Vince Gilligan famously described Beaking Bad as the story of how Mr. Chips turns into Scarface, and the greatness of that show lies above all in the subtle dexterity with which it reveals to us the many incremental choices, no one of which seems decisive, that lead inexorably to corruption and tragedy. It’s a show about how a person changes.

In a pivotal episode of Gilligan’s next show, Better Call Saul, Jimmy McGill learns that his seemingly-certain hiring at Hamlin Hamlin & McGill has been torpedoed by his own brother Chuck. When Jimmy confronts his brother, Chuck is silent for a moment and then explodes:

I know you. I know what you were, what you are. People don’t change! You’re Slippin’ Jimmy! And Slippin’ Jimmy I can handle just fine, but Slippin’ Jimmy with a law degree is like a chimp with a machine gun! The law is sacred! If you abuse that power, people get hurt! This is not a game! And you have to know on some level, you know I’m right. You know I’m right!

“What you were” is “what you are,” because “people don’t change.” And in the end Chuck is right: Jimmy, no matter how many times he vows to clean up his act, lapses. He reverts to the habits of the young Chicago hustler he once was: Slippin’ Jimmy. Saul Goodman, the thoroughly corrupt lawyer we meet in Breaking Bad, is just Slippin’ Jimmy in a snazzy suit and Gucci loafers.

The question the show (brilliantly) leaves open is: Why? Why does Jimmy not change? Is it because there’s a kink in his wiring, there from the beginning? Is it (Chuck seems to think this) because of parental indulgence? Or is it something else? I recall the argument Sartre makes in Saint Genet that Jean Genet, in a kind of revenge on a corrupt society, became exactly what that society had called him: a criminal and a deviant. There’s a good case to be made that when Jimmy realizes that — no matter how hard he works or what he achieves — Chuck will never think of him as anything but Slippin’ Jimmy, he decides: All right, then. Slippin’ Jimmy it is. A decision that has tragic consequences for many people, including Chuck.

But we can’t know — we can never know, because we can’t rewind the tape of a life. We can’t so back to some point that seems to us key, flip a little switch from On to Off or Off to On, and then see what happens when such a change is implemented. Human lives cannot be subjected to double-blind experiments; time prevents it.

The story of a man who does not change might cause us to look again at Walter White in Breaking Bad, because, after all, “Mr. Chips becomes Scarface” is not really Walter’s story at all. When we first see him, on his 50th birthday, he looks like a mild-mannered and slightly boring high-school chemistry teacher, but we soon learn that inside he’s a steaming, smoking cauldron of resentment, wounded pride, and the desire for vengeance. His cancer diagnosis simply allows him to act upon impulses that were already present in him. When we first meet Walter, Scarface is already raging inside him, just waiting for his opportunity to escape.

Do people change? Of course they do — but they never change in ways that make them unrecognizable. Patience can be lost, or gained; the talkative can learn to listen. But when the talkative learn to listen this is, or so I see it, a redirection of energies: the impulse to talk gets channeled differently. Barring some serious physiological alteration, the listless person doesn’t become an energetic one and the energetic one doesn’t become listless. Certain personality traits that, as it were, precede character remain in place, but can be pointed at new targets.

Take my father, for instance. All his days, he was boastful, overconfident, impatient, intolerant of other people’s faults, contemptuous of disagreement. Every single person who knew him really well says exactly the same thing about him: “Carl was an asshole.” But when he was around 60 he started attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and soon thereafter became an asshole who had been greatly blessed by the work of AA and wanted to help others receive the same blessing. I’m not sure he had ever in his life — at least not since the death of his little brother Bobby — focused his attention on the well-being of others, but after getting sober he genuinely started doing so. When he died in 2009 and the funeral home hosted the inevitable (and to me much-dreaded) “visitation,” I was utterly stunned at the number of people who showed up. Many of them sought me out and shook my hand and said, “I can’t tell you how much your father meant to me.” Then a pause and a grin. “He sure could be an asshole, though.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I thought to myself, though I smiled and nodded, because my sister and I got all the assholery and none of the care. He changed, and yet did not change, one might say; but perhaps it would be better to say that he did not change — and yet changed.

Daddy was sponsor to a number of alcoholics, but the one he was closest to was a man about my age whom I’ll call Nolan. Mama and Daddy used to say to me “You’ve got a brother now” — that’s how close they were, and let me just say that I am pleased and proud to have Nolan as a brother. He’s a great guy.

My parents’ intimacy with Nolan began when I was living hundreds of miles away, in Wheaton, Illinois, and it took me a long time to realize just how close they had become. But after a few years of seeing my parents several times a week, and taking afternoon naps on their sofa, and eating at their table, Nolan drifted away. He didn’t start drinking again, but instead had found a new interest in life — an interest I shall not describe here, because in a certain community Nolan became very well known and if I said what that community is you might be able to figure out his identity. And it’s Alcoholics Anonymous, ain’t it?

In any case, Nolan became so absorbed in his new world that he completely forgot about my parents, who had invested so much time and energy in him, who had watched over him so tenderly. And so their lives diverged and moved on … until something happened to Nolan. He has never told me what that something was, only that it was the biggest challenge he had ever faced in his life, and that he found it impossible to navigate. The ground was moving under his feet, and when that happens to a recovering alcoholic, the temptations are obvious.

Nolan knew precisely what, according to the tenets of AA, he was supposed to do next: Call his sponsor. His sponsor, though, was the one he had turned his back on; and, perhaps even more to the point, his sponsor was the most intolerant, unforgiving asshole he had ever met in his life. He couldn’t possibly call Carl … and yet what other option did he have?

So he called Carl. “Carl, this is Nolan. I know I haven’t seen you and Dolores in a long, long time, and I’m ashamed of that. I feel like I kicked y’all to the curb, and y’all didn’t deserve that. Y’all deserved my love and my gratitude, and I gave you nothing in return, and walked away. You’ve got every right to hang up on me right now, and if you did I wouldn’t blame you. But I’m in a bad place, Carl, and I need your help.”

And Daddy said, “Nolan, son, just tell me what I can do for you and I’ll do it.”