But killing Gale Boetticher was, arguably, justified and self defence because Walter, again arguably, believed Gus would dispense with (kill) Walter once Gale was fully trained.
However, having only recently watched the show, I felt this entire storyline was extremely poorly written and pushed suspension of disbelief a bit too far.
The set up was Gus NEEDED Walter for his specialised knowledge of chemistry to make drugs. This could be partially justified by Gus was setting up what was basically an industrial production plant. Gus was then preparing to replace Walter with Gale Boetticher who was more compliant to Gus’s will plus, with a degree or two in chemistry, had the ability to learn the required skills from Walter. I am gullible enough to accept all that.
But once Gale had been killed we were asked to believe Gus would, reluctantly, continue to EMPLOY (employ as in pay millions in dollars to each week) Walter. This despite Gus demonstrating he was himself a cold blooded killer (he cut the throat of that minion) and to me the obvious question: Assuming Walter was so vital why didn’t Gus just require Walter to continue working on threat of Gus having his family killed? The family were threatened much later. Why not immediately?
The storyline got worse when Jesse was sent down to the drug plant in Mexico and showed considerable ability. So we now believe Gale, in a purpose designed laboratory that he, Gale, had specified and set up didn’t feel he could replace Walter. High school drop out Jesse was able to go to an unfamiliar laboratory and do better than the locals? Even his experience of working alongside Walter doesn’t explain that.
But where this storyline became ridiculous was in the final season. Todd the Son of the Nazis is never shown as particularly intelligent. He does work alongside Walter a few times but is shown to be worse than Jesse was. Yet when the Nazis steal that underground drug lab and have it transported and rebuilt at their compound Todd appears to be the senior chemist. Sure, the show makes it clear his product is inferior, but he can oversee dismantling and rebuilding an entire laboratory and get it into production. While degree educated Gale felt he wasn’t ready to replace Walter?
I disagree with Martin. Walt is only more evil than most of the GoT characters. Joffrey Baratheon, Cersei Lannister, Ramsay Bolton, Walder Frey and Gregor Clegane are all worse than Walt, at least. But Walt killed children, poisoned a kid, murdered Mike, watched Jane die without lifting a finger, bombed a nursing home, had his own son unwittingly launder drug money for him by setting up a scam charity, and killed my favorite character Gale before he could become a regular character! And nothing Walt did was out of necessity, but simply greed and arrogance. A lot of the horrible things that happen in Game of Thrones are inevitable or at least considered necessary.
The weakness of the whole show was the irreplaceable artistry of Walter. For the show to work, you simply had to accept that he, and only he, knew how to make ‘the best’ meth, and that having ‘the best’ meth was really, really important; also, that Walter’s skills could, if he had enough time, be passed on to his chosen appretices (either Jesse or Gale).
Given that meth in reality is often cooked up by ignorant bikers and the like, I rather assume any midway competent person familiar with industrial equipment could make decent enough meth simply by carefully following well-known formulas, making Walter not-so-irreplaceable. But then, I know very little about the realities of meth production.
I believe the writers have insisted the final episode is ‘real’ (within the context of a fictitious show) and offer as proof Walter couldn’t have known Jessie was being held prisoner by the Nazis.
That’s a poor ‘proof’ since a delusional man can fantasise anything he wants.
My complaint with the final episode was the ability Walter had to put together a plan, within a few hours, that would have embarrassed the A-Team or MacGuyver. Buy a remote control garage opener, spend a couple of hours in the desert and next thing you have a remote controlled machine gun? Plus the Nazis, who intend to kill you, let you park where you want? Which turns out to be exactly where you need the gun to be? Plus not only do the Nazis decide to show you Jesse rather than killing you on the spot, they go and fetch Jessie and bring him to the ‘clubhouse’?
Since Jessie was chained up in an underground cage it would have been quicker, simpler and provide more proof of Jessie’s dire straights to take Walter to Jessie. Bringing Jessie to Walter makes no sense. Other than to allow the remote control machine gun plan to come together.
Oh, I totally agree with that. Never thought otherwise.
I totally agree with this too. Except that I don’t, because I have absolutely no problem with it. A whole lot of things have to go exactly right for Walt for his wacky plan to work. But I don’t think that’s bad writing. In the context of the final few episodes, it’s awesome writing. The penultimate episode is the more realistic ending, if the show was taking place in reality: Everything has gone to hell for Walt. In the final episode, it takes a step into fairy tale. But the taste of the more realistic episode that came before it still lingers in our mouths.
It reminds me of a movie that I probably shouldn’t reference, since none of you have seen it, but I will anyway: A Very Long Engagement by Jeunet. Spoilers (go see the movie before you continue reading): The protagonist gets a happy ending that feels completely magical and unrealistic. But it still feels like a better, and actually more sad, ending than a realistic unhappy ending, because we’re so aware of how unrealistic it is, and that most people in the same situation (and there were many, the movie is about World War I), or more likely everyone in that situation, never got that such a happy outcome. So the end result is bitter irony, which packs more of a punch than realism.
With the BB ending, the effect isn’t quite as stark, because the ending we got isn’t that blatantly fantastical. But it’s the same thing to an extent. And it only works properly because of the unrealistic-ish elements of it. We have to be aware that it’s no longer about realism, it’s about wish fulfilment.
Gus and Walt were successful only because they had high standards. Any idiot like “Captain Cook” could whip up some nasty subpar meth, so it wasn’t an untapped market. But the meth heads of the Southwest craved quality, and that’s where Walt cleaned up. I imagine there are very few chemistry PhDs cooking meth, so the idea that he alone could make premium, high purity meth wasn’t too outlandish to me. And Jesse had been working with Walt for years by the time he started his own operation. Gale, despite his chemistry training, had only been working with Walt for a few weeks by the time he took a dirt nap. I imagine Walt’s methods were very difficult, and exacting, but not impossible for others to learn.
I’ll note that I am not too bothered by Walt being irreplaceable without somebody else getting a bunch of training from him.
He wasn’t just a chemist. Apparently he was a DAMN GOOD chemist. Wasn’t there some mention of him being a project that got a Noble Prize or some such.
He was good with theory. He was good with the practice. He was anal as hell about quality. AND he was willing to become a meth producing mean assed SOB. Those don’t exactly grow on trees.
He exacting nature and skill didn’t just mean he could make the good stuff. He could make it in volume and on schedule. The Fried Chicken man was a real business man that also happened to specialize in meth. He understood the value of that.
Another consideration. Being a good chemist Walt probably wasn’t wasting any of the products used to make the meth. And IIRC, some of the products had to be stolen to be obtained for meth production.
So, somebody who isn’t wasting your scarce production supplies, makes good shit, and makes it on time and in volume is pretty damn valuable in my opinion.
This is a really good point. Though I’m skeptical that knowing more about Ramsey or Jeoffrey’s backstories could possibly excuse their monstrous behavior. There’s also the fact that many of the characters in GoT arrive fully formed. Sure, they have their arcs, but most of the evil ones are already evil by the time they show up. With Walt, we see most of his disturbing journey from Mr. Chips to Scarface, as Vince Gilligan liked to put it. In some ways, it makes Walt seem less evil since we see most of the path he walked; in others, it makes Walt seem worse since we see how many chances he had to turn away, but didn’t.
Anyway, I agree that Walt is more evil than many of the GoT characters, but not all of them. But Walt wasn’t the kind of mustache-twirling evil that some of the GoT baddies are. That’s fairytale evil, the likes of Emperor Palpatine or Sauron. Walt was a more human kind of evil; his raging insecurities and sense of entitlement pushed him to show the world how great he was, regardless of the collateral damage it caused. When a real person is “evil” it generally means “extremely selfish,” and that was the core of Walt’s character. He wanted what he wanted and if other peoples’ lives had to be ruined to get it, then so be it.
Now that I put it like that, I suppose the major difference between Walt and Jeoffrey or Ramsey is just that Walt wasn’t a sadist. If he had been, and decided that indulging himself was the best way to deal with his cancer, then the show would have been about Walter White the serial killer.
I don’t agree with that, and in fact I’m genuinely somewhat puzzled by that sentiment. Like, there seems to be a consensus that Cersei is the most heinous bitch that ever bitched on Bitching Street while bitching past the bitching parlor (with apologies to Dylan Moran).
And it’s true that, in the books, she kinda comes off that way.
But in the series, between the series’ focus and the actress’ acting, I can’t help but empathize. Yes, she’s bitter. Yes, she’s a shrew. Yes, she’s cold and cruel and lacks empathy. But at the same time, when the mask drops an inch she makes you see this hopeful, naive, Sansa-like person who ran into her wedding with Robert B. with wild abandon and a sackful of airheaded notions about love and sex and romance. And then got stomped. Forever. And mocked about it all.
And then he used her like a pig. And cheated on her extensively - well, is it even cheating when you’re brazen about it ? And so on and so forth - Robert deliberately shat on her feelings. For years.
So when she winds up a bitter, twisted fucked-up person with no empathy whatsoever, on the one hand it really is evil and such ; but on the other hand it’s profoundly sad. Like, you could imagine all the Cerseis that could have been. But because she never had a say or agency in her life, and because her diplomatic marriage was a recurring nightmare, and because she crystallized her son as the only good part of her existence and so on ; she turned into a shit person. An extremly shit person.
Which is very different from Walter, who always was a shit person. Now, maybe he’s got just as much external formative influence going on, which would if not exonerate him at least make him as darkly, sadly, tearfully, antagonistically sympathetic as Cersei is to me. But as far as we know, Walter just… is and was a shit person, and that’s all there is to it.
Well, I’d imagine that users would not want nasty sub-par meth, but the show is premised on Walt’s meth being so very good that it shipped internationally via Lydia and others. Presumably, the quality of the meth drives other meth out of the market or commands some major price above and beyond other meth, making this worthwhile, and allowing Walt to earn himself a mountain of money.
I don’t know much about meth, but my impression of meth-heads is that they aren’t really as discriminating as all that - that meth isn’t exactly like the luxury market for (say) fine French wines. From what we see of them in the show (and by popular report), they tend to live in dire poverty - more like alkies who would be just as happy drinking no-name booze, as long as it was non-poisionous, cheap and plentiful.
While I can believe ‘chemistry geniuses who are also criminals’ are thin on the ground, I find it hard to believe ‘people capable of working industrial equipment to reasonable tolerances who are criminals’ are - or that one needs to be a chemistry genius to make meth that would sell perfectly well; or that the increment in quality between “meth that is good enough and won’t poision you with crap” and “meth that is so very pure it requires a certified Nobel prize-potential genius to make” is worth all the trouble.
Cersei, when given a chance to take her children and run to safety by the honorable Ned Stark, decided to hold her ground and start WWIII (ultimately getting two of her children killed) instead. The fact that her life made her that way isn’t irrelevant, but it doesn’t excuse her being a heartless bitch, it only explains it.
In fact, that’s the great thing about both GoT and BB: These are fully fleshed out, three dimensional characters. We understand their motivations and why they choose the awful things they do. It doesn’t excuse their actions but it makes everything a lot more complex and less black and white.
I’m not so sure Walt was always evil. In fact, it seems that he lived most of his life selflessly, out of some sense of duty to his family or “niceness” to society. And when he knew he would die he stopped giving a shit about anyone else and decided that for the rest of his life, he was done being stepped on and would do the stepping instead.
It seems like he genuinely cared for what’s her name from Gray Matter, and took a lowball buyout to avoid hurting his friend’s feelings and making things awkward. It seems like he became a teacher out of sense of civic duty, rather than cash in on his chemistry degree which still held hard feelings for him. I think he actually cared for his family and wanted to take care of them. Eventually he was sick of living for other people and decided he would live for himself during the short time he had left. He went about it in a shitty way and yes, became evil, but it is inspiring in a way. I don’t want to kill people and cook drugs, but I wouldn’t mind gaining some confidence in myself, being more assertive, and making choices based on what I actually want, and not what I feel society or my family expects instead.
I have zero experience with meth. But my understanding is that most of its devastating effects are caused by its poor quality and impurities. The sores, the fucked up teeth, the sunken faces, the skin crawling and itching, the zombie stare. And Walt made his highly pure stuff in bulk. It wasn’t some boutique meth that you had to be a Wall Street trader to afford. It was more expensive, but not that more expensive. If you could basically double the quality of life for the average meth head, maybe allow them to hold down a better job or something, but it only costs 25% more, that would be huge.
The way I look at it is Walt was sort of the Steve Jobs of meth. The blue stuff was the iphone. Sure, there were plenty of cheap feature phones out there that could make calls and receive emails, but this was a breakthrough. That’s why it commanded a premium price and that’s why people from all income brackets from all over the world clamored to buy it. It wasn’t just an incremental improvement over the existing product. It was so much better that it was almost an entirely different product.
Walter couldn’t even use the Cancer or the Money he needed for treatment as an excuse because Gray Matter gave him an opportunity to take care of all that but he was too prideful to take it.
WW was an angry bitter man. One of the themes of the show was how you thought he was a good person who was ruined by circumstance but really Heisenberg was who he was all along.
I figure it’s something Dunning-Kruger effect related. Gale knows a lot more about chemistry, so he can see a lot better how much more Walter knows than him, and so he feels unworthy to replace Walt. Jesse and Todd know that they are still much less than experts compared to Walt, but since they know so much less they don’t see the gap in knowledge.
Also, maybe with the better quality, they’re just able to sell more. That a junkie might buy a certain amount of Captain Cook quality stuff, but with the high quality Crystal Blue, they’ll find some way to have more money to buy a bigger amount of meth, because it’s just that good.
