It calms him, and keeps his sporadic tendencies at bay. He doesn't need to lash out at the world because he's not failing at anything  That’s why I think Walter and Jesse have such a close connection throughout the show, but that’s an analysis for another blog post.

Although throughout most of the series, this is the personality Jesse embodies, he eventually wants to break free of the addiction Meth has on him, both in a cooking and smoking sense. As I said before, Jesse acts like a punk. However, there are several points in time where we can actually see him taking his baby-steps into adult hood. Strangely, these times only happen after someone close to him or someone innocent has been killed.

During these few moments of sorrow, we see Jesse’s true nature of innocence.  It's blocked by and emotional barrier built with extreme fortitude against the world’s unfortunate tendency to throw bad luck in his direction. He wants to lash back at the world that has lashed out at him. However, when an emotional-nuclear bomb, such as his first love interest dying, is cast upon this wall, he has no option but to reveal his true self. The first time its shown is when he goes to rehab after his love-interest over-doses; when he cleans up his house and stops using again because his new love-interest’s sibling gets killed; when he wants to quit cooking Meth after an innocent child who witnessed a robbery gets shot before Jesse can save him; when he rats out Walter to Hank, the DEA agent, because he discovered Walter poisoned his love-interests son. Each time the blow is less and less severe, yet it affects him more and more because he never has enough time to rebuild his wall. 

This theme of death in Jesse’s life seems to cause him to grow. It’s not until the murder of his second love-interest that we see a complete transformation. We see a shell of a rebellious man. One, who clearly just wants to live a normal life, chained and forced to cook Meth. He has finally left behind his barriers and accepted life. Whenever there's an enlightening change in Jesse's life, he has his girls to thank. If they had such a great impact on him, I wish that I had Jesse's girls. Why can't I find some women like that? (I'm weak, I couldn't pass that one up).