This line from Walter White, which has the honor of being one of the most quoted lines in a supremely, almost absurdly, quotable show, is also one of the most misunderstood. How so? Watch the scene whence it originates - without considering the context of that scene in Season 4 or the show as a whole.
Devoid of context, that monologue is a viscerally thrilling, perfectly-crafted put down delivered by a character who seems to radiate power. Everything about the scene - Walt's removal of his red button-up to reveal the black shirt (symbolic of his black heart, and a contrast to Skyler's white and blue ensemble) underneath; the guttural, almost bestial timbre to his voice as he growls, "I am the danger"; his heavy breathing and intense stare; his dominant position over against Skyler - signals to a modern American audience that we're watching a crowning moment of antiheroism, one of those triumphs of the amoral over the moral which we suppose we probably shouldn't enjoy but do anyway.
The problem is that this is not at all what is happening.
In context, Walter White is at one of his lowest points during this scene. After pulling off an incredible gambit to save his own life and that of his partner at the end of Season 3, a gambit which involved the murder of one of the show's only innocent characters, Walt finds himself locked in a terrifying, season-long standoff with his rival, Gustavo Fring. Nominally safe, but threatened at every turn by Fring's vast wealth, intimidating cronies, superior strategic intellect, and cold-blooded psychopathy, Walt's behavior starts to become increasingly erratic as he tries to deal with his own helplessness in the face of his seemingly-inevitable demise. At this point in the season, he has started to make stupid decisions: alienating the one person who might be able to save him, flaunting his ill-gotten gains, and even throwing out drunken hints to his DEA brother-in-law who is investigating Walt's own criminal enterprise. Walter has never had less control over his own life. So when he lashes out at his worried (but not worried enough), estranged wife, we are meant to see it for what it is: posturing. Hollow, groundless, insubstantial. The ravings of a man who, because he cannot defeat his more powerful enemies, unleashes his ire on someone he considers weaker.
Why, then, do this scene and its memorable dialogue get trotted out as proof of Walter's status as one of TV's greatest badasses? Part of the reason is that, as the beginning of this New York Times article points out, many Breaking Bad fans don't get the point of the show. Emily Nussbaum provides this description of a "bad Bad fan": "he arrive[s] late in the story, and he s[ees] Walt purely as a kick-ass genius, worthy of worship . . . ."
I think this is true enough, but it doesn't tell the whole story. There is a deeper reason that there are "bad" fans of Breaking Bad, and that reason has to do with how the show achieves its thematic goals. I'm thinking of a class on early modern literature that I took my last semester of college. In one of our class sessions on Paradise Lost, my professor opined that Milton's description of Eve functions as a meta-poetic indictment of human concupiscence. The language which surrounds her before the Fall is supposed to be innocently sensual, but we fallen people read into it our own degraded sexual desire. According to my professor, Milton achieved this by painting an alluring and beautiful picture of Eve in the early parts of the poem, throwing out a few hints here and there as to the ultimate fate of human sensuality (Eve's hair is described as "wanton," for example), and finally revealing to us our own lustful thoughts when he has Satan gaze at and objectify Eve in exactly the same way that we, the readers, have been doing. In this view, Milton has pulled a poetical bait-and-switch, leading us to lust after Eve and then exposing our sin.
I believe Breaking Bad works in a similar way. Early on, Walt is the put-upon everyman, and you're supposed to root for him when he starts to assert himself. Scenes where Walt blows up some jerk's car, or tells off his nagging wife, or destroys a crazed drug dealer's hideout are exhilarating and cathartic (not to mention sometimes hilarious) because they're satisfying our desire for poetic role reversal. We empathize with Walt's weakness. We feel his shame and regret at having missed his opportunity to capitalize on his potential, and although most of us aren't geniuses, we can understand his resentment against the monotony that dominates his life, the boredom that, to use Paul Tillich's words, is "rage spread thin." The circumstances of and people in Walt's life, from his second job at a car wash to his condescending, macho brother-in-law, from the son who doesn't seem to respect him to his unsatisfying position teaching basic chemistry to apathetic teenagers, appears the epitome of white, middle-class, late capitalistic ennui. As he shoulders burdens which are familiar to many or most of us, we instinctively project our own struggles onto his character, and, with them, our own fantasies about suddenly acquiring money and power. This is why it's fun to watch Walt start to gain some independence and agency over against his apparent oppressors.
Which is exactly what Vince Gilligan and crew want us to do. Having gotten us to identify with Walt and to invest in his bid for autonomy, they begin in earnest the project of "turning Mr. Chips into Scarface." But this transformation is less a change of one thing into something different than it is an exercise in following premises to their logical conclusions. Yes, it's true that Walt initially and perhaps sincerely justifies his actions by claiming that he needs to provide for his family. But the real roots of his eventual villainy lie, not in his hypocrisy, but in the very qualities which he is striving to attain and which we, the audience, desire for ourselves: self-assertion, a competitive spirit, righteous indignation in defending what is ours, the capacity to achieve through individual effort, pride, high ambition. We cheer Walt on as he pushes some competing dealers off his turf - then recoil in horror as we realize that that same sense of ownership leads him to ruin his friend's life. We exult in Walt's violent triumph over a pair of thugs - then cringe as we see the tragedy of a great mind degraded to solving all its problems through bloody murder. And was anyone still rooting for Walt to tell Skyler off once their relationship had become actually abusive?
Only those who ignore the implications I'm drawing above are able to truly and unreservedly pull for Walt in the final seasons of the show. Our bad Bad fans miss the point, not because they're incorrect that Walt is a badass (he is), but because they fail to see that his badassery is coterminous with, and indeed a consequence of, his evil. The point of Breaking Bad isn't simply the devolution of a once-moral man into a monstrosity, though the comparisons with stories like Macbeth and The Godfather are anticipated and, in the case of the latter, invited by the writers. Instead, the point is our own complicity in that devolution. By giving us a character onto which we can project our own desires for power and self-actualization, the show also creates a space in which we can have demonstrated for us the terrible consequences of those desires. We are encouraged to identify with Walter White so that we can see the Heisenberg that is in each of us, and the lesson we learn in so doing is unexpectedly and powerfully consonant with Christian hamartiology: in seeking to become as gods, we facilitate our transformation into devils.
