On the Siting of Science: Laboratories, Scientific Practice, and Its Subjects in the U.S.-American Television Show Breaking Bad

Abstract

This contribution explores forms of representing laboratories, scientific practice, and their subjects in the U.S.-American television show Breaking Bad (AMC, 2008–2013). Starting from the idea that scientific practice is always embedded in, and shaped by, specific socio-material constellations and thus needs to be understood as situated, it argues that the series’ laboratories, as sites of science, articulate different conceptualisations of science and scientific practice while contributing to modelling the series’ main characters through their respective set-ups. By analysing this mutual interdependence between the spaces and settings of the laboratories and the ways of both doing science and becoming a scientist, the contribution demonstrates the potential of serial television in the production of, and critical reflection on, notions of scientific practice, its settings, and its subjects.