Breaking Bad is justly considered the greatest serial drama ever produced, I think, at least partly because it charts in such painstaking detail the acceptance of change as enacted through a human face. We see each detail of consciously choosing to do the wrong thing as enacted through a face that shows no regret. That's the thing about a face--it shows what the soul consists of, and souls are not half-formed things, but complete remnants of the choices and habits we engage in every hour.
People know what and who they are to a certain extent--if we did not have at least semi-workable/plausible narratives to operate according to, we would be complete nomads, incapable of holding a job or paying rent or doing anything that relies on a basic measure of steadiness. Telling ourselves something about ourselves every day is a basic human necessity, like food, water, air, and orgasm. A soul is a definitive expression of what the true being of a person is, and the face of that person fairly directly communicates this. To live is to make a choice every day and to be aware of this choice and to accept it.
I don't think that quite enough has been made of just how aware Walter White has been of his choices. The image above shows exactly this--he knows that he will have to kill Hank, and this has become part of his being to such an extent that there is no question at all in his mind that he will do it. It is a foregone conclusion, like gravity or the sun rising, that he will brutally murder anyone who threatens him in any way, as if he, Heisenberg/Walter White, the killer, has no choice in the matter, and the fact that he has no choice is not even big news to him.
What an impressive level of being it must be to not deliberate, but to know as fully as water knows which direction to flow what needs to be done, and to know fully well that it will be done, because you have done it before. This is the beautiful, admirable, enviable thing about Heisenberg, and about the resolute aspect of this facial expression.
But, of course, it is all in the service of evil--and the truly bad thing about joining this absolute, classical excellence, this Kierkegaardian purity of heart and singleness of willing, of being so in control of one's bodily and psychical resources that an emergent problem is pitied because of how completely you know it will be dealt with, with evil, is how it shows a fundamental ugliness of human nature--the kind of forceful purity attending singularity of purpose so perfectly displayed by Heisenberg here has perhaps no un-evil counterpart.
It is perhaps not impossible to attain the fullness of being displayed above in service of selflessness, charity, or some other manner of positive behavior--but it's unclear as of this writing how exactly it would result to the above pictured/described order of complete self-knowledge. Perhaps the real allure of becoming evil for Walter White was not love of harming others or of earning millions in a matter of weeks, but the cheap, shortcut access to self-knowledge and self-awareness. He is a fuller man than a genuinely good person like Hank could ever be--but is such fullness Icarian?
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