Realism and Romanticism On TV: Which is worse - "Breaking Bad" or "How I Met Your Mother"? (Part 2)

(Note: This post is the second half of a two-part post. If you have not read Part 1, you should read it first.)

I intend to argue that the overall effect of romanticized, amoral programming like "How I Met Your Mother" (HIMYM) is more detrimental to our society than the significantly more graphic, but morally realist, programming like "Breaking Bad" (BB). I will however, offer some some qualifications for viewing moral realism.

The Serpent in The Garden

As I see it, Satan lurks in the garden still today, and his tactics, while crafty and sly, haven't really changed all that much. It's not that Satan is stupid and lacks innovation; it seems to be the case that we just keep falling for it. When Satan tempted Eve to partake of the forbidden fruit, he didn't initially lie, nor did he provide a strong argument. He merely asked a subtly skeptical question-“Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’? ” (Genesis 3:1) God had said that Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat of a particular tree, on the threat of death for disobedience. (Genesis 2:17) Satan's initial tactic was not to convince the woman that disobedience is actually good; he merely calls into question the existence of the command itself. It seems to be easier to convince people that there really is no such thing as objective morality than to convince them to openly defy a real moral code.

Herein lies the problem with HIMYM--it contributes to a cultural zeitgeist of moral relativity in which there really are no "right" or "wrong" actions. Unlike HIMYM, however, the account of Genesis continues down a morally realist trajectory. Satan was deceiving Eve into thinking that eating the fruit wasn't really forbidden. The problem is that whether any person (including Eve) recognizes it or not, the universe is woven together by God with a very real moral fabric, and violating the moral law carries with it consequences just as violating physical laws does. [1]

The above clip actually is very funny (and harmless) and does

not illustrate the point I'm making. There are thousands of

clips that do, but they are not appropriate to be linked to here.

The Moral Realism of the Bible

If one takes the whole Bible, Genesis to Revelation, as a single meta-narrative (and one should), the story is shockingly realist. Humanity is plunged into death, disease, evil, and utter spiritual and material ruin. Even nature is cursed. Adam and Eve are kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and it is lost to them and us for as long as this age endures. In this age, between the moral rebellion of Adam and Eve and the restoration of Jesus Christ in the eschaton, we find ourselves in a world that looks much more like that of BB than that of HIMYM. In BB, drug use leads to sickness, death, and violence. In HIMYM, it leads to nothing, except a funny anecdote or punch line.

The Bible itself does not hide the brokenness of the world. It contains a great deal of morally realist depictions, the whole of which ought to drive us to brokenness, desperation, and repentance. God the Holy Spirit inspired the inclusion of such morally graphic accounts as an attempted homosexual gang rape in Sodom (Genesis 19:5), the plunging of Ehud's dagger into the morbidly obese belly of King Eglon spilling his bowels (Judges 3:21-23), the hammering of a tent peg into the temple of Sisera's head while he slept (Judges 4:21), the decapitation of Goliath by young David (1 Samuel 17:51), and the wholesale slaughter of Jerusalem by the Babylonians (Lamentations).

The Scriptures even reveal the moral warts of its own heroes--David committed adultery and killed to hide it; Moses murdered an Egyptian; the Apostle Peter and Barnabas both succumbed briefly to hypocritical racism (Galatians 2:11-13); and the Apostle Paul was the "chief of sinners," formerly an agent of death for professing Christians. In the grand story that God is telling still today, the first and continuing moral rebellion of the human race has created a catastrophic moral mess.

HIMYM depicts many of the same actions but none of the same consequences. As Satan implied, it's as if God didn't really say it was wrong. (Or, maybe there is no God in the fictional universe of HIMYM.)

A Caution Regarding Moral Realism

 This is a particularly powerful scene from "Breaking Bad" 

in which Walter's wife learns that he is a meth "cook."

It reveals the depth of the darkness to which he has turned.

While I find HIMYM and programs like it to be more spiritually harmful to contemporary society, I must offer some cautions about moral realism, particularly in "Breaking Bad." First, the Bible is a text, not an image. While it can be jarring to read about sin in the Scriptures, it takes it to a new and visceral level to see it acted out visually. There have been a few violent scenes in Breaking Bad that I wish I had not seen, because they left a bad mark on my soul. It seems that the director was pushing the boundaries and went too far, crossing the line from moral realism into gratuitous obscenity. Human directors lack the perfect wisdom that God possesses. Therefore, the mature viewer must decide what he or she can handle. However, this must be done with great humility and restraint, as we often can overestimate our ability to be exposed to such things without harm. It is possible for the sensitivity of our souls to die a death by a million cuts.

Should The Individual Christian Watch These Shows?

Thus far, I argued that on a whole societal level, HIMYM is more harmful than BB. What I've avoided, however, is stating whether or not a Christian individual can ethically view either one. If a mature believer (not a child) considers the caution provided in the above paragraph, I believe it may be morally acceptable to watch moral realism (i.e. "Breaking Bad"), provided that they do not violate their own conscience on the matter. Like the issue of meat sacrificed to idols in the Scriptures, it is essentially a matter of analyzing the costs and the benefits. The potential costs are high, and the potential benefits are low, but it is plausible that a Christian can appreciate the story as a well-crafted piece of dramatic art, provided that he views it critically.

The ethics of watching HIMYM mother follows the same basic outline, but I think the costs of regularly watching HIMYM so far outweighs the benefit of the entertainment that it is best if not viewed at all. The reason for this is simple--it, and shows like it, make the viewer laugh at acts that are inherently offensive to the Lord and immoral. What is made to be funny now will be morally acceptable later. When BB portrays violence, drug use, or other sinful behavior, I'm morally repulsed by it. When HIMYM portrays extra-marital sex, drug use, foul language, and the objectification of women, I laugh at it. My spirit is desensitized to sin altogether, and, when sin is no longer a big deal, the Gospel loses its meaning.

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[1] For instance, running face-first into a brick wall (challenging a physical law) and having sexual relationship outside of marriage (violating a moral law) both have very real consequences, even if those consequences for violating the physical laws are more immediately obvious.

Realism and Romanticism On TV: Which is worse - "Breaking Bad" or "How I Met Your Mother"? (Part 1)

As a teacher of Christian ethics, I often think about the rightness or wrongness of the Christian's consumption of the media, and I've recently been wrestling with a particular comparison of two highly rated, but very different, television shows. The programs are AMC's drama "Breaking Bad" and CBS's sitcom "How I Met Your Mother." I've watched a good portion of both, and, though I have found both entertaining at times, both trouble me. The questions on my mind are, 1) Do they trouble me in the same way? and 2) Which is worse? This may seem like a trivial matter for a Christian to ponder, but it gets at a deeper ethical and philosophical question about a Christian view of ethics, art, and aesthetics, which I intend to address in a two-part post.

The two shows:

"Breaking Bad" is about a middle-aged, washed-up chemist named Walter White (played by Brian Cranston) who finds himself drudging through his job as a high school chemistry teacher, working well beneath his professional ability and training. Diagnosed with cancer and broke on a teacher's salary, he finds himself in dire straits. He can't afford the treatments and he wants to provide for his wife and two children before he dies. He runs into a former deadbeat student, named Jesse Pinkman, who is a small-time meth cook and realizes that he could make a lot of money in a hurry by cooking meth himself. Being a highly trained chemist, he's very good at it, earning himself a high reputation as a "cook" on the street. "Breaking Bad" is the story of Walter's spiral into the depths of the meth underworld in which he becomes a major player. The story is extremely graphic, violent, and laced with the profanity that one would expect to hear in such an underworld. Even if exaggerated, and it probably is (But, what do I know? I'm not a druggie.), the fictional universe of Walter White is realist, meaning that there does seem to be such a thing as real truth, a real moral code, and real consequences. Walter White definitely sins, but sin is still sin.

"How I Met Your Mother" is a comedic memoir, the retelling of how Ted Mosby met his future wife to their teenage children twenty something years in the future. The show flows chronologically, beginning in Ted's early 20s, and is the story of Ted's life, as remembered by Ted himself. It is the device of Ted's memory that makes the sitcom so entertaining. Being Ted's memories, it often departs from realism into exaggerated comedy and romanticism. Memory sometimes recalls stories with more flair and romanticism than they actually happened. Ted's entire life before his marriage is spent with his four friends--Marshall, Lily, Robin, and Barnie--and each episode features the antics of the quintet. Eerily similar to the 90s hit "Friends," the five are all best friends, have open sexual relationships in and out of the group, hang out exclusively at McClaren's Pub, and periodically live with one another. In particuar, Barnie Stinson is a reprehensible character whose main schtick is always wearing a suit and wooing any dumb, pathetic woman that crosses his path. He brags incessantly about his ability to manipulate and copulate with young women. While he is occasionally called "depraved" or "disgusting" by his friends, there is no real consequence to any of his actions, and the viewer gets the impression that, in their universe, it isn't even morally wrong, just merely gross. Being a network television show, there is no foul language, few drug references, and very little in the way of actual sexual content. It is all implied.

"How I Met Your Mother" (HIMYM) differs from "Breaking Bad" (BB) in two very important respects. First, HIMYM very rarely depicts any actual sinful activity; whereas, BB explicitly shows murder, death, drug use, sex (no nudity), and foul language. Secondly, as already mentioned, the world of HIMYM is entirely amoral (no such thing as moral "right" and "wrong"); whereas, the world of BB exhibits a real moral fabric--some things are objectively wrong and have consequences.

In HIMYM, all the characters, especially Barnie, are able to have open sexual relationships, use drugs, smoke cigarettes, get wasted, and pursue entirely selfish lifestyles with absolutely zero consequences. Ted is telling this story to his teenagers as if it is all just knee-slapping funny, and future Ted doesn't appear to have any of the diseases, baggage, or pathologies that one would expect from living such a lifestyle. Also, Ted is portrayed as the protagonist, a hopeless romantic, whom any girl would want to bring home to her parents, when, in the real world, almost anyone would consider him a complete jerk. In BB, while the sinfulness is graphic, Walter White becomes evermore dark and creepy. He transforms over several seasons from a normal, but pitiable, suburban dad to some profoundly twisted and dark individual, and he drags his family and friends down with him. From time to time, his conscience wrestles with who he has become, but it becomes increasingly easy for him to ignore his conscience. Walter White dies inside.

This contrast invites an important question: What should be the Christian response to both of these shows?

To be continued...

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Read Part II.