Nest #3: Kanga-man

Good news for anyone who wants to make Breaking Bad about gender.

Hello, folks — been a while!

My last newsletter was titled T(DO)V, and it focused on making every TV show trans.

In that newsletter, I desperately scrambled for a way to make Breaking Bad about transness. (The best I could come up with was Walter White talking about “growth, then decay, then transformation,” and Saul Goodman saying “I once told a woman I was Kevin Costner and it worked because I believed it.”)

I was reaching, and I knew it. But! Today, I have good news. Turns out there’s more trans stuff in Breaking Bad to talk about.

Particularly with regards to this guy.

Jesse Pinkman, Breaking Bad’s resident foul-mouthed failson — trans? Let’s explore.

I was surprised at how many results appeared when I Googled “jesse pinkman” “trans”. It seems a lot of transmasculine dudes are drawn to him — often, it seems, because of the ambiguity of his baggy clothes? Take these memes, for example (original post here):

Love this little journey for him! But, okay, that’s not what actually happens on the show. So, what does happen?

The Kanga-man conversation.

Late in Breaking Bad’s second season, Jesse is in bed with his girlfriend, Jane, showing her his drawings. He draws superheroes — his own original characters. They get to a half-man, half-kangaroo character named Kanga-man.

“And who’s this in his pouch?” Jane asks.

“His sidekick, Joey,” Jesse responds. “He rides around in his pouch and, y’know, fights crime.”

To which Jane says:

SET OFF THE TRANS ALARM

!!!!!!!!!!

Jane I love you. And then the kicker:

CONFIRMED: Jesse Pinkman draws thinly veiled allegoricaly transgender self-portraits in his spare time. It’s you in all of these.

Breaking Bad trans? It’s more likely than you think.