Embedded in the horrifically inevitable rise and fall of Walter White is a central thread which also finds its expression in the collective late-American consciousness: the desperate craving of personal autonomy at any cost.
In an authoritarian culture when one finds one's own personal choices increasingly truncated, one can't but crave personal autonomy - or the ability to create and/or alter one's own immediate environment in one's image - like someone who is dehydrated craves water.
