What a giveaway!
If you have to base your sleeping position on whether your drug addled ass might vomit and kill you in the middle of the night, you clearly can blame no one but yourself for your death.
The Mythbusters successfully replicated Walt’s machine gun contraption on a recent episode (discussed in this SDMB thread). Although it jammed on the first couple of attempts, they did get it to function exactly as depicted in the BB episode.
The best part was the joy Vince Gilligan got watching it come to life, and actually work.
The writers must have done some serious research for that scene. That was no ass pull.
If someone else causes you to move and then stands by doing nothing while you obviously choke to death, then clearly you can. Fault and blame are not always absolute and are often shared.
I just re-watched that scene. She didn’t have anything propped behind her to be sure she stayed on her side, which she should have done. Walt didn’t touch her, he shook Jesse and she rolled over onto her back. Walt cried when he realized that she was dead.
Heroin use can definitely cause nausea and vomiting, although a more experienced user with some tolerance like Jane would have would be less likely to experience it, so she must have taken a pretty big dose. Plus as I said upthread, you have to be really severely out of it to die that way - if a sober(ish) person starts asphyxiating on vomit while sleeping, they would generally wake up and be able to recover on their own.
The “rolling her over” aspect muddies the ethics a bit. This is the actual scene. Walt grabs Jesse by the shoulder and shakes him to try to wake him up, at which point Jane rolls onto her back. He never touches Jane directly, but I can see how someone might interpret that as him “causing” her to roll. But that still doesn’t change the fact that the actual cause of her death was her own decision to take a ton of heroin.
“Actual” cause? That doesn’t mean anything. Almost nothing has a single cause.
There’s no inherent reason to accept that proposition over “the actual cause of death was Walt’s failure to prevent it.”
Not too bad for a seat-of-your-pants guess.
Um, death does have an actual cause. I’m quite sure that the medical examiner’s autopsy report doesn’t have a check-box for “Guy stood and watched and failed to save” as a legit COD.
Doubling back to the original question … IMHO what makes Walter White so effectively evil is that he is not purely evil. The fact that many of us are able to identify with some aspects of his motivations and understand how he justified some horrible actions (no matter how early on we each labeled those justifications as self-delusions) and that his smarts and cohones still evoked a certain admiration and respect, is what makes him so chilling and scary … a pure villain would not have captured our imagination as well.
Let’s face it, many us could not help but catch our self more than occasionally rooting rooting for him even as he did horrific things. The smart man put down in life, by choices and circumstance a milquetoast respected by pretty much no one, who has kept his dark and ambitious side in check, restrained, for years, who embracing his impending death becomes both respected and feared. How many who feel that the world thinks them to be weak and ineffectual do not to some degree embrace the fantasy that they are not really weak and ineffectual but have just been keeping the powerful monster inside chained all this time? And seeing that aspect of ourselves reflected in those moments of identification with Walter White, as his monster becomes his transcendent self … that makes for the effective villain, more than the evil of any individual action (or inaction for that matter).
I just had a strange thought. Do you know who Walt makes me think of? And, yes, I know this is going to provoke boos and the throwing of tomatoes, but here goes: Ofelia from Pan’s Labyrinth. They’re stuck in terribly situations, and the escape is fantasy. Except that the fantasy may be real. Also, (major spoilers!)
they both end up shot dead in the end.
I know, I know, dumbest parallel ever. I’ll regret posting it in the morning.
Terrible. Terrible situations. I must learn to preview.
Oh, well. Just as well that you all probably think that I was drunk when I made that post. Better that, then to have you think that I was sober.
At the risk of going off topic can I ask whether anyone agrees with me that, morally, there is no difference between Mike Ehrmantraut and Todd Alquist?
My assessment:
It is made pretty clear Mike will kill to order and at times was ready to kill Walt, Jesse and was about to kill Lydia a few feet away from her small daughter. It seems he just never needed to kill an innocent in the events shown on Breaking Bad.
While Todd did kill innocent people he always did so with a reason. The motorcycle boy was killed to ‘leave no witnesses’ and Andrea was killed to encourage Jesse not to try and escape again. Todd is never shown being pure ‘evil’ or even cruel out of some sadistic desire. Same as Mike, Todd does what the situation seems to require.
As a positive, Mike is shown as a loving and caring grandfather. Although when the cops move in to arrest him he immediately abandons his granddaughter… She was probably safe but he put his immediate needs above her.
Todd is shown as a dutiful and conscientious student to Walt plus he has the (slightly creepy) infatuation with Lydia but he shows some genuine tenderness when he leads her blindfolded, by her choice, away from the carnage at the underground drug factory.
So Mike is shown as more professional and generally looking for more elegance in his actions. He is helped here by his training as a cop and his age. But he kills when required and chooses to work in a business where killing is a regular occurrence.
Todd is perhaps clumsier in his choices than Mike but he lacks Mike’s age and experience. Although Todd doesn’t hesitate to use violence, and steps forward and offers to torture Jesse, he is only ever shown using violence to gain a real benefit. The train robbery does go undetected and Jesse does work for the Nazis.
So Todd demonstrates planning, loyalty and problem solving skills. He’s like a rougher version of Mike with the youth which could have allowed him to achieve Mike’s easy professionalism.
In conclusion, both choose a life of crime and accept occasional murders as part of doing business. There is no, moral, difference.
TCMF-2L
We never saw Mike kill a citizen (a person not involved in the drug trade), and I don’t think you can assume he would.
Oh, did you say medical cause of death? Well, that’s interesting.
Do you suppose the medical examiner would write “the actual cause of her death was her decision to take a large dose of heroin”?
Or do you suppose it would be “asphyxiation leading to heart failure” or something like that? Perhaps with the specification that it resulted from vomiting after taking heroin.
And depending on how you’re counting we are up to two-to-four causes. Which one do you suppose the medical examiner is going to identify as the “actual” one?
In any case, no one said that Walt was responsible for the medical cause of her death. Even Jane didn’t consciously decide to choke to death.
Logically speaking, most events have an infinite number of causes, which but-for, they wouldn’t have happened.
Legally speaking, Walt might or might not be subject to a duty of care but that’s irrelevant too because I’m not talking about whether he is legally liable.
We are talking about the ethics and morals and principles of being human, so the relevant causes are related to human actions or decision (including failures to act).
In that context, Walt’s failure to help is unquestionably a cause, a necessary one in the chain of causes, and he knows it, and he feels it, and unless you are a psychopath, you would too if a human being was dying in front of you and you failed to take the most minimal steps to help.
If you are in that situation and your consideration has to do with your legal duty of care, then you shouldn’t be walking around free in human society (again, not legally speaking).
We can’t be certain but can we reasonably assume?
When he is preparing to murder Lydia her innocent young daughter and innocent nanny are a few feet away. Mike is shown to be careful to try and avoid involving them.
But what can we assume Mike would do if he was discovered, by the nanny, murdering Lydia? He did, after all, tell Walter NEVER do half measures.
TCMF-2L
Mike never does half measures? Everyone remembers that line. What everyone seems to forget is what he chooses to do when he has the gun to Lydia’s head. I seem to remember that Lydia was still around for a few episodes after that.
(Similarly, everyone remembers “I am the one who knocks”, but forgets that about five minutes later Gus threatens to kill Walt’s entire family, and a panicked Walt tries to get away by way of Saul’s vacuum cleaner disappearing guy. Watch those bad-ass boasts, they can backfire.)
Of course, Mike has his reasons. Methylamine supply, for one. The other one: Lydia’s “I don’t want my daughter to think that I abandoned her. Promise that I don’t disappear.” As you pointed out, that is what Mike basically did to his granddaughter. Or at least that’s how he feels about it.
Which is, of course, why he gets back into business with Walt and Jesse: To get the money to his granddaughter.
Which means that Mike’s motivations are the same as Walt’s, kinda-sorta. Will little Kaylee starve to death if Mike doesn’t leave her an account full of ill-gotten funds? I don’t see why. Mike has to do that for Mike. Because Mike has to provide, apparently. The kid can’t think that he abandoned her. And Mike knows that Walt is trouble. Doing business with him again is another half measure.
Of course, the ultimate half measure that Mike does is not killing Walt, when he was pointing that gun at Walt’s head. Mike would have been wise to actually follow his own rules.
Actually, come to think of it, Todd is probably the only one who follows the rule. So maybe it’s not actually that awesome a rule.
Maybe Mike said that to Todd once, and Todd just nonchalantly took him up on it.