Breaking Bad portrays the First Reality–government by fear–with great vividness and accuracy. This is the primal world where the strong do as they will. The series does a fair job with the Second Reality–government by law–though at its best this level is much more profound than the series depicts. The story is largely a contest between the criminal world and the world of law and order, and the law and order people are mainly good people, who keep the world in order and avoid being bad.
The Third Reality is missing. None of the characters seems aware of it.
Shakespeare’s darkest tragedies reference the Third Reality, and depend on an awareness of it for the horror to have its full impact. I doubt that in Elizabethan England there was any real parallel with the Team Walter groupies. Team Macbeth?
