Mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher Walter White thinks his life can’t worsen. His salary barely makes ends meet, a situation not likely to improve once his pregnant wife gives birth, and their teenage son is battling cerebral palsy. But Walter is shocked when he learns he has terminal cancer. Realizing that his illness probably will ruin his family financially, Walter desperately tries to earn as much money as he can in the time he has left by turning an old RV into a meth lab on wheels.
Breaking Bad follows protagonist Walter White, a chemistry teacher who lives in New Mexico with his wife and teenage son who has cerebral palsy. White is diagnosed with Stage III cancer and given a prognosis of two years left to live. With a new sense of fearlessness based on his medical prognosis, and a desire to secure his family’s financial security, White chooses to enter a dangerous world of drugs and crime and ascends to power in this world. The series explores how a fatal diagnosis such as White’s releases a typical man from the daily concerns and constraints of normal society and follows his transformation from mild family man to a kingpin of the drug trade.