The complete and total moral decline of Walter White and his descent into complete and total indifference to the feelings and concerns of others in Season Five is really quite breathtaking. I’m trying to figure out how much of his decline makes me think by comparison that Jesse has been redeemed, or if maybe I need to watch it all the way through again (once I finish) and that maybe Jesse was a moral being from episode one, but just a confused junkie who when his head cleared became more of the person he really is.
I was also thinking it would be interesting to gauge the opinions of people who watched the show like I am (3 episodes a night) as opposed to someone who watched it week by week over a five year span. I think I am experiencing a far more dramatic sensation as to the shifts in character because every previous episode and season is so fresh in my mind, so I think the arc of White’s decline may be more dramatic for me than for someone who had months in between episodes.
Basically, what I am trying to say is that the way I am viewing this series, I’m experiencing a time lapse photography version of the show, so the arcs may be clearer and more vivid.
ricky
I was just rading a piece on a “real” progressive blog about how the Occupy movement blocked Larry Summers. Of course it was based on an analysis by Peter Beinart.
Redshirt
I’ve never seen a single episode of Breaking Bad, not even a scene from a review or YouTube. I have no idea what people find awesome about this show, but dang nab it if ain’t everyone praising it to the Moon.
M.O.O.N., that spells Meth.
trollhattan
Crux, meet fulcrum…or something.
Glimmers of Walt showing through Heisenberg were him pleading for Hank’s life and his phone rant to Skyler, taking full blame for his bidnez while excoriating her so obscenely. Would have been easy to look past what he was doing there, and Skyler seemed to only understand halfway through. Dazzling writing that drew on the whole five seasons’ character development.
Jesse is the humanitarian thread/anchor for the series at this point, and one despairs how he’s possibly escaping sociopath Todd’s clutches. Flash-forward Walt and the New Hampshire 60 might yet come into play WRT the peckerwood gang. There’s a-gonna be a bigass shootout.
Gawd, I don’t know how I’m going to manage the final two epps.
Comrade Mary
I binge watched it up to season 4 over a few weeks a while back, and now I’m dying on a weekly schedule like every other poor schlub.
Walter is a pitiful bastard in some ways, and a total bastard in others. I really hope that the writers don’t try to rehabilitate him over the last two episodes. There’s a lot of discussion out there right now about how he’s obviously going to come back to save his family and Jesse from the Nazis. You think that would make me happy, but it really would feel like a betrayal by the writers. I can’t see a rescue of Jesse working emotionally, unless it ends with Jesse beating the shit out of Walt. Or killing him. Which is AWFUL, but is what feels emotionally honest right now.
I have scary, scary Monday deadlines and will be working all weekend. I don’t know how I’m going to handle Sunday night.
Jamey
Just not buyin’ Jesse as the superego to Heisenberg’s id or something like that. Jesse’s pissed because his oxen have been gored. He seems motivated as much out of the desire for revenge–against “Mr. White”; against his parents; etc–as he is by some conception of morality. (e.g., He was fine with Mike’s business because he looked up to him.)
But compared to Walt, anybody looks like a saint…
srv
I for one don’t think Walter was ever moral.
Just a road littered with rationalizations on the way to hell.
Jesse isn’t moral either, he’s just a methhead who is continually agog at the results.
Keith P
I’m playing Grand Theft Auto V right now, and I just unlocked the meth cooking character (Trevor). It’s interesting how different he is from the image of Walter White. As opposed to the white collar, clean chemist, Trevor is a redneck living in the outskirts of a clone of LA in a nasty trailer cooking in a rundown store. He drives a ratty jeep and is perpetually angry.
piratedan
@Redshirt: same here, if I want to watch someone’s descent into madness, hell I have family for that. I’d rather watch sports, laugh at WLIIA and Mst3K and maybe solve a mystery with Castle.
Debbie(aussie)
http://m.theage.com.au/world/chicago-park-shooting-several-wounded-in-back-of-the-yards-neighbourhood-20130920-2u4ld.html
This is a bit sad, not even4 days
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@ricky:
I seem to recall a conversation about the anti-war movement of the ’60s and ’70s and their hand in ending the war in Vietnam. Someone said that it would be wise to give more credit General Giap. I think that person was right. He’s probably on to something here, too. Exactly what he’s right about, I’m not sure. I’ll wait for his follow-up.
piratedan
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): well I would allow that the ant-war movement essentially turned the US public against support for the war, granted with incidents like Kent State, I think that Nixon knew that the sands in the hourglass were running out and perhaps served as a tipping point, plus the graphic televised carnage brought into American homes on a nightly basis made it difficult to turn away or ignore what was taking place.
jl
Thanks for posting an interesting video, Cole. But I grew up on a farm and saw shitloads of fruits and veggies and other odds and ends of other crops lying around rotting. So, not in the mood at first glance. But will think on it and come back and check it out later.
TheMightyTrowel
@Debbie(aussie): There’s a lot about australia that leaves me slack-jawed, but the sensible and sane and more or less universally accepted response to the Port Arthur shootings is not one of them.
TheOtherWA
I watched Breaking Bad from the beginning, one season at a time. Then before season 5 started I rewatched 1-4 on netflix. There were so many little thing about Walter I’d missed the first time. Like just how much of Heisenberg existed from the beginning, waiting to come out.
Jesse’s no angel, but he’s not cruel like Walt. I hope he rigs the lab they have him tethered to and blows them all up. It would suck if Jesse dies too, but what the hell, the shows ending right?
Debbie(aussie)
@TheMightyTrowel: Tony Abbot and the election of the backward LNP?
Gex
“maybe Jesse was a moral being from episode one”
That’s where my thinking lies. I decided to start over with season one since my Breaking Bad experience was disrupted by the family medical issues last year. It seems that Jessie’s moral compass always pointed the right direction even if he was forced by circumstance into horrible acts or was addled by drugs when he performed them.
So I’m just going to leave this comment and scram, since I don’t need to see any spoilers. Just caught a glimpse of your post and wanted to add my 2¢.
MikeJ
@Debbie(aussie): Why would you expect us to go anywhere near four days without a mass shooting? That’s something like the 250th this year. Note that many of those mass shootings didn’t have mass deaths. The FBI only counts it as a mass shooting if four or more people die.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@piratedan:
But it took, what, 9 or 10 years from the time the protests began until we got out? And all that time, the Vietnamese communist/nationalist movement never waned, and probably got stronger, bolstered not by the anti-war activists in the States, but by US governmental policy that drove support towards the Vietcong and the NVA.
In the case of Larry Summers’ candidacy for the chair of the Fed, I’ll credit, until shown concrete proof to the contrary, the current White House for shooting it down based on his positions rather than the public’s perception of Summers.
jl
@Debbie(aussie): I have wondered how that happened. The Labor coalition had been just hanging on for awhile, is that right? The recovery has sort of stalled out in Australia, hasn’t it? I think so but haven’t had time to look into why. Was it the economy?
TheMightyTrowel
@TheMightyTrowel: Unfortunately, I expected that. I lived through the 2010 British election and watched Nick Clegg more or less single handedly lead the Lib Dems away from every single position they ever held. The utter amateurishness of most Aussie politicians and media on the other hand…..
Joseph Nobles
In all the Breaking Bad promotional information out there for this final leg of its road to glory, I’ve learned two incredible things:
1. The character of Mike Ehrmantraut was created only because Bob Odenkirk could not film one day. That’s right, Mike Ehrmantraut exists because of a scheduling conflict.
2. Jesse Pinkman was originally going to die in the first season.
So many parts of making TV and film comes down to things like this: seeing the hand that you’re dealt and making the best possible choices you can make. Or even creating a couple of new choices…
TheMightyTrowel
@jl: Lots and lots of reasons – no one singular. There never was a recovery here because Australia never went into recession. They haven’t in something like 26 years. Yet, they’re totally freaked out because (a) they still largely conceptualise themselves as an extension of Britain and Britain’s been seeing some pretty bad times lately and (b) the export and industrial market is heavily reliant on East Asia where there are (finally) signs of a slow down. Also the minerals won’t last forever, and we’re probably getting real close to peak mine – archaeologists have started losing their jobs so that means the mines aren’t expanding as quickly as previously (we’re the canaries in the development coal mine). Plus, Gillard had been walking a real tightrope with a minority led coalition government necessitating a lot of political gamesmanship and compromise which looks deeply ugly to the not amazingly informed public. Don’t discount misogyny as well – remember Abbott was making spectacularly sexist comments on the campaign trail because it seemed to add to his approval ratings. Let that sink in. Don’t forget that 70% of the Australian media are owned by the Murdochs and nearly all the rest is largely financed by major mine owners who hated the labour-green coalition with the fire of a thousand super polluting suns.
ETA: not to mention that we’re looking at 2 generations who have seen nothing but rising standards of living and who are starting to discount the value of unions.
piratedan
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): well you’re completely ignoring that this was a proxy war, to ignore that the Viet Cong were being supplied militarily and trained by the Chinese during this time period isn’t being exactly fair either. I’m not saying that Vietnamese nationalism wasn’t strong, but we suffered the same issues that the French had, supporting a “rich aristocracy” that had little popular support and whose own mismanagement and skimming of money and materiel causing their own issues.
If the US had accepted Ho Chi Minh requests/pleas in the late 50’s and early 60’s and told the French to give it up (i.e. their dreams of remaining a colonial power and major world player) who knows, perhaps it would have been a brief and bloody civil war with Minh winning and building a democratic state model, but the fears of the neocons and the rampant McCarthyism of the mod-late 50’s kinda put the kabosh on that, plus, there’s a realistic debate that since Vietnam was sitting on China’s border, would China have allowed/suffered a truly democratic state to be born on their southern border?
jl
@TheMightyTrowel: You have a point, what Australia went through from 2008 and on was a blip compared to the US and Europe. So maybe not recession, but there has been definitely a stall in the growth since the last real recession in the early 90s. Just wondering how much that stall might have played a part.
Didn’t know about the political sexism in Australia. I thought the US, and maybe Japan were the last high income developed nations that had a super big hangup with that.
Edit: sorry, I misread some of what you wrote. I forgot how dependent Australia is on raw material exports to East Asia. Thanks.
TheMightyTrowel
@jl: From the former PM to the current PM. A glorious rant.
Tommy
@Comrade Mary: Same here. How I did it.I was late to the game.
jl
@TheMightyTrowel:
I guess it’s kind of amateurish compared to the Brits and Swiss, but they been practicing for centuries. We could use a little of that in Aussie directness in the U.S.
Did Abbott really say that garbage? Yikes, Abbott makes Howard look like Mr swauvaay sophisticate.
BTW, I know a reporter who interviewed Howard for profile. Got a sad account of Howard’s ceaseless (and unsuccessful) pickup attempts.
TheMightyTrowel
@jl: Abbott really said all that and worse. He’s basically Scott Brown without the charm or looks (and, unfortunately, with more of a brain).
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@piratedan:
Forget the ’50s and ’60s. Go back to Versailles in 1919.
The Chinese weren’t as influential, especially from 1968 onward, as the Soviets. Mao pulled his advisors out as Moscow began supplying Hanoi while massing troops on the Soviet-Chinese borders. In ’79, after Vietnam invaded in ’78, China invaded Vietnam as a response, then pulled the fuck out quickly. That was no proxy war. Vietnamese forces remained in Cambodia until ’89. Not smart for anyone to fuck with the Vietnamese.
And whatever training the Vietnamese got from either Moscow or Beijing, the Vietnamese had gained a huge amount of it under fire during WWII, almost entirely on their own.
Redshirt
It’s going to be sweet when Vietnam becomes a US proxy state. This will happen in the next 5 -15 years. And why not? They kicked our ass – why not join the Empire?
eemom
What a thing of beauty is this thread. Obsessing over fictional teevee series characters intermingled with Vietnam war reminiscences intermingled with something about Aussie politics.
I love this blog, fer realz. [wipes away tear]
TS
@TheMightyTrowel:
I’ve not seen much sign of the “more of a brain”. I think of him as the GWB of Australia & suspect that similar to the current Queensland premier Abbott will have his deputies and minions deciding on policy.
As for the sexism – he has 2 sisters and 3 daughters – I assume he must have been treated like royalty by all of them – don’t think I’ll ever recover from the vision of the virginal whites on election night.
Hopefully this disaster will be over in a single 3 year term – although I fear the level of the damage, especially in relation to science and the environment.
Tommy
@eemom: I was born in 1969. Hard for me to know about Vietnam. Born about the time that happened. I don’t understand this but my dad tried to enlist, wanted to fight. I note he broke both his legs jumping out of a plane in military high school. He was rejected. I ask him all the time why he’d want to do this. He just says I want to fight.
TheMightyTrowel
@TS: I know people who know him (woo ACT! woo Oxford!), the brain is there. It’s cunning and lizardy, but it’s there. Also those damn white dresses. UGH. PM Abbot, minister for women. What a fucking nightmare.
piratedan
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): well you can thank the Japanese for that side benefit, again, I don’t want you to get the idea that I disrespect the abilities of the Vietnamese as a people (or as fighters), but just like in the US Revolution, we didn’t do it entirely on our own (big hat tip to the French) and neither did they. They have the ability now to self determine what they want to do and who knows, with the current guy in office, that may happen sooner rather than later if you take the cues that he’s given and accept that he’s done some of the groundwork already in that region with Thailand with having them dial back the oppressive nation state model.
Since we have the benefit of hindsight, I wish we had taken more cues from the shitty situation that Vietnam was and applied them later on, but with the R’s dominating foreign affairs we continued to follow the real-politik model well past it’s expiration date and we’ve only had two Dem Presidents in office since the wall came down, Big Bill’s foreign slate was a mixed and muddled affair of stops and starts and we’ve only now started to twig to how Obama does things, i.e. pull our nads out of no-win situations, rattles the saber when its justified and tries to let people decide for themselves (i.e. the way that he’s let the Arab Spring play out) when its in our best interest to stay the hell outta the way.
I still grieve for the way that Bush the lesser fucked us over as a nation on the world stage and by also insanely disassembling our humint capabilities (what a dipshit, did he think that nothing would fill the vacuum the Soviets left?), we have decades of international unfucking to do imho.
Debbie(aussie)
@jl: In a word, no. Economy is good, especially in comparison. Labor just could not stand up for/with their successes and kept moving to the right, alienating and not wanting to be associated with the Greens on the left. At times they appeared to be trying to outdo the right. I am not happy (just in case that wasn’t obvious).
Tommy
@piratedan: My grandfather was a HUMP pilot during WWII. Google that if you don’t know what it is, but a bad ass thing to do. For his entire adult life he’d take me to Asian nations, cause what he learned there and the people, well folks he loved.
piratedan
@Tommy: yup, I know about them, I believe they were the guys that flew supply sorties over the Himalayans into places like China, Burma (as it was known then) and India, correct? Most of that area was essentially uncharted territory as far as Westerners were concerned, because most supplies (natch) were moved by boat or rail, WWII and the Japanese incursions in SE Asia, made resupply of the Nationalist Chinese a bitch, as well as those forces (like Merrill’s Marauders) in Burma, keeping Japanese armies engaged and away from India.
Tommy
@piratedan: You are totally correct. A hard thing to do. My grandfather was a medical doctor. He was taught to fly a plane cause he was told, well he might not make it home. A few years ago my grandfather told me he’d buy me a car if I got honors in college. Back in like 1994. I wanted a Japanese car. He said fuck that, they shot me, I won’t buy you that car.They shot me!
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@piratedan:
Well, we got a shit-ton of support from the French (and not a little from the Dutch and Spanish), not limited to advisors and a little bit of materiel, but including the full force of the French Navy. The Vietnamese against whom the US fought got…Some anti-aircraft missiles and AK-47s. No air support, no naval support. And the tactics the Vietnamese used were introduced during their fights against the Japanese, the Vichy and, just as WWII ended, reinstated French Republicans- and they did so at that time with little more than moral support from the Chinese communists, because the Kuomintang controlled the area between Mao and Ho. But, returning to the original point, the ant-war movement had a lot less to do with the endgame than they like to credit themselves- just as their imitators in the Occupy movement have less to do with the failed Larry Summers’ candidacy, imo. Hell, I’m willing to credit the anti-war folks of the ’60s and ’70s quite a bit when it comes to lowering the voting age and ending the draft, but I don’t think OWS has done jack shit.
Well, we’ve only had two Republicans, too, and if I’m not mistaken, the Democrats have spent more time in the White House in that time. That said, I’m willing to give both GHWB and the Dawg some leeway, seeing as that everything in Moscow’s old sphere took a long time to find its new shape. W fucked everything up though- Midas in reverse he was.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Tommy: @piratedan:
If you haven’t yet, read Babara Tuchman’s Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45.
Tommy
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): I will have to look at that book. It is very hard for me to explain how much he loved China. I got so much stuff from China in my household.My grandfather is a huge fan. So I am.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Tommy:
My great-uncle was already in the Army before Pearl Harbor. He was a grunt. Front line infantry. He was in the North Africa campaign, then in NW Europe from D+10 until the end of the war. He never talked much about his experiences, except that he was captured by the Germans in North Africa (Kasserine Pass, maybe?)…And then he’d add, with a bit of a laugh, that he escaped from the Italians a short time later.
He never held any anti-German sentiments of which I know, but I’ll bet he’d have laughed his ass off if someone tried to sell him a Fiat.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Tommy:
Definitely check it out. Stillwell, by Tuchman’s account, loved China and the Chinese, too. He just couldn’t stand Chiang Kai-shek. Absolutely hated the guy.
Tommy
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): I drive a car built in Germany. I am sure my family members hate this. I know my grandparents hated this.
Tommy
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
My favorite pic is this. My grandfather on the guys back
http://www.flickr.com/photos/webranding/7261048500/
I don’t know entirely what it is all about. I just think it is an amazing pic.
Schlemizel
@piratedan:
Uncle Ho hated and feared the Chinese. He was driven into their arms by American military muscle. Had Ike not sent the Marines to disrupt the elections we would have had a nominal allie there.
debbie
I’ve watched the series as the DVDs became available at my library, and I usually watch 2 episodes at a time. I’m now waiting for this final season to come out on DVD, but I can tell you that Jesse has definitely changed. I’m not quite sure when it happened (maybe when Gus slit Victor’s throat), but before that, he was all about the drugs, the money, and the power. Only difference between Jesse and Walt in the early years was that Jesse was totally in the moment and Walt was thinking several steps ahead.
Betty Cracker
I binge-watched the first four seasons of Breaking Bad and then the rest from week to week. It probably is easier to see the shifts in character when you binge-watch. I think the show has always been about Walt’s hubris.
Jesse is basically good but weak. The evil he’s done haunts him and always will. Walt is an arrogant prick who doesn’t care what happens to anyone but those closest to him. He could whistle while he worked after that sociopath Todd shot the little boy, but what happens to Hank genuinely undoes him.
So what will happen in the last two episodes? Hmmm. We know from the season opener that Walt returns to NM from NH — considerably more hirsute, which means he’s been gone awhile. He buys a fuckton of heavy weapons, and he retrieves the ricin cigarette from his old house, which is now a ruin. His former neighbor flips out when she sees him, which means he’s a notorious character.
What brought him back to NM? Surely it’s not to rescue Jesse, whom he was ready to see executed at the end of the last show; Walt would have assumed Todd tortured and killed Jesse. The neo-Nazis left Walt with enough money to live out his days, so I don’t think the money drew him back home.
Maybe he gets wind somehow that a particularly pure form of blue meth made a reappearance in ABQ, undermining his Heisenberg legacy. Now that Jesse is Todd’s meth slave, that’s a possibility. Or maybe he wants to wreak havoc on the neo-Nazis to recoup some of his stolen loot and avenge Hank.
Who will smoke that ricin cigarette? Jesse? Todd? Uncle Jack? Lydia (does she even smoke)? Maybe Skyler accidentally ends up with it. I can’t wait to see how it all turns out. It’s one of the best programs ever, IMO.
Oh, and speaking of Lydia: I saw an interview with her on TV the other day, and she has a Scottish accent! Mind = Blown.
cvstoner
I think if Jesse represents anything, it is the tortured morality of the situation. It was all fun and games in the beginning, but when the consequences began to mount, he was the venue for displaying the emotional costs.
mericafukyea
Philisophical musings of wr0ng way Cole about a fictional character who was created as a made for pay tv concept and just evolved by writers as they went along in whatever way they felt would help to keep themselves employed. Yet Cole talks about him like it’s some sort of reflection on reality. Cole really isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.
Dervin
The advantage of watching one episode a week is you don’t see the transformation from anti-hero to maniacal murdering incompetent egomaniac until it’s already happened. It’s like how you rationalize the bad actions of a good friend until one day you realize he’s just an a##hole.
Jesse was immature and lazy, but by Walt’s (and Jessie’s Parent’s) various statements he was always smart. I think that working with Walter White was Jesse’s personal “Scared Straight” program.
The amazing thing about Breaking Bad, if Albuquerque had a stronger teacher’s union, Walt never would have had the chance to make meth.
Betty Cracker
@mericafukyea: It’s called art, motherfucker.
kc
Love the show. One thing that nags at me, though, is that it seems implausible that both Walt and Hank would be married to much younger women.
I can’t help but think its because no one could conceive of having 50-ish actresses in such prominent roles.
April
I recently stumbled onto Hit and MIss, a six episode British series with a premise too weird to describe. But I think many of you all would like it: character-driven; believable dialog; combination of insight, black humor, family drama, and action. Yes, it’s about a trans-sexual hitwoman who becomes responsible for raising four children.
kindness
Compare Breaking Bad to Game of Thrones. You couldn’t really do what John is doing because GoT has only 10 episodes a year and only two years under it’s belt. The whole run would be over in 7 days.
Na, I’m more inclined to give it a whole week to let the nuance, inuendo and subtle hints float around to find their proper levels in understanding/coming to terms with the plot. Well that and GoT has way better oogle factor.
Peter
Walt is who he has always been. In the early days, he had morality, sure – but it was a veneer, an appearance he was keeping up as much for himself as for the people around him. It comforted him to be able to say that he’s not like those criminals. He always needed to justify it to himself. But justify it be always did. And the further into this life he’s gone, the less he’s felt that need to justify, the more that veneer of morality has fallen away.
Jesse was always the more truly moral between them. Yeah, he slings meth, but he’s a methhead himself – of course he doesn’t see anything wrong with that. All he wanted was to cook quietly, make some money, and use that money to get high. He doesn’t want to hurt anybody, and whenever circumstances force him to, it destroys him inside.
ricky
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
I seem to recall a chant that went:
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh
Dare to Fight, Dare to Win.
But I could be wrong. I was having sex under the bleachers with someone I never spoke to again.
chopper
@Betty Cracker:
could be that he finds out jesse is still alive. the nazi guys agreed to take care of jesse if walt would then cook for them one last time, but walt’s gone so there’s no reason for them to keep up their end of the deal. it would make sense also, as jesse is the one they always show smoking.
Xecky Gilchrist
Isn’t Breaking Bad over yet? Hasn’t it had like 10 finale episodes?
Hawes
@Xecky Gilchrist: They’ve only all FELT like final episodes.
This is a fucked up thread, BTW. Walter White and Australian politics, together at last.
Gypsy Howell
@chopper:
I don’t think the ricin was ever meant to be smoked. It was meant to be ingested, on food or whatever. The cigarette was just the hiding place for the capsule.
That said, I have no freakin idea how this is going to turn out. I want Jesse to live, but this being BB, I doubt it will have anything like a happy ending for anyone. Man, the next two Sunday nights are going to be INTENSE.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@ricky:
Noted- with a laugh.
Deb T
No way anyone gets a happy ending on BB. That would be totally out of the realm of possibility. Maybe not everyone is killed, but no one is unscathed
I think when Hank was murdered, Walter White had to finally face up to a lot of the lies he’s told himself to get by. Hank was his proof that he cared about family more than money or his outlaw life. I think he tries to pay back a little with his rant to Skyler absolving her from his crimes, and then letting Holly be reclaimed by her mother, but he’s stained. I don’t think he’ll be able to successfully excuse himself any longer. He survived a long while on his outlaw justice of payback and survival, but Hank’s death ruined that.
shepherdwong
It is. It’s also the biggest story-flaw in the series. Psychopaths aren’t created, as adults, by circumstance. They are basically born that way and manifest their psychopathy by childhood or early adolescence at the latest.
dollared
Just watched the video. Damn, potatoes are the cockroaches of the vegetable world. Bless ’em.
JimV
Just to review the bidding, Walt had cancer with a poor prognosis and couldn’t afford the treatment, with a handicapped son in high school and another child on the way. Before becoming a high school chemistry teacher, he was one of three founders of a biotech company which made the other two rich after he was somehow frozen out (I must have missed the episode with the details). They show up and offer to pay for his cancer treatment, but the thought of being dependent on their charity sends him over the edge, and he comes up with his own plan to pay for his treatment and provide for his family if the cancer is terminal, after Hank takes him on a ride-along to a drug bust and he notices his old student Jesse getting away.
So he started with a lot of rage and a big ego, and some other of our baser instincts, but seemed no worse than a lot of guys I’ve worked with or went to school with. If the army can take almost anyone and train them to kill, I personally don’t think we have to assume he was always a psychopath. People in desperate situations will do bad things. Heck, maybe even Jack Welch wasn’t such a bad guy until the power went to head. (Don’t get me started on Jack Welch.)
Most long-run TV series seem to me to be making it up as they go along (and forgetting what they showed us a few episodes earlier), but BB had better continuity than most – maybe out of sheer luck. Anyway, a couple times when I thought they had made a bad mistake (such as Walt killing Gus when he should have known that Gus was filming his meth-cooking and that a police investigation would find the video), they recognized the dilemma and found a way out of it.
The character that made it a must-watch for me is Saul Goodman. Sort of like Hudson in “Aliens”, he’s a weak, flawed, but funny character that somehow strengthens the drama.