Breaking Bad is widely considered to be one of the best television dramas ever created and one of its best episodes is titled “Half Measures.” In the penultimate episode of the third season, Walter White has a stunning moment of heroism, running down two murderous drug dealers with his car to save the life of his apprentice, Jesse Pinkman.
The enduring line from that episode comes from Mike Ehrmantraut, the grizzled former cop who tells a story of a battered woman and the husband who had beaten her. Mike took the man out to the desert and threatened to kill him, knowing all the while that he wasn’t going to go through with it.