That would be a completely different show: Reverse Breaking Bad.
Yeah, I’m sure that would be absolutely riveting to watch.
What show have you been watching? Walt likes killing people. He’s only tangentially interested in the money at this point. What he enjoys is the winning the game aspect of it all. He’s addicted to the drama and the excitement. Essentially, he’s an adrenaline junkie. I agree he would probably be better off if he gave it up and just bought a motorcycle or something, but perhaps he can’t stand to look that douchey.
Oh, it’s the sort of gun you can effectively use on helicopters, armored vehicles, and yes, people.
Y’know, the kind of stuff the DEA might come at you with.
I don’t think he’s alone in this. Remember season 2, with the B&W premonitions of the pink teddy bear in the pool. Almost everyone took that as some sort of dark, ugly death blow to Walt’s family or perhaps a DEA sting going sour. While the finale was certainly a horrendous outcome of Walt’s actions, it was by far an indirect consequence that totally put the series’ foreshadowing in a different light. Almost relief as opposed to dread.
I wouldn’t put it past Gilligan to pull something similar here. Then again, all bets are off and always have with this show – and yet never pulling any punches.
My opinion as well. It is reasonable to expect from the teaser into and the hints that the ending will be some sort of massive Walt shoot-out with his new machine gun, a la Scarface. This leads me to think it isn’t going to be, but something else instead …
I was saying it’s a big change and that’s all I was saying. And one reason people are “hung up” on the timeline is that the show doesn’t provide a lot of hints as to when all of this is taking place.
He’s become a big success very fast, I agree. Partly that’s happened because he attaches himself to people who know more about the drug trade than he does and later killing them (except for Jesse). But I think his climb through the drug world reflects the sheer hatred that’s been unleashed in Walt. He said his motive in making meth was to leave some money for his family after he died, but from the very beginning it’s also been an act of revenge against the world because Walt feels he’s been treated unfairly. He’s had a lot of opportunities to get rich, but he keeps going further because he’s stuck with that rage and he can’t stop.
I think you’re completely misreading Walter White. He’s not “thoughtful and philosophical enough” to do that. What the show is exploring is the fact that the erstwhile meek and repressed Walter White is actually discovering himself in this adventure. He’s an extremely angry man. And the depths of his anger have only been revealed in very small ways up until now (his abandonment of Gretchen and Gray Matter, for example).
Practically every decision that White has made since the beginning of the series–starting with quitting his job at the car wash and not telling his family about his diagnosis–has been based on his pride and his anger. That’s who the man is, and this is the ride he’s taking us on. There’s no way that Walter can go back now.
Well, he’s right that a rational guy would have left the drug business or would have avoided any number of confrontations with Gus and just been happy to make a bunch of money - “Take yes for an answer,” as Mike put it. But that’s not what drives Walt. He’s running on anger and he likes the Heisenberg version of himself more than he likes the passed-over chemistry teacher who was such a victim he got lung cancer without even smoking.
The character of Walter White in this series does remind me, in many ways, of Milton’s Satan - in terms of pride and resentment being his major motivations. “Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven” - better to make meth to pay one’s medical bills than to accept money (and pity) from his former partners.
The more I think about it, the fumigation thing is such an odd idea that the writers must have a reason for it.
Suppose a batch gets contaminated with a pesticide somehow. Suppose their customers start dying or getting very sick from contaminated meth, and suddenly no one wants Heisenberg’s blue meth, and law enforcement efforts become intense.
Or, you know how cockroaches sometimes get frozen into the ice cubes at a really grubby cafeteria?
I personally think that Walt has been pretty douchey from the beginning, but we see it in only small doses. I would love to know what really happened at “Grey Matter” it seems his partner and his ex girlfriend took pity on him, and really only because of his cancer, because given Walt’s narcissism I think he probably acted unethically to screw himself so badly that he can’t even get work at the University level. We’re only privy to Walt’s loathing of Grey Matter, but we really don’t know why. We’re lead to believe he was squeezed out, but all we get really is Walt’s point of view. It’s also only a really slimy teacher who would go on a search for a former student who he knows has broke bad in order to get into the business.
For me, these are significant enough character flaws to give us clues as to how quickly someone like Walt can spiral down to depravity in pretty short order.
I like this idea. I like it a lot.
But I also like your idea from a few threads back about Hank coming under suspicion. I wonder if the writers would have time to do both.
Mike is the conduit between the “Fring” people with their hands out for their hazard pay, and the meth cook who doesn’t want to divide up his money so much. Interestingly enough, as I suspected, Mike refused to pay Lydia for her first batch of ingredient for the cook, that “freebee” was a given since he spared her life. But he did tell Walt and Jesse to be prepared that that will be an added cost moving forward. So Lydia is getting her taste of the business as well as the Fring 9.
There’s too many it seems with their hands out. Somebody’s gonna get a hurting before the season’s over.
I got the distinct impression that Walt had had, or had wanted, a romantic relationship with that woman from the company. But, if so, she obviously wound up with that other guy from the company, so Walt was bitter at being spurned and left the company before things took off and they got rich.
More than that, there also seems to be the implication that Elliot Schwartz (head of grey matter) got rich only by taking some of Walt’s work and claiming it as his own, and then stole his girl as well.
That level of bitterness is the only thing that really seems to explain Walt’s decision that he’d rather cook meth than accept charity from Elliot… even after the horrible events of the first few episodes.
Of course thats all Walt’s impression of it, could be entirely his narcissist view of the events.
We know at least some of what went on. Walter and Gretchen were a romantic couple as well as business partners. On one occasion, they went to spend a weekend with Gretchen’s (wealthy) family and at some point Walt disappeared and was later discovered packing his bags. He left with no explanation, essentially dumping Gretchen, who eventually ended up with Elliot. It’s not entirely clear whether Elliot was already involved in their business or whether he came in after Walter left. It’s implied that Walt disappeared not only from Gretchen’s personal life but also from their business and Gretchen and Elliot moved forward with it. It seems that Walter resents that part, but it’s not clear why—he expected that his departure would result in Gretchen and Elliot giving up on the whole thing?
My impression is that Walt is and was overly sensitive to being condescended to (that pride again) and was quite willing to see signs of it everywhere - and exposure to Gretchen’s wealthy, no doubt somewhat snooty family, in effect, gave him more of this than he could take.
To be fair, from what little we have seen of Gretchen, she isn’t above pushing his buttons when he’s acting like an ass (remember when they meet and she tells him how sorry she was for him? That would annoy anyone, but for Walt it was what would piss him off the most - and she looked like she knew it).
That scene and Walter’s final line in specific I think are/were quite important to the progression of Walter’s personality. One of the best scenes in the series in my opinion actually. Not as high as some later scenes in season four, but still up there.
See. They need to hire me. 
How about this: The nanny cam bit was a foreshadowing. Either that house or another has a working nanny cam that they miss. Suddenly Walt has to kill an innocent family.