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.