Breaking Bad Meaning

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Charles Moss. I’m talking from Linsburg, Virginia.

Oh, hi, Charles. Welcome to the show.

Hey.

What’s up?

Well, I’ve got a question about the expression of breaking bad.

Breaking bad.

Okay.

That term, I’ve always heard it growing up in Virginia.

It’s kind of just a slang for, you know, departing from being nice.

As in, like, if you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to break bad on you.

You heard it long before the show, then.

Right, and Vince Tilligan’s from Virginia, and I’m a fan of him going back to the X-Files.

He wrote and worked with that a lot.

And when he created Breaking Bad, I read an interview, and he was saying that it was an expression from back home.

I don’t think people outside of this area really knew what that was about until the show.

And I was wondering if it was just in the South, or whether it was just like Virginia, North Carolina, or what?

I liked your description of what it means to break bad.

I think of it as breaking away from the pack.

You break away from the pack of regular, well-behaved people and go out on your own and get a little wild, right?

Yeah, just like Walter White, you know?

Yes, exactly.

So he goes from being this boring chemistry teacher who’s been diagnosed with cancer to being like a drug lord.

Right.

He literally broke away from the, like, ordinary life that he otherwise would have lived.

You’re right.

Vince Gilligan, who is the writer, director, and producer of Breaking Bad, has given numerous interviews where he’s almost always asked about this term, at least from people who didn’t do their homework.

And he told the New York Times in 2009 that it did come from his background in Virginia.

And he mentioned it was to raise hell.

That was the expression he used.

He said, Jim was down at the bar the other weekend and he got really drunk and he really broke bad.

He totaled his car.

So we’re not just talking about your gossiping.

We’re not just talking about you had three more drinks than you should.

We’re talking about you shut down the bar, you wrecked your car, you went home, lit the house on fire, walked around the neighborhood with no pants.

That’s what we’re talking about.

If you go to urbandictionary.com, you’ll find a number of people have mistakenly assumed that it was a term from the southwest of the United States, but it’s not.

The first time to break bad shows up in a really firm way where we know it’s the same slang term is in the 1960s.

And it is almost always in the 60s and early 70s from African-American speakers and writers.

So you’ll see it show up, for example, in 1969 in a play by Alice Childress called Wine in the Wilderness, a comedy drama where there’s two people talking back and forth.

And the man, the woman asked the man for some food and he brings her a hot dog.

And so she goes on this long riff about a hot dog, a hot dog’s not food and you can’t bring me something better in this.

And he’s like, baby, don’t break bad over something to eat.

The smart set, the jet set, the beautiful people, kings and queens eat frankfurters.

And so in their mind, Breaking Bad is just getting angry or kind of just stepping over the line a little bit in a conversation.

But eventually it starts being exaggerated.

It’s not just getting angry anymore.

It’s really having a heck of a time.

It’s Breaking Bad.

Yeah, it’s Breaking Bad.

It’s a big deal eventually.

So it kind of escalates.

That’s my understanding.

I’ve just grown up with it.

So I just assumed it was something that people used all around the United States, but evidently not.

How does that feel to see a term that you think of as your own from your own hometown go national or international?

I mean, I think it’s kind of cool, really.

Vince Gilligan actually calls attention to Virginia as being part of the inspiration.

I don’t know.

Yeah, it’s sort of like liking a band before everybody else likes it, right?

That’s what I was thinking about, right?

Sometimes you feel betrayed because they were yours.

But sometimes it’s like, yeah, you’re like, too right.

Yeah, you better love these guys.

They’re awesome.

The whole world should know about this band I love.

Well, that’s interesting. You answered it very well.

We do our best. Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Bye, Charles.

Bye-bye.

Take care now.

We should point probably to this play by Alice Childress.

It’s really hilarious.

It’s written in the African-American vernacular, but it’s really a perfect use of the language of the 1960s among African-Americans.

It’s great.

Cool. Give me the name again.

So the play is called Wine in the Wilderness.

It’s from 1969, and it’s by Alice Childress.

Is that with an H or without? Wine?

Wine.

As a drink, wine in the wilderness, W-I-N-E.

Very good.

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