. . . The drug world is a convenient setting for selling white supremacy because it allows for a white underdog in an openly racialized conflict. Besides the War on Terror, there aren’t a lot of other scenarios in which it’s possible to root for the particularly American cocktail of meritocracy, the little guy, the good guy, and the white guy, all at the same time. Put it this way: A show about a small American toy manufacturer laying waste to the villainous and inferior Mexican industry would be such a transparent and reactionary play on post-NAFTA anxieties that no luxury advertiser would dare sponsor it. But when Jalopnik‘s Travis Okulski expressed understandable confusion about what Chrysler thought it had to gain from being associated with an abusive husband and meth cook, the luxury carmaker responded with a staid “The placement on Breaking Bad is part of an overall marketing strategy to place products in TV shows and movies. This vehicle was the right fit in terms of the plot line and the character.”

White-washing the illegal drug market involves depicting it like markets wealthy viewers are more comfortable and familiar with, namely those of the farmers market or the local pharmacy. Walter White combines the ostensible moral complexity television audiences demand in a post-Soprano protagonist with a cleanliness that allows him to market expensive cars. The U.S. is still very much a white supremacist country, but classic cowboys-kill-Indians narratives don’t play with wealthy viewers or the critics who help determine those tastes. And Jack Bauer can drive only so many cars. For the credulous viewer who likes to imagine he’s a couple of life crises from being the Larry Bird of meth — and for the people who sell him stuff — White is right.

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