What film(s) or literature do you most identify with, and can you provide a scene or description to illustrate?

Home - Quora Link

Great question, thanks Poppy Fielding! A recurring one for me is Mike from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Rather than a recent scene, this is rather his first one.

In case you haven’t seen Breaking Bad, Jesse, the heartbroken kid sitting down, just lost his one true love to an overdose. Jesse has a ridiculous amount of money from drug dealing, so he can afford professional assistance, and Mike, the man talking to him, is that assistance.

We get to know MIke a lot more in the subsequent episodes, but even here, the caring underneath the gruff exterior shines through. Theirs is a world filled with heartbreak and tragedy, and this is just one of a million Mike’s had to deal with.

Mike has a vast array of tools at his disposal, but when he can, he prefers to solve problems with words, relating to the people around him, trying to get them to choose honor and goodness over selfishness and vice. He knows people won’t listen to him, and so he’s always prepared for that. He only had to get violent once in this particular scene, when he is forced to smack Jesse to bring him out of his funk.

As I re-watch the scene, I’m reminded of the calculations constantly going through Mike’s head, and invariably, the choices he makes either defuse tense situations or fix really tricky problems. People think they’re bringing him in to use what he knows, but really what they need is, and what always ends up saving them is Mike’s empathy.

The show is careful to always show Mike’s human side when he’s getting violent. His use of force is measured, patient, it immediately stops when its accomplished its aim. At the same time, he knows what happens if you display the empathy that you show. As a result you’re always getting the feeling that “this guy will never know how lucky he is to have Mike kicking the crap out of him.”

Mike lives in the moment, his life moves too fast for planning to be of much use to him. At any moment, anything he has can go away.

All of these aspects are things I can relate a lot to. In my world of software development I run into a lot of odd ducks. I have a huge array of skills that I deploy as sparingly as I can, only when the number one goto for problem resolution, talking to and understanding people, fails. As a result, I watch people that aren’t as morally constrained make more money, but at a higher cost.

Mike’s and my wealth, you won’t find it by looking at anything you can see. Everything we have is inside, rebuilding isn’t a big thing. And what you have inside, can’t be taken away. We can try to offer it to others, but nobody will listen and we’re both prepared for that.

It’s losing humans that keeps us up at night, while everyone else is worried about status, money, prestige. Jesse, his scene partner, isn’t worried about these things either, but is rudderless, his only role model at that point in the story is the eminently evil Walt, and Walt uses Jesse without much regard for his well-being. Mike does his best to pull Jesse out from under Walt’s spell, but well, watch the show if you haven’t.