Walter’s “caring” for Jesse consists entirely in Walter’s fear of failure. He’s set himself forth as a mentor figure for Jesse, a father-substitute. If he has to have Jesse killed, then he will have failed at this role in about the worst way possible. Hence Walter’s waffling.
I think that he’s very very good at convincing himself that whatever is best for him is also best for Jesse… but even he couldn’t convince himself that killing Jesse is what’s best for Jesse.
I certainly think that, at least up until the events of the last couple of episodes, he would have risked a LOT to save Jesse from getting killed.
Walt has always kind of seen Jesse as a reclamation project. I mean it’s not like Jesse was really going anywhere in life before Walt recruited him. So Walt taught him a trade, helped him earn lots of money, tried to teach responsibility. But along the way it went south, and if Walt determines Jesse has to go, then Walt is a failure. Walt doesn’t want to kill Jesse not because he cares tremendously about him, but because he doesn’t want to give up on the project which is Jesse.
I think one upcoming twist might be that Walt hires Todd’s uncle to kill Jesse but Jr. is directly effected. Killed, injured, or finds out about his dad’s villainy.
I’m trying to figure out if he could be hiring them to kill someone else or do something that doesn’t include killing Jesse, but it wouldn’t seem to be consistent with the show to date.
Not unless Todd’s uncle also happens to be an ace at relaying carpets.
Is there a facebook version this week? I don’t think I have seen it.
Here it is. (That website is pretty badly organized…)
OK, so let’s compile a list of Jesse’s strategies for dealing with his own guilt:
- Accepting himself as the “bad guy” (that didn’t last, and it didn’t suit him anyway).
- Soul-crushing depression.
- Robin Hood-style redistribution of wealth.
- Violent outbursts and attempted arson.
- Casting himself as the victim by putting all the blame on Mr. White, “the Devil”.
Yes, I’m going there: I’m suggesting that Jesse’s current rage against the Heisenberg machine (not entirely misplaced, I grant you, as Walt *is *a lying, manipulative, homicidal, sociopathic asshole) and his sudden willingness to spill the beans to Hank’s camera are just the latest ways for him to deal with his own inner demons.
Actually, if I was drunk enough, I might consider making an argument that Jesse is going through something like the five stages of grief, but in reverse. The usual sequence is denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Jesse’s doing it the other way around: Acceptance (“I’m the bad guy”), depression (escapism through house parties, catatonia on the couch), bargaining (“I’ll give my money away, that will settle my debts somehow”), anger (“I’ll burn this house down”), denial (“I’m not the bad guy, Mr. White is to blame for everything”).
But I’m not that drunk, so I won’t. Still, it would have been really interesting to get to see Jesse’s taped confession, and see how much he plays himself as accomplice vs. victim. I guess it’s actually a pretty interesting question what percentage of accomplice vs. victim he really is.
This goes back to the previous episode, but I’m not sure I understand how Jesse figured out that Walt did poison the kid after all, when he had the revelation while waiting to be hoovered up and disappeared. He realized his weed was gone, figured Saul’s guy took it, then looked at his pack of cigarettes and realized that was also how the capsule of ricin had disappeared-- by Saul’s guy sneaking the pack out and removing the cig with the ricin capsule. Jesse figured out Walt was behind that. That’s what I got from the scene, anyway.
That’s all fine and good, but how did Jesse make the logical leap from “Walt stole the ricin back” to “Walt was actually the one who poisoned the kid”, since the kid was poisoned with the Lily of the Valley poison, not ricin? Jesse told Walt this himself last season, when the kid recovered-- he said the docs told him it was berries from the Lily of the Valley plant, and there was even a logical explanation, that kids find the berries attractive and eat them, or something.
I suppose Jesse could figure if Walt is evil enough to steal the ricin back and lie about it, he’s evil enough to have poisoned the kid. But this seems weak, and the show is so well plotted I figure I missed something. Did I?
I was wondering about this as well.
I think, maybe, it’s supposed to be that Jesse, now realizing Walt is capable of cold blooded murder, had been sub- or half-consciously reevaluating his thoughts about the ricin all along, and the pickpocket incident simply triggered it to explode to the surface.
When Jesse confronted Walt about the poisoning, Walt said Gus must have poisoned Brock to turn Jesse against Walt. When it turned out Brock hadn’t been poisoned with ricin, Walt said the whole thing must’ve been an accident. He made another ricin capsule to “find” at Jesse’s house to convince him of that. When Jesse saw the marijuana had been stolen from his pocket he realized he was right at the start: Huell had stolen the cigarettes, and that would only have been done on Walt’s orders. And yes, I think Jesse would never have put the mystery completely out of mind. Brock would have told Jesse and Andrea that he never ate any berries and the timing of the poisoning sure would have been a weird coincidence, wouldn’t it?
I can’t speak for everyone, but it’s definitely not just you. 
It’s interesting to speculate on what would have happened to Jesse and Walt if they hadn’t hooked up- if either Walt had gone on another raid- or Jesse had been seen and arrested on that one- or if Jesse had smelled “NARC!” with Walt and run like the plague.
Jesse would probably be in prison or dead, either through a botched low end drug deal or an overdose. Walt would probably be alive but penniless from the cancer treatment, or beholding to his Grey Matter partner.
And a lot of people- ranging from an innocent kid on a bike to a tweaked out psychopath- would probably still be alive.
I predict something awful will happen to Hank and/or Marie pretty soon. Their marriage is the only healthy relationship left on the show.
If it makes any difference to whatever you’re speculating on, their marriage already had it’s rocky period, while Hank was bedridden.
It was a mineral-y period!
[Marie]I’m sorry, your minerals. Tell me about that one, it’s pretty, I just want to be interested in your hobbies[/Marie]
I need some goofy cartoon violence in the next episode. The past four have been bleak in the extreme. If the show gets any darker now, I think I’ll shoot myself.
Did Walt really think that any high school chemistry student would miss the fact that a chemist is talking about hosing gasoline off himself with WATER???
That bothered me more than anything in this episode…and I thought that that was what prompted Junior to tell him to quit lying.