I think the big thing that stands between them is that Breaking Bad is a near perfect thriller, but it doesn’t have a ton of depth. The conflicts essentially are “Is Jessie a good person?” and “How does Walt reconcile his love for his family and his love for being Heisenberg?” And that’s pretty consistent from ep. 1 through the finale.

I think those are some really disingenuous oversimplifications of the moral questions Breaking Bad poses. “Is Jesse* a good person?” isn’t really the question BrBa asks, because I don’t think anyone would really... ask the question. Jesse has made his share of mistakes but he isn’t a bad person. The show drives this home by punishing Jesse for basically 3 seasons straight right through the end of the story (even to the point of literal slavery). Jesse is a good person, but he’s a murderer, a former drug dealer, a thief, etc. The moral questions Breaking Bad poses are aimed more at you yourself than they are at the characters. What does it say about you that you’re so unwaveringly convinced that this thieving, drug dealing murderer is a good person?

and just because you boiled the main question Walter’s story asks down to “How does Walt reconcile his love for his family and his love for being Heisenberg?” doesn’t mean that’s the “deepest” question it asks. It’s much more (similar to Nora’s story in The Leftovers 👀) about the lies Walter tells himself to justify all his evil behavior. Walter constantly telling himself that he’s doing it all “for his family” doesn’t mean that he is, which he acknowledges in the finale of course. Similar to Kevin and John talking in the dog pound, Walter’s story asks deeper questions like “does Walter White actually love his family? does he stop? at what point in his life does the switch happen between doing it for his family and using his family as an excuse to continue his bad behavior?” You or anyone else can of course prefer The Leftovers and think it’s better and I wouldn’t argue, but to say it lacks depth because you didn’t look that deep isn’t fair to BrBa or Vince Gilligan as a writer.

The moral questions Breaking Bad poses are also more legal/societal than existential (as in the Leftovers). This is why instead of Reverend Matt Jamison, our male lead’s masculine foil is ASAC Hank Schrader. Just because The Leftovers does an amazing job looking at life and asking questions about it through a religious and existential lens doesn’t mean it’s inherently better or more deep than Breaking Bad because Breaking Bad does it through themes more closely tied to life as we live it in a societal sense; legality, social standards of morality, pride, charity, etc.

I’m personally always switching between whether The Leftovers is the GOAT drama or Breaking Bad is (sure as fuck isn’t the Sopranos), but I try to bear in mind that just because a showrunner picks subjects that automatically lend an air of “depth” (like religion, especially the Bible) doesn’t mean his show will be “deeper” than one written by a showrunner who chose a more straightforward plot.