For those who paid attention to that detail but couldn’t figure out what was the reason, we’ve got you covered.
‘Breaking Bad’ is indisputably the most popular and recognizable drama series out there. The AMC produced neo-western crime drama about a school chemistry teacher turned meth drug lord went on for 5 seasons from 2006 to 2013 with a total of 62 episodes, and it also got a follow-up sequel movie ‘El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie‘ which came out in 2019. The show also has a prequel series based on it – ‘Better Call Saul‘ which is currently ongoing. The awards and accolades the show has received are too long to list and the show actually is registered in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most critically acclaimed show.
Highlights —
- The events leading up to and following the crash in brief
- What were the blue ribbons for?
- Walter White breaking character
If you paid attention, you would probably have noticed that since after the plane crash, many ‘Breaking Bad’ characters were seen wearing a blue ribbon. Saul Goodman, the sleazeball criminal lawyer was seen with the blue ribbon for the longest. Not long after the tragedy happened, Saul found a way to monetize it by demanding compensation from the airline company on behalf of the Albuquerque citizens. But was there any more to the blue ribbons than that? Let’s find out!
The events leading up to and following the crash in brief
Episodes of season 2 began with mysterious shots of a half-burnt teddy bear, a man in a hazmat suit as well as much random debris in the vicinity of the White household. Many viewers suspected that those scenes indicated an explosion in Walt’s house due to a chemical reaction gone bad. The show did catch viewers surprised when it was revealed, in later episodes, that those scenes were about a plane collision and its resulting debris. Walt initiated a chain of events and outcomes that eventually led to Jane’s father, an airline traffic controller, to zone out and let the collision happen.
It all began when Jesse moved out of his aunt’s house and into a rental belonging to Jane’s father and managed by Jane. The two developed feelings for each other over the brief period in which they used heroin together. One night, when Walt was trying to reach Jesse but couldn’t, he decided to break into his house and found the couple unconscious and high on heroin. Walt sees Jane choking on her own drug-induced vomit and moves to help her but stops and lets her choke to death. Jane’s father is distraught over his daughter’s death and goes back to work in a poor mental state. This leads to him phasing out on the job and letting the two planes collide mid-air.
What were the blue ribbons for?
Due to Jane’s father’s carelessness, which can be attributed to his grief-struck mind, two planes, one passenger and the other one a charter collided mid-air over Albuquerque one morning. This mishap led to the deaths of 167 lives and several injuries (from the falling debris of the crash). After the crash, many people of Albuquerque began sporting a blue ribbon to show their condolences for the dead and solidarity with each other.
Walter White breaking character
Walter’s speech to the high school students was nothing short of absurd and, as many have remarked, totally out of character for him. Walt is someone who does not like to cut corners in his work, he is highly professional and a perfectionist. However, the crash incident definitely cracked him a bit, he begins to realize that he was at the beginning of the chain of events that led to the crash in the first place. Had he not let Jane die in a pool of her own vomit, her father (also similar to Walt in his professionalism) would most likely not have committed that blunder.
In an act to justify his actions, he tried to convince the school crowd that the mishap was not all that bad. He calls it only the 50th worst air disaster and implores the grieving students to “look on the bright side of things” as the passenger plane was not even at full capacity. Walt was trying to abscond any moral responsibility for his role in the crash, that much was very apparent.
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